Platform Cooperativism
플랫폼 협동조합주의
A model of digital platforms cooperatively owned and democratically governed by workers and users. Coined by Trebor Scholz in 2014 as an alternative to the labor exploitation of venture-capital-funded platforms like Uber. Based on the premise that ownership change redirects algorithmic objectives from shareholder profit to worker welfare and reconstitutes data as a user-controlled resource. Because cooperatives must compete within capitalist markets (lacking capital to overcome network effects and remaining isolated within market logic), it is assessed as a transitional form, with the move toward more radical social ownership the central point of contention.
In depth
Origins and Development
Trebor Scholz first introduced the term in his 2014 essay 'Platform Cooperativism vs. the Sharing Economy,' later elaborating the concept in a 2015 primer published in five languages and the 2016 book Uberworked and Underpaid: How Workers Are Disrupting the Digital Economy. In November 2015, together with Nathan Schneider, he convened the conference 'Platform Cooperativism: The Internet, Ownership, Democracy' at The New School in New York, drawing over 1,000 attendees; the following year they co-edited the anthology Ours to Hack and to Own with contributions from 40 authors.
Typology
Scholz classifies platform cooperatives into several types: (1) cooperatively owned online labor brokerages and marketplaces, (2) city-owned platform cooperatives, (3) produser-owned platforms, (4) union-backed labor platforms, (5) cooperatives built from within existing platforms, and (6) platform as protocol. He proposed ten principles for platform cooperativism including broad-based ownership, democratic governance, dignified incomes for workers and users, data transparency and portability, and global solidarity.
Experiments in Korea
Launched in 2018, the Riders Cooperative (라이더스 협동조합) was a self-management experiment by delivery riders aiming for worker-owned and worker-operated platform structures. However, it proved structurally unable to compete with large venture-capital-backed platforms such as Coupang Eats and Baedal Minjok.
Criticism and Limitations
Left critiques focus on three points. First, cooperatives must still generate profit to survive in the market, risking a slide into self-exploitation. Second, in platform markets where user numbers are themselves the source of value, cooperatives lack the capital to sustain the massive subsidy wars that dominant platforms wage to secure network effects. Third, as Marx noted in Capital, cooperatives are 'the new form within the old'. But without transforming society-wide relations of production, they are either absorbed by big capital or isolated. Nevertheless, platform cooperativism is assessed as a meaningful transitional form: a school in which workers experiment with algorithmic and data ownership, and a material basis for more radical demands for socialization.
Sources
- Wikipedia (EN) Wikipedia article on platform cooperatives: etymology, history (Scholz 2014 coinage), typology, public policy examples including Barcelona, and the distinction from commons-based peer production.
- rosalux.nyc Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung New York, 'Platform Cooperativism: Challenging the Corporate Sharing Economy' by Trebor Scholz (January 2016): Scholz's own foundational pamphlet detailing the critique of the sharing economy, the rise of platform cooperativism, a typology of platform co-ops, and ten principles.
- culturedigitally.org 'Platform Cooperativism and the Problem of the Outside' (Culture Digitally, February 2017): scholarly critical analysis examining tensions within the platform cooperativism movement, including the debate over autonomy within the cooperative ecosystem and the difficulties of competing with extractive platforms.