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Nielsen, L., & Albertsen, A. (2022). Why Not Community? An Exploration of The Value of Community
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Why Not Community? An Exploration of The Value of Community in
Cohen's Socialism
Lasse Nielsen, Andreas Albertsen
Res Publica, 28(2), 303-322
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11158-021-09525-0
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Why Not Community? An Exploration of The Value of Community in Cohen's Socialism
Abstract
The work of prominent analytical Marxist, G.A. Cohen, offers a vision of socialism with
distributive justice and community at its core. While Cohen's views on distributive justice
have been hugely influential, much less has been said about community. This article argues
that community plays three distinct roles in Cohen's socialism. One is as an independent
value, the second is as a necessary adjacent counterpart to justice, which serves both to
restrict and facilitate distributive equality, and the third is as a critique of the liberal
contractualist view of humanity. We argue that these are distinct and valuable elements in
Cohen's thought, and each must be recognized to understand the range and implications of
Cohen's socialism.
It is still an unsettled and highly debated question within political philosophy exactly how we
are to understand socialism. Socialism can be understood, for example, as a property
relation, distribution of power in society, or as an altered, non-exploitative relation between
producer and surplus value. Alternatively, perhaps, socialism is Marx's "realm of freedom"
contraposed to the realm of necessity. It is undoubtedly hard to disentangle the accounts of
what socialism is from the question of what makes socialism valuable. This is the case
because for most socialists, socialism is the best (if not the only) route to achieving
something valuable and worthwhile.
This article contributes to our understanding of what makes socialism valuable by
exploring a neglected aspect in the work of influential analytical Marxist and life-long
socialist, G.A. Cohen, namely the value of community.1 In his early work, Cohen focused on
the Marxist theory of history (Cohen 1978; 1988). 2 He later contributed immensely to
contemporary debates over distributive justice (Cohen 2011; 1995; 2008). Specifically, he
was pivotal in developing the influential responsibility-sensitive theory of justice known as
luck egalitarianism (Cohen 1989; 1993; 2004; 2006; 2008). Luck egalitarians generally agree
that we have reasons of distributive justice for rectifying inequalities when they do not
1
2
For other relevant discussions of Marxism and community, see (Holm 2020; Spafford 2019; Verma 2000).
For Cohen’s own personal reflections over Marxism see especially (Cohen 2013b; 2001).
1
reflect people's exercise of responsibility (Arneson 1989; 1999; Knight 2009; 2013; LippertRasmussen 2001; 2001; 2016; Rakowski 1993). 3
In his last published book, Why Not Socialism?, Cohen identifies two distinct ways in
which inequality can be bad. First, inequalities are unjust when they violate luck egalitarian
justice – the principle of socialist equality of opportunity – because then someone is
disadvantaged without this being a result of their own choice or fault. Second, inequalities
can be impermissible, according to Cohen, even when not violating the requirements of
distributive justice. This happens if these distributions threaten the principle of communal
caring, “that people care about, and, where necessary and possible, care for, one another,
and, too, care that they care about one another” (Cohen 2009, 34). Cohen calls this the
community principle. Community such understood “is put under strain when large
inequalities obtain” (Cohen 2009, 34). While Cohen's work on distributive justice is widely
discussed, the community aspect remains, as Vrousalis has aptly put it, “an important but
neglected strand of Cohen's humanist thought” (Vrousalis 2015, 98). 4 This article discusses
several aspects of Cohen's community principle, in particular its content and its relation to
Cohen's principle of distributive justice. While Cohen touches on these questions, he leaves
much to be discussed.
It is clear that Cohen believes community to be distinct from distributive justice, but the
relationship between community and justice is not always well spelled out in his socialism. In
some places, Cohen's socialism seems to imply that justice presupposes community and the
collective realization of the commitment to implications that follow from this (Cohen 2008).
