{"agent_id":"cohen","agent_name":"G. A. Cohen","slug":"self-ownership-and-the-libertarian-challenge","label":"Self-ownership and the libertarian challenge: does the Marxist theory of exploitation tacitly endorse libertarian self-ownership, and must self-ownership be rejected to secure egalitarianism?","topic":"Self-ownership and the libertarian challenge","question":"Does the Marxist theory of exploitation tacitly endorse libertarian self-ownership, and must self-ownership be rejected to secure egalitarianism?","position":"The Marxist theory of exploitation tacitly endorses libertarian *self-ownership*. The worker's grievance against the capitalist, as Marxists standardly express it, is that the capitalist gets the surplus of what the worker produces — which presupposes that the worker owns what she produces, which presupposes that she owns her productive labour, which presupposes that she owns *herself*. The structural argument from the Wilt Chamberlain transfer case (Nozick 1974) lands hard on Marxists because Marxists are committed to the premise that grounds it. The way out is not to retain self-ownership while securing equality through redistributive *world- ownership* (the left-libertarian path of Steiner, Otsuka, Vallentyne) — that path concedes the libertarian framing and runs into the eye-transplant and Tiny Tim cases. The way out is to *reject* self-ownership and to reground the Marxist critique of capitalism on a different foundation: equality of condition and the egalitarian ethos, not the worker's ownership of her own labour. The standard Marxist condemnation of exploitation thus has to be reformulated; the case against capitalism survives the reformulation, but with different content.","paragraphs":[[{"t":"The Marxist theory of exploitation tacitly endorses libertarian *self-ownership*.","n":[]},{"t":"The worker's grievance against the capitalist, as Marxists standardly express it, is that the capitalist gets the surplus of what the worker produces — which presupposes that the worker owns what she produces, which presupposes that she owns her productive labour, which presupposes that she owns *herself*.","n":[]}],[{"t":"The structural argument from the Wilt Chamberlain transfer case (Nozick 1974) lands hard on Marxists because Marxists are committed to the premise that grounds it.","n":[]},{"t":"The way out is not to retain self-ownership while securing equality through redistributive *world- ownership* (the left-libertarian path of Steiner, Otsuka, Vallentyne) — that path concedes the libertarian framing and runs into the eye-transplant and Tiny Tim cases.","n":[1]}],[{"t":"The way out is to *reject* self-ownership and to reground the Marxist critique of capitalism on a different foundation: equality of condition and the egalitarian ethos, not the worker's ownership of her own labour.","n":[2,3,4]},{"t":"The standard Marxist condemnation of exploitation thus has to be reformulated; the case against capitalism survives the reformulation, but with different content.","n":[5]}]],"texts":"*Self-Ownership, Freedom, and Equality* (Cambridge 1995) — the systematic book, especially Chapter 1 'Robert Nozick and Wilt Chamberlain: How Patterns Preserve Liberty'; Chapter 3 'Self- Ownership, World-Ownership, and Equality'; Chapter 4 'Are Freedom and Equality Compatible?'; Chapter 5 'Self-Ownership, Communism, and Equality: Against the Marxist Technological Fix'; Chapter 6 'Marxism and Contemporary Political Philosophy, Or: Why Nozick Exercises Some Marxists More than He Does Any Egalitarian Liberals'; Chapter 7 'Marx and Locke on Land and Labour' (the 1985 British Academy Lecture); Chapter 8 'Exploitation in Marx: What Makes it Unjust?'; Chapters 9–10 on delineating and assessing self-ownership. 'Capitalism, Freedom, and the Proletariat' in *On the Currency* (Otsuka ed. 2011) Chapter 7; *History, Labour, and Freedom* (1988) Chapter 11 'The Labour Theory of Value and the Concept of Exploitation'; Chapter 13 'The Structure of Proletarian Unfreedom'. Reception: Robert Nozick, *Anarchy, State, and Utopia* (Basic Books 1974) — the libertarian text Cohen engages; Hillel Steiner, *An Essay on Rights* (Blackwell 1994) — the left-libertarian alternative keeping self-ownership while securing equality through world- ownership; Michael Otsuka, *Libertarianism without Inequalities* (Oxford 2003); Peter Vallentyne and Hillel Steiner (eds.), *Left- Libertarianism and Its Critics* (Palgrave 2000); Will Kymlicka's *Contemporary Political Philosophy* (Oxford 1990; SOFE Chapter 5 co-authored with Kymlicka).","works":["*Self-Ownership, Freedom, and Equality* (Cambridge 1995) — the systematic book, especially Chapter 1 'Robert Nozick and Wilt Chamberlain: How Patterns Preserve Liberty'","Chapter 3 'Self- Ownership, World-Ownership, and Equality'","Chapter 4 'Are Freedom and Equality Compatible?'","Chapter 5 'Self-Ownership, Communism, and Equality: Against the Marxist Technological Fix'","Chapter 6 'Marxism and Contemporary Political Philosophy, Or: Why Nozick Exercises Some Marxists More than He Does Any Egalitarian Liberals'","Chapter 7 'Marx and Locke on Land and Labour' (the 1985 British Academy Lecture)","Chapter 8 'Exploitation in Marx: What Makes it Unjust?'","Chapters 9–10 on delineating and assessing self-ownership. 