Capitalism, Economic Democracy, and Ecological Destruction of Our Planet

Abstract

There is a fundamental difference between the impacts of two alternative systems of economic organization: capitalist or fully democratic. The latter, based on democratic decisions based on personal rights, including in the area of enterprise management and organization will, in many contexts, protect the natural environment because the decision makers live in and are permanently exposed to that environment. By contrast, the capitalist firm and the system based on it and on profit maximization (where the often “atomized” owners have never even seen their firm) will tend to avoid where possible all environmental-related costs, and thus hurt the natural and human environment. Thus public regulation of capitalist firms will be far more called for than in the case of economic and full democracy. In the chapter that follows I make an attempt to substantiate these claims.

Citation

Vanek, J. (2011), "Capitalism, Economic Democracy, and Ecological Destruction of Our Planet", DeVaro, J. (Ed.) Advances in the Economic Analysis of Participatory and Labor-Managed Firms (Advances in the Economic Analysis of Participatory & Labor-Managed Firms, Vol. 12), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 289-298. https://doi.org/10.1108/S0885-3339(2011)0000012015