1.  State just like any other enterprise is having its proprietors (people who control it to their utmost personal advantage) with their very distinctive economic and financial interests

2.  State as any commercial enterprise is selling its goods and services

3.  State as any commercial enterprise is receiving revenues mostly in the form of taxes, paying costs associated with provision of the state services and with a persuasion to buy them as well as receiving profit, which is later distributed as various types of benefits for its real proprietors.

4.  State is having a price for its services – first of all in the form of a level of taxation

At the same time two factors seem to separate the State from regular incorporated enterprise:

1.  State is a monopoly with exclusive property rights on particular territory and with associated possibility of gaining an exclusive or monopolistic (non-market) income for its real proprietors

2.  State is an ultimate source of power and coercion especially in the modern world.

We can probably say that from one side the State is conventional commercial enterprise while from the other it is a social agent. Generally speaking, social agent is an organization or an institution, which income is based on mechanisms of power and coercion. Otherwise there is nothing social in organization - only an economic substance – and that is an outcome, which we all should try to achieve for any organization. We can equally say that social agent is a commercial enterprise with exclusive rights, privileges and revenues based on mechanisms of power and coercion.

Because of their reliance on mechanisms of power and coercion, the nature of social agents is always covered with a shadow of misapprehension and fallacy. Important part of an overall activity of social agents is a concealment of their non-socialized nature based on inherent exclusive social and property rights. Furthermore, their real proprietors (people benefiting the most from their activity in terms of income) are rather unclear and obscure in order to hide underlying private interests and to market public character of organization. However, not only a nature of their real proprietors is hidden, but almost every single aspect of their activity (nature of customers or contributors, nature of revenues, nature of price formation for their services, nature of property relations) is concealed as much as possible. Under these circumstances it is absolutely normal that the very essence of the State (which is one of the most ancient and “experienced” social agents) is rather far from being explicit and for its uncovering needs some serious exercise and, first of all, a rejection of certain ungrounded emotional appeals and non-sustainable widespread social axioms.

Social agent is a very important intermediary definition in our envy to discover the nature of State - very important primarily because a definition of social agent is completely embedded in the definition of State. At the same time understanding of social agent is a fundamental part of the definition of social monopoly (monopoly based on mechanisms of power and coercion). Not any organization or institution is a social agent or social monopoly yet. Some of them are being incorporated purely in commercial purposes and in such capacity preserve their decent character of conventional commercial enterprise. Though, majority of them, in line with purely commercial also pursue various social objectives or objectives realizable only through a reliance on the mechanisms of power and coercion. However, even among such institutions not all are yet social agents. Some of them simply fail to get any benefits based on those mechanisms either because of their inability or because of unyielding circumstances. Only those organizations and institutions, which are realizing their grand objective and getting social revenues and social benefits (including acquired owing to their status tax advantages), revenues which in one way or another are connected with mechanisms of power and coercion, can be called social agents. Table bellow exhibits more of the comparative characteristics of economic and social agents.

 

	Economic agent (conventional commercial enterprise)	Social agent (social monopoly)
Definition
Basic definition	Organization or institution, which revenues are not connected with exclusive social and property rights based on mechanisms of power and coercion and are relying exclusively on economic activity	Organization or institution, which revenues are based on certain exclusive rights and privileges generated through mechanisms of power and coercion
Examples of organizations	Conventional commercial enterprise (sole proprietorship, partnership, corporation, etc.); associations, institutions and non-profit organizations without exclusive rights	Social monopolies (private companies), non-profit organizations and special interest groups with exclusive rights and privileges based on mechanisms of power and coercion, including trade unions and associations; the State
Economic characteristics
Key revenues	Proceeds from sale of goods and services	Contributions plus “favors” on behalf of the mechanisms of power and coercion (mostly on behalf of the state)
Costs to proprietor	Labor, land, input resources	Everything what relates to provision of services including promotion and fund raising
Profits	Everything left after deducting costs from revenues	Income and benefits of top management
Form of income distribution	Dividends and capital gains	Salaries and benefits
Price formation	Economic - interaction of supply and demand	Social (based upon involvement of the mechanisms of power and coercion), either solely or complements economic price formation
Social characteristics
Key customers	Buyers of goods and services	Plus to other contributors of funds, State becomes one of the main contributors – in terms of benefits based on power and coercion
Real proprietors	Stakeholders	Top management
Legal identification of real proprietors	Explicitly identified by law	Concealed or not explicitly identified by law.
Exclusive rights based on power and coercion	No	Yes
Exclusive (non-market) revenues based on exclusive rights	No	Yes

No one social group, social institution or social association is superior to another. Their single objective is to acquire and maintain exclusive or monopolistic rights based on mechanisms of power and coercion, otherwise there is nothing social about any organization. Taken separately all social agents are futile and intolerable while their only value stands in the fact that they fight and obliterate each other thus diminishing possibilities for emergence of strong exclusive social rights.

If the State seems to have both natures (one of conventional commercial enterprise and the other one of social agent) why we are implying that it is hardly anything more than regular commercial enterprise? The reason is really simple and straightforward - two characteristics above, which we attributed to the State as a social agent (monopoly and power & coercion), both under dictatorship and under democracy serve one single commercial purpose – to extract from people as much financial resources as possible for internal consumption of the real state proprietors (representatives and top-level state bureaucracy). Unfortunately, State is not only conventional commercial enterprise - it is also a social agent or rather social monopoly based on exclusive rights, power & coercion and appropriation of exclusive income. We can equally say that State generally is somewhat worse than conventional commercial enterprise because it embraces as its intrinsic part exclusive social and property rights, while its revenues, income and property are based on mechanisms of power and coercion.