Economic Democracy: History, Theory and Practice

This course will have students identify and examine multiple forms of worker and community self-management throughout history. Through readings, films and case studies, students will explore different experiments in community control and worker-management as well as how such experiments have sought to help workers and communities build social and economic institutions that operate in their interests. The class will address a number of key questions: How do we define worker control, economic democracy, and community control in the US context? How do worker-controlled companies and other institutions, like credit unions and housing cooperatives function? How do social relations and other aspects of identity such race and gender interact with such institutions? What does the history of worker owned cooperatives, cooperative housing, and community ownership reveal about the possibilities and challenges facing contemporary work in this area? Where do these experiments fit within the broader political economy of cities, regions and nation-states? In addition to exploring the history of experiments in worker and community ownership, the course will introduce students to such concepts as: solidarity economy, worker-councils, consumer co-ops, community wealth building, new municipalism, energy democracy, the commons, municipal ownership, platform cooperativism, community land trusts, limited equity housing and public banking.