Elsewhere, Cohen emphasizes the distinctiveness of the value of community compared to
the value of egalitarian justice (Cohen 2009). And even when he does, community involves
several aspects such as communal caring and communal reciprocity (Cohen 2009). Cohen
both defends community as a dimension of value in its own right and suggests communal
reciprocity as an alternative to market-based reciprocity, which implies an inherent critique
of market capitalism. In other words, the community principle plays several roles in Cohen's
writings, sometimes valuable in it is own right as a supplement to justice, sometimes
constitutive of justice, and at times critical of justice in a way similar to his critique of the
3
Miller has argued that Cohen should not be considered a luck egalitarian (D. Miller 2014a), but this is a
minority positon (Albertsen 2017; Lippert-Rasmussen 2016).
4
For some recent discussions, see however (Albertsen 2019; Choo 2014; H. P. Frye 2017; H. Frye Forthcoming;
Gilabert 2012; Noonan 2012; B. D. King 2018; Roemer 2017; Spafford 2019; Vrousalis 2015; 2010; 2012).
2
market. And it seems that Cohen was not always clear on which of these to employ. In this
paper, we explore and elaborate on the content and different functions of community in
Cohen's socialism. We identify three different roles that community plays – as an
independent socialist value, as an adjacent counterpart to egalitarian justice, and as a critical
counterexample to the liberal contractualist view of human nature.
The content of Cohen's community
The first question explored in the paper is the content of Cohen's community. What does it
mean, for Cohen, that people live in a community? Following Cohen's treatment of
community in Why not Socialism?, we can say that the requirement of community is "that
people care about, and, where necessary and possible, care for, one another, and, too, care
that they care about one another" (Cohen 2009, 34). On Cohen's account, community
involves two forms of communal caring.
The first concerns the importance of equal challenges (or abilities to relate). Cohen
stresses that vast inequalities can undermine community. This happens when people "enjoy
widely different powers to care for ourselves, to protect and care for offspring to avoid
danger and so on" (Cohen 2009, 36). Cohen points out that "we cannot enjoy full
community, you and I, if you make, and keep, say, ten times as much money as I do, because
my life will then labour under challenges that you will never face" (Cohen 2009, 35).
Seemingly, the concern here is that if inequalities become too large, people will be unable to
relate to challenges faced by others. While Cohen often presents such lack of community in
terms of economic differences, it seems important to note, as Lippert-Rasmussen does, that
other experiences, such as cultural barriers, matter as well for people's ability to relate
(Lippert-Rasmussen 2016, 224).
The second form of mutual caring in Cohen's community is communal reciprocity, which
pertains to people's motivations. This is not, Cohen emphasizes, "required for equality"
(Cohen 2009, 35). The form of mutual caring becomes relevant when the reasons for which
people trade, work, or in other ways engage in productive activities, fail to reflect communal
reciprocity. In the spirit of communal reciprocity, Cohen submits, "I produce in a spirit of
commitment to my fellow human beings: I desire to serve them while being served by them"
(Cohen 2009, 41). This motivation is based on the wish to serve others. As opposed to
engaging with people for purely selfish reasons (we explore this part in more detail in the
3
next section) (Cohen 1994, 9; 2008, 82; 2009, 39). Cohen notes how classic proponents of
the market were quite clear that it utilized problematic motives to desirable ends (Cohen
1994, 10; 1995, 263), mentioning Mandeville's Private Vices, Public Benefits as an example
(Cohen 2008, 179 n72; 2009, 79). Cohen compares this communal interaction to the
relationship existing in a family or among friends (Cohen 2008, 225; 2009, 51). There is thus a
motivational component in Cohen's understanding of community. At times, Cohen takes this
a step further and makes the stronger claim that under capitalism, people are motivated by
greed and fear (Cohen 2009, 77). This seems too crude a depiction, so we here follow Steiner
and Frye in focusing on the claim that interactions are not motivated by a wish to serve
others (H. P. Frye 2017; Steiner 2014).
