European Economic Democracy A new path out of the crisis

International Review of Sociology, 2018

Cooperatives and trade unions are the oldest organizations of democratic participation, founded nearly 200 years ago. For sure the main challenges for the world and especially for the trade unions and the social economy today are the environmental degradation in all realms and globalization dominated by the financial capital. To better understand these issues a historical approach is needed.

2015

Author(s): Carlos, Alfredo | Advisor(s): Lynch, Cecelia; Torres, Rodolfo D | Abstract: Economic Democracy and worker cooperatives are part of a growing movement for economic change. In the dissertation I explore the ideas of Economic Democracy, what they can teach the academy, their history and theoretical underpinnings. I am specifically interested in understanding whether worker cooperatives offer a solution to the problems of capitalism and whether they fundamentally change the nature and process of work as well as the quality of life for ordinary workers, especially those workers who traditionally have been relegated to the bottom of the labor market, workers of color. Through the use of the Marxist theory and the Gramscian concepts of hegemony and war of position I analyze the complicated and difficult structural, administrative, ideological/cultural and racial struggles that these types of enterprises face in enacting their visions. Through a comparative case study based on in...

Routledge Handbook on Cooperative Economics & Management, 2024

This paper argues that the use of hired workers in non-worker cooperatives violates the moral standards that should be exemplified in cooperatives. All cooperatives (as opposed to conventional corporations) allocate membership rights as personal rights (rather than property rights) to those who patronize the cooperatives-which is evidenced by the one-person one-vote rule. However, most cooperative organizations today do not exemplify any cooperative activity; non-worker cooperatives do not represent any cooperative activity of the members since the only joint activity of the organization is carried out by employees. The idea that cooperatives are democratically governed does not apply to non-worker cooperatives (based on the employment relation) since the members are not choosing the managers or governors of their own activity but of the activity of the people working in the cooperative.

Full version of an essay published in People Over Capital: The co-operative alternative to capitalism, edited by Rob Harrison, New Internationalist / Ethical Consumer, 2013.

This paper uses data collected through written narratives, focus groups and participant observation in three small UK worker cooperatives to investigate the role of democracy in maintaining cooperatives' dual social-economic characteristic and resisting degeneration. More specifically, it adds to limited empirical literature countering the degeneration thesis by arguing that ongoing processes of individual-collective alignment, understood as central to the practice of democracy, help cooperatives to: balance varying and conflicting needs and aims; challenge the assumption underpinning the degeneration thesis; and transform degenerative " risks " into creative and productive spaces where new meanings and practices can be formed. Acknowledgments I would like to thank my supervisors and all research participants for supporting me on my research journey. I thank also the editors and anonymous reviewers for their invaluable comments on earlier versions of this manuscript. In the spirit of this paper and journal, I would welcome comments on the article.

Economic and Industrial Democracy, 2010

The article deals with the forthcoming challenges to the German system of co-determination (Mitbestimmung) arising from the Europeanization of industrial relations (IR) in general and the European Company (Societas Europaea -SE) in particular. After some short remarks on co-determination 's national history and present challenges, recent political controversies are discussed. Then the most important European regulations on employee involvement are analysed from a German perspective. The main part of the article presents some first empirical results on the new SE form with particular emphasis on its impact on the existing German system. Finally, some tentative conclusions are made.

Faith and Economics, 2020

The negative outcomes of industrial capitalism and neoliberalism continue to grow in the twenty-first century, causing many social scientists to look for solutions and alternatives to the status quo. Major ideologies gravitate towards collectivization and statism on the one hand, and anarcho-capitalism and the "commodification of everything" on the other. There is, however, a growing movement towards decentralization by democratization. This article examines worker's cooperatives and the framework behind the cooperative movement (distributism and anarcho-socialism) as a robust solution to the central problems of our economy. Worker's cooperatives, while still not common in many industries, are both theoretically sound and have been concretely tested.

