[WS:] Yes, this is what I suggested, because this is what corporations are doing. However you fail to demonstrate why it is based on a faulty assumption. You merely revert to explaining why union organizing drives at places like Walmart do not deliver results - which is not what I was arguing. I was arguing that unions should use their money to open a retail chain instead of trying to organize people working in one. And I did not imply that such a union owned retail chain should be some feel good joint where everyone loves everyone and nobody is anybody else's boss, but a profit-making business sans anti-labor practices that are typically found in many US businesses. They key difference is that proceeds from this business would not fund GOP and conservative lobbyists and think tanks but a labor or social democratic party and labor or social democratic lobbyists and think tanks.
It may be that this idea will turn difficult or impossible to implement in practice, but it is at least more plausible than delusions about launching a revo in Etats Unis or Europe by mobilizing prisoners and other fringe elements. There has not been a successful socialist revolution in industrialized democracies even under more favorable conditions, so it is pretty certain that there will not be one in the foreseeable future. However, there have been effective reforms of the existing economic and political institutions that considerably improved the living standards and political representation of labor. As a matter of fact, EU cooperatives aka "social economy" do have a political representation in the European Commission http://ec.europa.eu/enterprise/policies/sme/promoting-entrepreneurship/social-economy/ so they are not such a miserable failure as you seem to suggest.
Wojtek