Smart (Cooperative)

A European cooperative with 30,000 full members and approximately 300,000 lighter members, providing shared employment infrastructure for freelancers and creative workers across multiple European countries. Smart allows independent workers to invoice clients, access social protections, and belong to a cooperative employment structure — a mutualized umbrella organization that creates collective security for otherwise isolated workers.

Michel Bauwens works with Smart and cites it as an example of mutualism scaling in practice. Smart represents the kind of federated cooperative infrastructure that the Network Nations project imagines at a translocal level — providing real material benefits (employment law protections, social insurance) to members distributed across multiple jurisdictions.

Referenced in: Ep 3