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30Mar

Is a democratic economy possible? Lessons from history, horizons for the future

Hosted by the Ralph Miliband Programme
In-person and online public event (Old Theatre, Old Building)
Monday 30 March 2026 6.30pm - 8pm

Fifty years after powerful labour movements launched radical plans to democratise the economy and gain control of large businesses, what is the legacy of these efforts and what are the prospects for economic democracy today?

Join us on the anniversary of the "Meidner plan", a famous moment in the history of socialism when Swedish unions tried to take ownership of all large companies there. As a report for the Spanish government brings renewed attention to the possibilities for economic democracy, how can we learn from the ambitions and failures of projects like this? What should plans for economic democracy look like today? And what is the best way to pursue projects for economic democracy in practice?

This lecture is jointly organised with the Programme on Cohesive Capitalism and the Alternatives to Capitalism group within the Programme on Cohesive Capitalism.

Meet our speakers and chair

Isabelle Ferreras is a Research Director (Directrice de recherches) of the Belgian National Science Foundation (F.N.R.S., Brussels). She is professor of sociology at the University of Louvain (Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium) where she teaches at the Department of Social and Political Sciences, at the Institut des sciences du travail and at the Economics School of Louvain. Isabelle is involved as a permanent researcher of the CriDIS (Centre de recherches interdisciplinaires Democracy, Institutions, Subjectivity). She was president of an Expert Committee on Democracy at Work, commissioned by the Spanish government, which recently presented its findings.

Mathew Lawrence is Common Wealth’s Founder and Director. Prior to founding Common Wealth, he was a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Public Policy Research, working on their Commission on Economic Justice. He is the co-author of Owning the Future (Verso) and Planet on Fire (Verso).

Neil Warner  is an ESRC Postdoctoral Fellow at the European Institute. He is a political economist and historical sociologist with particular interests in socialist and social democratic parties, labour movements, the politics of the ‘long 1970s’, and alternatives to capitalist control over workplaces and investment. He is currently working on a project that brings attention to proposals for the socialisation of investment as an alternative to neoliberalism in Western Europe the 1970s and 1980s.

Robin Archer is the director of the Ralph Miliband Programme and director of the postgraduate programme in political sociology at LSE. He is the author of Economic Democracy: The Politics of Feasible Socialism (Oxford UP).

More about this event

The Ralph Miliband (@RMilibandLSE) programme is one of the LSE's most prestigious public lecture series, receiving attention not only at the LSE but across London, the UK, and globally. The programme was set up in 1996 thanks to a generous anonymous benefaction from a former PhD student inspired by 'Ralph Miliband's contribution to social thought'. He specified that the funds be used in memory of his friend and mentor 'to advance his spirit of free social inquiry' and the diversity of thought that has always been the hallmark of LSE.

Join us on campus or register to watch the event online at LSE Live. LSE Live is the home for our live streams, allowing you to tune in and join the global debate at LSE, wherever you are in the world. If you can't attend live, a video will be made available shortly afterwards on LSE's YouTube channel.

Hashtag for this event: #LSEEvents

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