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Comment by kunimu | Hacker News Reader

A democratically run company is still an owner of private property, the fact that citizens have a say is irrelevant to the idea that property is privately owned. This is evident in the case in which the State is an actor on the global stage and defends its private property from other nations; whether that be land or means of production.

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>A democratically run company is still an owner of private property, the fact that citizens have a say is irrelevant to the idea that property is privately owned.

Yes, I agree - however, the fact that ALL citizens have a say is not irrelevant.

The case you're talking about is one where the State acts in its capacity as an agent of the citizenry, similar to how a manager can hire, fire or sign contracts within the bounds set by the owner or owners. It doesn't mean the manager owns any property, simply that he as an agent of ownership is currently in possession of it.

> A democratically run company is still an owner of private property,

In the capitalist public/private sense, yes; in the socialist personal/private/social sense, this is social not private property (specifically, cooperative social property.)

The sense of “private property” opposed by socialism is not at all the sense which is opposed to “public property”.

When I say "company" I mean such an organisation as which employs wage labour to further the accumulation of capital; such an organisation could not exist under a Socialist mode of production, at least in my understanding. This is because it is firstly not wholly the "property" of the workers in general, because accumulation of capital requires exploitation and value added through M-C-M'; a cooperative still sells produce, so in my view this makes it inadequate for Socialism. Perhaps something like mutualism would better describe such an arrangement at the scale of a society.

It is entirely possible for people to create a super-capitalist, an image reflecting bourgeois nature, within a cooperative establishment.

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