The Case for Economic Democracy, By Andrew Cumbers (2020) Cambridge, UK/Medford, Mass., USA: Polity Press, 140 pages. ISBN: 978-1-509-53384-8

Broadly held power has been declining since at least the early 1980s when the bright flowering of the more egalitarian initiatives and policies that had sprung up in the decades after World War II began to go into eclipse. Economic and political forces, commonly classified under the rubric of “neoliberalism”, came into play that resulted in money and power flowing to the few and away from the many. The “few” whose power grew ever greater, proved to be rapacious and focused on gathering in “more and more” irrespective of its impact on the environment, sending world climate and ecology into an accelerating downward spiral. The unresponsiveness of governments to the declining wellness and prosperity of the working and middle classes led to authoritarian regimes springing up around the globe. Crises of “climate change, economic inequality and democracy” were upon us and all of that, before Covid-19 further complicated and worsened things. Attempts to move in that direction in the 20^th century collapsed, Cumbers reports, under a wave of neoliberal policies which produced the crises outlined above. Twentieth century initiatives, although they had some positive results, were too narrowly focused on “industrial democracy” or “workplace democracy.” Cumbers agrees that these “spheres” continue to be a “critical concern,” but what is needed, he tells us, is a “broader and more holistic view” of the nature of “economic democracy.” His plan for materializing that view calls for the reformation of contemporary economies according to what he refers to as “three pillars”, that is: 1- individual economic rights; 2- “collective democratic ownership of firms and property”; and 3- public involvement and participation in decision-making. Under individual economic rights one might have expected a discussion of the International Labour Organization’s Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work or even more broadly the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights and especially the economic rights (such as the right to work, education and housing) championed by the Communist nations during the cold war as opposed to the civil rights (the right to vote, free speech and free press) universally accepted (in theory, if not always in practice) by the liberal democratic West. Although, in a way, he does. His primary example of an individual economic right is the Universal Basic Income. His argument in favour of it is based largely on the work of the late Eric Olin Wright. Unfortunately, Cumbers does little more than list a series of bullet-points that summarize Wright’s work. Under this heading Cumbers also mentions progressive taxation, a minimum living wage and a reduction of hours all of which, he argues, would enhance individual economic rights. Under his second pillar of democratic ownership of firms and property, his proposition is that we need “a shift away from the corporate or privately-owned firm towards collective forms of ownership that provide self-governance of labour.” Towards this end, he offers a smorgasbord of possibilities to the would-be reformer including with regard to finance: “national, regional and local state banks for industrial policy/economic development;” utilities operated according to a “combination of local municipal ownership and national state infrastructure ownership;” and housing provided by “local municipal ownership and resident cooperatives.” Employee ownership, he suggests, might be required in services such as hairdressing and restau- rants with more than 20 employees. Cumbers makes little or no effort to expand upon these concepts. Concrete examples of what he has in mind under this second pillar are the Yugoslavian system of “self-managed worker enterprises” that, he says, worked “very well through the 1960s and 1970s.” Unfortunately, he offers no substantial review of the history and performance of that system nor …