Networked Labour University Information Bulletin No. 1 | 1-7 May 2015 [ENGLISH] | Networked Labour

1. Culture and knowledge for classless societies is networked in process! 

Networked Labour University is designed as an educational module to be integrated with a broader network composed of Global Networked Labour Union, Networked Labour Research unit, and networked labour coop GNLU. Tied to a greater ecology of universal, free and open access community projects, such as Faircoop, the Earth Cooperative, all our projects aim mutual empowerment at the bottom level. Unconditional empowerment of the dis-empowered, excluded, and oppressed with direct solidarity is the reason why we exist for. Our platform is designed to liberate knowledge from alienation and domination of any kind at the point of production and distribution. In order to enable money-free access to most essential cultural resources we rely on free/libre, open source software, but the platform also aims to facilitate broader solidarity economy by encouraging and enabling open-cooperative exchanges between participants.

Our invitation is an wide open one, anyone can join and contribute by offering and taking courses, moderating circles or skill shares, helping out with web design, platform development, promotion, or any other way!

2. Networked Labour University Opening Meeting

Date: 7 May 2015
Time: 14.00 – 17.00 (ECT / UCT+1)

Check-ins (14:00 – 14:15)

Opening and presentation of the system (14:15 – 15:00)
Networked Labour University and Worker to Worker Study Circles

Discussion (15:15 – 16:45)
How to use cross-border communication and which digital tools to build commons knowledge, culture, politics, and economy for the classless society and from the oppressed point of view?

Closing and Check-outs (16:45 – 17:00)

Access: Participation is on-line, open and free. What you need to do to is to open an account on the website below and to selfenrol for the event before. Working languages are English/Turkish

Website: networkedlabour.networg.nl/moodle
Email: networg@networg.nl

Click here to register as a user 

Networked Labour University, a project networed in process! | Networked Labour

Networked Labour University is a universal, free and open access platform that allows collective learning for individuals and groups. Unconditional empowerment of the disempowered, excluded, and oppressed with direct solidarity is the reason we exist for. Based on a transformatory and emancipatory perspective the platform is designed to liberate knowledge from alienation and domination of any kind, at the point of production and distribution. We use free/libre, open source software is to enable money-free access to most essential cultural resources. The platform is being developed to facilitate broader solidarity economy by encouraging and enabling open-cooperative exchanges between participants. Anyone can join us and contribute by offering and taking courses, moderating circles or skill shares, helping with web design and platform development or in any other way!

Website: http://networkedlabour.networg.nl/moodle/Empowered by http://www.networkedlabour.net/

via Networked Labour University, a project networed in process! | Networked Labour.

The P2P Prince?: The form and the program of the transnational REvolutionary subjectivity

Below text is an excpert from unpublished and unedited 2012 article Another World, Now! Coming of the Transnational REvolutions and the P2P Prince.

The  modern  prince,  the  myth-prince,  cannot  be  a  real  person,  a  concrete individual. It can only be an organism, a complex element of society in which a collective will, which has  already been recognised and has to some  extent asserted itself in action, begins to take concrete form. (A. Gramsci)

 

Italian political activist and theorist Antonio Gramsci’s core concepts like hegemony, organic crisis, historic bloc, war of position and war of manoeuvre are central to our understanding of today’s complex global capitalist system as well as the catastrophic changes that are currently taking place in it. Referring to the original concept developed by Gramsci, global political economy theorist Stephen Gill describes the 2008 global financial turmoil as the manifestation of an organic crisis at the global level. [1] We can also read the outcomes of the global organic crisis following another neo-Gramscian theorist Robert Cox as a mixture of three scenarios he describes.[2] First one is a global (military) Keynesian recovery being pushed by the West. Regional wars moving from the periphery to the centre involving massive destruction of lives, cities and the nature, as we witness it happening since the 9/11. The second scenario is the rise of global fascism in tandem with the regional wars. This has also been happening, especially increasingly in the centre, since 2007; highlighting the race to the bottom caused by the strengthening of totalitarian forms of capitalism at the main contenders like China, Russia and India. Finally and the last scenario is accompanying transnational revolutions, like the uprisings in the northern Africa, Americas and Europe also happening.[3]

