Capitalism Permits Collectivization, But Does Socialism Permit Privatization?

One virtue of capitalism is that it can accommodate a wide variety of economic arrangements, including socialist ones. If you’d like to join an worker cooperative, you may do so. If you’d rather work for a capitalist employer, you may do that too. So capitalism does a better job of respecting freedom of occupational choice than socialism.

Here’s an objection I’ve gotten: if capitalist regimes are compatible with socialist arrangements, why not think that socialist regimes are compatible with capitalist arrangements? Suppose, for instance, that someone prefers to work for a capitalist employer instead of being part of a worker cooperative. Wouldn’t a (liberal) socialist regime allow this sort of privatization, just as a liberal capitalist regime would allow collectivization?

The cases aren’t symmetrical, however. Under capitalism, productive property is privately owned. The owners of that property have the right to dispose of it as they see fit, without asking anyone’s permission. If they’d like to collectivize their property, they have the right to do so, just as they have the right to make other decisions about their property.

Under socialism, productive property is collectively owned. If some individuals want to privatize a portion of the collectively-owned property to create a capitalist workplace, they’d need the permission of the collective—permission that the collective is under no obligation to grant. So, unlike individuals in a capitalist regime who are free to collectivize if they choose to do so, individuals in a socialist regime may only privatize when their compatriots see fit to allow it. In brief, capitalism can accommodate socialist arrangements much more readily than socialism can accommodate capitalist arrangements.