Reply #35: That's because Americans are largely ignorant of co-ops or the leftist ideology behind them.

[Selatius]

Much of that ideology is rooted in left libertarian thought that wanted to steer away from statist socialism but still aimed at collective ownership that was outside of the state. The unfortunate thing with American workers is that they exist in an historical vacuum by design. They don't want workers knowing about such things because it causes problems for business owners when workers start growing a brain and start their own businesses that are in competition with traditional businesses. The problem is if workers in traditional businesses see workers in labor co-ops doing well, it might cause those workers to leave the proprietorships and join the co-ops. In this case, we would see market place competition actually benefiting workers in the long run.

In Spain, the left libertarian tradition is extremely well entrenched due to decades of agitation by anarcho-socialists in the countryside prior to the Spanish Civil War. Of course, much of the movement disappeared under Franco, but the leftist thought still remained engrained in the population. The world's largest labor co-op is the Spain-based Mondragon Cooperative Corporation with roughly 70,000 workers.