Extending our Shared Futures: A Horizon for the Co-operative Movement in the Digital Age
Rafael Ziegler, IICADD, HEC Montréal
What collective ambitions do we hold for the co-operative movement's future? What goals are we working toward, and how do we hope to achieve them? Nathan Schneider has spent the past decade helping to bring the co-operative movement into the digital economy, and in the process has encountered profound limits that the movement is up against. In the process, he has also developed a profound respect for the gains our predecessors have achieved. Drawing on that experience, he contends that we need to work toward more ambitious visions for what the co-operative movement can be and for what it needs to thrive—particularly in an economy characterized by financialization and data colonialism. He suggests reasserting the “right to assemble” as a foundational basis for policy demands, meant to ensure that ordinary people have the ability to form meaningful power in the economy, from our online networks to our local communities.