Self-Ownership, Freedom, and Equality

by G. A. Cohen

Overview

Defenders of capitalism claim that its inequality is the necessary price of the freedom that it guarantees. In that defense of capitalist inequality, freedom is self-ownership, the right of each person to do as he wishes with himself. The author shows that self-ownership fails to 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. In the final chapter he reaffirms the moral superiority of socialism, against the background of the disastrous Soviet experiment.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521471749
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	10/26/1995
Series:	Studies in Marxism and Social Theory
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	6.18(w) x 9.25(h) x 1.02(d)

Table of Contents

Preface; Acknowledgements; Introduction: history, ethics and Marxism; 1. How patterns preserve liberty Robert Nozick and Wilt Chamberlain; 2. Freedom, justice and market transactions; 3. Self-ownership, world-ownership, and equality; 4. Are freedom and equality compatible; 5. Self-ownership, communism, and equality: against the Marxist technological fix: 6. Marxism and contemporary political philosophy, or: why Nozick exercises some Marxists more than he does any egalitarian liberals; 7. Marx and Locke on land and labour; 8. Exploitation in Marx: what makes it unjust?; 9. Self-ownership: delineating the concept; 10. Self-ownership: assessing the thesis; 11. The future of a disillusion; Bibliography; Index of names; Subject index.

Editorial Reviews

"...provides an extended and masterful examination of the relationships between the concepts of self-ownership, freedom, and equality." Nancy Holmstrom, The Philosophical Review

"Cohen's book is crammed with intricate, interesting, and often ingenious arguments." Jan Narveson, The Journal of Ethics

From the Publisher