ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses a variety of historical episodes of economic democracy. Workers’ participation at factory level are analyzed for the Paris Commune of 1871, the Russian revolutions of 1905 and 1917, uprisings in Germany in 1918–19, Turin in 1919–20; the Spanish Civil War of 1936–39, post-World War II workers’ activism in Italy, the “Chilean Way to socialism” under President Salvador Allende in 1970–73 and the Carnation/Captain’s Revolution of 1974–75 in Portugal. These episodes were, in general, part of an attempt to bring about broader socio-economic transformation with varying degrees of success and failure. Mechanisms of democratic participation within the framework of dominant capitalist (or socialist) economies include the German co-determination system, the Swedish company participation schemes, the Basque country’s cooperatives, Israel’s kibbutz, Yugoslavian self-managed enterprises, among others. In these cases, the principal objective was to increase social participation in firms rather than a revolutionary overturn of the status quo. Then the chapter reviews 21st century experiences of constitutional change in Bolivia, Ecuador and Iceland centered around agendas of social and ethnic inclusion, preservation of the environment and more transparent democracies. In Iceland the restoration of shattered credibility in government and monetary institutions caused by the financial crises of 2008–09 required a new constitution.
