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Robert Dahl and the Right to Workplace Democracy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

Extract

Do employees possess a moral right to democratic voice at work? In A Preface To Economic Democracy and other writings over the past two decades, Robert Dahl has developed a neo-Kantian proof for the existence of such a right. Even if we accept the norm of distributive justice upon which Dahl founds his proof, voluntary subjection to authoritarian power in firms does not violate the legitimate entitlements of employees. While adult residents of territorial associations do possess a moral right to political equality, polities and firms are qualitatively different types of associations in which the entitlements of subjects are distinct. Subjection to power is acquired in different ways in the two kinds of associations, and this difference deprives employees—but not residents—of a right to democratic voice as a matter of moral desert.

Throughout his career, Robert Dahl has been troubled by the different ways in which those who govern polities and firms are chosen in modern society. While democracy is the norm in the state, at least in the advanced industrial nations, authoritarianism prevails in the economy. Most employees are subject to managers they did not elect and to rules in which they had little or no say. They are subordinates, a role manifestly at odds with the ideal of the democratic citizen. Given the “contradictions between our commitment to the democratic ideal and the theory and practice of hierarchy in our daily lives,”

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 2001

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References

1. Dahl, Robert, “Liberal Democracy in the United States,” in A Prospect of Liberal Democracy, ed. Livingston, William (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1979), p. 68.Google Scholar

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12. Ibid., pp. 57–58.

13. Ibid., p. 61.

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17. Ibid., p. 114.

18. Ibid., p. 115

19. Ibid., pp. 116–17.

20. Ibid., p. 123.

21. Ibid., pp. 122–33. For further evidence on the performance of cooperative enterprise see Schweickart, , Against Capitalism, pp. 88136.Google Scholar

22. Ibid., p. 118.

23. Ibid., pp. 73–83.

24. Ibid., pp. 7–51.

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30. Ibid., p. 140.

31. Ibid.

32. Ibid.

33. The reasoning that underlies this intuition will be set forth in the next section.

34. Dahl, , Preface to Economic Democracy, pp. 114–16.Google Scholar

35. Throughout this section I avoid the language of “voluntariness” in describing organizations that accord a subjection option to prospective members. In their criticisms of Dahl's proof both Narveson and Arneson employ this terminology, but they fail to distinguish carefully between the different ways in which organizations can be voluntary. Freedom to leave is one dimension of voluntariness, but freedom not to be subject to the organization is another. We would do better to avoid this language entirely and focus on the kinds of options organizations accord to members. For reasons that will become clear in the next section, I also avoid the contested language of consent in building my argument.

36. The claim to political equality in an organization can be a valuable asset. Capitalist firms purchase the claim (negotiate political inequality) because they think they can maximize profits by dictating how the work will be done. Whether an authoritarian political structure in the firm in fact enhances profitability is a contested issue. If it does, then expropriation of this claim (by mandating workplace democracy in every firm) should result in diminshed compensation for labor. For two arguments along these lines see Maitland, Ian, “Rights in the Workplace: A Nozickian Argument,” Journal of Business Ethics 8 (1989): 951–54;CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Phillips, Michael, “Should We Let Employees Contract away Their Rights against Arbitrary Discharge?Journal of Business Ethics 13 (1994): 233–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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38. Consider the fruitful distinction drawn by Oakeshott, Michael between civil and enterprise associations in On Human Conduct (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975),Google Scholar ch. 2. Polities are not enterprise associations, but they sometimes like to act as if they were.

39. For a similar argument against guest-worker laws see Walzer, , Spheres of Justice, pp. 5661.Google Scholar

40. In the example we abstract from the circumstance that the monastery belongs to a larger organization (the Church) that may be entitled to choose the superiors. Assume for the sake of argument that the monastery is autonomous.

41. The classic locus for this argument is, of course, Marx's Capital. At the end the chapter on the working day, for instance, Marx observes that “our worker emerges from the process of production looking different from when he entered it. the market, as the owner of the commodity ‘labor-power,’ he stood face to face with other owners of commodities, one owner against another owner. The contract which he sold his labor-power to the capitalist proved in black and white, so to speak, that he was free to dispose of himself. But when the transaction was concluded, was discovered that he was no ‘free agent,’ that the period of time for which he is free to sell his labor-power is the period of time for which he is forced to sell it” (Capital: Volume One, trans. Fowkes, Ben [New York: Vintage Books, 1977], p. 415).Google Scholar

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46. Roemer, John, Free to Lose: An Introduction to Marxist Economic Philosophy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988), pp. 90107.Google Scholar

47. On the logic of minimum-wage laws as a remedy for exploitation see Feinberg, Joel, Harm to Self (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), p. 79;Google Scholar and Hudson, Thomas, “Immutable Contract Rules, the Bargaining Process, and Inalienable Rights,” Arizona Law Review 34 (1992): 343.Google Scholar

48. According to Marx, , the “surplus population of workers…forms a disposable industrial reserve army, which belongs to capital just as absolutely as if the latter had bred it at its own cost” (Capital, p. 784).Google Scholar In this sense workers are virtual conscripts, the capitalist equivalent of the Trotskyist labor army.

49. Dahl, , Preface to Economic Democracy, pp. 84110.Google Scholar

50. For a powerful defense of workplace democracy on consequentialist grounds see Schweickart, , Against Capitalism, pp. 88136;Google Scholar for a more skeptical view see Hansmann, Henry, The Ownership of Enterprise (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996), pp. 66119.Google Scholar For further reflections on the possible costs of mandatory democratization of firms see Mayer, Robert, “Is there a Moral Right to Workplace Democracy?Social Theory and Practice 26 (2000): 2225.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

51. Dahl, and Lindblom, , Politics, Economics and Welfare, p. 477.Google Scholar

52. Dahl, , After the Revolution?, pp. 116–17.Google Scholar For a more recent expression of the same view see Social Reality and ‘Free Markets’: A Letter to Friends in Eastern Europe,” Dissent 37 (1990): 227.Google Scholar

53. Dahl, , Preface to Economic Democracy, p. 111.Google Scholar