Global Networked Labour Union | CoopFunding

Together we build a Commons Humanity

Global Networked Labour Union seeks your broadest support for the network of emancipatory projects we have been building in collaboration with others. You can give us an hand in any way that you could. Most preferably by joining your labour, heart and mind with us, so that we would walk together towards a commons humanity in dignity, overcoming all kinds of alienation in and between peoples and societies.

In case you like to support our work financially, the amount you
donate will be used to cover the project related costs. Amount over
due will be shared with and donated to sister communities that are
developing similar projects like ours and working for all of us by
commoning the humanity.

Hackers, makers, workers, farmers, designers, squatters, and all communities GNUnite in stitching One Big Mesh Network for the Emancipation of Labour and the Commons

via Global Networked Labour Union | CoopFunding.

Digital Labor, Nov 14-16, NYC, US

SWEATSHOPS, PICKET LINES, AND BARRICADES will bring together designers, labor organizers, theorists, social entrepreneurs, historians, legal scholars, independent researchers, cultural producers and perspectives from workers themselves to discuss emerging forms of mutual aid and solidarity.

The third in The New School’s Politics of Digital Culture Conference Series Sponsored by The New School and The Institute for Distributed Creativity.

Over the past decade, advancements in software development, digitization, an increase in computer processing power, faster and cheaper bandwidth and storage, and the introduction of a wide range of inexpensive, wireless-enabled computing devices and mobile phones, set the global stage for emerging forms of labor that help corporations to drive down labor costs and ward off the falling rate of profits.

Companies like CrowdFlower, oDesk, or Amazon.com’s Mechanical Turk serve as much more than payment processors or interface providers; they shape the nature of the tasks that are performed. Work is organized against the worker. Recent books included The Internet as Playground and Factory (Scholz, 2013), Living Labor (Hoegsberg and Fisher) based on the exhibition Arbeitstid that took place in Oslo in 2013 and Cognitive Capitalism, Education, and Digital Labour (Peters, Bulut, et al, eds., Peter Lang, 2011). In 2012, the exhibition The Workers was curated by MASS MOCA in the United States. Christian Fuchs’ book Digital Labor and Karl Marx is forthcoming with Routledge.

Several events have been organized in the last few years to focus on these developments: Digital Labor: the Internet as Playground and Factory conference (The New School, New York City, 2009 http://digitallabor.org), Digital Labor: Workers, Authors, Citizens (Western University, London, Ontario, Canada, 2009), Invisible Labor Colloquium (Washington University Law School, 2013), Towards Critical Theories of Social Media (Uppsala University, Sweden, 2012), Re:publica (Berlin, 2013), and the Chronicles of Work lecture series at Schloß Solitude (Stuttgart, Germany, 2012/2013).

We would like to continue and elaborate on these discussions by raising the following questions:

via Digital Labor.

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.

Online Preparatory Meeting for the ‘Organizing Digital Labour and Digital Labour Organizing Workshop’ at Global Solidarity Conference

When: 10:00, 14 May 2014

Where: BigBlueButton

Preparatory and test call for planning the ‘Organizing digital labour & digital labour organizing’ workshop. The actual workshop is being planned to take place in Berlin between 23-25 May 2014, during  Labour Start‘s 5. Global Solidarity Conference.

Original Post

To open up the preparation process for the workshop as wide as possible and to allow those interested online participants to test and practice with the online system we will be using, we will be making several test conference calls in coming days. The first call will take place on Wednesday 14 May, between 10.00 am and 15.00 pm [UK time], so wider global participation will be possible during the day.

The draft description of the workshop, which we be taken as the starting point, can be found at ‘Union Upgrading’ Group Wiki created on Organizing Network -which we will be testing and using to document the workshop and the preperation, and to take the minutes. If you like to participate the preparatory call, and the workshop itself please add your name, affiliation, contact information, and any ideas or suggestion of yours on the wiki and click on ‘Save’. In order to be able to use all the functions of the Organizing Network, for instance the wiki, you will need to register first. Please read the user guide for the ON here.

The test call is open to all unionists, labour organizers, social justice activists, free information and knowledge [h]activists, researchers who are interested in and experienced on the topic. The call is especially set up for those who wish to actively collaborate in the preparation of the content of the workshop, and who needs to practice with the digital tools we will be using.

