(Autonomedia) What Do We Need Bosses For? Toward Economic Democracy

Incessant propaganda endlessly blares “there is no alternative” to capitalism. But there is always an alternative. Humanity need not be condemned to sit by helplessly as an uncontrollable economic and political system spanning the world brings us devastating inequality, precarious jobs, life-threatening environmental destruction and global war. What Do We Need Bosses For? Toward Economic Democracy analyzes past and present efforts to establish systems of economic democracy on a national or society-wide basis, dissecting the mounting inequalities of capitalism and theorizing how we might organize a better world. Workers everywhere have repeatedly sought to create that better world, organizing to reverse their subordinate positions under capitalism and to take charge of their working lives and their workplaces through egalitarian movements that sought to build economies for everybody rather than for a minuscule capitalist elite. Political democracy is impossible without economic democracy. Economic democracy, in turn, is impossible under capitalism. As ever more people realize the present world system offers them nothing but more hardship, movements to create a better world inevitably will rise again.