Democracy for Schools and Markets: Dewey, Liberalism, and the Promise of Employee Stock Ownership Plans

Democracy for Schools and Markets: Dewey, Liberalism, and the Promise of Employee Stock Ownership Plans With IHS support, in the summer of 2020 I would direct a literature review and the drafting of a book proposal with a graduate student whom I would supervise on the educational needs for the advancement of employee ownership models in business. The project would build on the critique that Elizabeth Anderson has raised in Private Government of Adam Smith’s predictions about economies of scale. He believed that they would not be large and that most people would come to be self-employed. In fact, economies of scale are enormous and most people are not self-employed. A viable competitor to current employment practices is the employee ownership model, which addresses Anderson’s and others’ concerns about the tyranny of employers’ excess interference in the lives of their employees. Employee ownership would broaden the scope of shared prosperity within a capitalistic system, while also increasing employees’ share of authority in the private sector. Employee ownership models can achieve such results without coercive policies or violent revolutions. At the same time, the task of preparing people for participation in shared authority is itself an important matter in which educational practices must participate. John Dewey’s progressive educational philosophy demonstrated the powers that pupils bring to the educational process and argued that the ideal method for democratic and educational empowerment would be one that incorporates learners in shared educational authority. I and a graduate student would review the literature and draft a book proposal on the educational policies and practices needed for the cultivation of an employee ownership movement, in order to advance the potential for addressing critiques of classical liberalism that focus on the common opposition between the owners of capital and their employees. This book would contribute towards my application for promotion to full professor and to the graduate student’s research program and job prospects.