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Democratic workplaces or what I call "labor-managed firms" (LMFs) have been supported by a number of theorists who believe they would lead to a more just and wholly good society that better secures equality across social positions, increased democratic engagement, opportunity for meaningful work, and autonomy. For example, Robert Dahl has famously argued that "if democracy is justified in governing the state, then it must also be justified in governing economic enterprises" (Dahl 1985, 111). Carol Gould (1988 has maintained that workplace democracy is necessary for an equal positive right to self-development (1988)/self-transformation (2014). Those sympathetic to republican thought such as Elizabeth Anderson (2017) and González-Ricoy (2014) have referenced LMFs as a way to protect workers against arbitrary interference. Andrea Veltman (2016) and Ruth Yeoman (2014) think that LMFs are important vehicles in securing the good of meaningful work. LMFs are also attractive to liberal-socialist thinkers including David Miller (1989) and David Schweickart (1996), who, to quote Miller, claim that an economy of LMFs "combine the freedom and efficiency advantages of markets with a more democratic organization of work and more equal distribution of resources" (Miller 1989, 1).However, despite the purported benefits of LMFs, they have not spontaneously developed in any appreciable number. They currently constitute at most 3-4 percent of total firms in any developed economy and typically much less (Dow 2018b, 66). After several decades of economic investigation, the reasons for this dearth are starting to become clear. The fact of the matter is that for LMFs to predominate and an LMF economy to develop, LMFs will likely need to be mandated (more below). However, an LMF economy that is developed through state mandates is a different beast to one that develops entirely spontaneously since the state is intending for LMFs to predominate.The seeming necessity of direct state involvement has led several liberal thinkers to criticize an LMF economy as exploitative and illiberal, despite its reliance on the ostensibly freedom preserving market mechanism. This charge has been most recently advanced by Alan Thomas (2017) who,

In his new book, The Inheritance of Wealth, Daniel Halliday (2018) argues that the taxation of bequest and inheritance is justified on the grounds of preventing dynastic concentrations of wealth harmful to both democratic equality and fair equality of opportunity. Although Halliday's claims are convincing, he neglects the role that solidarity should play in justifying a robust tax on bequest. In this paper, I develop an argument for taxing and regulating bequest on the grounds of solidarity, linking the argument back to the thought of both Marx and Rawls.

This article explains how Pope Francis’s economic views are both radical and practical. His views are practical in the sense that they are sensitive to social realities, not theoretical abstractions; and they are radical in the sense that they undermine traditional economic ideologies. To demonstrate these points, I show how Francis’s pronouncements are consistent with “economic democracy.” In economic democracy efforts are made to create a more equal dispersal of capital assets and the economy is more squarely oriented around fundamental human ends, including the common good, human dignity, equality and opportunity, meaningful work, ecological responsibility, and solidarity.