ABSTRACT
This introductory chapter provides an outline of the main contours of a theory of council democracy and offers a preliminary sketch of council democracy’s relationship with the major strands of democratic theory. Council democracy is a project of deepening democracy which includes the decentralisation of the state, democratisation of the economy and solidarity with similar international struggles for self-government. Council democrats view capitalist market relations as having to be not only tamed, but transformed in a manner which alters the underlying relationship between capital and labour and eliminates capitalists’ controlling power over workers and the state.