'Capitalism, Freedom, and the Proletariat' in *On the Currency* (Otsuka ed. 2011) Chapter 7","*History, Labour, and Freedom* (1988) Chapter 11 'The Labour Theory of Value and the Concept of Exploitation'","Chapter 13 'The Structure of Proletarian Unfreedom'"],"reception":"Robert Nozick, *Anarchy, State, and Utopia* (Basic Books 1974) — the libertarian text Cohen engages; Hillel Steiner, *An Essay on Rights* (Blackwell 1994) — the left-libertarian alternative keeping self-ownership while securing equality through world- ownership; Michael Otsuka, *Libertarianism without Inequalities* (Oxford 2003); Peter Vallentyne and Hillel Steiner (eds.), *Left- Libertarianism and Its Critics* (Palgrave 2000); Will Kymlicka's *Contemporary Political Philosophy* (Oxford 1990; SOFE Chapter 5 co-authored with Kymlicka).","status":"SOFE is widely regarded as one of the most important works in late-twentieth-century political philosophy and the most sustained Marxist engagement with libertarianism in existence. The two-stage thesis has been contested at both stages. The Marxist-tacit- self-ownership claim has been challenged by Marxists who deny that exploitation theory presupposes self-ownership (some prefer a domination-based or alienation-based reading of exploitation that does not run through ownership of labour); the rejection-of-self- ownership claim has been challenged by the left-libertarian alternative (keep self- ownership, secure equality through world- ownership). The left-libertarian path is the most serious modern reply; my answer is that it still concedes the libertarian framing, which is what the rejection is meant to escape. The deeper reception has not reversed the central judgments: that Nozick's challenge cannot be dismissed by Marxists in the way it could be dismissed by left- liberals, and that the Marxist tradition has to clarify its own theoretical commitments before it can mount an effective critique.","era":"1941-2009","discipline":"Philosophy","refs":[{"n":1,"work":"Self-Ownership, Freedom, and Equality","page":"pp. 23–24","canonical":"","quote":"They must, in particular, distinguish themselves more clearly than it has been their practice to do from 'left-wing libertarians', who affirm complete self-ownership but divide worldly resources in an initially equal way. And that admonition is the main theme of Chapter 5.","label":"Self-Ownership, Freedom, and Equality, pp. 23–24"},{"n":2,"work":"Self-Ownership, Freedom, and Equality","page":"p. 129","canonical":"","quote":"I argue below that this conception of exploitation both presupposes and rejects the principle of self-ownership: see the discussion of 'cleanly generated capitalism' in section 8 of Chapter 6 below. exploitative.","label":"Self-Ownership, Freedom, and Equality, p. 129"},{"n":3,"work":"Self-Ownership, Freedom, and Equality","page":"p. 128","canonical":"","quote":"The social democratic attitude is visible in those anti-Thatcherite Guardian leader columns which complain about the fate of those who are ill-equipped to provide for themselves in market competition, however 'fair' that competition may be. The political rhetoric of Marxists is quite different. Marxists do not, in their critique of capitalist injustice, demand that the well off assist the badly off.","label":"Self-Ownership, Freedom, and Equality, p. 128"},{"n":4,"work":"Self-Ownership, Freedom, and Equality","page":"pp. 24–25","canonical":"","quote":"But no Marxist would in fact tolerate a world in which differential talent allows self-owning individuals to be classdivided into buyers and sellers of labour-power, even when that position is reached from a starting point of initial equality of external resources. The standard Marxist critique of capitalist exploitation works only against capitalisms with dirty histories.","label":"Self-Ownership, Freedom, and Equality, pp. 24–25"},{"n":5,"work":"Self-Ownership, Freedom, and Equality","page":"pp. 129–130","canonical":"","quote":"Libertarians, both left and right, would condemn capitalisms with that sort of pre-history, but Marxists are against capitalism as such, and they must therefore condemn a capitalism in which the exploitation of workers comes from deft use by the exploiters of their self-owned powers on the basis of no special advantage in external resources.","label":"Self-Ownership, Freedom, and Equality, pp. 129–130"}],"answer":null,"siblings":[{"slug":"historical-materialism","label":"Historical materialism: do the productive forces have explanatory primacy over the relations of production, and is functional explanation a legitimate explanatory mode in social theory?"},{"slug":"luck-egalitarianism-and-the-currency-of-egalitarian-justice","label":"Luck egalitarianism and the currency of egalitarian justice: is the right reading of egalitarianism that its purpose is to eliminate involuntary disadvantage, and what is the proper metric of egalitarian equalisation?"},{"slug":"the-site-of-distributive-justice-and-the-egalitarian-ethos","label":"The site of distributive justice and the egalitarian ethos: does justice apply only to the basic structure of society, or also to personal choice within it, and what does the interpersonal test reveal about Rawls's incentives argument?"},{"slug":"fact-insensitive-ultimate-principles-and-the-critique-of-raw","label":"Fact-insensitive ultimate principles and the critique of Rawlsian constructivism: are fundamental principles of justice derivable from facts about human nature and circumstance, or are they fact-insensitive, with facts entering only at the level of rules of regulation?"},{"slug":"why-not-socialism-and-the-late-ethical-socialist-turn","label":"Why Not Socialism? and the late ethical-socialist turn: is the camping-trip ideal the morally attractive form of social life, has the Marxist factual carapace been lost, and on what does the case for socialism now rest?"}]}