Repository | Book | Chapter
(1990) Social economics, Dordrecht, Springer.
Our purpose is to apply the principles of democratic theory to the corporation (as, for example, in Dahl, 1985). The lack of democracy in a conventionally structured corporation is based on the employer-employee contract. The employment contract is analyzed as a limited economic Hobbesian pactum subjectionis for the workplace. Inalienable rights arguments, originally developed in the seventeenth and eighteenth century Enlightenment against nondemocratic thinkers such as Hobbes, are updated and applied against the employment contract. The abolition of that contract for the hiring or renting of human beings entails restructuring firms as democratic corporations where the membership/ownership rights are personal rights assigned to the functional role of working in the firm. Then the corporation itself is transformed from a piece of property into a democratic social institution.
Publication details
DOI: 10.1007/978-94-009-2498-7_11
Full citation:
Ellerman, D. (1990)., The corporation as a democratic social institution, in M. A. Lutz (ed.), Social economics, Dordrecht, Springer, pp. 365-387.
This document is unfortunately not available for download at the moment.