ABSTRACT
In this chapter, Alexis Cukier asks us to reflect on the role work and workplace organization could play in democratizing society generally. His claim is a straightforward one: if we desire a properly democratic society, we must prioritize democratizing work, given the centrality of work in our social and political experiences. This claim is defensible on empirical and theoretical grounds. Empirically, there is a wealth of evidence revealing that workers yearn for greater freedom in their work, and experiments in workplace organization show that this yearning is realizable. Theoretically, a combination of the class-struggle and industrial-democracy paradigms, in conjunction with lessons from feminism and political ecology, reveals the project of democratizing work and the economy more broadly to be normatively desirable and practically conceivable. Cukier ends his discussion with a consideration of the rights and institutions that would facilitate the democratization of work and the economy, including the conferral of a new ‘worker-citizen’ status on all and the foundation of a multilevel council democracy.
