The article summarizes the experience of two decades of experiments with employee stock ownership programs in the United States. The author was an active participant of the movement for ESOPs. In his view, the programs did not fulfil the early hopes. The ESOP companies can be found on the periphery of the US economy, and suffer from capital shortage. (First published in Dollars and Sense, US.)

Mitbestimmung, or co-determination, was a major novelty of workplace democracy in post-war Germany. It used to be criticized for its function in eliminating class struggle and increasing the divisions within the working class. The new critics, however, come from the right, and intend to reform this mechanism for the purposes of neo-liberal streamlining.

It has become a kind of commonplace that the neoliberal reforms in Russia have had a devastating impact on living standards. A recent chapter of the East European thriller tells us about the immorality of the shock therapists too. Anatoly Chubais, once finance minister and deputy prime minister of Russia, for instance, was involved in privatization deals that fall into the category of abuse of power. (First published in Socialist Economic Bulletin, UK.)