Economic Democracy and Civil Sociely

This paper is an attempt to identify and analyse the relevant context of workers' management, the type of environment by which any scheme of democratization of decision-making in industrial organizations stands or falls. This context consists of political and economic democracy. Meeting workers' interests is one of the main goals of industrial democracy, but the concept of interest is also what makes industrial democracy closely related to the democratic political system which uses articulation of collective interests as a strategy for social regulation. I will also analyse social ownership as, in theory, the most democratic scheme of ownership distribution, and the problem of its dual role as a program for social transformation. The mines of Asturia were controlled by a council composed of a director representing the State, certain technicians, a deputy director and secretary chosen by the Asturias mines councillor, and three workers. The director could not act without the workers' agreement, and this administration can be therefore regarded as a unique mixture of nationalization and workers' control. H. Thomas, The Spanish Civil War'