Sargent identified a key conceptual error in the indivisibility thesis: the failure to acknowledge that capitalism was an economic program, which could be linked with various forms of social and political organization. “[W]hen we compare socialism with capitalism we are discussing two economic programs, and are not discussing such questions as the relation of socialism to art, religion or forms of government. Capitalism may prevail under a democracy or under a dictatorship; socialism … in theory might exist full-fledged under a democracy.”
