Continental ambivalence toward employee ownership: philosophical and historical interpretations

This article examines European ambivalence toward the idea of broad-based employee ownership of firms. A primary source of resistance can be traced European reliance on the idea of socialization, a construct which has functioned as a performative rhetorical device counterposed to an imagined legendary rival of private property. A preference among many social reformers toward redistributive tax policy through the state and for collective bargaining over wages has overshadowed calls for inclusive property designs framed in terms of “industrial republics” in the USA and echoed in Sweden by the Meidner Plan. Despite a cultural preference for state intervention, employee ownership is not a dead alley in the European history of ideas. Cooperatives have grown to scale in Spain and have adopted a political framework in France described as “Economie sociale et solidaire”. American models which focus on conversions of healthy, privately held firms, have prospered and made use of more sober and bi-partisan language. The contemporary political context may be receptive to the adoption of inclusive property policies that meet the needs of small and medium firms. In such a context, the Slovenian adaptation of the American ESOP model presents a possible path forward.