Democratizing the Corporation: The Bicameral Firm as Real Utopia*

Abstract

In the context of capitalist democracies, the contradiction between people's expectations of equality and the subordination they experience at work is intense. I argue that it is the defining experience of the contradiction between capitalism and democracy. Capitalism grants political rights to property owners, while democracy grants political rights to the citizens recognized as equals. They are thus regimes of government that distribute rights in dramatically different ways. This essay is grounded in the understanding that firms are best analyzed as “political entities,” and workers as “labor investors,” and have thus a legitimate right to bear on the government of their work life. Examining the history of how political entities have become democratic through the innovation of bicameralism provides a “real utopia”: economic bicameralism, that is, a set of patterns that may be applied to democratize and transition the corporate firm beyond capitalism.