The difference between Mondragon, the kibbutzim, and other successful examples of collective labor, and the Soviet system, is precisely that the former are not governments, and operate in a capitalist system of property rights and free markets (in a practical rather than spherical cow sense of that term).<p>I'm all for more cooperatives, it's a good model. Operating in a system which doesn't compel that form of organization is what keeps them honest. Mondragon is a profitable company, emphasis on <i>profitable</i>.<p>The article talks a bit about how, while Mondragon is a pretty good deal for basic labor, they have trouble attracting high-demand talent like engineers, which they also need. In a free-market system, a worker's collective can solve a problem like that, by offering more perks, raising the 'level' for new engineering hires, waiving some amount of the up-front investment, or just getting by through, in effect, paying some of the salary in a nonmaterial reward of belonging to something which better meets some people's sense of ethics and fairness.<p>That's not how it works when the company you work for is also the police and the military. It's also not how it works when every company is compelled to organize itself this way. That compulsion leads to dysfunction, corruption, cheating, and at the extreme end, gulags.<p>So let's pass on all that. If you believe that worker cooperatives are a social good, as I do, buy stuff from them. Work for one, found one. It's working so far.