Economist Robin Hahnel in this LONG ESSAY deals with the history of economic democracy.

Hahnel reviews Michael Harrington's analysis of the success and shortcomings of Social Democracy in the 21st century. Like Harrington, he believes that the membership of these parties remained radical yet their leadership lost touch with their base and became electoralist professionals that managed the system (in a more humane way) rather than transform it. The French and Swedish case studies are looked at in more detail as well as the radical proposal of what was called the Meidner Plan, which was the most far reaching proposal of worker's control that a Keynesian state ever contemplated.

Hahnel also looks at the tradition of Libertarian Socialism (i.e. Anarcho-syndicalism or Anarchism). He tries to analyze why this movement disappeared and why it has reappeared in the last decade as a new global force. Hahnel looks into the Libertarian Socialist model that was set up in Spain during the civil war. Orwell and Chomsky have written extesnively about events in Catalonia in the late 30s and have argued that what the anarchist Confedetation of National Labour (CNT) set up was the only true model of real socialism (i.e. an economy controlled by workers, consumers and citizens without capitalists, bosses, party commissars or state bureaucrats).

Hahnel studies these two important movements and their relationship to the various strands of Communism (Soviet, Trotskyism, Euro-Communism, Neo-Marxism etc.)

Hahnel aslo looks at the influence that the New Left, Feminism and Environmentalism had on the vision of Economic Democracy.

Most importantly, yet, this may interest American Economic Democrats more -given the fact that the examples are US based- Hahnel looks into the prospects of a movement for Economic Democracy in the next century by taking into consideration the struggles of the last century as well as new movements. Of course, there is a strong emphasis on the Cooperative sector, which along with the labour movement will be the backbone of an ECODEMA movement.

I hope you find this essay useful in understanding the history and struggles for Economic Democracy as well as its prospects for the future.