Industrial democracy

The term industrial democracy is a loan translation of industrial democracy and describes the participation of employees and their representatives ( works council , trade union ) in the economy and the world of work through institutions of co-determination and self-administration.

Although established in professional discourse, the term is rarely used in general parlance, just like its German equivalent, economic democracy . The term social democracy is more common , but it is even more vague and evokes connotations to social democracy.

The German Marxist Karl Korsch , after a long stay with the Fabians in London (1912/13), translated the term Industrial Democracy, which goes back to Sidney and Beatrice Webb , into German for the first time. In his work “Labor Law for Works Councils” (1922) he not only used the term “industrial democracy”, but also expanded its content. While the Fabier mainly thought of self-management / co-determination / participation of workers in the company and company, Korsch also closed the inter-company level z. B. in the form of economic and social councils at sectoral and macroeconomic level. The founding program of the German Federation of Trade Unions of 1949 assigned this level the primary importance for a democratic economic order.

Various social researchers (e.g. Fritz Vilmar , Erich Gerlach , Walther Müller-Jentsch ) have adopted the term and use it as a collective term to describe democratization tendencies and aspirations in the world of work and economy, that of forms of direct participation ( group work , quality circles , Project teams ) from operational and corporate co-determination to collective (wage) negotiations as well as industry and macroeconomic decision-making and control bodies.

In contrast to the term economic democracy , which focuses more on supra-company, sectoral and macroeconomic co-determination, industrial democracy covers co-determination rights and institutions at company level and at the workplace.

See also

• Economic democracy
• Co-determination
• Industrial relations

literature

• Torsten Bewernitz: Thinking Economy and Democracy Together , in: Direct Action No. 210, March / April 2012, pp. 12–13.
• Alex Demirović : Democracy in Business. Positions - Problems - Perspectives , Münster 2007, ISBN 978-3-89691-656-3
• Alex Demirovic : Economic Democracy, Council Democracy and Free Cooperation , in: WIDERSPRUCH, No. 55/2008.
• Ralf Hoffrogge : From Socialism to Economic Democracy . A brief outline of ideas of economic democracy in the German labor movement . In: Marcel Bois & Bernd Hüttner (eds.): History of a plural left. Volume 3. Berlin 2011.
• Christian Koller : "The captain rules on a ship, not a sailor's council" - The codetermination debate after the Swiss national strike , in: Schweizerische Zeitschrift für Geschichte 69/1 (2019). Pp. 49-72.
• Karl Korsch : Labor Law for Works Councils (1922), Frankfurt am Main 1968 (new edition ed. And with a foreword by Erich Gerlach), ISBN 3-434-30066-X
• Walther Müller-Jentsch : Work and Citizen Status. Studies on social and industrial democracy , Wiesbaden 2008, ISBN 978-3-531-16051-1
• Fred Emery Thorsrud : Industrial Democracy , Bern / Stuttgart / Vienna 1982, ISBN 3-456-80597-7
• Fritz Vilmar (ed.): Industrial Democracy in Europe , Reinbek b. Hamburg 1978, ISBN 3-499-11711-8

supporting documents

1. ^ Karl Korsch: Labor law for works councils, 1922, § 3 "Industrial Democracy".