Workers' self-management
[2] The goals of self-management are to improve performance by granting workers greater autonomy in their day-to-day operations, boosting morale, reducing alienation and eliminating exploitation when paired with employee ownership.
This economic model is a major version of market socialism and decentralized planned economy, stemming from the notion that people should be able to participate in making the decisions that affect their well-being.
The major proponents of self-managed market socialism in the 20th century include the economists Benjamin N. Ward, Jaroslav Vanek and Branko Horvat.
The classical liberal philosopher and economist John Stuart Mill believed that worker-run and owned cooperatives would eventually displace traditional capitalist (capital-managed) firms in the competitive market economy due to their superior efficiency and stronger incentive structure.
[15] Karl Marx championed the idea of a free association of producers as a characteristic of communist society, where self-management processes replaced the traditional notion of the centralized state.
According to Pink, for the vast majority of work in the 21st century self-management and related intrinsic incentives are far more crucial than outdated notions of hierarchical management and an overreliance on monetary compensation as reward.
[20] According to this research, the key is aligning bonuses and incentives to reinforce, rather than hamper, a sense of autonomy, competence and relatedness (the three needs that self determination theory identifies for autonomous motivation).
[22] In his book Anarcho-Syndicalism (1938), Rudolf Rocker stated: But by taking the land and the industrial plants under their own management they have taken the first and most important step on the road to Socialism.
CFDT (the CCT as it was referred to in Northern Spain), trade-unionist Charles Piaget led the strike in which workers claimed the means of production.
[24] In the Basque Country of Spain, the Mondragon Cooperative Corporation represents perhaps the longest lasting and most successful example of workers' self-management in the world.
It has been touted by a diverse group of people such as the Marxian economist Richard D. Wolff and the research book Capital and the Debt Trap by Claudia Sanchez Bajo and Bruno Roelants[25] as an example of how the economy can be organized on an alternative to the capitalist mode of production.
[26] Following the 2007–2008 financial crisis, a number of factories were occupied and became self-managed in Greece,[27] France,[28] Italy,[29] Germany[30] and Turkey.
[31] In Greece, solidarity-based distribution is partially the result of austerity policies' privatization of public services, which exacerbates on-the-ground solidarity activities.
These have mostly emerged as a consequence of ambitious politicized thinking and mobilization, as well as a practical formulation that ensures degrees of living by transforming informal solidarity networks into remunerative distribution cooperatives.
[32] Workers' collectives and cooperatives, Self-Help Groups, Local Exchange Trade Systems (LETS), Freecycle networks and Timebanks, and the first worker-occupied factory are examples of non-capitalist social experiments and innovations that have emerged in Greece since 2012.
Yugoslav economist Branko Horvat also made a significant contribution to the theory of workers' self-management (radničko samoupravljanje) as practiced in Yugoslavia.
Due to Yugoslavia's neutrality and its leading role in the Non-Aligned Movement, Yugoslav companies exported to both Western and Eastern markets.
[40] Macro-economic reforms and structural adjustment programs that were imposed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank brought an end to workers' self-management in Yugoslavia.
Thus, during Héctor Cámpora's first months of government (May–July 1973), a rather moderate and left-wing Peronist, approximately 600 social conflicts, strikes and factory occupations had taken place.
