It's not like this hasn't been tried. First, do you know what Soviet stands for? The relevant meaning of the word in Russian is "council", and it refers to "wo

It's not like this hasn't been tried. First, do you know what Soviet stands for? The relevant meaning of the word in Russian is "council", and it refers to "worker councils", "soldier councils", etc. that made the revolution happen (the Petrograd Soviet, or council, in St Petersburg was the main alternative power structure to Provisional Government that took over from the czar), that were supposed to "democratically" run things like factories, and send delegates to higher levels to democratically run things there. Somehow, this all ended up a dictatorship, as it did pretty much every time something like this has been tried. Then, economically, co-ops are perfectly legal in the West. There are some successful ones, like REI. I shop at REI a lot, and I really don't give a damn if employers are wage laborers or co-op members - I doubt most people do. If anything, some people might prefer co-ops because they would give them the same warm fuzzy feeling as green-washed products do, so a co-op would start out with a competitive advantage at least among the well-off liberals. Why not go build a coop to replace your local restaurant or a laundromat; or Exxon, or Google, or whatever? Perhaps because generally, it doesn't work so well? Heck, I don't know how much of a "real" co-op REI is anymore, at this scale.