ABSTRACT
This chapter argues for a conception of workers’ councils that are embedded within the architecture of the modern state and parliamentary government as opposed to anti-statist and romantic conceptions of workers’ councils. I defend the idea of what I call “council republicanism” that blends workers’ councils with the institutions of the modern constitutional state in order to secure and expand the institutional capacities of workers’ councils. A second purpose of this theory of council republicanism is to achieve the maximisation of the principle of non-domination in social relations as well as the need to orient social and economic activities towards common purposes and not particular, private ends. I argue that council republicanism can therefore provide us with a persuasive and compelling model that orients worker movements towards a more substantive democratic vision than that provided by either a liberal or a pure council democracy.
