The author provides an analytical comparison between cooperatives and typical companies with an emphasis on the issues of property and ownership. The purpose of the comparison is to highlight the distinguishing features of cooperative property, a concept that is often misunderstood in both the public and the political sphere as private (group) property. She complements the comparison with conceptual analysis, and demonstrates that cooperatives represent a special type of property, or at least a concrete potential for the development of a special type of property which is communal property, also known as the commons. In the final part of the article, she critically highlights the process of privatization in the 1990s and presents an initiative for subverting a part of the “new” privatization of Slovenian state property by employing the cooperative buy-out model.