The third element in Cohen's community is a justificatory part. In his discussion of Rawls,
he employs an interpersonal test (Cohen 2008, 42). Those receiving incentives in the form of
higher wages should be able and willing to justify such an advantage in a conversation with
the worst off. Those who cannot justify their advantages to others, in a way that would pass
such an interpersonal test, are outside what he terms the justificatory community (Cohen
2008, 44–45). 5 They are then also, we may assume, outside any real or proposed
community. 6
Thus, Cohen's conception of community involves several elements. Furthermore, the
value of community plays different roles in Cohen's writings, and it is difficult to grasp in its
entirety the complex function of community in his socialism. Community plays an important
role both as a restriction on and as constitutive of principles of egalitarian justice. In
addition, community often appears as an independent value in Cohen's writings. Moreover,
we will argue, community holds potential for a socialist critique of the view on humanity
offered by liberal contractualism. We elaborate these different roles of community in
Cohen's socialism in the following sections. We begin with the question what kind of value it
is.
5
See also the imagined conversation in (Cohen 2009, 7–9).
The three components listed here follow (Albertsen 2019). Not everyone agrees with this depiction. Roemer
considers altruistic behavior to be part of Cohen’s community (Roemer 2017, 306). Some leave out an equal
challenges component (R. W. Miller 2010, 250; Van Schoelandt 2014). Some include a shared body of
experiences component (R. W. Miller 2010, 250; Van Schoelandt 2014), while Archer does not include either of
these (Archer 2016). Lippert-Rasmussen discusses three components similar to those presented here, but not
in a way where they all need to obtain for community to obtain (Lippert-Rasmussen 2016, 222–26).
6
4
What kind of value is community?
It is clear by now that community is a central part of Cohen’s socialism, and that the
relationship between the value of community and distributive justice is a complex one. We
elaborate this complexity in the next section, but in this section, we ask what kind of value
community is according to Cohen. We think there are two important entries to this question:
the relation to the socialist valorization of fellowship and equality and the moral criticism of
the marketeer relationship. In Cohen's writings, these aspects of community often go
together. Here, we will try to disentangle them to analyze what type of value community
carries in Cohen's socialism.
In several places, Cohen expresses the relational, or social, morality inherent in a
community, which makes it morally superior to market-based relationships. 7 According to
Cohen, the latter involves being motivated by greed or fear or at least by considering others
as predominantly sources of enrichment (Cohen 2009, 40). Cohen remarks several places in
his work 8 that "these are horrible ways of seeing other people" (Cohen 2009, 40). The
statement serves as a critique of the capitalist market, so the most general point is that since
the market is immoral, or "is mean in its motivational presuppositions", we need an
alternative, more communal, way of relating to each other. Consequently, one aspect of the
value of community is its inherent moral character. In being morally superior to human
interaction on the market, community holds value as facilitating an appropriate way of
seeing other people. This relational morality includes both communal reciprocity – seeing
other people as equal members of the same community – and communal caring, i.e., it is an
important end in itself for a person to care for others within this community. 9 Hence,
whatever type of value community is, it is evident that it holds both an other-regarding
aspect, in that communal reciprocity involves the value in perceiving and treating other
people as equals, and a self-regarding aspect, in that communal caring implies that it
matters from one's own perspective to be morally concerned about other people. As argued
by Spafford, this value aspect of community can be grounded both on the welfare-gains for
7
According to Vrousalis, this critique is aimed at “not an innocuous forum for exchange of goods and services,
but what Marxists call generalized commodity production” (Vrousalis 2010)
8
See (Cohen 1991; 1995; 2009).
9
This is illustrated in Cohen’s book If You're an Egalitarian, How Come You're So Rich? On its final pages, Cohen
shares the story of his father, who is laid off, then brought back to work only to be fired once more. This
illustrates how the market encourages us to treat people in accordance with a market norm “that promotes
‘efficiency’ but corrupts humanity” (Cohen 2001, 181).
5
each individual living in a society in which people see each other as equals and the
independent morality in the disposition to feel that way about one another (Spafford 2019,
228).
As mentioned, Cohen repeats his critical statement that the market is based upon a
structure of reciprocity that facilitates "horrible ways of seeing other people" several places
in his works. But the argumentative step that follows that statement has developed in subtle
but important ways. Compare the following sentences, which all follow the market-critical
statement, but in different works, and all capture communal relationships:
I) "In (at least one kind of) non-market motivation I produce because I desire to serve
my fellow human beings while being served by them." (Cohen 1995, 262). 10
II) "I said that, in community motivation, I produce because of my commitment to my
fellow human beings and with a desire to serve them while being served by
them."(Cohen 1994, 218)..
