TOWARD ECONOMIC DEMOCRACY.

The "Enron scandal" sent a signal that the nature of corporations and the security of investments and retirement funds might no longer be what citizens had grown to accept in the second half of the twentieth century. This paper considers the problem of increased consolidation of corporate economic power, and the increased isolation of business executives from the community and their impact on the free market and democracy. The founding fathers of the United States developed a theory for political democracy that included checks and balances on power combined with the cultivation of virtue in the private sector. An examination of the abuse of economic power and the tendency of economic power to consolidate into monopolies, leads the author to the conclusion that an analogous philosophy and legal structure should be applied in the economic sphere to allow citizens to freely pursue happiness. Economic democracy is a term that has been used by socialists promoting communism, by reformers of capitalism, by labor unions, by grassroots organizations and by cooperatives. On the other hand, the term itself implies the ability of all people to influence their own economic destiny, just as "political democracy" means that all people have a right to determine their political destiny.