Anne Sudrow
Completed research project

Forms of collectivist economics and cooperative corporate constitutions have a long tradition in Europe. Various legal forms of participatory or supportive economics have survived within the economic systems of Western Europe, which are now largely aligned with the private sector and the market economy, and have even developed further during the course of the twentieth century. Such projects of alternative economics shared a common economic approach that was anti-authoritarian and anti-merchandise, a grassroots democratic organisation, consensus-orientated decision-making processes, co-ownership, and the orientation of economic objectives towards a sense of community. Its practitioners regarded the collective as a means to democratise enterprises and their own everyday working life. In this way, they strived to overcome capitalism in economic practices, sometimes also its reform, and ultimately a transformation of society. The thesis of this project is that these forms of economics can now be seen as a distinctive feature of the European model of capitalism. It will be analysed how and to what degree collective economic practices have shaped the economic culture of Western Europe.