Zeitschrift für Vergleichende Politikwissenschaft ; Comparative governance and politics, 2016

Engaging with articles published in this journal by Wolfgang Merkel, Wolfgang Streeck and Colin Crouch, the present article seeks to elaborate on the relation between capitalism and democracy in the European Union. The key question addressed by the article is whether and to what extent democracy is possible within the EU, or whether the EU must be regarded as the Trojan horse of capitalism. The first two sections consist of a brief discussion of the main arguments raised in the foregoing debate and of the institutional and politico-cultural dimensions of democracy in the EU’s multilevel system. The central section of the paper is devoted to a discussion of the complex contexts and actors influencing the relation between democracy and capitalism, or rather, economic liberalization and deregulation, in the EU. In the fifth and final section I consider whether and to what extent democracy is possible within the EU’s system of liberal capitalism and how representative democracy in the EU and the multilevel system could be safeguarded and improved under current conditions. To this end, I present six possible pathways for institutional and democratic reform that are of varying complexity.

Why does democracy stop at the factory gate? This question, posed by Langdon Winner (1977), highlights the fact that we have learned to accept authoritative and nondemocratic governance structures in the workplace, which we strongly oppose in the political sphere. The constitution of clear boundaries between governance structures within and outside work organizations is an attractive area of study, as it involves a re-examination of basic concepts such as property rights and individual rights and their inner tensions. While the vast majority of capitalist workplaces are far from being democratic, some work organizations implement democratic governance structures in their daily operations. In these workplaces – for example, bakeries and taxi cooperatives – workers own their workplace, elect their managers and even constitute a justice regime with an internal court with independent judges. The second article in this issue presents the growing interest in different forms of economic democracy. It deals with the application of an alternative organizational form, a cooperative, in the German energy sector. Özgür Yildiz and Jörg Radtke explain that cooperatives in this sector existed already in the late nineteenth century and have received government as well as grassroots support in the early twenty-first century with the push towards renewable energy. The authors suggest that energy cooperatives do not conform to the strict and narrow definition of workplace democracy, which promotes workers’ ownership and control over decisionmaking in their employing organization. Rather, Yildiz and Radtke provide a much broader definition of workplace democracy, which includes the meso and macro levels. On these two broader levels they are able to demonstrate the democratic nature of energy cooperatives.

Abstract The article examines transformative alternatives that may offer pathways toa more participative, sustainable and equitable social order. It focuses on oneform of alternative, worker-owned co-operatives, and argues this existing form of democratic and economic relations has already proven capacity to generate more equitable socio-economic outcomes and residual social capital. The worker-owned model islocated within an ideological framework that focuses on the inherent democratising principles of their praxis that can in the right circumstances underpin firm strategic foundations for radical social change. It examines the development of worker-owned co-ops in Ireland north and south and the obstacles that need to be overcome to make these a more feasible and common form of economic ownership. Reflecting on the current debate in Ireland it argues such co-ops cannot work effectively without a secure legal framework governing their status and softer supports including entrepreneurship development, leadership training, market research, accessing loan finance and grant aid, inter-cooperative networking and federation building. The article poses workers’ co-operatives as sites of political struggle and consciousness, expressed in co-operatives’ core values including sovereignty of labour, the subordinate nature of capital, democracy, inter-cooperation and sustainability, and in tangible democratic experiences and transformative praxis. Key words: workers’ co-operatives, economic ownership, transformation, legal framework, participation

SCIENTIFIC PAPERS, 2011

The paper aimed to present the evolution of Cooperatives in 2007 in all the countries of the EU. It is based on the statistical data provided by the European region of the International Co-operative Alliance. The data have been processed into the following ...

Revista Tendencias, 2013

The aim to achieve-in 2003-the single market also for the European cooperative societies was one of the major objectives of the EC Regulation concerning the status of the Societas Cooperativa Europeae (SCE). Seven years later there seems to be little practical experiences. This paper is focused in the analysis of experiences in the Basque Country, especially on Ethical Banking and the Project developed known as Fiare, which would 1. Doctora en Derecho por la Universidad de Deusto especializada en economía social y solidaria, empresas sociales y participación de los trabajadores en la empresa. Profesora acreditada agregada por la agencia de calidad universitaria UNIBASK perteneciente al Gobierno Vasco.

