Having been raised in relative poverty, I have no idea what it's like to have wealthy parents to fall back on. Instead, I spent a decade after high school fighting to get ahead. Today, I find myself, over a decade later still, living what can only be called an excellent quality of life. I, instead, give back to my parents. And I look back at the path that I walked and it makes me less liberal in my politics as a result.
> Getting ahead is hard, but certainly possible.
I think that most everything we do in life is hard and that the daily challenges of life are exactly what make it worth living.
Would the people who give absolute value to the right of property holders to do what they choose with it support the Soviet Union's right to organize its economy however it so choose, along with controlling the media it owns and the workforce it contracts with? After all, it owns the property, and anyone with credible contrary claims to it would be long dead.
I think the question here is legitimate ownership of property. If you think the Soviet Union stole the property (I do), then it should be assumed that it's homesteaded to those using it. Even Murray Rothbard suggested giving ownership of U.S. universities to students and professors, if I recall correctly. (I think it was in "All Power to the Soviets")
I suppose you believe the capitalists stole the property, which allows for the same appropriation by the workers.
But here's the thing: what then? Could the workers sell their shares? If they can, another capitalist class can emerge just as well, purely by preference of people wanting an earlier payout selling the shares + steady paychecks vs risking being responsible for the enterprise. And if the workers can't make such a choice, in what sense do they really own the share? (EDIT: I think Proudhon actually had a counter argument to this, I forgot what it was)
The ethics of capitalism are based on the assumption that the business owner rightfully has final say on all of the property of the business, and that the workers are merely guests on the property, paid to do something with the property, collect a paycheck, and go home. They have no right to it.
But then you can start asking questions like, did the capitalist have rightful ownership of the money to buy the thing in the first place? If you go far back enough, you have things like conquest, homesteading land (which is inherently ambiguous), government grants of land (open to favoritism), etc. The whole foundation can be called into question.
Again I'm not ultimately convinced by it, but I think there's at least a discussion to be had. I feel like I've heard some convincing arguments but they're not coming to me now. But if you have the patience for it (I didn't even finish it), you might check out "What is Property" by Proudhon. He lays out a philosophy called Mutualism that sort of has socialist ethics, but is still somewhat market based in the end. He enumerates all of the assumptions he sees as underlying private property ownership and makes an interesting argument against them.