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Great read, highly recommend.
Employee ownership is not a silver bullet to every problem. The governance model and governing body of employee-owners has to be well constructed as with anything. As a philosophy generally, it has a lot of potential to avoid certain common problems with more traditional business models.
In this space it's also important to understand the difference between cooperatives and collectives: https://institute.coop/about-worker-co-ops/worker-cooperativ...
Credit Unions tend to be a more commonplace example of member/worker governance, though in my experience it's somewhat rare for the average member to engage much with the governance.
It should be said that Sara [1] was also the founder of the Freelancers Union [2], offering solo benefits and other resources to freelancers.
The book is great because it's so practical, with 3 org design principles [3]:
[1] A solidaristic community [2] An economic mechanism that supports the community's mission [3] A long-term time horizon where the economic value is recycled back to the community
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sara_Horowitz
https://freelancersunion.org/
https://ssir.org/articles/entry/mutualism-next-generation
I think part of the reason people assume it's not possible is that (at least in the UK) there is so much faux-consultation which has approximately no effect; both in the public and private sector. But it looks superficially like the same thing.
Workers should prefer to own their company as risks are really low (in contrast to other industries).
I know people working both at Galois and Mondragón, and they seem to be relatively similar in spirit.
However, Mondragon, and co-ops like it, go further. They are industrial democracies: one worker, one vote.
As for workers that were part of the coop in uncompetitive jobs, they moved them around as they could, but ultimately no amount of union or coop-like behavior is going to help if you are getting outcompeted.
A lot of people think it's all wine and roses when you get more worker input, but then you realize quite a few of the warts come straight from having a bunch of people with different amounts of power, and you still have power differentials even if everyone votes.
However, another explanation is that the dominant economic and legal environment - and, indeed, society itself - is structured around a single business model: the capitalist as chief, and workers with no meaningful voice in management.
Mondragon emerged in a region with strong traditions of industrial organization, communal solidarity and popular education, as well as a recent memory of workers' movements. It also arose within living memory of the large-scale worker collectivizations of the Spanish Revolution, particularly in Catalonia.
Much of the social and institutional environment that has made this possible has weakened over recent decades. This was not merely an accidental development: in much of the world, it was the result of a conscious political project that accelerated in the 1980s.
Have been listening to an audio-book of 2312 when I have the time to be fully attentive
I would say that capitalism is not only characterized by private ownership of capital, but also by free market for labor, which could be almost considered a complementary feature (other side of the same coin).
On the other hand, socialism primarily rejects free market for labour in favor of worker emancipation and participation in decision-making. So both socialism and capitalism are compatible with free markets; it's the labor market where the opinion differs.
(As a socialist, I would add, salaries cannot be treated in economics the same way as e.g. price of apples, because apple doesn't care what its price is.)
Socialism isn't even well-defined.
Socialism is a prescriptive ideology, it is concerned precisely with the nature of the economic relationships people make. Labor theory of value. "From each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs." Workers own the means of production. To the degree that people are able to freely structure their economic relationships with one another, then the vast majority of those relationships will look nothing like the prescriptions of socialism. To the degree that the economic relationships are made to look like the prescriptions of socialism, then the economic model would fail to be described as a free market.
This is why in a free market/"capitalist" economy, communes can exist, Mondragon can exist...because you can structure your relationships with one another however you want. It's just that most people don't like that structure. "Capitalism" itself doesn't care at all if that's the way people want to distribute equity and control of the corporation. Now, if you want to structure an arbitrary economic relationship in a socialist communist country...good luck.
It is just embedded in a market system, just as, say, USSR or Cuba was embedded in the global economy.
That doesn’t make it not socialist.
And not all socialism is “bad”. It has to do with whether it is voluntary or not. I am a libertarian, and I fully support communes, housing cooperatives, credit unions and the like. I consider the lack of a superfluous extractive landlord or shareholder class a feature.
And there is another forgotten truth. Before the Soviet counter-revolution, liberals advocated for this type of Socialism.
- John Stuart MillIf the unions had dumped their efforts into co-ops instead of trying to fight their own companies then they might have managed to have a positive impact. They've been at it for long enough for capital accumulation to have kicked in even at pathetic rates of saving.
What would Musk do if nobody worked for him? He is probably not going to be able to develop rockets alone in his basement.
> Huawei Investment & Holding Co., Ltd. is a private company wholly owned by 169,054 of its employees and retired beneficiaries. As of December 31, 2025, company founder Ren Zhengfei's investment accounts for nearly 0.59% of the company’s total share capital.
https://www.huawei.com/en/media-center/company-facts