Economic democracy is a socioeconomic philosophy that proposes to shift decision-making power from corporate shareholders to a larger group of public stakeholders that includes workers, customers, suppliers, neighbors and the broader public. No single definition or approach encompasses economic democracy, but most proponents claim that modern property relations externalize costs, subordinate the general well-being to private profit, and deny the polity a democratic voice in economic policy decisions. In addition to these moral concerns, economic democracy makes practical claims, such as that it can compensate for capitalism's claimedly inherent effective demand gap.

Classical liberals argue that ownership and control over the means of production belongs to individuals and firms and can only be sustained by means of consumer choice, exercised daily in the marketplace. "The capitalistic social order", they claim, therefore, "is an economic democracy in the strictest sense of the word". Critics of this claim point out that consumers only vote on the value of the product when they make a purchase; they are not voting on who should own the means of production, on who can keep profits or on the resulting income distribution.

Thom Hartmann (born May 7, 1951) is an American radio host, author, former psychotherapist and entrepreneur, and progressive political commentator. His nationally-syndicated radio show, The Thom Hartmann Program, airs in the United States and has 2.75 million listeners a week. In 2008, 2009, and 2010, Talkers Magazine named Hartmann the tenth most important talk show host in America, and number 8 in 2011 defining him as the most important liberal host for four years in a row (the ones above Hartmann are conservatives).

Hartmann's article "Talking Back To Talk Radio" became part of the original business plan of Air America Radio. He replaced Al Franken on the network on February 19, 2007. On March 1, 2009, Hartmann moved syndication of his show from Air America to the former Jones Network, now owned by Dial Global (which also syndicates Neal Boortz, Ed Schultz, Michael Smerconish, Bill Press, Stephanie Miller, and Clark Howard). In the summer of 2009, his program began to also be offered to nonprofit stations via the Pacifica Radio network, and some community/nonprofit stations in the US are also carrying his show. The radio program is also simulcast as a TV program by Free Speech TV on Dish Network and DirecTV. Additionally, he stars in a one-hour daily TV show which his production company records at the studios of and licenses to the RT news network, The Big Picture; that TV show is also syndicated by Free Speech TV and carried on both Dish Network and local cable TV stations.

Dennis John Kucinich ( /kuːˈsɪnɪtʃ/; born October 8, 1946) is the U.S. Representative for Ohio's 10th congressional district, serving since 1997. He was furthermore a candidate for the Democratic nomination for President of the United States in the 2004 and 2008 presidential elections.

The district includes most of western Cleveland as well as suburbs such as Parma and Lakewood. He is a member of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce.

From 1977 to 1979, Kucinich served as the 53rd mayor of Cleveland, Ohio, a tumultuous term in which he survived a recall election and was successful in a battle against selling the municipal electric utility before being defeated for reelection by George Voinovich.

Through his various governmental positions and campaigns, Kucinich has attracted attention for consistently delivering "the strongest liberal" perspective. This perspective has been shown by his actions, such as bringing articles of impeachment against President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, and being the only Democratic candidate in the 2008 election to have voted against invading Iraq, although eventual nominee Barack Obama had also opposed the Iraq War at the time it was started, even though he had not been in Congress at the time.

Bradley Edward Manning (born December 17, 1987) is a United States Army soldier who was arrested in May 2010 in Iraq on suspicion of having passed classified material to the whistleblower website, WikiLeaks. He was charged over the following months with a number of offenses, including communicating national defense information to an unauthorized source, and aiding the enemy, a capital offense, though prosecutors said they would not seek the death penalty.

Assigned as an intelligence analyst in October 2009 to an army unit based near Baghdad, Manning was given access to several databases used by the United States government to transmit classified information. He was arrested after Adrian Lamo, a computer hacker, told the FBI that Manning had confided during online chats that he had downloaded material from these databases and passed it to WikiLeaks. The material, much of it published between April and November 2010, included videos of a 2007 helicopter gun attack in Baghdad and the 2009 Granai airstrike in Afghanistan, 250,000 United States diplomatic cables, and 500,000 army reports that came to be known as the Iraq and Afghan War logs. It was the largest set of restricted documents ever leaked to the public.

Avram Noam Chomsky (/ˈnoʊm ˈtʃɒmski/; born December 7, 1928) is an American linguist, philosopher,cognitive scientist, historian, and activist. He is an Institute Professor and Professor (Emeritus) in the Department of Linguistics & Philosophy at MIT, where he has worked for over 50 years. Chomsky has been described as the "father of modern linguistics" and a major figure of analytic philosophy. His work has influenced fields such as computer science, mathematics, and psychology.

Ideologically identifying with anarcho-syndicalism and libertarian socialism, Chomsky is known for his critiques of U.S. foreign policy and contemporary capitalism, and he has been described as a prominent cultural figure. His media criticism has included Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (1988), co-written with Edward S. Herman, an analysis articulating the propaganda model theory for examining the media.

According to the Arts and Humanities Citation Index in 1992, Chomsky was cited as a source more often than any other living scholar from 1980 to 1992, and was the eighth most cited source overall. Chomsky is the author of over 100 books. He is credited as the creator or co-creator of the Chomsky hierarchy, the universal grammar theory, and the Chomsky–Schützenberger theorem.