#MayFirst #MetaStrike: Take part in six moth long global and systemic hackaton to take down the Prism, fascism, capitalism, imperialism, racism, sexism and war

Considering the total enclosure of the Internet, the enslavement of mass free labor on it, and the rise of meta-data Orweillian society, what should one make of celebration of the rise of the Internet of Everything (IoE) or Industrial Internet and calling for the demise of capitalism by people like Jeremy Rifkin! What would be Rifkin’s advise to his ruling class clients, but more importantly why the neoconservatives and Chinese state class elite pay him high compensations?

The ruling elite way of dealing with the problem of ‘near zero marginal costs’ has been massive exploitation of zero labor cost (free labor). Now they like to capture free labor in the physical world by connecting devices and people “putting them at work on the move” -as Cisco and GE founders of the Industrial Internet Consortium publicly declare. While the translation of this ideal is the objectification of entire living labor and commons (should be read as human) to a global production process, why Rifkin celebrates this! If the plan is clearly to giving IP addresses to 50 billion devices in coming 10 years to form the IoE infrastructure, making it is possible a global scale surveillance an most logical outcome would be the total exploitation of artificially constructed happy playbouring produsers who would be living in sterile smart cities. As for the masses, there shall not be need for an hegemonic governance like bourgeois parliamentarian model what so ever in this new digital world. It has become clear by now that this ambitious capitalist project has the potential to replace the ancient industrial capitalism. It is certain by now that the fall of capitalism as we know it won’t be quite and painless. The attempt towards realizing this transition has brought about imperialist peripheral wars. If one look to the fierce clashes between Russian, Westerns and Chinese rulers in Syria, Iraq, Iran, Turkey, Georgia, Chechnya, Ukraine and other frontiers of the Empires, the naked truth would appears in clear vision. The fact that crack between two giant tectonic plates is about to break up to a truly global corrective war between ruling classes. Titans are getting ready to clash, and planning for the aftermath of the great cleansing, of billions of un-exploitable and expensive to feed human.

Global Networked Labour Union invites organizers and networkers to mesh-up for the worldwide transition

GNUnion is an idea. It is a collaborative effort and a swarm like social activity aiming to interconnect emancipatory cultures, individuals, institutions, visions, strategies and networks to each other. Global networked labour union is a living, conscious and shared map of locally grounded, translocally interacting autonomous collectivities (simultaneously in and between local, regional, national, continental levels) that are forming a global whole. GNUnion of the nodes, hubs and ties involved serves to generate healthier, stronger and clearer path to emancipation beyond capitalist mode of production without destruction.

We therefore invite peers who share the idea, to network and organize to stitch a global mesh-network by linking thier struggles, network bases and labour to each other. Our call is to all who strive for building dynamic, free, libre, and open source spaces, where our autonomous agendas, geographies and visions can interact and become collectivised bottom up manner. While each of which becomes more empowered to move further independantly, in an harmony.

Join Our Email List: https://lists.riseup.net/www/info/workersoftheworld

GNUnion encourages all its peers to collectivize their individual social and communicational power to swarm around dynamical, creative and positive actions. Such collective actions we know well by now that are capable of creating real impact at unpredicted magnitude on the chosen targets, regardless how large and powerful they are.

Combining peer to peer social relations and technologies and embedding them into all its internal and external processes and relationships, GNUnion ultimately aims at hyper-empowerment of all the nodes involved in one big mesh network.

Below are some of the spaces we collaborate on N-1, and the Organizing Network -online social network spaces developed as free nodes using Lorea.

Social Network-, Wiki-, Meta- Strikes

Our first direct and mesh networked action will be a transnational meta-strike to target PRISM contractors. Priority objectives of the strike will be forcing the state elite and capital to hand-off private and public data, and stop abusing people and democratic rights for their commercial and tyrannical objectives. The action will reclaim what is ‘social’ and belong to people in societal communication and bring about mass awareness about using FLOSS!

We will bring high-tech and industrial workers, hackers, system admins, digital artists and activists and their powers coming from production, consumption, communication and knowledge -so a being social individuals and society.

