ABSTRACT
Objective observers are able to reach realistic assessments of the potential for social change only if they take this changed subjectivity into consideration. The key terms now are ‘labour entrepreneur’, new, individual members of ‘civil society’ and subjectivization of labour’. Institutionalized codetermination as it was instigated in post-war Germany was part of the tradition of older concepts of economic democracy and could be seen as a pragmatic manifestation of some of their key notions in the specific social constellations of power of the post-war period. Simultaneously, the demand for greater self-organization at work has strengthened both demands for participation (and not just in manufacturing) and the potential that employees bring to such participative processes. Codetermination as an institution has had a lasting influence in shaping the relations between capital and labour, particularly in Germany, but it cannot be understood as a post-war phenomenon without the concerted efforts and evolution of powers in the old labour movement dating.