III) "I said that, within communal reciprocity, I produce in a spirit of commitment to my
fellow human beings: I desire to serve them while being served by them."(Cohen 2009,
41)
The first, and oldest, expression says nothing explicitly about community. Its main focus is
not the moral motivation one has in a community but that there are other kinds (or, at least,
one other kind) of motivation besides market-related self-interest to serve other people and
be served by them. This sentence is a pure market criticism that expresses the moral
deficiency in relating to one another as fellow marketeers. Hence, importantly, in (I) Cohen
points out the existence of a morally superior way to relate to other people than the one
seen on the market, and this involves desiring to serve while being served by fellow humans.
The second expression mentions community but as community motivation. Here, then,
the morally superior way of living together – also mentioned in (I) – as being motivated by
serving while being served is explicitly connected to the idea of community. One explanation
10
The formulation there is adapted from (Cohen 1991).
6
is that Cohen's aim here, in "Back to Socialist Basics," is not merely to provide a criticism of
market capitalism – it would largely suffice to show that market relationships are morally
defective – but also to offer a positive defense of basic socialist values, in this case, the value
of social fellowship – i.e., community. Thus, in (II), community is valorized as carrying the
social basis for binding people together in moral commitments that are in themselves
desirable, and in which they see themselves as both committed to serve and equally entitled
to be served by others.
The third and final expression is similar but explicitly adds the idea of communal
reciprocity. By this addition, Cohen reiterates community as the alternative (to the market)
way of standing in reciprocal relations to other people. The desire to serve and be served by
others is hence becoming the other way of living together. Community is here not only a
socialist value – something to be valued in and of itself – but also a way of perceiving the
relationship between oneself and others, which binds people together in moral
commitments. This fits the aim of Why Not Socialism? well, since Cohen is here trying to
elaborate socialist principles that he thinks would be both valuable and feasible (or, at least
not unfeasible) in contemporary societies. That Cohen expresses this idea, in this work, with
the expression of producing "in a spirit of commitment" is interesting as it relates to his
development of the egalitarian ethos necessary for a society to unfold egalitarian justice (we
shall say more about this in the next section). 11
Consequently, in Cohen's socialism, the value of community is threefold. First,
community as a fundamental basis for living together as equals is a basic socialist value. This
value aspect involves an alternative, more attractive way of living together than the one
provided by the market, and also by the idea of an institutional social structure from liberal
contractualism. There is an inherent critique of liberalism (not merely market capitalism)
here (which we elaborate below) that invokes and adds to the value of a socialist basis for
relating to each other as equals. The morality of liberal contractualism implies reciprocal
equality only in the half-hearted sense of committing each other to social institutions built
on the foundation of rational self-interest. Socialism, on the other hand, values communal
equality because it is in a human being's genuine interest to live in a community of equals –
11
For important and recent discussions of Cohen’s ethos, see (Albertsen 2019; Carens 2014; Casal 2013;
Furendal 2018; 2019; 2020; Johannsen 2017; Titelbaum 2008; Holt 2011; McTernan 2013; Voigt 2019; Pérez
Muñoz 2016).
7
which includes both treating others as equals and being treated as an equal by others. The
way community bears the basic socialist value of equality, then, is that one's society is nonhierarchical in the sense that everyone enjoys equal respect and no one has privileged
access to positional goods such as status and power, and that material inequalities are not,
for related reasons, too significant (Cohen 2009). 12
Second, community is valuable through people's recognition of the realization of the
superior, non-market morality. This is expressed in Cohen's effort to make explicit that not
only is it better if people enjoy communal equality than if they merely respect each other as
part of rational, self-interested marketeer logic; it is also better for them. It is better in itself
that they endorse this "for-them" value. We find this point expressed in (I) and (II) cited
earlier by the inclusion of the term that we desire to serve and be served. In Why not
Socialism?, it is made even more explicit. In the 2009-edition, Cohen adds to the sentence,
"and I get satisfaction from each side of that equation" (Cohen 2009, 41). What that means
is not (only) that the two necessarily go together, so that you cannot have one without the
other, but that there is a moral value to be endorsed on both sides. Even if you could be
served without serving, you shouldn't and wouldn't want to (if you were to realize your
communal part of your human morality) without contributing back to your communal
fellows. In this sense, community is the bearer of a superior moral value (in comparison to
the market) to be both realized and endorsed by its communiteers. While Cohen is rather
vague in his argumentation for this claim to the value of community – in Why Not Socialism?
