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As for the actual organising part, I'll leave it to those more knowledgeable than myself, but I would like to caution against being too enamoured with new and shiny toys. When push comes to shove, there's no substitute for feet on the ground. When you want to block production in a company, there is no substitute for an organised presence within the majority of the company's workforce - not only to organise the strike, but to keep blacklegs out while it's going on.

New media might change democracy. The radio and the TV did in their times. On the other hand, space travel was supposed to change the world too, and didn't.

- Jake

If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Tue Dec 11th, 2007 at 01:57:11 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Your definition as 'toys' is revealing.

President Estrada of the Phillipines was removed by group SMS. The key is rapidity. The length of time it has taken to organize a mass protest has been a few weeks (and by nature out in the open) - time enough for the government and the poilice or military to organize effective strategies and get men and assets in place.

But if you can get a million people on the streets in a couple of days you will always win - or cause a suicidal reaction of brutal repression. Naturally you cannot get a million people out there if they are not primed and ready. The MSM will not be helping in this task - the new media will.

Facebook had 20 million active users in May 2007 - basically all added since '05. By September it was 58 million - with 50% from outside college. It is doubling every 6 months and it is international. Google has 100 billion monthly page views. Youtube has 16 billion.

Oh yes, you'll say - this Facebook is a just a toy. This is kids looking for new friends and showing off. Yup, 63% of Facebook users are female.

The point you are missing is that Facebook demonstrates how a genuine social need can be rapidly and scaleably satisfied with this toy 'technology'. What is wrong with having more friends?

What is wrong with being pissed off by rich pigs and the ruinous injustice of our system? Facebook is not going to change democracy, but it demonstrates how the technology can tip human needs into a mass 'movement'. One day this new and shiny toy will change everything. IMHO.

You can't be me, I'm taken

by Sven Triloqvist on Tue Dec 11th, 2007 at 02:33:03 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Not saying that the new media are all - or even mostly - toys. In fact, the use of the term 'toys' was derived from a comparison between some people's infatuation with new media and the ill-fated infatuation of some military types with new weapons (frequently referred to by their critics as 'shiny toys') - both have a use, but over-reliance on them leads to grief. I eventually edited the military comparison out because I figured it would muddy the waters. The 'toys' terminology should probably have gone with it.

Nevertheless, if the new media are to be more than just toys, we need to learn how to use them to get feet on the ground and people to cast ballots. In other words, we must translate virtual power into physical power, because at the end of the day, physical power trumphs virtual power.

I have seen a number of people arguing here and elsewhere that the rise of virtual communities heralds a revolution in the way we do democracy, but without making any but the most rudimentary attempts to translate the virtual community into coordinated action in the 'real world.' That is a trap that we must not fall into. That's all I wanted to point out.

- Jake

If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Tue Dec 11th, 2007 at 03:30:42 PM EST
[ Parent ]

OK - I didn't get the shiny toys reference. Apologies.

But I see further than feet on the ground. What the www is doing in the mid-term is cutting out the traditional middlemen. Politicians are middlemen, born of a logistics problem over a millennium ago.

As I've said here before, the most powerful weapon we have now (when we get organized) is Withdrawal of Purchase. It may replace Withdrawal of Labour as a weapon for regulating equality.

If we can get enough people together to agree to stop purchasing the products of a certain company with whose policies we disagree, we can change quite a lot. Even the threat of a 10% loss in sales for a month will have boardroom impact.

I believe we should change by politics by changing business. Elections every 4 years is too long a time span for dealing with the relatively rapid changing nature of the problems we face. Business is quarterly. They listen to the tills.

You can't be me, I'm taken

by Sven Triloqvist on Tue Dec 11th, 2007 at 04:17:19 PM EST
[ Parent ]

I certainly considered withdrawal of purchase as well as withdrawal of labour. But while withdrawal of purchase might get a company to - say - stop using child labour or pay a semi-decent living wage, it is a much more indirect approach. It is, I think, far easier to get the employees in a factory to strike for higher wages for themselves, than it is to get customers to refuse to buy in order to get higher wages for someone else. While the net economic effect might be similar, I can't quite see the latter happening as easily as the former.

That aside the underlying organisational infrastructure is fundamentally the same for both kinds of operations. Ultimately I would envision an organisation capable of organising a strike on a factory in China, a blockade of the transshipment terminals in Singapore and a consumer boycott in Copenhagen. Simultaneously. Directed against the same company. I imagine that such a multi-pronged approach would be far more effective than just applying pressure to a single point. If for no other reason then because such an approach would create greater redundancy in the operation.

- Jake

If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Tue Dec 11th, 2007 at 04:29:37 PM EST
[ Parent ]

But do you agree that changing business could be a faster method of changing politics, as well as bringing about more instant wage/conditions equality?

BTW Your vertical approach is very interesting. I am sure Sun Tzu has something to say about supply chains as a vulnerable weakness.

You can't be me, I'm taken

by Sven Triloqvist on Tue Dec 11th, 2007 at 04:39:27 PM EST
[ Parent ]

But do you agree that changing business could be a faster method of changing politics, as well as bringing about more instant wage/conditions equality?

Of course. The Scandinavian labour markets prove that beyond any reasonably doubt. There organised labour managed to create progress that for much of the 20th century outpaced political regulation.

BTW Your vertical approach is very interesting. I am sure Sun Tzu has something to say about supply chains as a vulnerable weakness.

The vertical approach is a logical consequence of the increasing vertical consolidation of the trans-nats. In the Bad Old Days that shaped the labour unions we know today, a single company was usually focused on a single business area - the production, transportation and the sale of products were handled by different companies (with robber-baron railroads being a notable exception). So if you wanted to change company policy, hitting other business areas meant increasing the collateral damage to yourself and society at large while the additional pressure generated by your action was applied in an indirect fashion and thus - all other things being equal - less effective.

Today, the trans-nats do their dead level best to control every aspect of the production, distribution and sale of their products (and probably also the resource extraction part). This makes them more resilient to traditional single-sector action because their profits are more diversified, but more vulnerable to a cross-sector action, because it becomes easier to establish the connection (both psychological and financial) between each of the sectors you hit.

Although you're certainly right that blocking supply-line bottlenecks is a very effective tactic, I can't say I thought of Sun Tzu and supply lines when I wrote it. Actually I thought more of the general strike - in which you affect political change by paralysing an entire country at a time. With trans-nats increasingly taking on the characteristics of countries (they have their own infrastructure and their real estate and turnover is frequently comparable to that of state actors), they increasingly become vulnerable to the same kind of paralysis.

- Jake

If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Tue Dec 11th, 2007 at 05:08:51 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Jake, are these kinds of discussions happening among the Lib Dems you know? England (the part of it called me at least) is crying out for "the new generation" of politicians, the ones who understand what's going on, who are active in working out what needs to be done. I'd suggest a block of "old left" labour, greens, Lib Dems, and "Freedom" conservatives--renewable energy, civil rights, and a new (this is the hard part!) contract between employees and employers following Chris's post-co-op model. I only ask coz you's a Lib Dem!

Don't fight forces, use them R. Buckminster Fuller.

by rg (leopold dot lepster at google mail dot com) on Tue Dec 11th, 2007 at 10:19:47 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Huh? Where did you get the idea that I'm a Lib Dem? I'm Danish, and I don't even know precisely what Lib Dem means in a Danish political context? As far as I know, the term is of UK origin, and I am insufficiently familiar with UK politics to know what it covers...

An alliance of labour and greens is a reality in Norway and the more the hard right works towards turning the West into police states the more social libertarians (I suppose that's what you mean by 'freedom conservatives') are likely to butcher a couple of ideological holy cows and shift their allegiance to the progressive bloc.

- Jake

If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Wed Dec 12th, 2007 at 01:20:10 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Jake, I got you confused with Gary J (if I squint I can see why), a Lib Dem.

So, UK political hounds, how does it sound? "Working class" Labour + Lib Dems + Greens + "Civil Rights" tories = a strong majority. They'd have to get agreement, so there'd be scaling down/blocking "Surveillance" culture, there'd be a huge push for renewables (the tories would have to get over the NIMBY aspect--could they? I think that battle may be won now), the complicated part would be sorting out the financial mess. Hmmm. Is this a crazy suggestion? (From what Jake says, it seems (to me) to work in Norwary.)

Don't fight forces, use them R. Buckminster Fuller.

by rg (leopold dot lepster at google mail dot com) on Wed Dec 12th, 2007 at 01:32:47 PM EST
[ Parent ]

From what Jake says, it seems (to me) to work in Norway

I mean, I suddenly connected what he wrote to what Solveig has posted recently--maybe I leaped a step.

Don't fight forces, use them R. Buckminster Fuller.

by rg (leopold dot lepster at google mail dot com) on Wed Dec 12th, 2007 at 01:34:45 PM EST
[ Parent ]

From what I recall, Solveig has posted a bit on how lefty politics is done in Norway. I'm sure she can give more details, but from what we hear down on this side of Kattegat, a socialist-green-social democratic alliance ousted the last rightist government.

- Jake

If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Wed Dec 12th, 2007 at 02:08:06 PM EST
[ Parent ]

The purchase strike is also a lot harder to implement when the company being striked against doesn't make products for non-corporate consumers - industrial capital goods, for example. It's one thing to convince fellow workers to stop buying something for the good of the strike, but it's an entirely different proposition to convince major industrial operations to stop buying something for the same reason - especially if those purchase decisions were made years ago, and standing contracts exist well into the future.

Then again, the "comprehensive campaign" waged at the Ravenswood Steel plant in West Virginia stands as an example of the thing Jake S was talking about. A brief wikipedia blurb about it can be found under their entry on George Becker.

by Zwackus on Tue Dec 11th, 2007 at 06:25:27 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Facebook is a huge time suck. That having been said, I think it's a great tool, that hasn't been fully utilized.

I think that the internet in general could be a highly useful tool.

The first thing that I can think of would be to counter the outsourcing trend with information.

Insted of looking down on working folks in India as the enemy, I'd say that there's a point to getting the point about jut how much less than their Western counterparts they're getting paid.

So set up a website, and try to get a hold of the US or European wages for jobs that have been outsourced to India or elsewhere. Getting workers in those countries that info would have a huge impact on their ability to negotiate with employers.

Second, I think that the behavior of European companies operating in the US is often atrocious, and would not pass in Europe. Having a transatlantic dialogue so these things are known globally would put an incentive on good behavior by companies.

And I'll give my consent to any government that does not deny a man a living wage-Billy Bragg

by ManfromMiddletown (manfrommiddletown at lycos dot com) on Tue Dec 11th, 2007 at 03:52:31 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Side point - the technology will be the same, but google, youtube, facebook, etc, will not be the vector - they are corporate interests to the same extent that any other corporation is, and they aren't interested in being used as a tool for labor rights, and in particular in countries like China where they are granted access to markets as long as they are willing to operate directly in conjunction with the ruling party.

you are the media you consume.

by MillMan (millguy at gmail) on Tue Dec 11th, 2007 at 04:26:54 PM EST
[ Parent ]