Economic democracy

As economic democracy various historical and contemporary concepts are referred to which seek to co-determination and participation of workers in economic processes and a legitimate global control of the market economy. Coined the term in 1928 by Fritz Naphtali in a report issued on behalf of the General German Trade Union Federation book on the objectives of a democratization of the economy. This, in its resolution 1928 in Hamburg, the democratization of the economy and thus " the gradual elimination of the rule, which is based on the ownership of capital, and the transformation of the governing bodies of capitalist interests in those of universality " ( ADGB, 1928, 436). The various concepts ranging from a democratically reformed capitalism on the synthesis of capitalist and socialist principles of order to socialist- collectivist structures.

Fritz Vilmar defined economic democracy as follows: " Economic democracy is the epitome of all economic structures and processes, pass through the democratic to the point of autocratic decisions that are legitimated by the participation of economically affected and / or the democratic state. "

Chronology

The demand for the democratization of the economy was a widespread demand in the 1920s. The most the demands of economic democracy were at the General German Trade Union Confederation ( ADGB ).

As concrete steps were " the embodiment of collective labor law, social work protection law, the expansion and self-management of social security, the extension of co-determination rights of employees in the company, the equal representation of workers in all economic entities, the control of monopolies and cartels in full participation of the trade unions, the summary of industries to self-government bodies, the design of the farms in the public sector, production funding in agriculture through cooperative summary and technical schools, the development of trade union municipal enterprises, promotion of consumer societies, the opening of the education monopoly. " ( ADGB, 1928, 436f ) seen.

In 1949, when the founding of the German trade union federation, the unions attacked the idea of economic democracy back on, among other things as a result of their experiences of Weimar. " The experience of the years 1918 to 1933 have shown that the formal political democracy is not sufficient to realize a democratic society. The democratization of political life must therefore be supplemented by the democratization of the economy " (DGB, 1949, 459 ).

Historically we mean by economic democracy a counter-concept to the social market economy that is the returning to Napthali concept of Wirtschaftssteurung as a transitional form to socialism.

The IG Metall chairman Otto Brenner hit 1960 several levels (macro, meso, micro level) broad concept of economic democracy.

The participation is an important tool to democratize the economy. In the Federal Republic there are three forms: inter-company, which company-specific and operational participation. The inter-company influence is to be found especially in the self-governing bodies of social security, for example, the Federal Employment Agency. The second variant, corporate participation, exists in different forms: the parity co-determination, as it was in 1951 set in the field of coal and steel industry, on the under joint participation (1976 ) up to the third participation ( 500 to 2000 employees). The third level of participation, operational, is the most important form of institutionalized participation. The development of the participation agenda was also the subject of government commissions. A first government commission was convened in 1967, which stated, inter line Kurt Biedenkopf in its report of 1970 that the co-determination had not had a negative effect on efficiency and profitability of the company. The Launched in 2005, co-determination Commission came to a similar conclusion.