Public Deliberation and Platform Governance: A Pragmatist Approach in Contribution to the Theory of Workplace Democracy

In contribution to burgeoning theories of deliberative workplace democracy, I argue that Habermas's model of deliberation is unhelpful for normative recommendations about the democratization of firms in the platform economy. Based on the discussions of platform workers online, I instead argue that John Dewey's model of deliberation has greater critical purchase for them as deliberators. On Dewey's rendering, platform workers are deliberative inquirers seeking but failing to achieve collective knowledge and control of sources of disruption to their work. A set of normative recommendations following from Dewey's account demands self-governance from the first, an experimentalist governance strategy that would follow from the activities in which platform workers are already engaged. Pace Habermas, who worries that this lacks sufficient democratic legitimacy, the Deweyan model of deliberation allows platform workers to begin collectively experimenting now.