Andrew Cumbers - The Case for Economic Democracy

1 Cover

2 Front Matter The Case for Economic Democracy Andrew Cumbers polity

3 Introduction The economic roots of the democratic crisis The retreat from democratic scrutiny in economic policy Making the case for economic democracy in the twenty-first century Notes

4 1 A Brief History of Economic Democracy as Industrial DemocracyIntroduction Struggles for economic democracy in the nineteenth century The growth of a social democratic labour politics in the twentieth century The Meidner Plan and the high tide of twentieth-century social democracy The convenient fiction of Thatcher’s property-owning democracy ‘Stale, male and pale’: the exclusions of twentieth-century industrial democracy Conclusion Notes

5 2 The Three Pillars of Economic Democracy Individual economic rights and self-government Democratic, collective and diverse public ownership Creating a deliberative and participatory economic democracy Conclusion Notes

6 3 Putting Economic Democracy into Practice Institutions for implementing individual self-governance and economic freedom Emergent tendencies in democratic collective ownership Practising participatory economic decision making Conclusion Notes

7 ConclusionConstructing the democratic economy A summary of the main arguments and their policy implications Mobilizing for economic democracy Notes

8 References

9 End User License Agreement

1 Chapter 1 Figure 1.Income Inequality in Europe and the United States, 1900–2010: Share of Top Incom… Figure 2.Ownership of Share Capital in UK’s Quoted Companies 1963–2014

1 Chapter 2 Table 1.Three Pillars of Economic Democracy Table 2.A Diverse Ecology of Collective Ownership in a Democratically Regulated Economy

2 Conclusion Table 3.The Pillars of Economic Democracy: Essential Elements and Institutional Mechanis…

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Andrew Cumbers, The Case for Economic Democracy

Andrew Cumbers

polity

Copyright © Andrew Cumbers 2020

The right of Andrew Cumbers to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

First published in 2020 by Polity Press

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All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-3386-2

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Cumbers, Andrew, author.

Title: The case for economic democracy / Andrew Cumbers.

Description: Cambridge, UK ; Medford, MA : Polity, 2020. | Series: The case for | Includes bibliographical references. | Summary: “Andrew Cumbers shows why economic democracy’s time has come”-- Provided by publisher.

Identifiers: LCCN 2019034779 (print) | LCCN 2019034780 (ebook) | ISBN 9781509533848 (hardback) | ISBN 9781509533855 (paperback) | ISBN 9781509533862 (epub)

Subjects: LCSH: Distributive justice. | Social justice. | Democratization.

Classification: LCC HB523 .C84 2020 (print) | LCC HB523 (ebook) | DDC 330.01--dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019034779LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019034780

The publisher has used its best endeavours to ensure that the URLs for external websites referred to in this book are correct and active at the time of going to press. However, the publisher has no responsibility for the websites and can make no guarantee that a site will remain live or that the content is or will remain appropriate.

Every effort has been made to trace all copyright holders, but if any have been overlooked the publisher will be pleased to include any necessary credits in any subsequent reprint or edition.

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I am grateful to the Adam Smith Business School and the wider academic community at the University of Glasgow for providing me with the space, time and collegiality to help me complete this book. Special thanks are due to Robert McMaster who has been my partner on the related project to construct an Economic Democracy Index, and who has been the source of important discussions and insights on economic democracy over almost two decades. I am grateful too to the ESRC for the initial funding for that project ‘Transforming Public Policy through Economic Democracy’ (REf: ES/N006674/1), which helped to develop some of the ideas behind this book. Our other co-investigators on that project, Michael White, Susana Cabaco and Karen Bilsland, also deserve thanks for their support in various ways over the past four years.