This is way too idealistic for any adult to believe. Coops didn't even work in China[1]. In Brooklyn, NY there's a food coop [2](grocery store) run by people in the neighborhood. I believe the group has naturally separated in a minority of pushy organizers (i.e. managers) and the majority who put in their hours and go home. Coops could work if it didn't involve human beings.
There are plenty of decades-old working cooperatives here. It's the standard business form for farmers in the countryside. It's just another business arrangement, nothing extraordinary. They get everyone's production and leverage their volume to get better deals than any individual producer could, then pay everyone a fair rate.
Upon reading the articles: that NY coop seems fairly successful, but the closest to that model around here is a just-opened Sam's Club :) You seem to have misunderstood the article on China: what made them successful and more productive was precisely working as a collective while being fairly compensated. Cooperatives have nothing to do with communism.
[1] http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/01/20/145360447/the-secr... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Park_Slope_Food_Coop