Table of Contents

Introduction: What about the Workers?

• Overview: Against the Reductio Ad Corporationem
  • Background
  • Part I. Critical History of Power in the Firm: The Slow Transition of Work from the Private to the Public Sphere
  • Part II. What Is a Firm?
  • Part III. Looking to the Future: From Political Bicameralism to Economic Bicameralism
• Regaining Control of Global Finance Capitalism: “It’s the Corporation, Stupid!”

Part I Critical History of Power in the Firm: The Slow Transition of Work from the Private to the Public Sphere

1. Stage One: The Workplace and Its Emergence from the Household

• About the Locus of Economic Activities

2.  The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: Workers’ Movements and the Invention of Collective Bargaining

• Work Enabling Participation in the Public Sphere
• Collective Bargaining Makes Waves, or the Limits of 
Economic Liberalism

3.  The Twentieth Century and the Ambiguities of Institutional Innovations in the Capitalist Firm

• Options
• Participating in Management
• Comanagement
• Union Reactions

4.  The Twenty-First-Century Service Economy is Bringing Work fully into the Public Sphere

• To Govern

Part II What Is a Firm?

5.  Obsolete Vision: Instrumental Rationality as the Firm’s Sole Logic

• Economic Theory of the Firm
  • The Firm as Instrument of the Capital Investor
  • Work as Instrument Alone
  • The Capital Investor as Optimal Guarantor of Instrumental Rationality
• Marxist Theory in Support of the Idea of Labor as
 Instrument

6.  Foundations for the Political Theory of the Firm

A Substantive Account of the Firm: Two Rationalities Make a Firm

• Instrumental Rationality Sustained by Capital Investors in the Age of Global Finance
• Expressive Rationality: Moving Labor Investors in the Service-Based Economy
• Expressive Relationship to Work
• Public Character of Work
• Political Logic of Work
• Intuition of Democratic Justice
• Conclusion: The Firm as the Conjoining of Instrumental and Expressive Rationalities

A Descriptive Account of the Firm: Fundamental Dimensions

• Corporate Law and the Reductio ad Corporationem: Distinguishing the Firm from the Corporation
• Labor Law and Sociology: Recognizing the Institution in
the Firm
• Organization of the Firm: Networked and Fissured
• Power: Authority, De Jure and De Facto Powers, Intra-Firm
 and Inter-Firm Relationships
• Incompleteness and Goal Setting: The Reconstructive 
Identification of the Firm, Its Investors, and Their
 Specific Interests
• The Firm as a Governed Polity, a Political Entity
• The Firm as a Political Actor, Externally

Part III Looking to the Future: From Political Bicameralism to Economic Bicameralism

7.  Bicameral Moments: A Pivotal Institutional Innovation for Governments in Democratic Transition

• Ancient Origins: Rome
• Modern Reasons for Bicameral Legislature
  • The Great Modern Example: The British Compromise
  • Condition of Legitimate Government
  • Condition of Reasonable Government
  • Condition of Intelligent Government

8.  Analogy: The Executive of the Firm Answering to a Two-Chamber Parliament

• Justification
• Relations between the Two Chambers
• Conditions for Responsibility
• The Classic Capitalist Firm: The Unicameral,
 Capital-Managed Institution Mistaken 
for the Corporation
• Government Structure of the Bicameral Firm
  • Composition of Chambers
  • Size of Chambers
  • Convocation and Prerogatives of the Chambers
  • Role of the Executive Committee
  • Organization of Work, Hierarchy, and Delegation of Powers
  • Role of Unions and Labor Organizations
  • Firms Concerned

Conclusions

• On Democracy as a Project
• The Place of the Firm in Democracy
• The Contradiction between Capitalism and Democracy
• Considering the Firm for Itself, at Last

A Reader’s Guide for Reflection and Debate about Economic Bicameralism

Bibliography

Index

Download the book presentation in PDF format