A Socialist's Dialogue with Liberalism

This summer the world celebrated or mourned, as one was inclined, the arrival of its first trillionaire in Elon Musk. For the former, Musk’s ascension to levels of wealth and power few could have foreseen is a sign of meritocratic capitalism working its magic. For those of us who’ve been exposed to Musk’s uninhibited thoughts on a more regular basis it was further confirmation of how little capitalism has ever had to do with moral “merit.” Once more a major debate was kicked off about deepening inequality. The typical lament was that the ever more urgent need to do something about inequality seems inversely proportional to how much elites actually intend to do about inequality. 

These debates raise more immediate and deeper questions about the relationship between liberalism, capitalism and the moral status of inequality. With Donald Trump and Musk in control many liberals have inveighed against our ever more unequal society. Much of this draws on deep-rooted political and theoretical inspirations that range from Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal to John Rawls’ A Theory of Justice. At the same time there is a deep liberal tradition of not only tolerating but even celebrating stark social and material inequality, so long as citizens are legally treated equally and given an opportunity to climb the ladder through their own efforts. Thomas Jefferson’s praise of a “natural aristocracy” that is to govern the upper reaches of the country on the basis of talent is just one powerful expression of this idea. The latter conviction has led to longstanding critiques from socialists that liberals don’t care as much about equality—and related values—as they should. 

G. A. Cohen’s engagement with libertarianism 

G.A Cohen was one of the 20th century’s most important analytical philosophers. Beginning his career studying at McGill University in his native Montreal, from 1985 onwards Cohen was a professor at Oxford University. Cohen is most famous for his seminal 1978 book Karl Marx’s Theory of History: A Defense, which offered a careful (if controversial) reconstruction of Marx’s theory of historical materialism. The early Cohen remained cautiously invested in what he later called the “obstetric thesis” common to orthodox forms of Marxism: namely that the internal contradictions of capitalism were destined to bring about its fall and the birth of socialism. The collapse of the Soviet empire in 1989–1991 convinced Cohen that the obstetric thesis was no longer viable. Like many Western Marxists, Cohen had long been a critic of Soviet authoritarianism. But he recognized that the declining fortunes of “real existing socialism” ought to make one very skeptical that the arc of history bent inexorably in one (desirable) direction.

This contributed to Cohen’s famous turn towards emphasizing moral philosophy.  In Self-Ownership, Freedom, and Equality (1995) Cohen came to argue that, since they could no longer lean on the obstetric thesis, socialists had to argue to the moral superiority of their position. While he’d worked in moral philosophy before, from the 1990s until he passed away in 2009 much of Cohen’s oeuvre was taken up by this project while remaining critical of Marxist orthodoxies. In her recent guide, G. A. Cohen: Liberty, Justice and Equality, Christine Sypnowich stresses how Cohen’s work never climaxed in a big system like Rawls’ or Nozick’s. These latter thinkers wrote big books like Anarchy, State, and Utopia that mapped out much of their political philosophy in all its moving parts. By contrast Cohen’s interventions were more pluralistic and varied. 

Nevertheless there are thematic throughlines. A major one is Cohen’s careful and deep engagement with liberalism and libertarianism. 

Tied to Cohen’s deep reservations about the obstetric thesis was a shift in thinking about liberal political philosophy. Cohen realized that just as socialists couldn’t simply proclaim that the end of capitalism was nigh, they could no longer lazily get by on dismissing liberalism as a rearguard “bourgeois” ideology defending the freedom of bosses to fleece workers. He came to respect at least philosophical liberalism and even libertarianism as powerful bodies of thought that needed to be engaged with rather than dismissed. Cohen even credited Nozick with awakening him from his “dogmatic socialist slumber” about issues like the nature of self-ownership and labor.

Self-Ownership, Freedom, and Equality is Cohen’s book-length engagement with the libertarian tradition, particularly the very Lockean flavored libertarianism of Robert Nozick. Cohen notes that in some ways libertarianism is a more vexing philosophy for socialists than liberal egalitarianism. There is a sense in which the moral claims of many libertarians are quite close to those of many socialists. 

