In the economy today, we generally use what's called the
market to connect people who need goods
and services with the companies who
produce them. We give companies money and
get stuff back in return.
Markets can often behave badly in ways
that are destructive and wrong, but they
do also provide a reasonably efficient
and decentralized way of allocating
productive capacity to match demand. Can
we continue markets in a truly
democratic economic system? David
Schweickart think so, but only if we make
some big changes. Corporations today are
not democratically organized: the workers
inside them have very little say in how
things are run. It's the people who own
the companies that are in charge: not
only do they get to decide how things
are run, but they also get the to extract
the profit made, which increases the
resources under their control.
So that's what our economy looks like
today: a market system with lots of
privately-owned non-democratic companies.
Where does the capital for all this
come from? How do companies start and grow?
In our current system capital is
undemocratic, too, driven by private
interests pursuing private profit.
This means that private investment, a market in
capital, determines who gets the
resources they need to build or expand
their company. And these decisions get
made based on who the owners of capital
thing will be able to generate more
profits from their company. It's a
feedback loop: what's most profitable has
the most ability to grow under the
current system even if it conflicts with
community needs and
ecological demands. So what does David
Schweickart think a democratic economy
looks like? His idea is that we should
keep markets and get the economy itself
under democratic control. The first step
is to get rid of those private owners
who control the individual companies—
instead companies should be
democratically managed by the people who
work in them, as cooperative enterprises. We
need to bring democracy into the
workplace. Capital also needs to be democratized
and that means making it publicly
controlled. In Schweickart’s system the
cooperative companies pay a tax—like a
rental charge—for using public money to
grow their businesses. Instead of going
back to corporate finance, profits flow
back to the government and the people, 
and the government democratically
controlled by all the people who make up
the economy
gets to decide which companies get more
public investment, whichcan be made based on
what creates more jobs 
and what meet the needs of the people.
Now, with
democracy in the workplace
and in the way capital is invested, David
Schweickart thinks we can have economic
democracy: a system which still uses
markets to handle the problems of
coordinating supply and demand, but which
is run by and for the people. For more
information on this and other models for
changing the system, visit
thenextsystem.org
