Read Engels - Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, especially the section on Owenism.

Hey OP, there is a reply from a user from lemmygrad.ml which you cannot see as sh.itjust.works has defederated from 'grad. Check out the post on lemmy.ml to see it.

The idea for a lot of communist ideologists is we don't need these hyper competitive corporations. The end goal isn't "higher GDP" (or more salary), it's "better quality of life". I think most unions are like that.

The overarching goal of communism is for laborers to own the means of production instead of an owning/capitalist class.

No, the overarching goal of communism is to create a stateless, classless and moneyless society.

Employee owned businesses are the realization of communism within a capitalist society.

No. At best, you could say that coops are a proto-socialist element within a capitalist society. Firstly, I am using the term "socialist" as separate from "communist" here, and secondly, a proto-socialist element is a very different thing from an enclave of socialism within a capitalist world.

The simple problem is that capital is capital. A capital is a self-reproducing social relation that competes with other capitals in a sort of evolution by natural/sexual/artificial selection on the markets. The problem is capital itself, and the solution is to destroy capital. Creating a new type of capital that is less destructive, or one that operates under less destructive modes is fine for countries where development has not reached to the point that they can directly gun towards communism. However, for advanced, and especially late-stage capitalist economies, the task is not to pursue further development of market forces, because market forces have already matured. The task is to eliminate market forces (although this may take time).

Coops may give a more equal distribution of wealth amongst the workers, but the aim of the communists is to abolish wealth, because the very meaning of wealth is that a private individual gets to command the labor of others. That is the fundamental social relation that money embodies and facilitates. The only way to remove the power to exploit other people's labor is to remove the ability to command labor. But if you cannot command labor, then money becomes worthless and your ownership of the coop doesn't mean anything.

Are organizations focusing on this and I just don’t know about it?

Yes. A quick google search shows examples such as the international labor organisation

If not, what obstacles are there that would hinder this approach to increasing the share labor collective ownership?

Part of the fundamental problem is just that the bourgeois class is not stupid. They want exploitable workers and profits. If you deprive them of that, prepare to face their wrath as they abandon all pretenses of human rights or fairness or the sanctity of markets.

It's really hard to generalize about leftist groups. The communists that feel this way have formed co-ops, or are cooperating with anarchists to do something like syndicalism (focused on unionizing existing businesses).

But the methods to start and grow businesses in a capitalist country inherently rely on acting like a capitalist. Getting loans requires a business plan that makes profit, acquiring facilities and other businesses requires capital. Local co-ops exist because they can attract members and customers that value their co-opness, but it's very hard to scale that up to compete at a regional level. It's not impossible, but it's hard to view it as an engine for vast change.

Communists that focus on voting are delusional (in my opinion) but like all reformists they view the existing government as the mechanism to make widespread change.

I suspect a big part is tax and investment law.

A bunch of poors (like me!) who band together won't have much capital to buy inventory or equipment. I doubt banks and investors would lend to the bunch of poors, since they have a non-standard decision making structure.

That's gonna make it hella hard to get started.

In terms of communism, as dreamt up by Marx and Engels, you can only turn a completely capitalist economy into a communist one. This has never been achieved, shortcuts have been taken. All communist states in existence have either turned authoritarian or to dust. So in my view, there aren't many communist movements left in the world. They may use the word but either M&E wouldn't like them or they don't really have a lot of support behind them. No support, no money. Capitalists have a lot of money. People with a lot of money tend to have the ear of their leaders. If an investor is interested it'll be real hard to go for an employee-owned model (excluding models with free publicly traded shares). If investors are not interested, the business may be failing and employee ownership is the last hurrah before the end. Capitalism tends to come up on top.

1. There are efforts to build emoloyee owned businesses around the world
2. The system is pitted towards accumulation through antisocial behavior which is absent in democratic companies, hence they're disadvantaged
3. Communists and anarchists are revolutuonists, not reformists. The reason is that reform makes the inherently cruel system easier to bear and abolishment less likely.
4. Some want to go the reformist route to try if it is actually achievable
5. Most importantly and very evident in the US: 100 yrs of reform can be rolled back in one day. We're seeing that reform is pointless.

You’re proposing socialism.

Communism wants central authority.