it largely relies on an intuitive argument – we think it is possible to construct an argument
upon a Marxist idea of alienation from human nature. We elaborate this argument in the last
section.
Third and finally, and as we shall discuss further in the next section, community is
valuable as the necessary facilitator of the spiritedness (i.e., the egalitarian ethos) that
enables a society to become just. Evidently, this value is instrumental in so far as its
valorization comes from its contribution to the value of justice, but it is nonetheless
community that provides the contribution. In contrast to the market as well as liberal
contractualist social institutions, the community is constitutive of, and maybe even
necessary for (sometimes Cohen seems to believe so), 13 the realization of principles of
12
13
See also (D. Miller 1989; 2014b).
Especially in (Cohen 2008).
8
distributive justice. If this is the case, then community has important instrumental value as a
condition for the value of justice. Thus, we end this section by concluding that community is
a central, but complex, moral value in Cohen's writings as being both valuable in and of itself
(qua expression of basic socialist moral equality), valuable for the members of a community
through their endorsement of the communal way of relating to each other, and often
instrumentally important for the realization of distributive justice. The next section
continues where this ended by discussing the relationship between community and justice,
which is, we should add, more complex than what we have so far accounted for.
Community and distributive justice in Cohen's socialism
Having laid out the content of the value of community in Cohen’s socialism, we will now
examine its relationship to distributive justice. For Cohen, community is indeed more than
justice. This is clearly the case as some things that are not unjust can be problematic from
the perspective of community. This is illustrated when Cohen notes that even though we
cannot forbid stark inequalities, which reflect differential exercises of responsibility, in the
name of distributive justice, they "should nevertheless be forbidden, in the name of
community" (Cohen 2009, 37). As community and distributive justice are essentially
different values, and thus the relationship between them is a good example of Cohen’s
pluralism, it becomes important to disentangle them and their role in Cohen's vision of
socialism. 14 Building on these observations, this section addresses two questions: One
pertains to the relationship between community and distributive justice, while the other
addresses the content of the ethos, which has a prominent role in Cohen’s socialism. How
should we perceive the relationship between community and distributive justice in Cohen’s
socialism? This question is important because even though community and justice may
conflict, as already illustrated, they also relate to each other in other ways.
Vrousalis suggests that Cohen must have rejected that community is sufficient for
distributive justice and further that Cohen would have rejected that distributive justice is
sufficient for community (Vrousalis 2015, 110–11). We have already seen that justice is not
sufficient for community. This is the case because justice allows for distributions in conflict
with community (i.e., we can have justice without community). 15 Is community then
14
15
See also the discussion regarding the relationship between them in (Lindblom 2021)
To a similar effect, we could also have accidental justice. Cohen mentions this possibility (Cohen 2001, 132).
9
sufficient for justice? Albertsen argues that this is not the case, using the example of an
irreversible, accidental injustice as one that may exist even among people who live in a
Cohenian community (Albertsen 2019). That neither justice nor community is sufficient for
the other to obtain, however, does not rule out the possibility of community and distributive
justice co-existing. 16 It only shows that they are different values that may come into conflict.
Their incommensurability does not preclude the thought that one of them may, in some
circumstances, be important for realizing the other. The importance of the latter observation
becomes very clear as we consider what Cohen writes about an ethos in relation to
distributive justice.
