In the US, the American Solidarity Party[3] draws from distributism, for instance.
[1] https://distributistreview.com/archive/an-introduction-to-di...
He had to flee the country because his chosen party was purged. He survived a street battle. Then made a final visit to many of his comrades in prison.
Don’t presume that his views were shared with those who had influence.
He had admiration for his comrades in arms, especially the mess hall staff. He was on the workers side, but he was in the banned party, of the losing side of the war.
Above all, Orwell saw through the propaganda at home and the rest of the worlds deliberate misunderstanding of the whole situation. For instance, he saw that France had a tacit agreement with the Soviets to slow-walk supplying arms to the Nationalists, to ensure French financiers had protected investments in Spain’s railroads. And every newspaper outside Spain reported like Fox News.
And I bet these salary-capped co-op leaders are still appropriately capable / qualified. The U.S. billionare situation is ugly.
I still admire Mondragon and wish there were more companies like it, but now I try to remind myself that most characterizations from the outside are surely lacking in nuance.
In technical econ terms, the marginal profit of new employees is typically below the average profit of existing employees. A profit-maximizing business only cares that the marginal profit is positive, and will hire until there is no additional profit to be made. A co-op is incentivized to keep average profit per employee high, which can mean reducing headcount in order to keep the average strong. So that's why co-ops can have a sort of exclusive club feel to them.
SV is actually an interesting example which proves how employee ownership can drive prosperity, but the typical co-op crowd doesn't want to talk about it because it's too capitalist-coded. In a way, SV companies show that employee ownership is not some sort of instant cure for everything which ails capitalism.