How The "Information Superhighway" Led Us to Digital Socialism

"Flexible workforces and flexible firms had been growing for forty years, but computers and other technologies reinforced these changes, just as the steam engine accelerated the industrious revolution. Reorganizing people made industrialization possible. The first factories were just buildings. The first assembly lines were just slides. Businesses then developed technology to take full advantage of these new ways of organizing people. Technology, in turn, became intertwined with this reorganization, becoming the most visible part of the epochal change. Observers confused cause and effect.

"The application of the internet to the flexible workforce was no different. The digital platforms developed over the last twenty years provide flexible workforces, now catchily called 'liquid workforces,' to employers with a click. At the same time, however, these platforms might contain the seeds of an alternative to the corporation, which, if realized, would be a truly radical break in the economy. It is unclear that any of the platforms . . . .will exist in a few years, but what is apparent is that the digital platform, as a way to coordinate work, is unlike anything ever before.

"Flexible workforces are nothing new. But that workers might truly be able to be independent from employers, without temp agencies or consulting firms - that is what has become possible with the new platforms. Workers can now do on their own that just a few years ago required participation in a corporation: manufacturing globally, selling globally, shopping globally, working globally. The corporation might no longer be necessary. (emphasis added) The office certainly will not be, as the remote work revolution is finally here. Today, the same information technologies that allow capital to manage labor in new ways might also enable labor to collaborate in new ways. With the death of the employer-employee relationship - and the industrial economy - workers certainly need an alternative.

"The platform cooperativist movement is pushing for worker-owned cooperatives as an alternative to the privately owned platforms. Digital labor and selling platforms make their profits from a cut of sales or wages, just like Manpower, Upwork, Uber, and Etsy all take a percentage or a fee from every sale. Worker-owned platforms, instead, could return those fees to those who labor or sell through the platform. Imagine a temp agency owned by the temps. 

"Where digital cooperatives might be different from temp agencies is in the ability to start cheaply and to coordinate decision making. Open-source platform software makes it easier than ever to set up a platform. In the past, the challenge for all co-ops was capital. Most businesses require capital to start and capital to grow. Marketing cooperatives, like orange growers, or procurement cooperatives, like grocery stores, don't actually make operational decisions. They make selling and purchasing decisions. For drivers, sellers, and laborers, different kinds of platforms could help them find customers - without extracting a stiff toll like the current platforms (or temporary agencies). Running a cooperative is a challenge, because no one, in many cases, is in charge. And that is part of the point. New technology, developed for other purposes, might be able to solve the governance issues.

"Everyone has something to offer. We just need to find a way to reach everyone. In the digital era, connecting people is easier than ever before. While the flexible workforce and the flexible firm brought insecurity in the last forty years, we can turn them around now and make them work for us. Technology will make it possible, but what will make it happen is collective will to finally achieve the real American dream."

-----------Louis Hyman, Temp - How American Work, American Business, and the American Dream Became Temporary, pps. 292-3, 309, 322