Preamble
When an economic order ceases to serve the people whose labor sustains it; when the abundance created by millions is claimed by a few; when working people are denied authority over the institutions to which they surrender their time, strength, intellect, and lives; and when private wealth acquires greater power than the public will, it becomes the right and responsibility of the people to establish a more democratic economy.
Capitalism has produced extraordinary abundance, but it has distributed authority according to ownership rather than contribution. It has granted dominion over labor to those who purchase it, permitted absentee owners to command enterprises they do not operate, and withheld the necessities of life as instruments of private extraction.
We therefore declare that economic democracy is the necessary completion of political democracy.
The purpose of these Articles is not to abolish enterprise, invention, exchange, personal property, or individual ambition. It is to end the dominion of capital over labor and establish a new economic order in which those who perform the work possess the governing power of the workplace.
Capital shall remain a tool. It shall no longer reign as master.
Article I
The Soveriegnty of Labor
All productive institutions derive their legitimacy from the labor, knowledge, and cooperation of the people who operate them.
No enterprise shall be considered democratic while those who perform its essential work remain subordinate to owners who neither participate in that work nor answer to those who do.
The worker shall no longer enter the workplace as a subject. The worker shall enter as a citizen of the enterprise.
Article II
The Right of Worker Ownership
The people who sustain an enterprise through their labor shall possess the right to an equitable share of its ownership, governance, surplus, and accumulated value.
Ownership shall not be understood merely as possession of financial instruments. It shall include the meaningful power to:
- Elect & Remove Governing Leadership;
- Examine the financial condition of the enterprise;
- Participate in decisions materially affecting employment and working conditions;
- Share in the prosperity their labor creates; and
- Preserve the enterprise for the benefit of its workers and community.
No person shall be permanently governed within an enterprise solely because another person possesses greater wealth.
Article III
One Worker, One Voice
The democratic authority of an enterprise shall arise from its workers.
Each worker-member shall possess an equal vote in the election of the enterprise’s governing body. Differences in skill, responsibility, experience, or compensation may be recognized, but no person’s political authority within the enterprise shall be multiplied by wealth, and no person’s wealth shall be multiplied by political authority.
Capital may receive a fair and limited return for its use. It shall not purchase political authority or sovereignty.
Article IV
The Fruits of Labor
After the lawful expenses, reserves, reinvestment, and obligations of an enterprise have been satisfied, the remaining surplus shall belong principally to the workers who created it.
Its distribution shall be determined democratically and may include:
- Compensation to worker-members;
- Reinvestment in the enterprise;
- Expansion of employment;
- Support for the surrounding community;
- Ecological restoration; and
- Contributions to the common welfare
Profit shall cease to be tribute paid by labor to absentee ownership.
Article V
The Duties of Ownership
Worker ownership shall confer responsibility as well as right.
Worker-members shall be charged with preserving the health of their enterprise, maintaining the quality of its goods and services, protecting one another from exploitation and discrimination, honoring legitimate obligations, and considering the consequences of their decisions upon future workers, consumers, communities, and the natural world.
Economic democracy shall not mean the freedom to exploit collectively what no person should be permitted to exploit individually.
Article VI
The Subordination of Capital
Capital is the accumulated instrument of production. It is created to serve human purposes and shall remain subordinate to them.
Investment may be rewarded, lending may continue, and enterprise may raise the resources necessary for growth. But the provision of money alone shall not grant permanent governing authority over the people whose labor makes that investment productive.
No investment shall carry an eternal claim upon the labor of others.
Article VII
The Conversion of Enterprise
The transition from absentee ownership to worker ownership shall be orderly, lawful, and structured to preserve useful institutions, productive capacity, employment, and legitimate personal security.
Workers shall possess a preferential right to purchase an enterprise when its owners seek to sell, relocate, dissolve, or transfer controlling interest.
Public institutions may assist such conversions through financing, technical support, education, and temporary stewardship.
Those who built enterprises may receive fair compensation for what they created. They shall not retain perpetual dominion over what generations of workers continue to sustain.
Article VIII
Enterprise & Initiative
Every person shall retain the right to invent, create, organize, trade, and establish new enterprises.
Founders may exercise reasonable authority during the formation and development of an enterprise. But as the labor of others becomes permanent and essential to its success, shares of ownership and governing power shall progressively extend to those workers.
No enterprise shall depend forever upon democracy being absent from the place where adults spend most of their waking lives.
Article IX
The Commons
Certain necessities are so fundamental to liberty that access to them cannot depend entirely upon private wealth.
Water, shelter, healthcare, education, energy, communication, transportation, and the natural foundations of life shall be protected from monopoly, artificial scarcity, and predatory extraction.
Where markets serve the public, they may operate. Where markets place human survival beneath private return, the public shall possess the authority to intervene.
No person is free while another may privately withhold the conditions necessary for life.
Article X
The Community's Claim
An enterprise does not arise from capital and labor alone. It depends upon roads, schools, courts, public knowledge, natural resources, social stability, and generations of collective investment.
The community therefore possesses a legitimate claim upon the conduct and prosperity of the enterprises operating within it.
Businesses shall not extract wealth from a place while abandoning its people, poisoning its land, or transferring the value created there to distant owners who bear none of the consequences.
Article XI
The End of Economic Dominion
No person shall possess the right to command another merely by possessing what the other requires in order to live.
Employment shall be understood as an association of people engaged in a common enterprise – not as the purchase of obedience.
Authority necessary for coordination may be delegated. Leadership may be elected or appointed. Expertise may be respected and rewarded. But all such power shall ultimately remain accountable to the people subjected to it.
Hierarchy may administer. It shall not reign.
Article XII
The Completion of Democracy
Political democracy without economic democracy leaves the greater portion of human life under private government.
A people cannot consider themselves fully self-governing when they elect their public representatives yet spend their working lives beneath institutions in which they possess no vote, no representation, and no meaningful claim upon the wealth they create.
The republic must not end at the workplace door.
We therefore affirm that worker ownership is not merely one form of business among many. It is the economic expression of the democratic principle itself: that those who are governed must possess a voice in their government.
Declaration
Capitalism is hereby called to surrender its claim that ownership of wealth confers rightful dominion over human labor.
It is called to surrender the doctrine that profit belongs primarily to those most removed from its creation.
It is called to surrender the workplace as a private kingdom, the worker as a rented instrument, and the corporation as a government accountable only to property.
We do not call for the capitulation of commerce, creativity, ambition, or enterprise.
We call for the capitulation of mastery.
In its place, we establish an economy founded upon cooperation, democratic ownership, shared prosperity, personal dignity, and the sovereignty of labor.
Let capital serve. Let labor own. Let democracy govern enterprise.