What brought humanity to this point is not a secret and also made clear by many thinkers, intellectuals, and activists. The above mentioned article by Gill is only one of the public records. It is very clear however where we have to drive history as the humanity, the third option: Transnational revolutions. Again, following Gramsci and Gill, we can think of the realisation of the transnational revolutions in relation to the ‘Prince’. For his time Gramsci thought of it as the collective subjectivity which will give the moral leadership to a wider counter-hegemonic historic bloc, and shape the form and content of the communist revolution in a national context. And it was the communist part of the working class. Gill referred to the anti- and alter-globalisation movement.

The Slow Death of the Socialist International by Dan Gallin

Original post

17 July 2014

Talk at the Global Labour Institute International Summer School 2014. Video available here.

– By Dan Gallin

The Socialist International is the organization of the world’s socialist, social-democratic and labour parties, by a loose definition. Its headquarters are in London (Maritime House, Clapham).

It is the successor organization of the historical Internationals of the labour movement, the First (International Working Men’s Association) (1864-1879), the Second (Labour International) (1889-1916), which split three ways during World War I and reconstituted itself as the Labour and Socialist International (LSI) in 1923 The LSI did not survive World War II and the present Socialist International was founded in 1951 in Frankfurt as its successor.

At the last count, it had 162 member parties in 100 countries, and it is now in a deep crisis which reflects the crisis of most of its members, certainly its most influential ones.

Why is any of this important?

Because socialism has been the ideological foundation of most of the world’s trade union movement, not necessarily always in the same acceptance of the term, and today we are faced with a crisis of socialism, which is principally a crisis of the meaning of socialism.

#ISS14: Capitalism, Anti-Capitalism and the Trade Union Movement 7 July 2014

#ISS14: Capitalism, Anti-Capitalism and the Trade Union Movement

7 July 2014

Talk by Asbjørn Wahl, Fagforbundet (Norwegian Union of Municipal and General Employees) and Bill Fletcher, American Federation of Government Employees

How do we revive the global union movement?

– By Josiah Mortimer

The global labour movement is at a crossroads.

#ISS14: The International Trade Union Movement 7 July 2014 – By Dave Spooner

A brief guided tour around the political and organisational landscape of the movement – for participants new to international trade union discussions.

Highlights

• Dave Spooner explains it’s very hard to find an example of the ITUC’s concept of ‘decent work’ in today’s economy
• The ILO was formed in 1919 in response to the Russian Revolution – Dave Spooner describes it as a ‘theatre of class warfare’!
• Some unions are turning to the World Federation of Trade Unions, however problematic, in a search for class-based unionism
• Climate change is one of the most pressing issues workers face globally
• Most European trade union structures are dependent on EU finance, which can be difficult under neoliberalism says Dave Spooner
• Passing a pro-worker motion in the ILO is just the ‘beginning of the battle’ before state ratification says GLI chair Dave Spooner
• ‘Domestic workers have faced enormous abuse across the world’
• There is a tension within unions as to whether the labour movement should be anti-capitalist – an issue we will have to face
• Precarious work is on the rise in the global north. How should unions organise those workers?
• ‘Gone are the days when a union official could knock on the door of a factory, talk to the manager and then have a union’
• Everybody was an informal worker before the trade union movement – it was only through organising that employment standards rose
• Unions across the world are questioning their relationships with ‘social democratic’ parties which have become more neoliberal
• ITUC General Secretary Sharan Burrow has described the situation for unions across the globe as a ‘labour war’ by neoliberalism
• Delegate: neoliberalism is ‘capitalism without working-class opposition’ – a political project against workers

Global Labour Institute International Summer School 2014 #ISS14

The third GLI International Summer School will be held from Monday 7th – Friday 11th July 2014 at Northern College in Barnsley, UK. The aim of the Summer School is to bring together trade union activists from around the world to debate and question what are, and what should be, the politics of the international trade union movement.

