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Dual Power

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Dual Power

Created: 250422 Monday, 22 April Tags: dual-power organizing mutual-aid counter-institutions counter-power social-movements prefigurative-politics

What is Dual Power?

Dual Power is a strategic framework for social change that combines two complementary approaches:

  1. Counter-Power: Public resistance to existing systems of oppression through organizing, protests, direct action, and other forms of collective opposition.

  2. Counter-Institutions: Building alternative democratic, participatory institutions that prefigure the desired society while meeting immediate needs.

As Breadchain Cooperative explains, “one part fights the existing systems by mobilizing against them while the other builds resilient, people-led institutions to take their place” 1. This two-pronged approach allows movements to both contest current power structures and create viable alternatives that demonstrate different models are possible.

Historical Development

The concept of Dual Power originated with Vladimir Lenin during the Russian Revolution, where it initially described a specific transitional period in which two competing powers—the Provisional Government and the Soviets (workers’ councils)—existed simultaneously 1.

Over the last century, the concept has evolved beyond Lenin’s specific context. Many social movements have reinterpreted dual power as a long-term strategy rather than merely a transitional phase. This perspective emphasizes building local democratic institutions as the foundation for systemic change rather than focusing primarily on seizing state power.

Core Principles

  1. Simultaneity: Both resistance and creation must happen in parallel; neither alone is sufficient.

  2. Prefigurative Politics: The means used to achieve social change should embody the ends being sought.

  3. Local Democracy: Emphasizing participatory decision-making in local contexts as a basis for broader transformation.

  4. Material Improvement: Counter-institutions should address immediate needs while building toward long-term change.

  5. Autonomy: Creating spaces and systems that operate with relative independence from dominant institutions.

  6. Scalability: Local efforts can network and federate to build broader power.

Applications of Dual Power

Traditional Examples

  • Cooperation Jackson: Building a solidarity economy in Jackson, Mississippi through cooperatives, land trusts, and community governance.
  • Zapatistas in Chiapas: Indigenous communities in Mexico creating autonomous zones with their own governance, education, and healthcare systems while resisting state repression.
  • Mutual Aid Networks: Community-based systems for meeting needs outside of state or market mechanisms.
  • Cooperative/Solidarity Economy: Worker-owned businesses, housing cooperatives, and other economic institutions based on democratic control rather than profit maximization.

Digital Dual Power

The Breadchain Cooperative has articulated an expansion of dual power theory into digital spaces, recognizing that “social movements (and the broader public) have become more reliant on digital tools for coordinating quickly and decentralizing operations” 1. This approach recognizes several key points:

  1. Dependence on Corporate Platforms: Activists and organizers have become reliant on digital infrastructure owned by the same corporations they often oppose.

  2. Limits of Platform Resistance: Simply attempting to resist on corporate platforms is insufficient when these platforms can censor, surveil, or shut down organizing efforts.

  3. Need for Digital Counter-Institutions: Building alternative digital infrastructure is necessary for truly autonomous organizing.

The concept of Digital Dual Power emphasizes:

  • Digital Democracy: Creating platforms, protocols, and tools that can be co-designed and co-governed to serve collective needs rather than capital accumulation.
  • Technological Sovereignty: Communities controlling their own technological infrastructure rather than relying on corporate platforms.
  • Decentralized Governance: Using blockchain and other technologies to facilitate democratic control of digital resources.

Dual Power in Web3 Context

Web3 technologies offer unique affordances for dual power strategies:

  1. Censorship Resistance: Blockchain-based tools can resist financial censorship and provide infrastructure resistant to shutdown by authorities.

  2. Examples of Counter-Power: Projects like WikiLeaks and SciHub have used cryptocurrencies to circumvent financial blockades. Iranians have used crypto to evade economic sanctions. AssangeDAO created democratic structures for organizing capital in support of international activist campaigns.

  3. Examples of Counter-Institutions: Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) can provide democratic governance in digital spaces. Projects like dOrg and 1Hive demonstrate alternative, democratic working models.

  4. Hyperstructures: The concept of hyperstructures—resilient public infrastructure that can “run for free, forever, and be governed democratically”—represents a technological affordance for creating digital counter-institutions resistant to corporate capture 1.

Critiques and Limitations

  1. Recuperation: Counter-institutions can be co-opted or absorbed by the systems they seek to replace.

  2. Resource Constraints: Building alternatives often requires resources controlled by existing systems.

  3. Scale Challenges: Scaling local democratic institutions while maintaining their participatory character presents significant challenges.

  4. Technical Barriers: Digital dual power strategies may exclude those without technical knowledge or access.

  5. Coordination Problems: Decentralized networks of counter-institutions may struggle with coordination across different contexts.

Relationship to Other Theoretical Frameworks

  • Prefigurative Politics: The practice of creating social relations and forms of organization that embody the desired future society.
  • Libertarian Municipalism: Bookchin’s vision of building confederated, democratic municipalities as alternatives to the nation-state.
  • Autonomism: Italian autonomist tradition emphasizing worker self-activity outside traditional political parties and unions.
  • Exit vs. Voice: Albert Hirschman’s framework where dual power combines “exit” (creating alternatives) with “voice” (demanding change in existing institutions).
  • Commons-Based Peer Production: Creating shared resources governed by communities rather than markets or states.

Projects Working on Dual Power

Breadchain Cooperative

Breadchain exemplifies the dual power approach in the Web3 space through:

  • Creating cooperative infrastructure for solidarity economics
  • Developing the BREAD token as a “solidarity primitive” for funding post-capitalist projects
  • Building applications like Crowdstaking that allow community support without donation
  • Creating a network of allied projects including PactDAO, LaborDAO, and Basis 1

Other Projects

  • Trust: Researching how Web3 tools can assist labor unions in organizing workers for strikes
  • Platform Cooperativism: Movement to create cooperatively-owned digital platforms as alternatives to extractive platform capitalism
  • Mastodon and Fediverse: Decentralized social media alternatives to corporate platforms

References

Footnotes

  1. Our Way Out: Dual Power and the Future of Organizing (June 5, 2022) ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5