Democratic Firms and Worker Ownership

European ESOP

The American Employee Stock Ownership Plan or ESOP is a leveraged buyout mechanism so that the employees in a company can, in effect, do a leveraged buyout of part or eventually all of their own company. ESOP is one of the most successful and unifying models for employee ownership in the world. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the main features of the US ESOP model and to define a technical description of the European ESOP, which builds on the good features of the US model and improves the flawed features.

Marcora Law for Europe

There is a time-tested solution in Spain and Italy that provides liquidity to such enterprises in a democratic manner by establishing employee ownership schemes. The new source of liquidity is allowing unemployed workers to capitalize part of their unemployment insurance to invest in a new or existing enterprise where they will have a job.

Using ESOPs to Democratize Labor-Based Platforms

Our purpose is to propose another complementary approach, which is democratizing and adapting the Employee Stock Ownership Plan to gain co-ownership in the local subsidiaries of the labor-based platforms (LBP). This option puts a new tool in the hands of the municipal and national authorities that could regulate the platform sector.

Less-Known Supporters of Workplace Democracy

his paper, published as an editorial in the Journal for Participation and Employee Ownership collects together extensive quotations and extracts from 19th and 20th century thinkers who were little-known for being supporters of workplace democracy.

The “Ownership of the Firm” is a Myth (1975)

This paper was originally published in a journal: Ellerman, David. 1975. “The ‘Ownership of the Firm’ Is a Myth.” Administration and Society 7 (1 May): 27–42, and then we immediately reprinted in a collection of essays: Ellerman, David. 1975. “The ‘Ownership of the Firm’ Is a Myth.” In Organizational Democracy : Participation and Self-Management, edited by David Garson and Michael P. Smith. Beverly Hills CA: Sage Publications.

Towards Abolishing the Renting of Persons

This paper is a write-up of a speech given in 2017 at a centennial ‘celebration’ of the 1917 Russian Revolution at the Haus der Kunst in Munich.

COVID-19 Aid to Promote Employee Ownership

The premise of this paper is that state aid to distressed companies should benefit not only the current owners but also the employees, who are the ones taking personal risks to continue or restart companies.

Reclaiming Democratic Classical Liberalism

The argument shows that the classical liberal endorsement of sovereign individuals acting in the marketplace generalizes to the joint action of individuals as the principals in their own organizations and associations.

Worker Ownership and the Current Crisis

There are so many crises these days (coronavirus, global warming) that this paper seems already out of date since we are referring to the crisis caused by the neoliberal post-socialist transition policies in East Europe and elsewhere in the post-socialist world.

Nancy MacLean’s Book and James Buchanan

Nancy MacLean’s book, Democracy in Chains, raised questions about James M. Buchanan’s commitment to democracy. This paper investigates the relationship of classical liberalism in general and of Buchanan in particular to democratic theory. Contrary to the simplistic classical liberal juxtaposition of “coercion vs. consent,” there have been from Antiquity onwards voluntary contractarian defenses of non-democratic […]