In memoriam: G. A. Cohen

Following some touching tributes by Chris Bertram in Crooked Timber and by Chris Brooke, I have decided to post a rough summary of Jerry Cohen’s intellectual voyage from the Second International marxism of Karl Marx’s Theory of History to the egalitarian political philosophy of Rescuing Justice and Equality. My hope is that people may decide to pick up some of Jerry’s sharp and ruthlessly sincere work in philosophy, and draw inspiration from it.

Jerry supervised my graduate work from 2003, until some months ago, when I finally finished my doctoral thesis. Like many people who knew him both as a teacher and as a person, I cannot help feeling a bit like I’ve lost a father. And that’s partly because, to the younger generation of graduate students, Jerry exercised a strong intellectual attraction both because of his vision of how to do political philosophy, and of what that political philosophy can achieve. First one had to learn not to do -too much- violence to ordinary language: a patch cannot simultaneously be red and green all over, false beliefs about shot donkeys imply mistakes, and excuses involve disowning responsibility. Jerry was -by pedigree and sense of humour- fond of Gilbert Ryle’s examples -his New College supervisor when a graduate student: pain, unlike pleasure, can be felt on parts of the body, in some relevant sense of the word, torturing is like killing, and so on. Then one had to -at least try to- master the art of counterexample: one of your proposed examples in support of a (moral) principle gets bombarded with counterexamples, sometimes of an extravagant sort, and you have to confront each of them on its merits, etc. In all this I found Jerry to be an extremely patient and invariably encouraging teacher and supervisor.

I once told Cohen that I thought Karl Marx’s Theory of History (KMTH) to be his best work, in almost every respect. Surprisingly, he gave me the look of someone with strong toothache, and hesitantly claimed that it ‘may be, together with Rescuing Justice and Equality‘. He added, however, that KMTH proved to be the most influential, although he had never thought it would turn out that way.

Karl Marx’s Theory of History: A Defence was, for Jerry, the ‘repayment of a debt’ to his marxist childhood and background. KMTH, published in 1978, defended a ‘traditional’ form of historical materialism, sometimes called ‘technological determinism’. Technological determinism is the thesis that the material productive forces -roughly, human technology- are the chief determinant of economic and social change. If the material is a subset of the economic, then technological determinism is a subset of ‘economism’, the thesis that the economic determines the non-economic. It is the latter thesis that was anathema to many Althusserian marxists, to whom Cohen explicitly opposes central claims in KMTH. Although some of the major distinctions in the course of the book’s argument seem insufficiently motivated -such as the material/social distinction- not much of Cohen’s central argument hinges on them, pace recent critical claims to the contrary.

Cohen’s first book turned out to be the central reference point for what came to be called ‘analytical marxism‘, a theoretical current of philosophers, sociologists, and economists making use of the tools of analytical philosophy and mathematical economics to understand Marx. Analytical marxism was later, illicitly, identified with ‘rational choice marxism’, a marxism committed, inter alia, to the thesis of methodological individualism. Illicitly because, unlike John Roemer and Jon Elster, Cohen never committed himself to methodological individualism -nor did he need to.

Pre-analytical marxism suffered from at least one severe drawback: it lacked a clear-headed conception of dialectics, or ‘the dialectic’, and often seemed to collapse into (forms of) teleology. Cohen set out to offer a rigorous and clear-headed scientific account to supplement -or replace- the traditional commitment to dialectic with functional explanation. Cohen claimed that historical materialism stands, or falls, on the truth of the following two ‘primacy’ theses: First, the productive forces have primacy in explanation over the relations of the production. Second, the relations of production have primacy in explanation over the superstructure. But how is it possible that such primacy obtains, given pervasive influence from relations of production to the productive forces, and from the superstructure to the relations? The central claim of KMTH was that this influence, and the relative autonomy of both relations of production and superstructure, can be accommodated by a feedback mechanism akin to those at work in evolutionary processes in biology. We do not know the precise mechanism by which this social feedback mechanism works, but we have at least some evidence that it is there, in some form or other. Marxism is, Cohen claimed in an exchange with Elster, still at its Lamarckian stage, i.e. the stage biology was in before the discovery of natural selection by Darwin.

