In contemporary discourse, cooperatives are often considered as vehicles for post-capitalist social transformation. However, theorists affiliated with the first, second, and third Internationals groupings of socialist parties suggested that cooperative potential was circumscribed by market coercion, leaving co-ops with limited pedagogical value and subordinating them to political movements. Their experience suggests it is important to avoid conflating cooperatives’ demonstration of post-capitalist labor norms with the strategic problems of creating a post-capitalist society.