I will attempt to lay out some of my learning from my research trip to Barcelona between 1st and 13th November 2025. Don’t have time to write it all in one go so will post by post.
Social spaces in every neighbourhood
A measure of success for the social movement is not just whether or not you have a strong organising presence in one neighbourhood but instead how the movement has a presence across many neighbourhoods in a myriad of forms.
This proliferation means the social movement is distant from no one. It allows potential allies to connect with the movement regardless of location. It keeps the movement from being isolated into the “leftist neighbourhood” which is something I’ve observed in some German cities.
It also makes it harder for the state to repress the movement by focussing on gentrifying and targeting a specific area with no resistance to deal with elsewhere.
What we can learn from this is that we need to build upon the successes of the movement building in Stirchley and South Birmingham to start building similar projects in other areas by inviting organisers from those areas to experience our projects and support them to build what they need where they are. Outreach is critical or will get stuck in our neighbourhood after the projects there have been consolidated.
A lot of the rhetoric I heard seemed to be framing the the struggle as between the forces of democracy and authoritarian anti-democratic billionaires.
This obviously flattens a lot of the dynamics of imperialist capitalism but it does allow for a very simple and effective rhetoric. All of the unions, left wing political parties, social economy (co-operatives), social movement and squats are framed as being on the side of democracy then the billionaires, military industrial complex, capitalist corporations, foreign imperialist nation states are framed as the enemy because they are clearly aiming to erode democracy
See for the example https://www.authoritarian-stack.info/ which is a new report in the form of a website that I was shown on my trip. The title is " The Authoritarian Stack. How Tech Billionaires Are Building a Post-Democratic America — And Why Europe Is Next". Of special note, it shows how the NHS and Coventry City Council have contracts with the essentially fascist corporation Palantir.
This rhetoric of democracy is really useful for building pluralistic ecosystems of resistance as there is still an instinctive understanding amongst the people that democracy is a way to protect the people from the worst excesses of capitalism.
Obviously the UK is not a very democratic country by any analysis and there is rightly much cynicism directed towards the dysfunctional parliamentary system. However I believe if we were to lean towards this framing then the message that Co-op Brum is an experiment in new democratic methods, it will be attractive to a broad range of potential members and allies from our communities.
Technology is a key struggle against authoritarianism
It may be a super obvious point but technology is a huge part of all our lives now. However we are seeing a distinct shift towards billionaire control and mediation over even more aspects of our lives.
The effects of this are yet to be fully understood. Many progressive commentators have warned that we heading or perhaps already are into an age of Technofeudalism, Enshittifcation, AGI cults, and even Techno Fascism.
In terms of of how this affect our daily lives. On the personal level, we are being manipulated by the oligarchically controlled attention economy, addicted to our weird little dopamine releasing computers in our pockets. Both the NHS and Coventry City Council have contracts with Peter Thiel owned company Palantir. They literally name themselves over a piece of evil tech from Lord of the Rings and Peter Thiel is an open fascist and uses his enormous wealth to fund authoritarian and destructive causes.
It is vital that progressive forces in the UK begin organising in these areas. Unfortunately we are very far behind where we should be. Many left wing organisations are completely complacent about the influence of this situation. It’s only since the horror of the genocide in Gaza and complicity of the U.S. that the social movement has begun to question what the progressive digital rights, privacy and hacker scene has been warning about since the 1980s. From my perspective, sadly all of that movements predictions about the dangers of tech authoritarianism have come true.
One of our big influences is really ahead of this Cooperation Jackson, they use the term Social Digital Commons in their recently video as part of their Build and Fight program:
Closer to home, there is amazing stuff being done in Catalunya and wider Iberian movements which I will maybe go into detail on another time.
Anyway, what can we as a small community based co-operative do about it?
Quite a lot, it seems. We should include in our programme, explorations and commitments to some of these broad ideas:
Commitment to using open source commons software (ideally developed and hosted by tech worker co-operative).
Reducing our reliance on U.S corporate platforms, only using them when absolutely necessary to reach wider audiences.
Speak out and criticise technofedudalism and fascism.
Encourage the usage of end to end encryption when possible to project our member’s and community privacy and digital rights.
Encourage the use of open protocols, open data, transparency and accountability, project managements, cybernetics in our organisations.
Investigate innovative new technologies such as Peer to Peer (P2P), radio/off grid/mesh networks, federated software and online democracy tools to build a more resilient tech infrastructure as move into a more unstable world.
Participate in the wider progressive tech movement community.
I think it terms of tangible practices, I would like to investigate whether it is possible to setup a new hackerspace organisation in Birmingham called Liberation Computer Club. We could meet in the new Artefact cafe to share knowledge and play with technology:
I also have started drafting some tech reforms for our meta organisation:
Here is a map of the co-operative economy in Barcelona and surrounding area. This probably doesn’t include new projects and the less formal squat scene. This is what I mean when I say " Social spaces in every neighbourhood".
Criteria
Only those initiatives that have passed some type of audit or previous evaluation based on criteria and practices that define the social and solidarity economy appear on the map:
In-depth interview based on the 15 criteria ofthe ESS. To be part of the map from Pam to Pam you have to meet half plus one of the criteria that evaluate concrete practices. In the file of each initiative, you can see the degree of performance of each one.
Social balance of the XES. The entities that have passed this audit of the SSE appear on the map. In most cases, you can consult their Social Balance results in the Pam a Pam file.