In his critique of John Rawls, Cohen develops the idea that justice might require an
ethos to be realized. According to Rawls, principles of justice, including the difference
principle, apply only to the basic structure of society (Rawls 1996, 283). Cohen questioned
this application of the difference principle (Cohen 2008, 32), arguing that principles of justice
apply also to our daily lives and the choices we make. 17 To achieve distributive justice, we
may need people to act in certain ways, develop certain dispositions and choose to forgo or
pursue opportunities in different ways than they currently do. In his critique of Rawls,
Cohen's most important insight is that not only institutions but also individual choices affect
the distribution of goods and burdens in society. According to Cohen, the Rawlsian view
represents "an evasion of the burden of respecting distributive justice in the choices of
everyday life" (Cohen 2001, 4). Choices of where to work, how much to work and the size of
remuneration for working profoundly affect whether and the extent to which, for example,
those with inborn talents fare better than others do. Choices could also concern whether to
engage in legal tax evasion and choices with distinct influence on the amount of wealth
available for other purposes, including improving the lives of the worst off.
Following from the justificatory element of the community principle, the willingness to
justify one’s holdings may be conducive to achieving a just distribution. The motivational
component, the willingness to engage unselfishly in productive activities, may also be an
integral element in achieving justice. Distributive justice may require a certain willingness to
work for non-economic rewards. This theme features heavily in Cohen's discussion of an
egalitarian ethos.
16
17
The idea that they are compatible is defended by (Albertsen 2019) and by (Parr and Williams Forthcoming).
See also (Johannsen 2013; 2016).
10
In terms of communal justification, Cohen relies much on Rawls' idea of a community's
shared sense of justice. 18 To Cohen, justificatory community is membership of a group with
whom you share a public basis in the light of which citizens can justify to one another their
common institutions.19 For Cohen, this implies that a just society presupposes an egalitarian
ethos, but much of the same idea is already iterated in Rawls' theory of justice. Regarding
the shared sense of justice between communal participants, Rawls says that,
[B]ecause we recognize that they wish us well, we care for their well-being in return […]
The basic idea is one of reciprocity, a tendency to answer in kind. Now this tendency is a
deep psychological fact. Without it our nature would be very different and fruitful social
cooperation fragile if not impossible […] A capacity for a sense of justice built up by
responses in kind would appear to be a condition of human sociability (Rawls 1971,
494–95).
There are thus strong similarities between what Rawls is saying here about the necessary
psychological dispositions for a just system of cooperation and the role played by Cohen's
egalitarian ethos.
Discussing the ethos is not only of interest to those taking up the task of debating the
relative merits of Cohen and Rawls. It has a much broader range, and the importance of the
discussions for egalitarian thought may be illustrated by an important trilemma discussed by
Cohen. Egalitarians face a trilemma consisting of three important values: freedom, efficiency
and equality (Cohen 2008, 184). 20 Three routes appear to the egalitarian, each of which
compromises an important value: Providing incentives to the talented in order to make them
more productive, thereby realizing two values but compromising equality. Forcing people to
work productively, realizing equality and efficiency by violating freedom.21 Forgoing those
two routes, denouncing economic incentives and forced labor, saddles us with a society that
is free, equal and inefficient. Cohen argues that Rawls, when faced by the trilemma, prefers
18
There is an interesting parallel to Segall’s recent work (Segall 2016).
See (Cohen 2008, 45; Rawls 1980, 515-572.)
20
The trilemma is also found in Carens’ work and further discussed by several authors (Olson 2017;
Vandenbroucke 2001; Wilkinson 1999)
21
For a very interesting argument in that regard, see (Stanczyk 2012). For a critique of the reasons Cohen offers
for not forcing people to work in a specific line of work, see (Otsuka 2009).
19
11
the route where equality is sacrificed through incentives to the talented. Old-fashioned
socialists were more inclined to take the route of forced labor. 22 For that reason, Cohen
sometimes refers to this as the Stalinist solution to the trilemma.