This year, up to 100 participants will be attending the Summer School – including delegations from national unions and global union federations, invited trade union activists, labour movement researchers and educators.

Most participants who attend the school are nominated by supportive unions, union federations and organisations. If you’re interested in attending the Summer School, get in contact with your union in the first instance.

If you have any further queries about the Summer School, drop us an email at gli-uk@global-labour.net

The Programme

Confronting the most difficult challenges facing the international labour movement

by Eric Lee – 15th May 2014, 17.00 BST

In the next couple of days, more than 1,500 trade union leaders from 161 countries will meet in Berlin for the Third World Congress of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC).  The ITUC unites national trade union centres, including Britain’s TUC, all over the world.

The ITUC event will be followed on Friday in the same city by a slightly smaller one: the LabourStart Global Solidarity Conference. Almost 700 people, from 75 countries, have registered to attend.

To a casual observer, these sound like very similar events. And there’ll certainly be some overlap. For example, the leader of Australia’s trade unions, Dave Oliver, will open the LabourStart event, though he’s also attending the ITUC Congress.

Here’s the difference: the ITUC Congress is a bit like a TUC Congress in the UK. Elected leaders attend, discuss issues, pass resolutions, elect a leadership and so on. Although, unlike TUC, ordinary rank-and-file workers, shop stewards, branch union officials and others won’t be there.  It is where the senior leadership of the international trade union movement meets.

And it’s a direct continuation of global trade union meetings that started 150 years ago in London, where Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels led the foundation of the International Workingmen’s Association, known as the “First International”.

The LabourStart event, on the other hand, is something new, something that probably couldn’t have been imagined before there was an internet.

All the fists of the world are GNUniting! First Brainstorm – Online Meeting This Sunday at 13.00 PM GMT

All the fists of the world are GNUniting!
First Brainstorm – Online Meeting This Sunday at 13.00 PM GMT
https://www.facebook.com/GlobalNetworkedLabourUnion

We are the workers whose free labour and privacy has been stolen, and sold
for greed! We have been abused, spied on and betrayed constantly. Before
this massive exploitation and surveillance machine turns into a global
apparatus in the hands of fascism, being operationalized for direct
oppression, we have to unite our fists and strike back!

This May Day is the time… How and what is not decided yet, there are
initial ideas but much is needed to put the global collective intelligence
at work to defend our and our children’s rights and dignity! Join us this
Sunday and bring your most free, creative, powerful and peaceful ideas and
dreams along… We did beat Freon, Caesars, Barons, Kings, Emperors,
Merchants, Industrial Capitalists and Nazis in the past, we can beat the
TNCs, CEOs and 1% as well!

We call all the workers, hackers, makers, farmers, artists, indignant and
outraged to GNUnite all their constructive capacity around the most
spectacular free libre and open sourced swarm to fight back and win!

Hasta la Siempre Victoria!
https://www.facebook.com/events/583310555077672/?ref=3&ref_newsfeed_story_type=regular
https://www.facebook.com/events/252508808246947/?ref=22&source=3&source_newsfeed_story_type=regular

Worker to Worker self-training module by NetwOrganisation

Worker to worker transnational exchange at the shop-floor level :  Social media and online networking guide for shop stewards and union activists

MODULE I – prepared for and by the support of TIE-Netherlands 

• Introduction
• Stronger ties with online networking
• Tools for cybermeetings and webinars
• Bottom up publishing & sharing
• Translation and interpretation
• Participation/Openness/Security
• An Example

Download the pdf version in Dutch here: Eindversie_Brochure_Social-Media_TIE_NL-1.pdf

Wiki: Online collaborative version of the self-training material

Presentation I: A Social Media Approach for International Solidarity

Presentation II: Social media and online networking guide for shop steewards and union activists

Open Source / Libre Training Material (in progress) on Social Media for Grassroots Labour Activism | NetwOrganisation

P2P AND TRANSNATIONAL EXCHANGE AT THE SHOP-FLOOR LEVEL: Social media and online networking guide for shop stewards and union activists

