0466256 - FLÚ 2017 RIV NL eng J - Článek v odborném periodiku
Hrubec, Marek
A Comparison of Models of Economic Democracy: Towards the World of Shared Sovereignty.
Perspectives on Global Development and Technology. Roč. 15, 1/2 (2016), s. 145-156. ISSN 1569-1500. E-ISSN 1569-1497
Institucionální podpora: RVO:67985955
Klíčová slova: economic democracy * market * planning * ownership * shared sovereignty
Kód oboru RIV: AA - Filosofie a náboženství
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/15691497-12341380

The article focuses on the highly important theme of economic justice and democracy, which has become addressed seriously again as one of key problems in the last decade since the global economic crises. The article deals with this issue in an innovative way in local, European and global contexts from the perspective of political and economic philosophy. It offers a comparative analysis of three models of economic democracy not as exclusive models but as a new way of plurality of possible models in the different contexts: participative democracy, enterprise (co-operative) economic democracy, and autonomous economic democracy. It analyzes the main characteristics of the models, and their advantages and disadvantages. It explains that even if the first model of participation seems to be the most fair and enterprise democracy the least fair from the unhistorical perspective, from the point of view of possible historical realization, enterprise democracy appears to be the best and the first model the worst. As to autonomous democracy, from both these viewpoints, it is situated somewhere in the middle between the first and the second model.
In at the age of global interactions, the article stresses that it is hard to develop economic democracy in a meaningful way only within a framework of nation states. Nation-states, especially the small ones, fail because they are too small to manage the big transnational and global problems which go beyond the boundaries of nation states. The role of democracy in individual states is being reduced under the current populist pressures and global interactions. Jürgen Habermas correctly points to a specific form of “reification” of people’s sovereignty, which occurs when a citizen’s democratic self-fulfilment is limited by the nation state’s borders and is not allowed to extend into the supra-national level. While the article agrees that it is correct, it offers an explanation why it is necessary to develop a very philosophical basis of an appropriate concept of citizen, from which civic self- realization can grow within the national and supranational levels. In this regard, there is the difficulty in historical terms of the modern (libertarian) emphasis on an intensely, almost extremely individualistic concept of isolated citizen, who is to be entirely sovereign in his decision-making and actions. The article shows in an innovative way that a parallel to this entrenched separation of man was a concept of the monopolistic sovereign nation-state, including the separating and isolationist connotations of sovereignty shared with no-one. Moreover, an extended criterion within European history for the definition of state borders, very often only implicit, was the difficult simplification of sovereignty down to sovereignty of an ethnically homogenous territory. This isolationist approach also contributed to the creation of concepts of ethnic cleansing and racist repression. On the contrary, the idea of an individual in intersubjective relations of mutual recognition and solidarity in a community (individual rights with solidarity) set within other communities corresponds to the idea of sovereignty shared by various communities. Example are India, Brazil, Argentina, and other states which feature similar characteristics, even if they are covered up by various problematic elements. Just relations between individuals, including relations of economic democracy, are consistent with just relations between states which share their sovereignty. Interconnecting political and economic democracy on the basis of shared sovereignty could be the appropriate way forward just relations in the European Union in the global interactions. Intersubjective basis of relations between people and countries can allow also required respect to other countries, macro-regions and civilizations. This article develops and specifies ideas articulated in the author’s (Marek Hrubec’s) main book (opus magnum) “From Recognition to Justice” (Od zneuznání ke spravedlnosti; 562 pages) which has been the first complex social and political philosophical theory in the Czech Republic after approximately half a century, and which articulates a new theory of society and politics in global interactions. The book “Contradictions and Alternatives of Global Capitalism” edited by Martin Solík published in 2015 (Rozpory and alternativy globálního kapitalismu; 302 pages) is a collection of 11 Czech and foreign papers (long reviews) which analyse ideas of this Marek Hrubec’s book and his other ideas, including ideas of this paper.
Trvalý link: http://hdl.handle.net/11104/0264598