This of course goes all the way back to Locke, who was the founder of the labor theory of property entitlements and came very close to arguing for a labor theory of value (the conservative Harvey Mansfield in The Rise and Fall of Rational Control even credits Locke with being the first to theorize the LTV). Locke argued that it was through mixing one’s labor with matter that one gained an entitlement to property. Locke also speculated that labor was the source of most of the value that accrued into objects, insisting that, “when any one hath computed, he will then see how much labour makes the far greatest part of the value of things we enjoy in this world.” Locke also offers the labor theory of property entitlements (and value) as a basis for how inequalities in wealth could appear, since those who worked harder and more rationally would acquire more because they produced more things of value. Later libertarians like Nozick were increasingly critical of the LTV, in no small part because of its association with Marxism, but still retained the spirit of many of Locke’s insights in his theory of acquisition. 

Cohen notes that most socialists took a very different approach to the problem of labor and acquisition, but like libertarians tended to make it theoretically central. This familiarity in spite of difference is what made Cohen intrigued by Nozick. Ricardian socialists made the simple claim that if the Lockean argument that labor was the basis of entitlement and value was true, as many capitalists believed then it was the workers of society who ought to own what their labor produced and it was deeply unjust that they didn’t. Labor after all contributed most of the labor. Marx himself was very skeptical of these kinds of moralistic arguments. But Marx’s theory that the exchange value of commodities could be (largely) determined by the socially necessary labor time congealed within them was downstream of this broader tradition in liberal political thought and classical political economy. 

Cohen urges his fellow socialists to take these parallels seriously as an opportunity for dialogue. Libertarian arguments like Nozick’s can’t just be dismissed as bourgeois ideology given their proximity to what many socialists themselves argue. So instead he developed a series of critiques of Nozick’s position. 

In his seminal paper “The Structure of Proletarian Unfreedom” (1983), Cohen engages Nozick’s claim that even though workers under capitalism may feel compelled to sell their labor in order to survive, they can still be considered free. Even if a worker has no acceptable alternative but to sell their labor, that doesn’t mean they are forced to do so. Cohen objects that this is absurd. It takes for granted the morality of circumstances that led to workers having no acceptable alternative but to sell their labor. Cohen reads Nozick as relying-at least here-on the view that existing property distributions came about through just acquisitions and exchanges. This is despite the fact that,in a famous section of Anarchy, State, and Utopia Nozick himself admits that the current distribution of property came about through very unjust practices and intense rectification may be required. Given that even Nozick can’t bring himself to argue that existing property distributions came about in a just way, it is very unclear why workers should accept a society where they have no opportunity to flourish except by selling their labor to the propertied. Moreover Cohen points to the absurd conclusions that arise from saying a person is not forced to do something even if they have no alternative but to do it so long as those circumstances arose “justly.” On that view we can’t say a prisoner was forced into going to jail even if they have no alternative because their imprisonment is morally justified. 

Later in the same paper Cohen takes aim at the common libertarian argument that social mobility shows that even if workers have to sell their labor, they still have the opportunity to become free. In principle any worker could save their pennies, invest in crypto, and eventually exit the laboring classes. Cohen uses a thought experiment to illustrate the absurdity of that argument. Imagine ten people are locked in a room. They are equidistant from a single key that any one, but only one, person can use to pick up and escape. At least nine people will remain in the room. Cohen asks us how plausible it is to say that even though nine of the ten people will remain in the room, the prisoners are all still “free” because any one of them has an equal chance of escaping. It doesn’t seem very plausible at all. But if that’s the case then libertarian arguments about the emancipation delivered by social mobility seem absurd. Most workers will remain unfree even if the odd Oprah Winfrey rises up.

Cohen on liberal egalitarianism 

Without a doubt Cohen’s most comprehensive engagement with the liberal tradition came through his dialogue with liberal egalitarianism, especially the work of John Rawls. So thorough was this engagement that by the time he wrote Rescuing Justice and Equality (2008), Cohen claimed that he wouldn’t object to being called a left-wing Rawlsian. In Why Not Socialism? (2009) he described liberal egalitarianism’s commitment to fair equality of opportunity as far more moral than “bourgeois equality of opportunity” which only guaranteed abstract legal equality.

