In capitalism, any worker is able to own the means of production. Anyone can start their own business or purchase a share of someone else's business if they want to benefit from its 'fruits'
In socialism and communism, only the state can own the means of production.
Which is plainful wrong. Why the supermarket employers work as employers if they could own their own supermarket? Most people cannot own the relevant means of production, otherwise salaried work would be impossible and capitalism would not exist. Your comment about socialism is also plainful wrong. In Yuguslavia, cooperatives did not owned the means of production?
Under capitalism, if you work for a supermarket and want to own some of company and share some of the profit, you buy some of the stock (there are often generous deals to encourage this). Alternatively, if you want to start your own business selling goods, you can - at any scale, whether it's a market stall or a supermarket - usually you'd work your way up from small to big, provided you have the work ethic to do so.
You mentioned cooperatives. This is tangential to the discussion as cooperatives are neither socialist nor capitalist, per se. They can freely exist in capitalist societies, and also in some socialist societies (although they are often tightly controlled by the state, and may be seized by the state).
Bullshit. A full share of an equity stock is much more than what a regular worker can afford. Here where I live a supermarket worker earns around 1500$, a full share of wallmart stock is around 2000$ (in local currency). Sure, there are incentives to buy fractional shares: a regular person who does so will not earn much, is not a real owner, will need to keep working for all her life, but the important is that she bought not the stock, but the ideology that she is as capitalistic as the supermarket owner that leeches her work and do not need to work.
Cooperatives are a socialist proposal. A country run solely by cooperatives is not a capitalist country.
Obviously we wouldn’t expect people doing menial work with low responsibility to be able to own a large share of their employer. But under capitalism any worker can start a company and own 100% of the stock in that company. This is a unique opportunity that is not available under socialism, where the state owns the means of production, and everyone is basically working for the state, with no hope of profiting from the growth of the thing they’re building.
You say the owners are “leeching” from workers. Sounds like they have it easy, right? So - become an owner! I think you’ll find building a company, employing people and taking on all the financial risk of doing so is harder than you thought. Perhaps if you give it a try, you’ll understand why company owners get the rewards they do.
> But under capitalism any worker can start a company and own 100% of the stock in that company.
You confuse legal possibility with real possibility. By the law and social norms, nothing forbids me from levitating in the street. Likewise, nothing forbids a worker to become a bourgeoisie. Sorry, but most people cannot start their own company. And the few that can, will be just providing services for the margins of the market, where the real big companies do not operate because it is not profitable enough. Doing this, they will keep needing to work like any other worker, in contrast with the burgoisie.
> You say the owners are “leeching” from workers. Sounds like they have it easy, right? So - become an owner!
Again the confusion with "legally allowed" with "real possibility". Contrary to most burgoisie, I did not inherited a lot of capital and money. So I cannot become part of the burgoisie, except with negligible probability. Even if the law does not forbid me (likewise, the law is not forbidding me to transform into a dinosaur).
> employing people
This is not a favor. They employ so that they can leech the fruits of other people's labor, and pay for them less than what they produced. A slave owner also provides an "employment" for his slaves, do you think this is a favor? The owner cannot produce without the workers. But workers can produce without the owner (like in a cooperative). The workers are the ones that are doing a "favor" to the owner.
> taking on all the financial risk
This is ridiculous. In capitalism, both the owner as the worker are sellers. The first has its company and sells what it produces. The second sells his labor force. Both of them can fail to sell their products and face risks: if the worker fails to sell his product, he becomes unemployed, and face risks like suffering hunger, dying of sickness because cannot afford treatment, and living in misery. If the owner fails to sell his product, the company fails, and the risk is losing some money, but not all the money because it is invested in lots of different companies. The worker deal with much more financial risks than the owner.
Economic freedom is freedom.