SHOULD THE ECONOMY BE DEMOCRATIZED?

With communism's collapse, the democratization of the economy might appear to be the specter haunting the new world order. Indeed, proponents have called for economic democracy as a prerequisite of both political freedom and social justice. They argue that extending democracy to the economy overcomes the limits of popular participation in modern representative government, remedies the subordination of politics to privileged social groups, and provides a training ground for political involvement. In addition, they maintain that democratizing the economy is necessary to realize economic freedom and curtail economic inequality. All these arguments neglect the distinction between civil society and the state and between social and political freedom. When this distinction is observed, the call to democratize the economy gets supplanted by the challenge of regulating markets to insure equal economic opportunity and to prevent economic factors from undermining the autonomy of politics and the equal political opportunity of citizens.