Capitalism & Socialism Rightly Understood

In a recent op-ed for The New York Times, Professor Gar Alperovitz of the University of Maryland, who teaches political economy there, has written that "something different [from what OWS wants] has been quietly brewing in recent decades: more and more Americans are involved in co-ops, worker-owned companies and other alternatives to the traditional capitalist model. We may, in fact, be moving toward a hybrid system, something different from both traditional capitalism and socialism, without anyone even noticing."

Well, this comment shows, among other things, a profound misunderstanding of both capitalism and socialism. In the former system there is no prohibition of pockets of communitarian associations, kibbutzes, communes, cooperatives and so forth. This is a point made emphatically by one of the 20th century's foremost philosophical defenders of capitalism – or, as he put it, "capitalist acts between consenting adults" – the late professor Robert Nozick, in his famous book, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (Basic Books, 1973).

Nozick pointed out that in the libertarian system he presented in his book there is every chance to experiment with a great variety of human associations – he called the "utopias" – provided these do not sanction the coercion of some people by others. And since the kind of associations that "worker-owned companies" need by no stretch of the imagination involve any kind of coercion, they are entirely compatible with capitalism wherein the major element is freedom of association, not the pursuit of any particular goal (including profit).

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