The United States fancies itself the exemplar and guarantor of democracy around the world. Whether it’s toppling elected governments, withholding basic necessities, or simply bombing women and children, the US will not be stopped in its endeavor to spread democracy. Rather than limiting our vision to that set by elites who tout democratic platitudes to further imperialism abroad and tyranny at home, the progressive movement should push our public institutions to build a democratic economy for all.
Despite its self-branding, the United States is not a democratic utopia. The president can be chosen without a majority, the legislature gives the citizens of small states 40 times the representation of larger ones, and the judiciary stands above any electoral scrutiny. Furthermore, our elections allow for private interests to deploy unlimited amounts of money to privilege candidates who will further their issue set.
However, even this flawed democracy trumps the day-to-day reality of American life. The average worker spends 40 or more hours a week in spaces with no pretension of democracy. Firms are guided by their owners and/or their chosen leadership, who are fiduciarily obligated to maximize profits. On the job, owners or their appointed management demand fealty and engage in surveillance while controlling your time, your speech—even your attire. If a state was organized around the basic principle of maximizing its leaders’ gain and ensured this by maintaining a police state, we’d rightly call this tyrannical and totalitarian.
At the macro level, corporations dominate the US economy. Between setting prices and deciding which products and services are available to us, corporations unavoidably touch the lives of every American. Despite impacting the public broadly, corporate ownership is heavily concentrated, leaving over half of stock holdings in the hands of less than one percent of the population. In contrast, more than half of US adults have no stock ownership. Thus, the few tyrants who directly control our workplaces join together to lead our economy as a whole to their benefit.
Paired with our pay-to-play elections, it’s no wonder that through subsidies, tax incentives, and government contracts, our federal, state, and local governments send hundreds of billions of dollars in our taxes to private interests. The same few tyrants who own our economy also have the means to shape public policy and wield our institutions as tools for their betterment. Despite appeals to the virtue of free-market capitalism, our nation’s wealthiest are not self-made, they are public dependents.
Though uncommon in the United States, there are alternatives to the totalitarian business model, called worker cooperatives. Unlike traditional corporations, the leadership and priorities of the firm aren’t decided by the few, they are decided by the many. Like any other firm, these organizations sell goods and services to consumers, but they do so under the direction of managers elected by the workforce. When our economic leadership is accountable to the mass of workers rather than the privileged few, policy decisions will inevitably begin to be made with their interests in mind.
As fantastical as it may seem, these organizations already exist. One towering example is a Spanish firm, Mondragon, which is a federation of financial, industrial, retail, and educational worker cooperatives. Leadership is chosen in each constituent firm and for the federation as a whole through democratic processes. Introducing democracy into the workplace has realized a model that is guided by the interests of its workers and isn’t tied to the constraints of maximizing the gain of an overlording few. As a result, the largest pay disparity between leadership and workers is 9-to-1—unlike the United States, where the average CEO makes nearly 300 times as much as their employees.
By democratizing our economy, the United States has the opportunity to spread democracy and eradicate totalitarianism without venturing overseas. By introducing a cooperative economy, we can dethrone our tyrants and introduce a new age of democracy, fulfilling the liberatory ideals our nation endemically falls short of.
Transitioning our economy would be no small task, but there is a way forward. As noted above, despite rhetoric otherwise, governments are integrally involved in modern commerce and should play a role in promoting a democratic economy. If corporations and the wealthy can draw from the public coffers, so can we.
In Jeremy Corbyn’s honorable effort to lead the United Kingdom, a law ushering in new labor rights was proposed. In the event that any private business decided to shut down, move, sell itself, or go public, the workers of that firm would be given the right to reject the owners’ decision and take over the firm. After the announcement of one of the former actions, workers could hold an election on the matter. If the workers wanted to maintain their positions, the firm could be bought by the workforce and led by their union or a newly organized council as a cooperative. If workers opted to make the purchase, the government would lend them the funding.
We should borrow from this British example and provide public assistance to new cooperatives. In light of the unending support that entrenched tyrants have afforded themselves, democratic firms—with the support of an active political movement—could force the government to do the same for us. By building direct power in the economic sphere, we could offer American workers liberation from their fealty to tyrants and promote membership in economic communities. Moreover, rather than allowing those few tyrants to continue making major economic decisions in their interest, cooperative leaders could wield their newfound power to make decisions that better the working class as a whole.
To make this happen, I call on progressive leaders, activists, and supporters to promote local, state, and federal legislation to affirm workers’ right to reject existentially threatening actions by their masters, provide financial and logistical support to new cooperatives, and give preferential bidding privileges for all public contracts to democratic firms. When conservatives and liberals inevitably coalesce to challenge this project, our pro-democracy movement will force our elites to explain to us—the American people—why we cannot be trusted to govern ourselves.
Trent Chassy is a senior at the University of Illinois studying history and political science. A lifelong local, he previously served as editor-in-chief of The Prospectus. In addition to his advocacy, Trent now coaches youth basketball in the community.
668 total views, 3 views today