Introduction

Abstract

A self-managed firm is one in which the right to manage rests exclusively with the workers in that firm. Ownership of the firm’s capital carries no right to manage nor to appoint agents vested with that right. It may be that some workers own some of their firms’ capital but, under self-management, the right to manage stems only from their status as workers and not from their status as capital owners. Self-managed firms are therefore differentiated sharply from conventional firms under both capitalism and socialism. In the former case management decisions are taken by private capital owners or their agents, and in the latter case the state owns the firm’s capital and appoints agents to manage it. Workers’ cooperatives are the most obvious form of self-managed firm and are the subject of chapter four. There is one economy in which self-management is the central feature, namely the economy of Yugoslavia: Yugoslav self-management is the subject of chapter three. Self-management, as here defined, is consistent with either a market system of resource allocation or a system of central planning (this point is taken up in chapter two), though most of this book is concerned with self-management in a market economy.KeywordsLabour IncomeSupply CurveWork ParticipationCapital OwnerGeneral Equilibrium TheoryThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.