Customer Reviews

Self-Ownership, Freedom, and Equality (Studies in Marxism and Social Theory)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I am a libertarian and so I read Cohen's book with some interest. I was assigned it for a graduate seminar in Political Philosophy as a "refutation of Nozick". So I was curious to see how he went about refuting Nozick. I think that his arguments are interesting and it is a good excercise to understand them, and what is wrong with them since I don't think they ultimately work.

He criticizes the claim that voluntary transaction are just and preserve justice. He says that ignorance, unforeseeable consequences and accidents show that voluntary transactions can lead from just to unjust distributions. But the former criticism is unworkable since ignorance and unforeseeable consequences are inherent to all human action and any political scheme. Accidents are also inherent to human life and not the subject of justice: justice simply concerns relations between men. He also claims that market transactions are not truly voluntary because of constraints imposed by the market i.e. wages for labor of your kind are set beyond your control, prices of goods, opportunities for work or entrepenuership, etc.. But voluntary, in this context, simply means the absence of coercion. It does not mean the absence of all constraints. The latter is in fact impossible: constraints are set because we live in a world that works in a certain way, whose entities have a certain nature and behave accordingly.

He also has many criticisms of the Lockean/Nozickean rule of original acquisition. He claims that it assumes that things in their natural state are unowned and that the proviso (doesn't worsen the situation of others compared to the objects remaining in its natural state) should take into account alternative uses of the object besides for capitalist appropriation and its remaining in its natural state.

Chapter 10 criticizes the idea of self ownership claiming that it is appealing because of its association with autonomy and true freedom but that it in fact is an obstacle to their realization.

His conclusion, "Future of a Disillusion", reflects on the demise of Socialism in Russia and the future of Socialism. He positively presents Market Socialism as a worthy goal in the short term.

The book is clearly written and I enjoyed reading it as an opportunity to see what a well respected critic had to say about Libertarianism. Ultimately, I wasn't persuaded but it was worth reading.

Greg Feirman (gfire77@yahoo.com)

I don't want to do a thorough review of content. I just want to show why you should be very skeptical about this book:

The phrase "self-ownership" appears on 217 different pages in Cohen's critique of Nozick.

The phrase "self-ownership" appears exactly once in Nozick's book, on p. 172.

Hmmm...

Every political philosopher should read this book, but they owe it to themselves to take Nozick seriously. Try as he might, Cohen fails to do so. If you're interested in a basically knock-down response to Cohen, check out Eric Mack's "Self-Ownership, Marxism, and Egalitarianism", parts I and II, in the journal Politics, Philosophy, and Economics.

Cohen does it again. In a work that defies brief summary, Prof. Cohen's arguments have sound logic, are truly provocative, and have profound normative implications. Few political theorists, especially if marxist, have such an admirable combination of analytical power and deep respect for the integrity of normative theory. Political philosophy at its best.