Democratizing the Corporation The Bicameral Firm and Beyond

Worker representation is the first step toward democratizing the economy

Although contemporary Western societies refer to themselves as “democratic,” the bulk of the population spend much of their lives in workplaces that have more in common with tyranny. Gigantic corporations such as Amazon, Meta, Exxon, and Walmart are among the richest and most powerful institutions in the world yet accountable to no one but their shareholders. The undemocratic nature of conventional firms generates profound problems across society, hurting more than just the workplace and contributing to environmental destruction and spiraling inequality.

Against this backdrop, Isabelle Ferreras proposes a radical but realistic plan to democratize the private firm. She suggests that all large firms should be bicamerally governed, with a chamber of worker representatives sharing equal governance power with the standard board representing owners. In response to this proposal, twelve leading experts on corporate behavior from multiple disciplines consider its attractiveness, viability, and achievability as a “real utopian” proposal to strengthen democracy in our time.

The Real Utopias Project is a long running book and conference series initiated by Erik Olin Wright. It was meant to combine rigorous social scientific analysis with visions of the world as it ought to be. This will be the first RUP book to be written since Erik Olin Wright's death.

Tom Malleson is associate professor of Social Justice & Peace Studies at King’s University College at Western University. They are the Coordinator of the Real Utopias Project series. Their latest books include After Occupy: Economic Democracy for the 21st Century (Oxford University Press), Fired Up About Capitalism (Between the Lines Press), and Part-Time for All: A Care Manifesto (co-authored with Jennifer Nedelsky and forthcoming from Oxford University Press). They are also a long-time social justice activist and organizer. www.tommalleson.com

Isabelle Ferreras is a sociologist (PhD Louvain 2004), and a political scientist (MSc Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2004). She also studied at the Harvard Trade Union Program (Certificate, Harvard, 2005). She is a senior tenured fellow (maître de recherches) of the Belgian National Science Foundation (F.N.R.S.-F.R.S., Brussels), a professor of sociology at the University of Louvain (Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium) where she is a permanent research of the CriDIS (IACCHOS-Centre for interdisciplinary research Democracy, Institutions, Subjectivity, Louvain), and a senior research associate of the Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard Law School (Cambridge, MA). Isabelle Ferreras has been elected President of the Royal Academy of Science, Humanities, and the Arts of Belgium, Director of its Technology and Academy Class (2021-2022).
www.isabelleferreras.net
Twitter: @Ferreras_Isa

Joel Rogers is the Noam Chomsky Professor of Law, Political Science, Public Affairs, and Sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he also directs COWS, the national resource and strategy center on high-road development that also operates the Mayors Innovation Project, State Smart Transportation Initiative (with Smart Growth America), and ProGov21. Rogers has written widely on party politics, democratic theory, and cities and urban regions. Along with many scholarly and popular articles, his books include The Hidden Election, On Democracy, Right Turn, Metro Futures, Associations and Democracy, Works Councils, Working Capital, What Workers Want, Cites at Work, and American Society: How It Really Works. Joel is an active citizen as well as academic. He has worked with and advised many politicians and social movement leaders, and has initiated and/or helped lead several progressive NGOs (including the New Party (now the Working Families Party], EARN (Economic Analysis and Research Network], WRTP (Wisconsin Regional Training Partnership], Apollo Alliance (now part of the Blue Green Alliance], Emerald Cities Collaborative, State Innovation Exchange, and EPIC-N (Educational Partnership for Innovation in Communities Network). He is a contributing editor of The Nation and Boston Review, a MacArthur Foundation Fellow, and identified by Newsweek as one of the 100 living Americans most likely to shape U.S. politics and culture in the 21st century.

Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction, Tom Malleson and Joel Rogers

I. The Proposal
1. Democratizing the Corporation: The Proposal of the Bicameral Firm, Isabelle Ferreras

II. Democracy at Work
2. The Progressive Era’s Public Firm, Carly R. Knight
3. Workplace Democracy, the Bicameral Firm, and Stakeholder Theory, Marc Fleurbaey

III. The Corporation and the Law
4. Fallacies about Corporations: Comments on “Democratizing the Corporation,” David Ellerman
5. Prospects for Democratizing the Corporation in US Law, Robert F. Freeland
6. Economic Democracy at Work: Why (and How) Workers Should Be Represented on US Corporate Boards, Lenore Palladino

IV. Nuts and Bolts of Economic Bicameralism
7. Islands and the Sea: Making Firm-Level Democracy Durable, Max Krahé
8. Are Bicameral Firms Preferable to Codetermination or Worker Cooperatives? Thomas Ferretti and Axel Gosseries
9. Learning from Cooperatives to Strengthen Economic Bicameralism, Simon Pek

V. Economic Democracy: The Big Picture
10. The Prospects for Economic Democracy: Learning from Sweden as Failed Case, Bo Rothstein
11. Ferreras and the Economic Democracy Debate, Christopher Mackin
12. Five Principles of Economic Democracy, Ewan McGaughey
13. Economic Democracy against Racial Capitalism: Seeding Freedom, Sanjay Pinto

VI. Conclusion
14. A Response to My Readers, Isabelle Ferreras

Notes