I agree with Rosa Luxemburg’s take on coops:

As a result of competition, the complete domination of the process of production by the interests of capital – that is, pitiless exploitation – becomes a condition for the survival of each enterprise. The domination of capital over the process of production expresses itself in the following ways. Labour is intensified. The work day is lengthened or shortened, according to the situation of the market. And, depending on the requirements of the market, labour is either employed or thrown back into the street. In other words, use is made of all methods that enable an enterprise to stand up against its competitors in the market. The workers forming a co-operative in the field of production are thus faced with the contradictory necessity of governing themselves with the utmost absolutism. They are obliged to take toward themselves the role of capitalist entrepreneur – a contradiction that accounts for the usual failure of production co-operatives which either become pure capitalist enterprises or, if the workers’ interests continue to predominate, end by dissolving.

The short answer is no, Cooperatives don’t strengthen nor spark the revolution

The long answer is a little more complicated, and requires some nuance.

To start, a Co-op is still just a company, it still has to act as a company is expected to under capitalism, and it can only be formed with capital. Hence, the co-op is just a petty-bourgeois organisation with an identity crisis, that can only exist because its founders had the funds together to pay the rent on a location, pay for trademarking of the name of the company, pay for stock or for equipment to do services, etc. The workers of Co-ops are still exploited for profit, even if they’re involved in workplace democracy, because the only way to have a company survive under capitalism is for the workers to take a smaller cut than they’re worth, just to keep the lights on. Co-ops are “we’re not coworkers, we’re a family” but dialled up to 11, and it doesn’t help that the people in the Co-ops are already petty-bourgeois, white, western leftists. That doesn’t spark anything revolutionary, which brings us to point two.

They’re inherently pacifying to revolutionary fervour, much the same way communes are. People who interact with these anarchist-centric projects tend to lean away from believing in violent revolution, and the longer they interact with the projects, the more they continue to lean away. Why? to put it simply; they believe they’ve achieved socialism on a small scale, and lose the perspective of the collective whole, and instead of supporting predominately Marxist-backed calls for violence against the state, they lean into a petty-bourgeois belief that anyone can either start or join a commune or a Co-op, and escape capitalism. Interaction with petty-bourgeois projects drift participants towards petty-bourgeois biases, like how the one ring of ‘the lord of the rings’ slowly clouds the mind of those who wear it.

The only organizations that realistically both sparks and supports the revolution, are political parties and labour unions. Co-ops might do some good for the community, and shouldn’t be opposed outright, but they’re not going to be the flag bearers of the revolution, they’re not going to teach their labourers about the struggle of the proletariat, nor are they going to educate their labourers on revolutionary ideology. And the people who gravitate towards them as an ‘alternative’ to the status quo need to be scrutinized for their class values, and their understanding of the revolution as a whole.

In short, it’s a westerner’s goal to start a communal project to ‘escape capitalism’. And studied leftists should instead spend their effort joining parties and unions, to actively progress the aims of the left in the west.

**edit: I should add to point one: Not only do the Co-ops have to act as a capitalist company would, they also have to compete with corporations. For the Co-op to become a decent alternative to the capitalist model, they have to become successful enough that they can take on employees, which means doing well on the market. In the case of local foodstuffs stores or antique/second-hand shops, it isn’t as big a deal. But for more specialized Co-ops, such as machine shops or assembly factories, they have to directly compete with bigger and more consumer recognized companies. As well, if we shift to a more theoretical discussion, Co-ops would need to syndicalize to build a network that would help them thrive via mutual aid. Think De Leon’s theory of unionism, wherein the unions syndicalize together to starve the bourgeois class out of the means of production. No such network exists, so the Co-ops would have to build it. (De Leon is ticketed as the founder of the IWW, and his theory is why the IWW came into being. And, to my understanding, American Unionism - otherwise known as ‘Marxism-Deleonism’ - influenced Lenin’s theories on the Soviets)

Theoretically, Co-ops could become an alternative, and could set their sights higher in terms of what they’re capable of producing. But again, realistically, this theoretical syndicate of Cooperatives would still need to compete with corporations that have the assets to completely bury the Cooperatives. For Instance, if a Co-op formed to build small cars, they would have to compete with the big auto manufacturers. Who are more than capable of spending billions of dollars on ad campaigns to make their product and their production lines more appealing to consumers, they’d be capable of giving the media billions of dollars to report negatively on the Cooperatives, and to boot, consumers are already familiar with the likes of Ford or General Motors. That familiarity tends to make consumers more willing to pay more money for the brands they already know. Or, a Cooperative pops up to make oatmeal. For the sake of argument, we’ll assume they’ve already secured a source of oats from farmers in the region the Cooperative is based. That Oatmeal Cooperative would have to compete with corporations like General Mills and Quaker Oats, and would have to secure distribution to stores. Distribution General Mills can simply pay a couple million dollars to prevent.

The long and short of it is, Cooperatives as a means of skirting capitalism is just silly. Not only do they do little to nothing for the revolution, but they’re often too small to introduce masses to alternatives to capitalism, and they’re too weak on the market to stand a chance against corporate giants. That doesn’t mean Cooperatives should be abandoned entirely, but it does mean a lot needs to change if they’re going to have any hope of becoming anything more than a handful of people who were already friends, who decided to start a business together. (which, btw, is most companies that bill themselves as a “Co-op” in marketing)

Worker co-ops on their own aren’t really good for changing the system. However, worker co-ops with class consciousness could be useful to support and supply revolution in the same way the Soviets were bases of revolution in the Russian Empire. It’s sort of like unionism. A union on its own isn’t necessarily a revolutionary body, but it can be with proper class consciousness and a revolutionary leadership and membership.

I take the view that they would begin providing the necessary institutionalisation for more social politics in future; they attack atomisation incessantly pursued in neoliberalism. Even though their collectivisation patterns are somewhat different to that of trade unions, one must not obviate the most pertinent unions have been professional occupations, and not the traditional underrepresented proletariat.

I’d also attribute some of the rejections of others in this post to market based systems, and not capitalism per se… But that’s an intersectionality argument to have another time.