Well, you were more than halfway to a Yugoslav-style worker-managed company in your first paragraph. They were all destroyed either because of the 90's wars, or

Well, you were more than halfway to a Yugoslav-style worker-managed company in your first paragraph. They were all destroyed either because of the 90's wars, or by post-war liberal governments who forced dissolution. There aren't laws against it, but the trouble with such structures is they need stability, so they tend to grow way slower, with new members who go in and stay (50-70 years for the examples below). That's not conducive to a space "race" indeed. Alternatively they need some state protection until they are big and stable enough - and then you're living in full Marxist-cum-Bolchevik or Maoist territory. There still exit various such cooperatives in Spain and northern Italy with from 12 to 30'000 members (also including industry). A lot of large Chinese firms also have that form.