Social enterprise journal, 2024

Purpose-Using the theoretical framework of the substantive economy, this study aims to point out the main aspects of the substantive mode of operation that help the integration of disadvantaged people while at the same time shedding light on the barriers that hinder economically efficient functioning in a market economy. Design/methodology/approach-Research focuses on Hungarian rural work integration social cooperatives, which are engaged in producing activity by the employment of disadvantaged people. In the research, mixed methods were applied: results of a questionnaire survey covering 102 cooperatives, as well as 20 semistructured interviews and experiences from the field. A total of 17 indicators were used to explore the substantive operational features, promoting mechanisms and problems in the following areas: organisational goals and outcomes; integrating roles and functions; productive functions; and the embeddedness of cooperatives. Findings-As for results, substantive operational mechanisms and tools that support the integration of disadvantaged people have been identified such as mentoring, social incentives, the ability to create local value or the expansion of local community services. At the same time, several barriers have been detected that make it difficult to operate economically, such as cooperatives being a stepping stone for workers, excessive product heterogeneity or the lack of vertically structured bridging relationships. Originality/value-The value of the study is to counterpoint the mechanisms promoting social purposes of work-integration social cooperatives and the obstacles to their long-term sustainability within the framework of the substantive economy, to better understand their functioning and the less quantifiable factors of their performance.

Global Perspectives, 2020

Karl Polanyi’s critique of the ideal of the self-adjusting market is increasingly invoked to challenge the negative effects of European integration on national social welfare systems. However, these debates have been caught in an unhelpful opposition between European market openness and national social closure. Challenging common interpretations of Polanyi, this article shows that he develops a theory of the relationship between democratic reciprocity and what the article calls “nonmarket modes of economic coordination.” The problem is not reconciling openness with closure but navigating the dilemmas of democratic capitalism. The article then uses this framework to critique the one-sided nature of European law as well as recent calls for a “social Europe.” The article criticizes these efforts, arguing that the fate of social Europe is bound to the economic and political dynamics unleashed by the project of monetary integration.

Capital & Class, 2023

One of the most unfortunate results of neoliberalism, capitalist culture and our global economy at large is the marginalization of alternative voices, spaces and socioeconomic movements. This is particularly true with regard to cooperatives and the cooperative movement. The (modern) cooperative movement generally began in the early 1800s as an alternative to industrial organization, on one hand, and as an alternative to radical political revolution on the other. 1 Unlike capitalist firms, cooperatives are (1) owned and (2) democratically managed by their members (e.g. clients, workers, producers, etc.), all of which decentralizes power and redistributes resources. They are, indeed, a form of socialism (a term apparently coined in The Cooperative Magazine in 1827). But despite the fact that today, over 1 billion people (about 12% of the human population) are members of a cooperative, they are continually sidelined and stereotyped as 'niche', 'hippie' or just incapable of addressing today's pressing social and economic concerns. Cooperatives are also criticized by the left (for cooperating with market, price, and legal structures, not challenging larger political hegemony, etc.) 2 as well as by the right (for countering big capital, replacing profit-maximization with human goals and socializing/democratizing the workplace). Perhaps this is unfortunate given how much cooperatives have accomplished for so many over nearly two centuries, and for how promising they are for the 21st century-where even the United Nations declared 2012 the 'International Year of Cooperatives', and popular Marxist economists like Richard Wolff define socialism in terms of worker cooperatives (Wolff 2019). Cooperatives in the Global Economy is a much-needed series of essays that demonstrate the concrete realities of cooperative economics across the globe. After a foundational chapter on the meaning of cooperative enterprise and its distinction among the endless models and forms of economic activity, the rest of the book essentially looks at