4.2. Democratising the Economy

To democratise research and innovation we also need to find ways to democratise the economy and to foster more decentralised economic arrangements, collective decision-making and structures for shared responsibilities. In short, we need to democratise economic decision making and ownership of technology and organisations. DiEM25’s labour pillar addresses the need for worker participation in companies.

Digital technologies are already being used to coordinate and to govern economic processes. This hints at a big opportunity to shape economic systems in the 21st century. We need to democratise these technological capabilities, and and shift their application from the accumulation of profit to a radically different challenge: to shape economies that foster social justice and help to keep our production and consumption within planetary boundaries. Technologies such as the Internet of Things, robotics and machine learning offer vast potential to transform how we coordinate our lives and activities. It is imperative that this revolution in coordination is democratic at its heart. If not, technological authoritarianism will further emerge.  We must envision how ideas for real progress, such as that of an “economy for the common good”, can be implemented and democratically governed in such systems. Concretely this boils down to questions such as: whose values and interests will program automated traffic systems, smart grids for sharing energy or automated agricultural technologies, and who will benefit from these technological powers? The capacity of these technologies is too vast to remain in private hands. It must belong to citizens.