KMTH, and the broad debate surrounding it, gave rise to a series of responses by Cohen in defence of his original argument. These responses are collected in Cohen’s second book, a selection of essays published in 1988, entitled History, Labour, and Freedom (HLF). This book is important in highlighting a significant shift in Jerry’s focus of attention, towards topics in political philosophy that were to occupy him for the rest of his life. One important bridge between Cohen’s early marxist work, and his work on political philosophy, a bridge that retained constant prominence on his philosophical canvas, is the theory of exploitation. For it connects the theory of historical materialism with the (in)justice of property relations, and the structure of (un)freedom under capitalism. In his well-known essay ‘The Labour Theory of Value and the Concept of Exploitation’ Cohen argued that marxian and marxist commitment to the labour theory of value is both obscuring and unnecessary. All of the (normatively) significant results of Marx’s theory of exploitation can be derived without commitment to the labour theory of value. (This point was argued much more extensively by John Roemer in his General Theory of Exploitation and Class.) Thus Cohen concluded that ‘instead of desperately shifting about for some or other way of defending the labour theory, Marxists and quasi-Marxists should address themselves to the crucial question, which is whether or not private ownership of capital is morally legitimate.’

In this context, HLF included three essays on freedom, one of which provides a clever analogy to illustrate the unfreedom of the proletariat under capitalism: there are ten people in a room, and only one key. Once one person leaves, the gate is sealed forever. Just like the working class under capitalism, the people in the room are free to escape their prison in sensu diviso, but not in sensu composito. For, pace the emphasis on ‘social mobility’ and similar claims of pro-capitalist propaganda, no economy can sustain the growth rates necessary to raise all, or a large part, of the working class into rough equality with everyone else. The last essay in HLF, intimately connected at a conceptual level with Cohen’s later essay ‘Freedom and Money’, investigates the right-wing argument for freedom, and the extent to which it can be enlisted to defend capitalism. It was in connection with this discussion of freedom, that Cohen once rebuked me during a tutorial: ‘you are not being reflective enough comrade Vrousalis… I said A is free to X, not that A Xs freely’ (A’s being free to X having to do with impediments to his actions, and A’s doing X freely having to do with his reasons for action).

Having traversed the bridge from marxism to (what was then mainstream) political philosophy, Jerry set his eyes on better understanding, and criticising, Robert Nozick’s Anarchy, State and Utopia. One reason he was drawn to the debate must have been that he shared the method and rigour of articulation that Nozick possessed. But, as he claimed in his 1995 book Self-Ownership, Freedom, and Equality, what ‘roused [Jerry] from what had been [his] dogmatic socialist slumber’ and caused a ‘mixture of irritation and anxiety’ was both the renewed vigour of the right-wing argument -Jerry did not consider Rothbard, von Hayek, or von Mises worthy of much philosophical attention, probably with justice- and the fact that many marxists seemed to share Nozick’s central premise, namely that of self-ownership of the person and its powers. And if marxists are to share the premise of self-ownership, then either the premise is not as inegalitarian as we think it is, or marxists -given their commitment to equality- must abandon commitment to the former premise. Cohen thus argues on two fronts: on the one hand, he tries to show, contra Nozick, that a truly just society would not tolerate the inegalitarian tendencies pervasive under capitalism. Wilt Chamberlain is not entitled to the extra millions he earns per basketball game, as no single individual can be held responsible for, nor has consented to, Chamberlain’s millions. Each individual only consents to an extra $10 for Chamberlain, and is subsequently faced with a free-rider problem. Furthermore, Cohen says, the use(s) to which Nozick puts his conception of self-ownership is itself flawed: Nozick is concerned with formal, rather than effective, self-ownership. But then he will not, indeed cannot, object to a world in which one person owns, for example, all the land and physical space: everyone else’s self-ownership rights would then amount to nought.

In the context of his criticism of Nozick, Cohen rehearses a series of celebrated arguments, including his well-known jazz band illustration of Marx’s conception of communism: ‘as I understand communism, it is a concert of mutually supporting self-fulfilments, in which no one takes promoting the fulfilment of others as any kind of obligation.’ Under communist abundance, all develop their individualities creatively and in harmony with the equal development of the individualities of others. Cohen also develops the motif of exploitation in connection with a challenge issued by John Roemer, who, in his essay ‘Should marxists be interested in exploitation?’, claims that there no longer exists much reason for a marxist (normative) emphasis on exploitation, as opposed to property relations. Cohen’s response draws a distinction between causal and normative fundamentality, the former pertaining to property relations, the latter to unequal exchange of labour. But the response begs important questions, and Cohen himself was not sure that the response fully met Roemer’s challenge.

