Equality, Community, and Diversity in Cohen’s Socialist Ideal

Analyse & Kritik 37 (1-2):113-130 (2015)
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Abstract

The ‘community principle’ is crucial to G. A. Cohen’s argument for socialism, because it is the best independent argument he has adduced for his strongly egalitarian conclusions. Cohen argues that even small differences in wealth ought to be prohibited because they bring us out of community with one another. In this paper, I show that his underlying premises lead to some repugnant conclusions, and thus should be rejected. If Cohen is right that even small differences in wealth can upset community, then, by the very psychological mechanisms he identifies, we should think that other differences, such as differences in religion, conceptions of the good, race, or taste, should also upset community. Cohen is thus caught in a trap: the more strongly egalitarian his community principle is, the more it not only prohibits differences of wealth, but diversity of any kind, including the forms of diversity we should celebrate rather than reject.

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Jason Brennan
Georgetown University

Citations of this work

Rescuing the Market from Communal Criticism.Harrison Frye - 2023 - Philosophy and Public Affairs 51 (3):234-264.
Community as Socialist Value.Jesse Spafford - 2019 - Public Affairs Quarterly 33 (3):215-242.

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References found in this work

The Institution of Property.David Schmidtz - 1994 - Social Philosophy and Policy 11 (2):42-62.
Is Market Society Intrinsically Repugnant?Jason Brennan - 2013 - Journal of Business Ethics 112 (2):271-281.
Nozick's libertarian utopia.L. E. Lomasky - 2002 - In David Schmidtz, Robert Nozick. New York: Cambridge University Press. pp. 59--82.

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