MODULE I – prepared for and by the support of TIE-Netherlands 

• Introduction
• Stronger ties with online networking
• Tools for cybermeetings and webinars
• Bottom up publishing & sharing
• Translation and interpretation
• Participation/Openness/Security
• An Example

Spanish, Russian, Turkish editions are being prepared:

Wiki version of the self-training material (EN / NL)

Download the pdf version in Dutch here Eindversie_Brochure_Social-Media_TIE_NL-1.pdf

Social media and online networking guide for shop steewards and union activistson Prezi

Source: http://networg.wordpress.com/

Down to earthing P2P production and educating projects | Las Indias

1. How to start P2P projects and business models

   05Jun2012

   Por Natalia Fernández

   If the model that underlies the P2P mode of production has caught your eye, we offer you a simple guide to get a project started. It’s all about bringing theory down to earth, and in a very basic way, identify the concrete needs of a population or region, and get to know the professional resources we can use to support each other.

   The graphic on the right shows the characteristic process of the P2P mode of production as a diagram.

   How do you convert the general model into a process?We start from free knowledge, the immaterial commons, which will be the base from which we launch a new project. Perhaps we are replicating a tested model, or perhaps we’re modifying and adapting it to our concrete needs. It’s the same approach we’d follow for the development of an application in free software. Only, in this case, the final result won’t be a program, but rather a machine, whose construction process will return again to the commons, so as to be publicly available.

‘Occupy’ as a business model: The emerging open-source civilisation by Michel Bauwens | Al Jazeera

The Occupy Wall Street movement is a model for a new economic paradigm, in which value is first created by communities.

In Zuccotti Park, protesters created an ‘ethical economy’ based on the group’s shared values [GALLO/GETTY]

Chiang Mai, Thailand – Last week I discussed the value crisis of contemporary capitalism: the broken feedback loop between the productive publics who create exponentially increasing use value, and those who capture this value through social media – but do not return these income streams to the value “produsers”.

In other words, the current so-called “knowledge economy” is a sham and a pipe dream – because abundant goods do not fare well in a market economy. For the sake of the world’s workers, who live in an increasingly precarious situation, is there a way out of this conundrum? Can we restore the broken feedback loop?

Strangely enough, the answer may be found in the recent political movement that is Occupy, because along with “peer producing their political commons“, they also exemplified new business and value practices. These practices were, in fact, remarkably similar to the institutional ecology that is already practiced in producing free software and open hardware communities. This is not a coincidence.

Occupy BOSCH: Birlesik Metal-Is [United Metal Workers] Union wins a historic victory in Turkey by Orsan Senalp

Since the military took power and shut down all the unions in 1980, except the state backed yellow ones which were member of Turk-Is Confederation, it is almost impossible to get official recognition for signing a collective agreement in large multinationals for progressive or left unions in Turkey.

According to the Turkish legislation, which had largely kept those articles created by the military junta until today, only one union can represent workers in one workplace. In order to get such recognition unions have to organise more than %10 of workers sector wide (national level). They also have to organise more than %50 of the workers in the given workplace to be able to represent that workers.

This context has been protecting the large multinationals active in Turkey against the progressive unions. State backed yellow union were preferred by those corporations like BOSCH and implanted in factories by the employers themselves. To engage with the massive task of taking over these factories, against the will of such unholy alliance is meant taking very high personal and organisational risks.

Occupy Wall Street – Forum on the Commons

Why a Forum on the Commons?
The Occupy movement is entering a new phase, one in which many of us feel the need to combine renewed engagement through direct actions and mobilizations with a deep reflection on the strategic objectives of our movement. In order to fulfill this need, the organizing committee of Making Worlds* is inviting Occupy supporters, sympathizers, and other organizations to participate in this Forum on the politics of the commons. In particular, we are interested in understanding how groups and communities working on housing, health care, education, food, water, energy, information, communication and knowledge resources can develop a vision of these resources as commons: a third form of social organization to the state and corporate capitalism. Making Worlds has the ambitious goal of articulating a strategic vision from and for the movement as well as specific political initiatives aiming at its realization.

