The transnationalisation of production, along with the rise of global supply chains, informalisation, financialisation, and connecting of world markets through informationalisation have all hit hard on workers. It seems to have become impossible to overcome the resulting divisions among working classes, who have been so radically abused by capital. These new structural forces have created an immense need for connected self-organisations of workers, built from the bottom up, and operating simultaneously at local, national and international levels. This article argues for a new global unionism that goes beyond the IWW experience and allows workers to connect local, national, regional and international struggles by aligning with other struggles in life.
Peter Waterman calls this model “Social Movement Unionism”[1]. In order to develop enough strength to turn the tide globally, we need to redistribute power to the nodes involved in collective subjectivity and action. This cannot happen without dismantling the giant hierarchies — those organisational models that have been constructed above the people they represent, and have been gradually co-opted. The distance between the worker and the coordinators of union operations needs to be dissolved.
The good news is that something fundamentally different is emerging today[2]. “Distributed networks” enable closer communication and deeper collaboration between individuals. These are spreading across the world among citizens, consumers, workers, artists, activists and so on. Such an approach allows participants to initiate strong and coordinated collective actions, create value and culture, produce services and materials, distribute these products equally, and organise and mobilize masses[3]. The term “peer-to-peer” refers to the relational dynamics expressed within these distributed networks[4].
Within a distributed peer-to-peer network, all the key and systemic information, be it of a project, collective bargaining process, or decision to be made, is open and accessible to all the nodes, without being filtered through a ‘hub’ that can use its position to collect power[5]. This in turn creates not a chaotic mass but the opposite: a massive collateral of collective and organisational capacity[6]. As a form, this maintains the advantages of the network form (non-hierarchical and flexible), while allowing the nodes to act as an organisation, and to achieve whatever is aimed for in a timely manner. Some people have called this quantum leap in our capacity for individual or collective action ‘hyper-empowerment’[7].
The argument that we are setting forth (not only here but also in the references added below) is timely for any discussion of global unionism, as it increases the possibility and potential of global emancipatory labour activism. Global social movement unions are being built up ‘de facto’ by working people themselves, based on peer-to-peer distributed networking principles, and adapting peer-to-peer relational dynamics and social network technologies to organising, campaigning, mobilising, and other functions.
Such new organisational forms will soon bring about tectonic shifts in not only traditional labour organising but also in societal structures[8]. In a way, such organisms allow many to move in harmony, or swarm in rapid deployments that are able to reach local conflicts, wherever they occur.
Such collective empowerment can only be achieved if the collective itself allows the individual nodes to become hyper-empowered. A massive global offensive and defensive capacity in yje face of capital then becomes possible, without falling into the trap of centralised power, which can so easily become co-opted.
Authorship
The authorship of this and all other articles in the series is to be kept anonymous until the deliberation process is complete. However, only members of the Network may make submissions.
Further reading:
[4] http://snuproject.wordpress.com/2011/02/26/the-political-economy-of-peer-production-michel-bauwens/
[5] http://snuproject.wordpress.com/2011/02/08/93/
[7] http://snuproject.wordpress.com/2011/02/21/the-new-toolkit/
[8] http://snuproject.wordpress.com/networganising/
January 31, 2015 at 6:51 am
You know as a result substantially on the subject of that subject, made me individually trust me at a large amount of several aspects. It’s similar to women and men don’t seem to be intrigued right up until it’s think about do with Lady crazy! Your very own products superb.. email marketing ideas Continually cope with that!
LikeLike
June 25, 2014 at 1:21 pm
[…] February 2013, Global unionism: the peer to peer model […]
LikeLike
April 19, 2013 at 4:13 am
Can you explain more about how resources woulod flow in a model like this? Would members pay dues to their local which would then pay a national who’d redistribute it again downwards, based on agreed priorities? Not trying to be smart-ass. I just can’t see how this would work.
LikeLike
May 24, 2013 at 11:05 pm
We can’t start with resource questions. They follow depending on progress. I like what is going on here. Just get your vision in place and go like hell.
LikeLike
April 2, 2013 at 7:18 am
This idea is too radical for my tastes. I have been in the union movement for 30 years as a rank and file member and a shop steward and an official. I have seen bureaucrats sometimes taking control at each and every level. I do not think decentralising will mean we get better representation. In fact it just gives more people a chance to hijack splinter groups. how many times have I seen officials called in to deal with a problem between members and stewards? It is great that this idea has come forward so thank you but can you suggest how we can prevent corruption and bureaucracy developing at the level of the individual node?
LikeLike
April 19, 2013 at 4:15 am
Distribute resources based on results rather than budget bids?
LikeLike
March 20, 2013 at 3:29 am
I send my congratulations on this excellent thought. You are right 100%. Everything in our movement should be decentralized. The people in threat need to have power to respond.
LikeLike
March 13, 2013 at 10:06 am
Congratulations to the writer of this piece. I am not much of a teckie but it is interesting the way all these ideas fit together- the ones above and the other ones.
LikeLike
March 5, 2013 at 7:25 pm
Reblogged this on As the Adjunctiverse Turns.
LikeLike