ABSTRACT
In the competitive socialised ownership sector, and in co-operatives, the workforce would receive encouragement to participate, to attend meetings, to stand for committees, to put forward proposals, to help elect the working management. Not all would be interested, since some would pay greater attention to hobbies outside the work process, and have every right to do so. The smaller the numbers engaged in a given productive unit, the more likely would be the effective feeling of participation, of ‘belonging’. Intuitively we surely would all agree that it would be far easier in a group of 50 than in one of 5,000. Individuals would be free to change their jobs, to acquire a different specialisation, to switch from working for the state to working in a cooperative or on their own account. The concept of producers’ preferences is a useful one to keep in mind, alongside that of consumers’ preferences.
