Product Description

In this book G. A. Cohen examines the libertarian principle of self-ownership, which says that each person belongs to himself and therefore owes no service or product to anyone else. This principle is used to defend capitalist inequality, which is said to reflect each person’s freedom to do as as he wishes with himself. The author argues that self-ownership cannot deliver the freedom it promises to secure, thereby undermining the idea that lovers of freedom should embrace capitalism and the inequality that comes with it. He goes on to show that the standard Marxist condemnation of exploitation implies an endorsement of self-ownership, since, in the Marxist conception, the employer steals from the worker what should belong to her, because she produced it. Thereby a deeply inegalitarian notion has penetrated what is in aspiration an egalitarian theory. Purging that notion from socialist thought, he argues, enables construction of a more consistent egalitarianism.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #168373 in Books
• Published on: 1995-10-26
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

Review
‘ … Cohen brings formidable analytical and forensic skills, and the book is an outstanding example of the intellectual gains to be won by clear and rigorous thinking about questions that are usually blanketed by idealogical fog.’ David Miller, London Review of Books

‘ … his book stands out among the many studies of electorial history …’. Anarchist Studies

Customer Reviews

Watch out Nozick
A comprehensive attack on the libertarian tradition of F. A. Hayek and Robert Nozick (best argued in the latter's 'Anarchy, State and Utopia'). G. A. Cohen argues self-ownership does not give the right-ranging rights that such theorists defend as our 'freedom'. Nozick's account, Cohen notes, is based on a vague notion of acquisition, but it actually relies on the assumption that resources are all initially unowned and up for grabs. If we took a different starting point, assuming they were jointly owned, or held in common, for example, then Cohen shows how we would reach quite different conclusions.

Well worth reading for anyone looking for holes in Nozick's arguments, but I think you have to start with 'Anarchy...' before you read this. Also possibly influential on the 'left-libertarians' such as Michael Otsuka who do take a different view of initial resources.

Essential reading especially for libertarians
I am a libertarian, and I love this book. With enemies like Cohen, libertarians don't need friends! Cohen's arguments here are two-fold: First, he wants to argue against libertarianism, or, more specifically, Nozick; secondly, he wants to justify doing so to his liberal and left wing philosophical colleagues. This requires his showing why libertarianism needs to be taken seriously. As an exempler of this dichotomy, there are Cohen's two chapters on a basic premise of libertarian arguments, self-ownership. The first chapter is made up of several arguments as to why the notion of self-ownership is appealing, coherent, and has content; it not only defends self-ownership as being coherent against Kant, and possessing content against Dworkin, but also the thesis that, if people own themselves, then they cannot be forced to help others, and forcing them, via taxation, to help others as a condition of helping themselves undermines that self-ownership.

But the next chapter turns away from criticising the left to criticising libertarian arguments. Cohen argues that libertarians are wrong to argue that taxation is slavery, or that arguments used to support redistributive taxation undermines self-ownership. He also argues that Nozick's appeal to Kantianism can't support the thesis of self-ownership, and neither can pleas for personal autonomy. He notes that only one argument from Nozick can go through, and that is that taxation undermines self-ownership, as explained above. But, Cohen says, Nozick can't really support that position, since he favours courts and police in his minimal state.

And that is one of the benefits of Cohen to libertarians - many of such counter arguments are very weak: Nozick did support a minimal state providing courts and police and national defense. But nowhere in his libertarian workd did he defend taxation to fund that minimal state, and even if he did, many libertarians don't - Cohen's argument here shows that commitment to self-ownership should commit you to radical libertarianism, ie, voluntary statism, or market anarchism.

In all, Cohen is essential reading for any student of libertarianism, either for or against it, since he provides great and tough arguments against libertarianism for opponents of it, whilst also providing tools and arguments for libertarians to refine their own arguments and their own positions against their opponents.