P2P and the Commons as the new paradigm | Michel Bauwens

posted by David Nixon

2 days ago

Michel Bauwens at the London Tent University, December 10th 2011

Organizing, P2P Networking, and Mapping of the Production Process by the Workers: an Argument for a ‘New Unionism 2.0’

The ‘Organizing’

”The Organising” method, originated in the US, has been achieving successes in the English speaking West and spread in the wider capitalist heartland after the collapse of class compromise or the tripartite corporatist model. The method is adoptable to local conditions as well as to the unions internal politics and specific context. In this method, professional union organisers hired by union, contact to, build relationship with, and mobilize workers at the shop floor level, with the aim of attracting more members to union. Then these activated members are to reach out potential members in broader range and together with the professional organizers they win workers hearts and minds in the work place, for the strength of union, or to increase the ‘union density’. The model “is successful because it begins to realise that autonomy is a powerful mobiliser, and that by giving activists ownership over campaigns in their workplaces, you build confident and dynamic local structures that are able to respond fluidly to complex and shifting circumstances.” (Cyberunions)

HISTORIC DAY FOR LABOUR OCCUPY SOLIDARITY 12.12.11 – West Coast port shutdown announcement OCCUPY US & ILWU

URGENT – spread the video viral – ILWU and OCCUPY US SHUT DOWN THE ENTIRE WEST COAST PORTS ON 12.12.2011

OccupyWallStreet 11.11.11: “Honor the Dead, Fight Like Hell For the Living”

Tomorrow: 11.11.11 Veterans Day Concert and Rally for the 99%. Foley Square 1pm.

Posted 1 hour ago on Nov. 10, 2011, 2:16 p.m. EST by OccupyWallSt

“Honor the Dead, Fight Like Hell For the Living”

When: Friday, 11/11/11, 1 PM

Where: Foley Square, New York City

Who: Sergent Shamar Thomas, Joan Baez, Ryan Harvey, Max Rameau from Take Back the Land, a speaker from OWS Direct Action, and a speaker from the Iraq Veterans Against The War.

Other amazing artists and speakers to be announced soon. Stay Tuned.

15th October. What’s the plan? Towards P2P & transnationally networked constituent assemblies

* Definition.

Looking for human dignity, we make a call to a global mobilization through specific actions, for building networks that allow the world population to decide how the world should be.

The key of 15 Oct should not be just mobilizing people, and doing some actions simultaneously, but being conscious that the world is acting together, and therefore starting to build a network between all of us, for deciding all together, because that’s the only possible way, what the world should be. We know that the powers are global, that we live in a globalized world, and therefore our answer should be global too.

* Contents.

– For giving the power to the people. For a direct democracy in a local and global level.

– Against who are deciding for us.

When thinking about the contents that could be behind a mobilization like this, the ideas that should give us a path to change the world, the first things that usually come to our minds are the common contents that usually appear in other mobilizations, activist groups or assemblies: environment (no nuclear, protecting the environment, …), banks (control the markets, tax havens, …), education (free and public education…), social care, migration, wars… but these contents depend a lot on each country’s context and its problems, the priorities change a lot from one country to another so how could we choose one or two of these ideas as the main focus of a truly global mobilization? Probably environment would be one of the contents in Europe, but for sure war or food would be the one in Africa. It’s difficult to determine global priorities.

Therefore, the idea was to change the point of view. We should go to the roots of the problems, the roots that are causing all these problems; roots that are common worldwide. And that fundamental issue that lie behind all the other problems is that we, the people of the world, are not deciding what the world should be. If we could, most of these problems would just disappear. That’s the main idea that is behind all mobilizations in Egypt, Tunisia, Spain, Greece, Iceland, Israel, USA, … We want to decide what our countries should be, instead of dictators, markets, or governments that do not listen to the people. And once we get back the power we will find the specific answers to our problems, probably different from one country to another. That very basic, but powerful idea led us to two main contents for 15O: