Decentralizing Statecraft: Techno-anarcho-syndicalism, platform cooperatives, and the potential marriage of platforms, DAOs, and AI in a new culture of design - Transekt UG
Decentralizing Statecraft In 2018 I applied for digital citizenship in Estonia. I did this primarily because of my ambitions to develop a social enterprise that would have global reach and enable me to be a tech-nomad seeking to distribute accessible technologies to the global majority. At that time, I was primarily interested in Platform Cooperatives and the shared-ownership and governance discourse that was growing as a result of modifying these tried and true organizational forms with emerging technologies. This intersected with research that was happening in Maker Spaces, Web3, and the Social & Solidarity Economy. Actors like Zebras Unite, Mondragon, Doc Servizi, and the University of Colorado, Boulder kept appearing in view. My imagination around how the art of governance (statecraft) could become a cultural constant for all designers, cultural producers, and tech practitioners was piqued. Taking the agency for governance away from outdated and largely unpopular institutions which tend to be more the source of the problem than a resolution to the wicked problems of our time and of the future. I reached out to 15 different actors pursuing projects that embodied the new spirit of cooperativism that was in relationship to modern cultural and technological projects. These interviews allowed me to identify patterns of resistance to these progressive models of power distribution and resource allocation. Those narrative barriers, as I called them, started to surface the importance of world-making in shaping the perceived-capabilities of the cultural and creative economy actors who would be the most-likely to adopt a new vision of the world and labor towards its production. The question evolved to — what is the minimum viable experience that a worker needs to have in order to believe in democracy in the workplace? Economic Democracy? Trust in democratic principles, and the engagement with their fellow human and non-human counterparts? The questions about which levers of influence could facilitate a cybernetic catalyst towards systems change became, as one might expect, nebulous and expansive. Theorists like Elinor Ostrom situated that exploration and started to pick away at the presumed narratives of Neoliberal Capitalism — man was not inherently selfish (when given a true choice, let’s say), that the human world was not separate from the natural world, and that the market was not the only true representation of human want. Heeding the work of authors like Viktor Papanek, E.F. Schumacher, and Paolo Freire in wanting to ensure that global inclusivity is in frame for the knowledge that my work will produce was a necessary complicating vector for the ability to draw from existing bodies of work which would remain applicable. Techno-anarcho-syndicalism To seed a techno-anarcho-syndicalist system of knowledge production is a “chicken and egg” problem. Do we design solution first or do we build community first? In the Working Classics Series, Anarcho-Syndicalism: Theory and Practice written by Rudolf Rocker and last updated in 2004, I found resonance for the types of systems change that spoke to the constantly emerging interest in Web3, DAOs, Blockchains, and AI. Ownership was a key to the problem that must be redesigned. Through the production of a textbook chapter (forthcoming in 2025) published by Bloomsbury and co-authored by my colleague and mentor Lara Penin, we positioned Worker-Centered Service Design as a logical next step in advancing the growing field and discipline of Service Design. Grounding the expansiveness of my own transdisciplinary work, I was asking if this switch from user- or customer-centeredness went far enough in pushing the boundaries towards a preferred future of design in which social, environmental, and economic justice would be achievable. Interviewed by researcher Matthew Wizinsky, in 2023, the following content and quotations were the outcome of our exchange: ** Rashid Owoyele is a Berlin-based designer whose work and research blend service design and social innovation. In our interview, Owoyele shared their career journey, emphasizing how they transitioned from environmental science to design, driven by a desire to create transformative change. They expressed disillusionment with the limitations of design within capitalist structures, arguing that design embedded in capitalism will inevitably perpetuate exploitation. Instead, Owoyele advocated for alternative models like cooperatives, commons, and platform cooperativism, emphasizing a fundamental shift in “the rules of the game” to achieve true social justice and ecological change. Owoyele’s vision involves building networks and fostering collaboration among diverse groups engaged in postcapitalist experiments, highlighting the importance of shifting power dynamics and redefining value systems to create a more equitable and sustainable future. “When it comes to social innovation, often the most useful thing is something that has been right in front of you the whole time but in a different context.” “There is no other role that the human in human-centered design can play other than consumer.” One of the biggest takeaways from my conversation with Owoyele was the limitation of new methods or tools within existing institutions. They said (paraphrasing): “I’m making the assertion that design embedded within a capitalist institution’s or organization’s DNA is going to replicate extractive, exploitative, marginalization effects NO MATTER WHAT! This is how the environment is designed. These are the rules we set in place for humans to interact with whatever materials and situations they encounter. The rules of the game ARE the problem.” This starkly indicates that attempts towards “new ways of designing” within existing institutions whose function is to operate in a capitalist paradigm (compete, exploit, grow) will be limited by this “DNA.” Owoyele took a strong position on this point. It was valuable to hear how this perspective came from diverse experiences working on social innovation projects in the United States and Europe. This clear articulation of “the rules of the game ARE the problem” helped me to see that “new ways of designing” (as described by Transition Design) will also necessitate “new institutions of designing.” ** The boundaries of design, institutionalism, and systems thinking blurred and converging to encompass the next space of my personal academic and practice-based endeavors; I set out to develop a company as a legal testing bed for the things that I
