[dragonwriter]

> What is top-down about the abolition of private property and workers owning the means of production?

Inherently? Nothing. But that's the goal, and socialism is more than the goal, its the means: if you do that through the State, its "socialism". If you do part or all of it within a community by non-state means, its something else (anarcho-syndicalism, for instance.)

Since capitalist states tend to impose structural disincentives or barriers to effectively altering relationships in this way, it may in practice to make changes through the State to achieve to goals even if those seeking them are not in favor of State action as an ideal (e.g., you can, within a community subject to a State with a capitalist view of property rights, perhaps restrict the impact of private property rights between members of the group, e.g., by contract, but you cannot force the State to withdraw from imposing certain models of property without exercising power through the State to make the change.)