Let us pause for a moment to savour the irony. As the American dream sputters and its business class frantically searches for an exit, they have stumbled upon a relic of British industrial democracy: the worker co-operative. Yes, the same model that sustained Yorkshire mill towns and Welsh mining valleys is now being marketed as a lifeline to panicked entrepreneurs across the pond.
News arrives that US business owners, weary of regulatory headaches and talent wars, are selling their firms to employees en masse. The employee ownership trust, a structure long championed by the John Lewis Partnership, has become a transatlantic fad. In 2023 alone, American co-op conversions surged by 40 per cent. The land of rugged individualism is embracing collective ownership. What next, a royal family?
But before we preen ourselves too vigorously, consider the context. This is not a victory for British socialism. It is a symptom of a decaying system. The American business owner, once a heroic figure of risk and swagger, now resembles a frightened tenant farmer handing over the keys to his serfs. Why? Because the state has made entrepreneurship a liability. Healthcare costs, litigation, minimum wage hikes: the cost of being a boss now outweighs the glory. So they flee into the arms of the workforce, hoping to shed the burden of command.
Meanwhile, in Britain, the co-operative movement enjoys a modest revival, but it remains a niche eccentricity. The great post-Brexit exodus of talent and capital has not triggered a wave of worker buyouts. Instead, we see asset stripping, private equity raids, and a government too busy picking trade wars to notice that the fabric of small business is unravelling. The Americans, at least, are trying something. We are just trying to survive.
History, as ever, offers a grim parallel. The late Roman Empire saw the rise of coloni: tenant farmers who bound themselves to the land in exchange for protection from a collapsing state. Today's co-op conversions are the same phenomenon dressed in progressive clothing. The entrepreneur hands ownership to the workers not out of generosity but out of desperation. The system has failed them, so they retreat into a medieval-style commune.
And yet, there is a strange beauty in this. The British co-op model, born of the Rochdale Pioneers and perfected by Victorian utopians, always contained a radical kernel: the idea that labour, not capital, should rule. That idea is now spreading without a single manifesto or speech. It is spreading through bankruptcy filings and exit strategies. It is the quiet revolution of the exhausted.
But let us not romanticise. These American co-ops are fragile. They lack the cultural memory of mutuality that British workers once had. They will face internal strife, capital shortages, and the same market pressures that made their founders quit. The road to a worker-owned economy is paved with good intentions and bad accounting.
Nonetheless, this development should give pause to those who believe that post-Brexit Britain can solo its way to prosperity. The world is watching our little institutional islands with interest. If we can export a viable co-op model to the United States, perhaps we have more to offer than fish and chip shops. But we must also ask: why have we not embraced this model ourselves? Why do British workers still sell their labour like serfs while American workers buy their companies?
The answer is pride and ignorance. British business culture is locked in a 19th-century mindset of masters and men. The Americans, for all their faults, are more pragmatic. They will try anything once. We cling to hierarchy until the roof caves in.
So here is my modest proposal: let the Americans lead. Let them experiment with worker ownership, fail, learn, and improve. Then, in a decade or two, when the first generation of worker-owned American giants emerges, we can smugly note that it was all our idea. And we can ask for a royalty.
Until then, enjoy the irony. The ghost of Robert Owen is smiling somewhere, probably in a co-op café in New England.
