Constitutionalizing Property-Owning Democracy

Abstract

Copyright © 2013 The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA Political constitutions are essential components of political-economic regimes. If one accepts the postulate that society needs to move towards a post-capitalist political-economic system, a key question that immediately follows is whether and in what ways existing political constitutions will need to change. The concept of property-owning democracy has been extensively explored in recent scholarship.1 In a nutshell, property-owning democracy consists of a system combining political democracy with a market economy, but with explicit measures in place to broaden the distribution of capital and property as widely as possible and prevent domination of the economy (and state) by a small elite. Many recent articulations of the idea also call for establishing in effect a right to a meaningful share of property (be it cash, housing, and/or productive capital) for individuals or households. A property-owning democracy is intended to realize effective political equality, fair equality of opportunity, and an economy that lifts the position of the least well off group over time to a much greater degree than do even the best forms of welfare state capitalism. Property-owning democracy shares many of the same features and intellectual sources as the “Pluralist Commonwealth” model articulated by Gar Alperovitz,2 and most if not all of the argumentation below would in my view apply with equal force to the Pluralist Commonwealth. Indeed, the Pluralist Commonwealth model can be viewed as a specific version of property-owning democracy, tailored especially to American conditions. Constitutionalizing Property-Owning Democracy