Abstract

In the present essay, it is argued that the obstacles to the implementation of industrial democracy and of economic democracy in our country do not stem from legal grounds, but rather from the historical foundation of the State, i.e. the social relations of production in their present form. The issue of workers’ participation appears from the onset to be correlated with the discourse on the goals of the State, i.e. on the form of State, a category that cannot be overlooked when discussing the ways in which workers are granted the right to exercise the functions pertaining to politically active citizenship, the body that actually exercises the popular sovereignty that innervates the entire republican order, and permeates the whole constitutional legislative framework. The implementation of Art. 46 of the Italian Constitution on co-management should therefore be conceived in relation to the solemn proclamation, enshrined in the Constitution, according to which work is the basis of citizenship, i.e. it is regarded as a general and exclusive principle to assess implementation policies related to the constitutional concept of society.