Towards a socio-history of economic democracy some theoretical hypotheses

To bring the debate on corporate reform in France to a successful conclusion, this paper argues that we need a theory of economic democracy which, on the one hand, establishes a continuum ranging from the non-profit sector to employee share ownership and, on the other hand, which is understood not only as workplace democracy but as the democratisation of economic processes as a whole through collective decision-making and ownership. But this requires both a re-reading of Polanyi’s dialectic of the double movement and a rediscovery of the historical tradition of economic democracy. This leads us to ask: how does economic democracy propose to re-embed the economy in society? In other words, what forms does the extension of democratic principles in the economy take? We first return to the theoretical framework by proposing a conceptualisation of economic democracy based on Polanyi’s framework. Then, we will test its relevance through the historical dynamics of three utopias formulated in the successive contexts of an agrarian, industrial and financialised society.