‘The Inner Workshop of Democracy’: Agonistic Democratic Practices and the Realisation of Emancipatory Potentials

In Chapter 4, I dealt with the dimension of democratic authority at the level of the organisation necessary for a system of workplace democracy to proliferate meaningful work. In this chapter, I turn to agonistic democratic practices at the level of the task. Despite an extensive literature on economic democracy (DabI, 1985; Albert & Hahnel, 2002; Boatright, 2004; Blumberg, 1968; Cohen & Rogers, 1992; Cohen, 1989; Cohen & Rogers, 1992; Schweikart, 1980; Strauss, 2006; Williamson, 2004; Bowles & Gintis, 1993; Hirst, 1994)1 much democratic theory uncritically assumes that the contemporary experience of work is inhospitable to the political mode of being, and therefore devoid of emancipatory potential.2 Despite this, I have sought to theorise how the active agency of workers can never be entirely eliminated by subjectified and divided work practices, but is, instead, intersubjectively manifested through working with others and upon objects. Furthermore, this intersubjective action gives rise to interpretive differences which will remain as pre-polirical potentials unless revealed through expressive participatory practices. However, if participatory practices are to be generative of interpretive differences, and capable of mediating those differences into positive meanings, making them available for appropriation to the meaningfulness of people’ lives, then they must possess certain characteristics, I shall argue that these characteristics can be specified from an evaluation of agonistic democratic theory.