If You're an Egalitarian, How Come You’re So Rich?This book presents G. A. Cohen's Gifford Lectures, delivered at the University of Edinburgh in 1996. Focusing on Marxism and Rawlsian liberalism, Cohen draws a connection between these thought systems and the choices that shape a person's life. In the case of Marxism, the relevant life is his own: a communist upbringing in the 1940s in Montreal, which induced a belief in a strongly socialist egalitarian doctrine. The narrative of Cohen's reckoning with that inheritance develops through a series of sophisticated engagements with the central questions of social and political philosophy. |
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Page vii
... Justice, Incentives, and Selfishness 117 9 Where the Action Is: On the Site of Distributive Justice 10 Political Philosophy and Personal Behavior 134 148 Envoi Notes Bibliography Credits Index 180 183 221 227 229 Contents.
... Justice, Incentives, and Selfishness 117 9 Where the Action Is: On the Site of Distributive Justice 10 Political Philosophy and Personal Behavior 134 148 Envoi Notes Bibliography Credits Index 180 183 221 227 229 Contents.
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Contents
| 1 | |
| 7 | |
| 20 | |
3 The Development of Socialism from Utopia to Science | 42 |
The Obstetric Motif in the Marxist Conception of Revolution | 58 |
God in Hegel Feuerbach and Marx | 79 |
From Fact to Norm | 101 |
A Lighter Look at the Problem of Evil | 116 |
On the Site of Distributive Justice | 134 |
10 Political Philosophy and Personal Behavior | 148 |
Envoi | 180 |
Notes | 183 |
Bibliography | 221 |
Credits | 227 |
Index | 229 |
8 Justice Incentives and Selfishness | 117 |
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Common terms and phrases
Anti-Dühring argument basic structure basic-structure objection behavior Camp Kinderland capitalism choices claim coercive structure Cohen Communist conception consciousness criticism critique difference principle distinction distribution distributive justice doctrine economic equality ethos example existence Feuerbach follows freedom G. A. Cohen German give grounds for believing Hegel human Ibid ideals incentives inequality injustice Jewish Jews justified Karl Marx labor lack Lecture less liberal Ludwig Feuerbach Marx and Engels Marx's Marxist means mind Montreal moral movement Nagel nature norm Nozick obstetric one’s Oxford party people’s person philosophy political present principles of justice problem produce proletariat question Rawls Rawls’s Rawlsian reality reason relevant religion religious revolution rich egalitarian rules scientific socialism self-awareness Self-Ownership selfishness sense sentence socialist solution struc Theory of Justice thing thought tice Tim Buck tion true truth ture unjust upbringing Utopian and Scientific utopian socialism Yiddish Yiddishkeit
Popular passages
Page 79 - Religious distress is at the same time the expression of real distress and the protest against real distress. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of an unspiritual situation. It is the opium of the people.
Page 69 - No social order ever perishes before all the productive forces for which there is room in it have developed; and new, higher relations of production never appear before the material conditions of their existence have matured in the womb of the old society itself.
Page 55 - From this it also follows that the means of getting rid of the incongruities that have been brought to light must also be present, in a more or less developed condition, within the changed modes of production themselves. These means are not to be invented by deduction from fundamental principles, but are to be discovered in the stubborn facts of the existing system of production.
Page 202 - But without our brain and muscle not a single wheel can turn; We can break their haughty power, gain our freedom when we learn That the union makes us strong. In our hands is placed a power greater than their hoarded gold, Greater than the might of atoms magnified a thousandfold; We can bring to birth a new world from the ashes of the old, For the union makes us strong.
Page 71 - At the same time, and quite apart from the general servitude involved in the wages system, the working class ought not to exaggerate to themselves the ultimate working of these everyday struggles. They ought not to forget that they are fighting with effects, but not with the causes of those effects; that they are retarding the downward movement, but not changing its direction; that they are applying palliatives, not curing the malady.
Page 54 - The growing perception that existing social institutions are unreasonable and unjust, that reason has become unreason, and right wrong, is only proof that in the modes of production and exchange changes have silently taken place, with which the social order, adapted to earlier economic conditions, is no longer in keeping.
Page 210 - ... the way in which the major social institutions distribute fundamental rights and duties and determine the division of advantages from social co-operation.
Page 202 - When the union's inspiration through the workers' blood shall run, There can be no power greater anywhere beneath the sun. Yet what force on earth is weaker than the feeble strength of one? But the union makes us strong.
Page 5 - ... may be of no religion, or they may be so-called sceptics or agnostics or freethinkers, provided only that the 'patrons...
Page 69 - ... disappears before all the productive forces for which there is room in it have been developed; and new higher relations of production never appear before the material conditions of their existence have matured in the womb of the old society itself.