One of the many interesting sources I have read in the Masters in Social Economy and Cooperative Management at Mondragon University. In these slides you see a frank critique of the evolution of cooperative ideology in the Mondragon Cooperative Experience. The practice of critical self-reflection within Mondragon is a real strength, even as they lament the failure to maintain cooperative values and strategies for social transformation.
http://www.slideshare.net/audaondo/evolucin-del-sentido-de-la-ecm-39801812
One thing that occurred to me reading these slides was how, in the union reform movement in North America, there is a lot of experience in the area of revitalization and democratization of existing institutions without attempting to return to some golden era -- many people know how to start from existing problems, needs, and aspirations and recognize the need to organize the union and unionism that you need and want to see.
The big drawback of the union reform project is that the horizon is, as Arizmendiarrieta pointed out, limited to demands (reivindicativo). That is, it assumes that the employer will maintain control and authority over work. The best activists project the kind of bold self-respect and audacity you need, if you are organizing to take over production, but the framework in which they act is, with very few exceptions, limited to "more."
In some cases, you find activists inspired by socialist or anarchist ideals who seek to make some kind of bridge between the struggles in which they are involved and some version or another of a socialist project, but it is nearly always an idiosyncracy and it is usually not what makes those activists valuable to others -- even though ideology may be valuable for the activist him or herself, as a source of motivation and orientation through the ebb and flow of movement activism, it is the capacity for cultivating and nurturing collective action that counts.
One appeal of Mondragon and other cooperative experiences is the practical, here and now, construction of a new form of production, going beyond demands and assuming the task of owning and managing. That the cooperative project also requires grassroots reform activism is no surprise -- democracy, as Ranciere tells us, hinges on its constant practice, not on any institutional form.