Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Democracy, Political Externalities & The Labour-Process, Nicholas Alan Partyka

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

My dissertation focuses on elaborating a problem for democratic political institutions posed by an externality of the capitalist labour-process, particularly for more participatory conceptions of democracy and democratic citizenship. I argue that the labour-process under capitalism causes a transformation in the skill-level and personality of worker-citizens. In the main, the direction of this transformation is towards workers who lack important deliberative skills enabling them to effectively participate in democratic politics. If one is committed to democracy as a means of collective self-government, then this negative transformation, or deformation, should be troubling. If the labour-process under capitalism deprives workers of the …