The global financial crisis has led to a new shop-floor militancy. Radical forms of protest and new workers’ takeovers have sprung up all over the globe. In the US, Republic Windows and Doors started production under worker control in January 2013.
Certain changes to the cooperative form could permit the creation of enterprises that would not belong to anyone specifically but would be at the disposal of its users, workers and clients alike.
Human alienation will disappear through the withering away of commodity production and social division of labour, through the disappearance of private ownership of the means of production.
"The difference between councils and trade unions is that, while the latter lose their functions in a decaying capitalism, the former become a prefiguration of the organisation of socialist society."
A historical overview of the rise and decline of the farmers' cooperative movement in Greece, as well as some early examples of worker-occupied businesses before the turn of the century.