UC Irvine

Economic Democracy and worker cooperatives are part of a growing movement for economic change. In the dissertation I explore the ideas of Economic Democracy, what they can teach the academy, their history and theoretical underpinnings. I am specifically interested in understanding whether worker cooperatives offer a solution to the problems of capitalism and whether they fundamentally change the nature and process of work as well as the quality of life for ordinary workers, especially those workers who traditionally have been relegated to the bottom of the labor market, workers of color. Through the use of the Marxist theory and the Gramscian concepts of hegemony and war of position I analyze the complicated and difficult structural, administrative, ideological/cultural and racial struggles that these types of enterprises face in enacting their visions.

Through a comparative case study based on interviews and participatory action research of workers and developers involved in the worker-cooperative movement of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Area of California, I study how worker cooperatives can and do impact communities of color in the U.S. as well as what problems they face when it comes to issues of race, racism and gender politics. I argue that worker cooperatives are a valuable resource in the hegemonic contest over ideological discourses and visions of how the world ought to function. Alternative forms like cooperatives become discredited within the realm of possibility because they offer a different understanding about how the economy should work that threatens the current dominant capitalist model. Worker cooperatives as part of a democratic economy are not just different ways of engaging within a capitalist economy or of creating small niche sharing economies to help bolster communities of color who have often not been allowed to advance because of racist glass ceilings. They are part of a war of position in the ideological and cultural struggle over what role and whose needs the economy and capital should serve in the course of human history, and as such are a fundamentally different mode of production. In order for them to fill this important historical role, however, they must take seriously the tenets and the day-to-day practice of democracy.