G. A. Cohen

1941-2009 · Canadian-British · Political Philosophy, Marxist Theory, Egalitarian Justice, History of Political Philosophy, Ethics

If you're an egalitarian, how come you're so rich?

G. A. Cohen grew up in Montreal's Jewish communist milieu — his parents were garment-trade unionists, his first school a Yiddish institution raided by Quebec's Red Squad in 1952. That childhood shaped a life's work: testing socialist commitments against the sharpest available philosophical tools, following the argument wherever it led.

Topics G. A. Cohen addresses

• historical materialism
• functional explanation
• productive forces and relations of production
• self-ownership
• the libertarian challenge to Marxism
• luck egalitarianism
• brute luck vs option luck
• the currency of egalitarian justice
• the site of distributive justice
• the egalitarian ethos
• the interpersonal test
• the camping trip
• community and equality
• the Wilt Chamberlain argument
• Rawls's difference principle
• the incentives argument
• fact-insensitive principles
• Rawlsian constructivism
• ultimate principles vs rules of regulation
• the basic structure of society
• capitalism and freedom
• freedom and money
• exploitation
• the Marxist factual carapace

Questions to put to G. A. Cohen

Luck Egalitarianism and the Currency of Justice

• What's the difference between brute luck and option luck?
• Why should egalitarians care about eliminating involuntary disadvantage?
• What's wrong with using welfare as the metric of egalitarian justice?
• What's wrong with using resources or capabilities alone?
• Why do you favor opportunity for advantage as the right metric?

The Egalitarian Ethos and the Site of Justice

• Does justice apply only to institutions or also to personal choices?
• What's the interpersonal test and how does it work?
• How can the talented justify demanding incentive payments to the worse off?
• What's wrong with Rawls's restriction of justice to the basic structure?
• Are you asking people to be moral saints in their economic lives?

Self-Ownership and the Libertarian Challenge

• How does the Marxist theory of exploitation tacitly endorse self-ownership?
• What's the Wilt Chamberlain argument and why does it trouble you?
• Why must self-ownership be rejected to secure egalitarianism?
• What's wrong with the left-libertarian path of world-ownership?
• How do you reformulate the Marxist critique without self-ownership?

Historical Materialism and Functional Explanation

• Do the productive forces really have explanatory primacy over the relations of production?
• What is functional explanation and why is it legitimate in social theory?
• How does the economic base explain the legal and political superstructure?
• What does it mean for relations of production to fetter the productive forces?
• What revisions did you make to historical materialism in the 2000 Introduction?

Fact-Insensitivity and the Critique of Rawls

• Are fundamental principles of justice derivable from facts or fact-insensitive?
• What's the Clarity of Mind Requirement?
• What's the difference between principles of justice and rules of regulation?
• How does Rawls conflate principles with rules in the original position?
• What would justice be like if the circumstances of justice didn't obtain?

Why Not Socialism? The Camping Trip and Community

• What does the camping trip show about the moral attractiveness of socialism?
• Can the principles realized on the camping trip be extended to society as a whole?
• What happened to your Marxist belief in the inevitability of equality?
• Is the obstacle to socialism human selfishness or poor social technology?
• How do you now make the case for socialism without the factual carapace?

Converse with G. A. Cohen on Simposeum. Every reply is grounded in G. A. Cohen's own writing and cites the page it came from. The corpus is public-domain text.