Nevertheless Cohen had deep reservations about liberal egalitarians failing to be comprehensively committed to equality. In Rescuing Justice and Equality he took special issue with Rawls’ claim that egalitarian justice only ought to apply to the basic structure rather than most forms of personal behavior and that the difference principle (the idea that social relations are justified strictly in terms of how they benefit the least well-off) can allow inequality if that incentivizes benefits for the least well-off. Cohen notes that under pressure from feminist critics Rawls “wobbles” on the point about egalitarian principles only applying to a basic structure like the state and the formal economy. Rawls began to think it ought to apply to the family too. 

Cohen thinks this wobble was justified, since once you begin to think that egalitarian principles ought to govern familial relations it's not clear why they ought not to apply to other interpersonal relations as well. On the point about Rawls’ difference principle, Cohen thinks that a person and society that needs to incentivize working to help benefit the least well-off can’t be said to actually care that much about equality. He compares it to a kidnapper who morally reprimands the parents for not paying the ransom for their son. By doing so, the kidnapper abstracts away from his own failure to take the demands of justice seriously: he’ll only do the right thing if sufficiently rewarded. In the same way, claiming to care about equality while arguing you will only work to help the least well off if rewarded abnegates your responsibility to do the right thing unless there’s a gold ring at the end. In such cases it seems one doesn't actually care that much about equality.

I don’t think Cohen’s objections to liberal egalitarianism a la Rawls are persuasive, for reasons he ought to have been sensitive to. In the new essay collection Analytical Marxism and Democratic Socialism in the 21st Century, we stress how Cohen’s philosophy is not mono-principled. Equality isn’t the only principle people ought to care about, nor was it the only principle Cohen cared about. As the critique of Nozick and other libertarians showed, he was deeply sensitive to the ways that capitalism inhibited freedom for the powerless. In Why Not Socialism? Cohen also postulated a principle of community. It would seem to me that a theory of justice that made such strict egalitarian demands on people, such that almost all our interpersonal relations ought to be governed by a commitment to equality, would seriously inhibit our personal freedom. People ought to have the liberty to form different kinds of associations, and pursue different kinds of careers and activities, without needing to have equality always on their minds. Relatedly, it would be exceptionally difficult to foster a sense of community in which the free development of each was a condition for the free development of all when members’ freedom became limited this way. It would inevitably induce feelings of alienation of the sort a Marxist like Cohen ought to be sensitive to. This is because Cohen’s hope that we would become so instinctively altruistic is deeply unrealistic. Socialist hopes should not be vested in anticipating we’re all going to become saints. On this point Cohen’s very egalitarian socialist position is open to many of the classic conservative and liberal charges of utopianism.

Conclusion

Despite these reservations there is much liberals have to learn from Cohen’s work. One of the most notable is his approach to criticism and dialogue. Until quite recently (things are beginning to change) liberal engagements with socialist philosophy didn’t usually go much further than reheating cliches from The Road to Serfdom for the umpteenth time. This is not only ill-advised at a time when inequality and oligarchy are major concerns. It is also intellectually too easy. Cohen never let himself off the hook that way. His career was defined by trying to read and engage faithfully with the best the liberal tradition had to offer. He was so committed to this project that decades of criticizing Rawlsian liberalism eventually led him to come around to signing off on a lot of it. Liberals should try and hold ourselves to this standard.

But more importantly Cohen does point out serious ways that liberals’ longstanding commitment to capitalism may compromise what ought to be our more sacred commitments to principles like liberty and equality. He is not wrong that many people correctly experience capitalism as deeply unfree, and at this juncture there is no denying we are anything but equal. Cohen’s work offers a vital resource for how to think through these problems, even if liberals ought to follow his intellectual lead in pushing back where he was wrongheaded. 

Featured image is "Ehrerbietige Vorstellung und Einladung an meine lieben Mitmenschen," Rudolf Sutermeister, 19th century.