G. A. Cohen - Self-Ownership, Freedom, and Equality

Studies in Marxism and Social Theory

In this book G. A. Cohen examines the libertarian principle of self-ownership, which says that each person belongs to himself and therefore owes no service or product to anyone else. This principle is used to defend capitalist inequality, which is said to reflect each persons freedom to do as he wishes with himself.

The author argues that self-ownership cannot deliver the freedom it promises to secure. He thereby undermines the idea that lovers of freedom should embrace capitalism and the inequality that comes with it. He goes on to show that the standard Marxist condemnation of exploitation implies an endorsement of self-ownership, since, in the Marxist conception, the employer steals from the worker what should belong to her, because she produced it. Thereby a deeply inegalitarian notion has penetrated what is in aspiration an egalitarian theory. Purging that notion from socialist thought, he argues, enables construction of a more consistent egalitarianism.

Studies in Marxism and Social Theory

Edited by G. A. COHEN, JON ELSTER AND JOHN ROEMER

The series is jointly published by the Cambridge University Press and the Editions de la Maison des Sciences de lHomme, as part of the joint publishing agreement established in 1977 between the Fondation de la Maison des Sciences de lHomme and the Syndics of the Cambridge University Press.

The books in the series are intended to exemplify a new paradigm in the study of Marxist social theory. They will not be dogmatic or purely exegetical in approach. Rather, they will examine and develop the theory pioneered by Marx, in the light of the intervening history, and with the tools of non-Marxist social science and philosophy. It is hoped that Marxist thought will thereby be freed from the increasingly discredited methods and presuppositions which are still widely regarded as essential to it, and that what is true and important in Marxism will be more firmly established.

Also in the series

JON ELSTER Making Sense of Marx

ADAM PRZEWORSKI Capitalism and Social Democracy

JOHN ROEMER (ed.) Analytical Marxism

JON ELSTER AND KARL MOENE (eds.) Alternatives to Capitalism

MICHAEL TAYLOR (ed.) Rationality and Revolution

DONALD L. DONHAM History, Power, Ideology

DAVID SCHWEICKART Against Capitalism

PHILIPPE VAN PARIJS Marxism Recycled

JOHN TORRANCE Karl Marxs Theory of Ideas

Chichele Professor of Social and Political Theory and Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford

Maison des Sciences de lHomme

Published by the Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge

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Maison des sciences de lHomme and

Cambridge University Press 1995

www.cambridge.org
Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521471749

First published 1995

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress cataloguing in publication data

Cohen, G. A. (Gerald Allan), 1941

Self-ownership, freedom, and equality / by G. A. Cohen.

(Studies in Marxism and social theory)

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.

ISBN 0 521 47174 5 (hardback). ISBN 0 521 47751 4 (pbk.)

1. Equality. 2. Libertarianism. 3. Liberty. 4. Capitalism.

5. Marxian economics. I. Title.

JC575.C63 1995 323.44-dc20 9440948 CIP

ISBN 0 521 47174 5 hardback

ISBN 0 521 47751 4 paperback

ISBN 2 7351 0684 2 hardback (France only)

ISBN 2 7351 0695 0 paperback (France only)

Transferred to digital printing 2001

For Arnold Zuboff:
brilliant critic, devoted friend

Seven chapters of this book were once published as articles: they reappear here in (sometimes extensively) altered form. Four chapters, and the Introduction, are new. But the whole book represents a single intellectual journey. It displays the development of my response to the challenge posed to my once dogmatic socialist convictions by libertarian political philosophy.

In coping with that challenge, and in writing this book, my greatest debt has been to Arnold Zuboff, who convinced me to drop many misconceived ideas and who helped me to sharpen those that survived his scrutiny. I am also grateful to the members (Pranab Bardhan, Sam Bowles, Bob Brenner, John Roemer, Hillel Steiner, Robert van der Veen, Philippe Van Parijs, and Erik Wright) of the September or (as it is sometimes called) Non-Bullshit Marxism Group, who raked through early versions of most of the chapters. Daniel Attas, Ronnie Dworkin, Susan Hurley, David Miller, Derek Parfit, Alan Patten, Joseph Raz, Amartya Sen, Andrew Williams, and Bernard Williams made excellent criticisms at Oxford meetings. My former students Chris Bertram and Jo Wolff read the penultimate draft and offered penetrating observations and liberating suggestions. Dozens of friends and colleagues outside Oxford commented orally and in writing at different stages of the development of much of the material, but I have culpably failed to keep a complete running account of their contributions. Since it would be unjust to mention only those interventions of which I happen to have a record, I hope that they will forgive me for not listing them individually.

My children, and Maggie, strengthened me with their solidarity, and their wonderful kindness.

And without Michle I would be a ship without a sail on a stormy sea, with no harbour in sight.

I thank the relevant publishers and editors for permission to draw on material in the following articles in the preparation of the indicated chapters:

1: Robert Nozick and Wilt Chamberlain: How Patterns Preserve Liberty, in Erkenntnis, 11, 1977. Copyright 1977 by Erkenntnis.

3: Self-Ownership, World-Ownership, and Equality, in Frank Lucash (ed.), Justice and Equality Here and Now, 1986. Copyright 1986 by Cornell University Press.

4: Self-Ownership, World-Ownership, and Equality: Part II, in Social Philosophy and Policy, 3, Issue 2 (Spring 1986). Copyright 1986 by Social Philosophy and Policy.

5: Self-Ownership, Communism, and Equality, in Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, supp. vol. 64, 1990. Copyright 1990 by the Aristotelian Society.

6: Marxism and Contemporary Political Philosophy, or: Why Nozick Exercises Some Marxists More than He Does any Egalitarian Liberals, in Canadian Journal of Philosophy, supp. vol. 16, 1990. Copyright 1990 by Canadian Journal of Philosophy.

7: Marx and Locke on Land and Labour, in Proceedings of the British Academy, 71, 1985 Lectures and Memoirs. Copyright 1986 by The British Academy.

11: The Future of a Disillusion, in Jim Hopkins and Anthony Savile (eds.), Psychoanalysis, Mind and Art: Perspectives on Richard Wollheim, Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1992. Copyright 1992 by Basil Blackwell Ltd.

1. When I was a young lecturer at University College, London, I taught subjects that were not closely related to my research interests. I was hired, in 1963, to teach moral and political philosophy, but I wrote about Karl Marxs theory of history, for I passionately believed it to be true, and I wanted to defend it against criticism that was widely accepted but which I considered (and consider) to be misjudged. To be sure, I did also have views about issues in moral and political philosophy, but those views did not generate any writing. I had, in particular, strong convictions about justice and about the injustice of inequality and of capitalist exploitation, but I did not think that I had, or would come to have, anything sufficiently distinctive to say about justice, or about capitalist injustice, to be worth printing.