Economic democracy

Economic democracy extends democratic participation and accountability to decisions about ownership, production, and resource allocation. It encompasses institutions that give workers, communities, or the public greater influence over economic life.

Worker cooperative: A business owned and democratically governed by its workers. Worker ownership gives employees direct authority over workplace decisions and enterprise governance.
Capitalism: An economic system in which productive assets are primarily privately owned and investment is organized for profit. Private ownership and investor control are common targets of economic-democratic reform.
Robert Owen: A Welsh social reformer who promoted cooperative communities and improved conditions for industrial workers. His cooperative experiments helped make worker-centered economic organization a practical reform proposal.
Mondragon Corporation: A federation of worker cooperatives founded in the Basque Country in 1956. Its network of cooperatives demonstrates worker ownership at substantial scale.
Workplace democracy: Democratic participation by employees in decisions governing their workplace. It can redistribute authority within firms and give workers a direct role in decisions affecting them.
Codetermination: A system in which employees participate in corporate governance, often through elected board representatives. It gives workers a formal voice inside firms without necessarily transferring ownership.
State socialism: An economic system in which the state owns or directs major productive assets. Public ownership alone can centralize decisions without democratic participation by workers or communities.
Rochdale Society of Equitable Pioneers: An 1844 English consumer cooperative that established influential principles for cooperative organization. Its democratic governance principles became a model for later cooperative institutions.
German works council: An elected workplace body that represents employees in dealings with management under German law. Works councils provide a statutory channel for employee participation within firms.
Economic inequality: Unequal distribution of income, wealth, or economic resources among people or groups. Economic-democratic proposals often aim to reduce inequalities that translate into unequal influence.

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