Working Groups on the ON and N-1:  https://on.usilive.org/groups/profile/323/mayfirst-meta-strike

https://n-1.cc/g/social_network_strike

All the Net workers of the world, mesh network!

This wiki is a meta-strike developing space created by GNUnion. Inviting interested digital and analog workers, labour and union activists to use it for inventing, initiating and networganising collective hactions to target Meta-Data abuses of the Capital. Besides PRISM contractors, there is a need to forge class struggle against digital capitalists of Amazon.com, Huffington Post, and others who undermines human dignity and rights, gained after hundereds of years fighting back!

*Operation PRISM Knock-out!
Objective: To stop PRISM contractors abusing people and data, and promote an escape route to FLOSS alternatives
Targets: Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Apple, Twitter, Skype, Yahoo
Twitter: GNUnion – One Big Mesh Network
HashTag: #OPprismknockout
Planning: Irc

*Operation Mechanical Jurk
Objective: developing direct hacktion operation targeting Amazon.com’s Mechanical Turk mass-exploitative model
Target: Amazon.com
Twitter: @GNUnion
Hashtag: #OPmechanicalJurk
Planning: Irc

Unite the Union’s USI mediates the established union world entering into the networked organising (networganizing) era

The below are Google Hangout videos taken from the USI’s website:

i. Hack the Union from US interviews with Andrew of Union Solidarity International: https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=4U4FNAkZtSc

ii.  A small step for unions, but a giant step for global labour
emancipation?: https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=k6BmWC5lr8Y

This following link is to a nice article by Walton Patland introducing the ON platform:
http://www.scoop.it/t/networked-labour/p/4017080234/2014/03/05/karl-marx-on-facebook-what-is-the-ideology-of-your-social-network?hash=fd4c16ef-09d3-468d-a043-3b8de2a28135

Seven Billion Struggles, One Hashtag #WaveOfAction

Autonomous, independant, distributed, collaborative, focused, disciplined, connected, meshed and outraged!

#WaveOfAction

FOR ANOTHER WORLD, NOW!

Partido X, Global Labour Charter, GNUnion: Modelling Peoples’ Transnational Self-Governance and the rEvolutionary transition to FLOS Societies!

Below article was published in August 2011 on snuproject.wordpress.com and P2P-Foundation’s blog on the same date.

Based on Waterman’s Global Labour Charter idea, it was a reflection for future p2p self-governance structures to be build after upcoming 15O – Global Revolution, which was seen as a starting point for a generative phase transition. 2 years later, Spain’s colourful Citizen Ties, progressive self-organised grassroots networks, might be transforming the idea into a concrete future model for total or absolute democracy: the ‘Democracy full stop!’ as it is called. Partido X, as it is described in the following link, is identical with what we have been describing in August 2011. It is not designed as a usual bourgeois party. It seems rather like a Citizen mesh-network. Here is a promotion video in Spanish (possibile to switch on English subtitles). Remaining question however is: How such model will replace the established bourgeois party politics and parliamentary-bureaucratic form that guarantees the survival of abusive and corrupt fake elite democracy and protected by the armed forces that launches ‘legitimate’ state violence and terror  in every occasion. In case it works, could such model be implemented and survive in one country, and stand against inevitable oppressive offensive of the fake democracies surrounding it; if not how should it grow beyond Spain via transnational and Global rEvolutions? There are ather models being simultaneously built and discussed, among which one of the just started to take shape and take-off: GNUnion – Global Networked Labour Union, is inspired by Waterman’s Labour Charter as a concept, and first designed under the name GAIA (Global Alliance for Immediate Alteration). GNUnion’s main inspiration source however was the Industrial Workers of the World (Wobblies) experience on the one hand -which stood up against the monopolies of craft unions and won; and on the other the GNU/Linux -the free, libre, and open source software that stood up against the monopolies of Microsoft and Apple Mac and won again. It would be plausible to suggest that in order to stood up against the fake capitalist democracies and win simultaneously -in Spain, Greece, Italy, across Europe, and Worldwide we might need to mesh all the autonomous models that are being built. The recent call for Worldwide Waves of meshed actions (#WWW) would be the catalyser of the chain (or un-chain) reaction we have been waiting for.

 

 

Writing Peoples’ Global P2P Constitution[s] | P2P Foundation