Throughout most of his work, Jerry strove to defend ideas, and ideals, he thought important and valuable, but did so with a unparalleled commitment to truth. This is becoming more and more difficult to do today, as gaining academic recognition seems to require a greater proportion of strategic behaviour, rather than persistent exertion towards truth. But Jerry was scarcely bothered with anything but the latter. In the output of (what has become) the Rawls industry -Rawlsian political philosophy- Cohen discerned important ambiguities and inconsistencies, to which he devoted much of his work until the end of his life. In If you’re an Egalitarian, then How Come you’re so Rich? he set out to show, first, how and why a marxist -like himself- comes to be drawn to egalitarian political philosophy, and, second, in what ways this political philosophy has gone wrong. The core of Cohen’s argument presses an important ambiguity in the liberal canon, prominently expressed in the philosophy of John Rawls. Most liberals since Adam Smith have thought that a just polity will condone little, if any, interference with the personal choices of individuals. This is not to say very much until some substantive distinction has been drawn between personal and individual choices, but the fact remains that most liberal thinkers are loath to include the personal, whatever that is, under the political. Cohen picks up on Rawls’ specification of -what the latter calls- the ‘basic structure’ of society and presses an exhaustive dilemma on it: either the basic structure is arbitrarily drawn, or it does not exclude what Rawls -and liberals like Rawls- would want to exclude. Hence the site of justice is not, cannot, be exhausted by structures: that’s where actions are.

The last chapter of If you’re an Egalitarian? takes up the challenge posed by the title. Given that personal behaviour does, contra Rawls, come under the purview of justice, can anyone be rich consistently with a belief in egalitarian justice? Cohen offers a number of reasons as to why the two may be logically and morally consistent. Consider, for example, one’s core desire not to be deprived of social status or position if, and when, others are not similarly deprived: X’s giving out of his money to charity, in accordance with an egalitarian ethos, places X at a disadvantage vis-à-vis others of similar status, unless all lose it simultaneously. Such coordination failures are pervasive across peoples’ personal lives, and a just polity would seek to correct or alleviate them.

Rescuing Justice and Equality was Cohen’s last book, which completed, for him, ‘twenty years of life’s work’. The book collects a series of older essays written by Cohen in response to Rawls and his defenders, and contains a number of previously unpublished critical pieces. The book is organised in two parts, one in substantive ethics -the content of justice- and one in metaethics -the concept of justice. In the first part Cohen articulates his egalitarian critique of Rawls, developing further his rebuttal of the Pareto argument for inequality. That is a Rawls-inspired argument which claims that Pareto improvements are necessarily improvements at the bar of justice. Cohen also confronts the (anti-egalitarian) freedom of occupational choice argument and takes up the question of whether the conception of equality he favours -dubbed ‘luck egalitarianism by Elizabeth Anderson- can do better than competing theories against these objections. At the metaethical level, Cohen attributes to Rawls, and what he dubs ‘Rawlsian constructivism’ two major flaws: first, incoherence at the level of principle, second, confusion of justice with other concepts. As regards the charge of incoherence, Cohen argues that all fact-sensitive principles (of justice, or syntax, or whatever) presuppose fact-insensitive principles, in virtue of which fact-sensitivity is justified. He thus claims -controversially, and perhaps uncharitably- that Rawls does not, and cannot, assert this fact-insensitivity thesis as part of his theory of justice. In respect of the confusion charge, Cohen claims that Rawls and Rawlsians derive ‘too much’ from the original position, that is, overburden the concept of justice to breaking point.

Numerous essays Cohen wrote throughout his career have never been published. Many of them, until recently still in his file, were put together on a typewriter -presumably with Jerry’s legendary one-finger typing style. At some point Jerry mentioned that he would like to compose a volume of collected essays, ranging from historical materialism and class struggle to the idea of socialism and its connection with equality. One of these essays, entitled ‘Why not Socialism‘, will, I think, be published by Princeton within 2009.

Cohen’s stand-up comedy skills were also legendary, and his impersonations of well-known philosophers helped to lighten the -sometimes unwelcoming- Oxford atmosphere during seminars, and to improve students’ moods following an argumentatively devastating tutorial. Perhaps some of his very funny impersonations from lectures and hotels in the US and Oxford will sometime see the light of day for the wider public. A brief sample of this funny side was rehearsed by Cohen in his valedictory lecture, a link to which can be found here.

Chris Bertram ends his nice memoir of Jerry with Marx’s simile of the silkworm: ‘Milton produced Paradise Lost for the same reason that a silk worm produces silk. In was an activity of his nature.’ The conclusion probably applies as much to Marx, in relation to his own work. And it is very apt, I think, in the case of Jerry, in the following sense: much of his work flowed from a robust commitment to certain values and ideals Cohen was attached to naturally, via pedigree and deep conviction. But he always appreciated that sincere attachment to, and defence of, these values called for serious and persistent philosophical application. Jerry applied himself more brilliantly and persistently than most.

I, like the rest of his comrades, students, friends, and colleagues, will miss him dearly.

- Nicholas Vrousalis

Addendum 12/08: Obituaries in the Guardian, the Times, and the BBC have now appeared online.