It's Time for Economic Democracy

From the foreword to my new book

Political democracy is no longer “for the people and by the people”, as it has been corrupted by moneyed interests. Yuval Noah Harari recently said we are mostly electing fools. The Indian philosopher P. R. Sarkar called this “foolocracy.” Indeed, one of the world’s greatest fools is leading one of the countries with the most concentrated wealth and bombs today. So, we need to restore political democracy to elect people of ethical caliber, service, and wisdom. However, even more importantly, to create a balanced democratic society, we need economic democracy, which is what my latest book is about. Here, from the introduction to my book Economic Democracy: A Practical Guide to Life After Capitalism, where I argue for a post-capitalist economy:.

This will require rethinking not only what and how we grow and produce food, but also how we organize our entire economies and communities. A growing number of economists and activists now believe the principles we need to adapt are those of economic democracy, which means that economic power is broadly distributed rather than concentrated in the hands of a few.

Economic democracy is about creating an economy in which those who contribute to and are affected by economic activity—workers, consumers, and communities—have meaningful participation in decision-making. This includes, but is not limited to, worker-owned cooperatives, community land trusts, public and commons-based ownership models, and decentralized production systems rooted in place.

At a deeper level, economic democracy is about redefining the purpose of the economy itself. Instead of organizing production around profit maximization and endless growth, it prioritizes the fulfillment of human needs, social well-being, and ecological balance. It values resilience over efficiency, cooperation over competition, and sufficiency over excess.

Economic democracy also asks us to rethink scale. Many everyday economic activities need to be brought closer to where people actually live, so that local areas can become more self-reliant while still participating in fair and necessary national and international trade.

In this way, economic democracy is not about cutting ourselves off from the world, but about practicing “subsidiarity” – the idea that decisions should be made as close as possible to the people affected by them. At the same time, these more local and regional economies must remain connected to wider democratic institutions at the national and even global level, so that the core principles of economic democracy can be protected and strengthened over the long run.

As my own experiences suggest, a more balanced and localized way of living is not a utopian vision; it is something we already know, and something that millions of people still practice in local and indigenous communities all over the world, at least in part.

The task now is not only to recover many of those traditions but to consciously evolve them into a contemporary framework of economic democracy—an economy that is participatory, just, and capable of sustaining a flourishing life for both people and planet. But to do that, we cannot simply imagine a more benign form of corporate capitalism; we need to question the relevance of capitalism altogether. We need to envision and design a post-capitalist society based on the principles of economic democracy.

If interested in my book on economic democracy, please go here: https://www.amazon.com/Economic-Democracy-Practical-Guide-Capitalism/dp/1881717976/ref=sr_1_1?crid=23QDFG0IRXLA2&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.RwCwvMyK2mb_JN8PGVPn4LVgk6Zw3BscZXXUZfwik9w.zz73FN3M2lNptXcfM1R6_DGqSxl3g5cvcMnmRmK3HBk&dib_tag=se&keywords=bjonnes+economic&qid=1785082211&s=books&sprefix=%2Cstripbooks%2C402&sr=1-1