Suchergebnisse

Cover -- Title -- Copyright -- Contents -- I: The Camping Trip -- II: The Principles Realized on the Camping Trip -- III: Is the Ideal Desirable? -- IV: Is the Ideal Feasible? Are the Obstacles to It Human Selfishness, or Poor Social Technology? -- V: Coda -- Acknowledgment

Frontmatter -- CONTENTS -- Preface -- If You're an Egalitarian, How Come You're So Rich -- Prospectus -- 1 Paradoxes of Conviction -- 2 Politics and Religion in a Montreal Communist Jewish Childhood -- 3 The Development of Socialism from Utopia to Science -- 4 Hegel in Marx: The Obstetric Motif in the Marxist Conception of Revolution -- 5 The Opium of the People: God in Hegel, Feuerbach, and Marx -- 6 Equality: From Fact to Norm -- 7 Ways That Bad Things Can Be Good: A Lighter Look at the Problem of Evil -- 8 Justice, Incentives, and Selfishness -- 9 Where the Action Is: On the Site of Distributive Justice -- 10 Political Philosophy and Personal Behavior -- Envoi -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Credits -- Index

Is socialism desirable? Is it even possible? In this concise book, one of the world's leading political philosophers presents with clarity and wit a compelling moral case for socialism and argues that the obstacles in its way are exaggerated. There are times, G.A. Cohen notes, when we all behave like socialists. On a camping trip, for example, campers wouldn't dream of charging each other to use a soccer ball or for fish that they happened to catch. Campers do not give merely to get, but relate to each other in a spirit of equality and community. Would such socialist norms be desirable across society as a whole? Why not? Whole societies may differ from camping trips, but it is still attractive when people treat each other with the equal regard that such trips exhibit. But, however desirable it may be, many claim that socialism is impossible. Cohen writes that the biggest obstacle to socialism isn't, as often argued, intractable human selfishness--it's rather the lack of obvious means to harness the human generosity that is there. Lacking those means, we rely on the market. But there are many ways of confining the sway of the market: there are desirable changes that can move us toward a socialist society in which, to quote Albert Einstein, humanity has "overcome and advanced beyond the predatory stage of human development."

Some ways of defending inequality against the charge that it is unjust require premises that egalitarians find easy to dismiss—statements, for example, about the contrasting deserts and/or entitlements of unequally placed people. But a defense of inequality suggested by John Rawls and elaborated by Brian Barry (who themselves reject the premises that egalitarians dismiss) has often proved irresistible even to people of egalitarian outlook. The persuasive power of this defense of inequality has helped to drive authentic egalitarianism, of an old-fashioned, uncompromising kind, out of contemporary political philosophy. The present essay is part of an attempt to bring it back in.

ON 24 NOVEMBER 1993, A MEETING OF LEFT INTELLECTUALS OCCURRED IN LONDON, UNDER THE AUSPICES OF THE INSTITUTE FOR PUBLIC POLICY RESEARCH (PPR), WHICH IS A LABOR-LEANING THINK-TANK. A SHORT DOCUMENT DECLARED THAT THE TASK OF THE IPPR WAS: "TO DO WHAT THE RIGHT DID IN THE SEVENTIES, NAMELY TO BREAK THROUGH THE PREVAILING PARAMETERS OF DEBATE AND OFFER A NEW PERSPECTIVE ON CONTEMPORARY BRITISH POLITICS." THE EXPLANATORY DOCUMENT ALSO SAID THAT "OUR CONCERN IS NOT TO ENGAGE IN A PHILISOPHICAL DEBATE ABOUT FOUNDATIONS OF SOCIALISM." THE AUTHOR OF THIS ARTICLE DISCUSSES HIS OPINION THAT IF WHAT WAS MEANT WAS THAT DISCUSSION OF PHILISOPHICAL FOUNDATIONS IS NOT WHAT THE LEFT NOW NEEDS, THEN HE DISAGREES. IT IS HIS OPINION THAT IF THERE IS A LESSON FOR THE LEFT IN THE RIGHT'S BREAKTHROUGH, IT IS THAT THE LEFT MUST REPOSSESS ITSELF OF ITS TRADITIONAL FOUNDATION, ON PAIN OF CONTINUING ALONG ITS POLITICALLY FEEBLE REACTIVE COURSE. IF THE LEFT TURNS ITS BACK ON ITS FOUNDATIONS, IT WILL BE UNABLE TO MAKE STATEMENTS THAT ARE TRULY ITS OWN.

Review of Sen's Inequality Reexamined. Outlines the idea of 'capability', considers the sub theme of the connection between freedom and control, and defends Sen against criticism made by Andre Beteille. The reworking of the idea of 'equality of opportunity' suggests a theme to renew the programmes of the Left.

Provides a personal reflection on the author's Canadian communist childhood and the effects of McCarthyite campaigns against the party sponsored primary school he attended. Examines the fundamental values to which communists appealed, and finds many of them to have an enduring validity. (RSM)

1. The present paper is a continuation of my "Self-Ownership, World Ownership, and Equality," which began with a description of the political philosophy of Robert Nozick. I contended in that essay that the foundational claim of Nozick's philosophy is the thesis of self-ownership, which says that each person is the morally rightful owner of his own person and powers, and, consequently, that each is free (morally speaking) to use those powers as he wishes, provided that he does not deploy them aggressively against others. To be sure, he may not harm others, and he may, if necessary, be forced not to harm them, but he should never be forced to help them, as people are in fact forced to help others, according to Nozick, by redistributive taxation. (Nozick recognizes that an unhelping person may qualify as unpleasant or even, under certain conditions, as immoral. The self-ownership thesis says that people should be free to live their lives as they choose, but it does not say that how they choose to live them is beyond criticism.)