Cohen rejects both routes just presented, argues that egalitarians need not abandon
any of the three important values and presents an ethical solution to the trilemma. This
draws on the ideas Cohen developed in his critique of Rawls, that our everyday choices
should be guided by an egalitarian ethos. According to Cohen, the egalitarian ethos provides
a viable solution to the trilemma. If people choose to put their talent to productive use not
because they are motivated by economic incentives but because they are driven by their
egalitarian commitments to the community, the trilemma is solved. This is the ethos solution
to the trilemma. Cohen’s work is explicitly inspired by Carens (Cohen 2008, 53; 2009, 65),
who developed an economic model in which economic incentives are replaced by moral
incentives (Carens 1981, 34). Supply and demand set wages to ensure information about
where people's talents are needed (Carens 1981, 49; 1986, 34–37; 2014, 55), but wage
differences are taxed away afterwards (Carens 1981, 73). The similarities with Cohen's ethos
solution are clear. While at one point, Cohen seemingly considers Carensian socialism to be a
realization of the full socialist ideal (Cohen 1995, 264), it is mostly discussed as an
improvement compared to other market-socialist proposals. 23
Cohen often talks of the ethos as an egalitarian ethos (Cohen 2001, 126; 2008, 175),
thereby emphasizing how the ideal of distributive justice, with all its redistributive
demandingness, presupposes a collective spiritedness and collective understanding of equal
belongingness to the same community. But knowing what we know about the relationship
between distributive justice and community, the content of the egalitarian ethos cannot only
be about distributive justice. If people are inspired by an ethos that merely tells them to
strive for distributive justice – in the sense of ensuring that institutions and everyday choices
secure distributive outcomes that are in accordance with luck egalitarian fairness, or social
equality of opportunity – then we are left with the very real possibility that community is
compromised in the process. Those following such an ethos may realize justice but do so by
sacrificing community. Following from already presented possible conflicts between
22
See (Wilkinson 1999) for illustrative quotes in that regard.
Furendal recently criticized the ethos solution for relying too much on the market (Furendal 2019). We
believe this to be less of a problem once we take into account how the ethos is also informed by community.
23
12
distributive justice and community, this could happen because the large inequalities, while
just, may make people unable to relate, or because distributive justice is for the most part
silent regarding motivations. As we can have distributive justice without community, an
ethos focusing only on distributive justice is insufficient for achieving both.
This certainly cannot be the purpose of Cohen’s ethos, because, as we have argued, the
ethos is anchored in the justificatory element of the community. Hence, if community and
distributive justice are indeed, as Cohen believes, 24 separate values, and community holds
value in the sense we have argued for above, community here plays the role as a necessary
adjacent counterpart to justice. On the one hand it restricts justice, in the sense that choices
made inspired by an ethos of community ensure that among several distributions in
accordance with luck egalitarian distributive justice, those that does not infringe upon the
value of community itself is brought about. Furthermore, community serves to constitute
justice by providing for society the needed motivational spirit in the sense of the ethos. 25
Community, distributive justice, and the relationship between them offer interesting
insights into Cohen's broader vision of socialism. In presenting his socialism as one of both
community and distributive justice, Cohen invites the possibility of conflict between these
values 26 and commits himself to a plausible explanation of how they can coexist and
reinforce one another. Cohen is aware that this conflicts with at least some common
understandings of what defines socialism. He thus rejects an understanding of socialism that
defines it in a purely economic sense as collective ownership of the means of production
(Cohen 2009). This should not be understood as a rejection of the importance of changing
institutions but rather as an emphasis on how important it is that the values are also shared
and acted upon by people. Hence the need for an ethos. Cohen never argues that we only
need an ethos but rather that the ethos must supplement institutions, which supports our
point that community also plays the role as necessary spiritedness constitutive of justice.
Cohen acknowledges that the "famous Christian nostrum for inequality to be overcome,
there needs to be a revolution in feeling or motivation, as opposed to (just) in economic
24
For a note on Cohen’s value pluralism, see (Cohen 2008, 4–5). For thorough discussion of this see (B. King
2015; Johannsen 2020; Vrousalis 2015, 108–10).
25
By needed we do not mean necessary in the sense that community is a necessary condition for justice, but
rather in the more everyday sense of the word as something that is likely to facilitate something else.
26
Cohen explicitly writes that ”It would, of course, be a considerable pity if we had to conclude that community
and justice were potentially incompatible moral ideals.” (Cohen 2009, 37)
13
structure", holds, "more truth in it than I [Cohen] was once prepared to recognize" (Cohen
2001, 120). Thus, we may say that Cohen's views have grown into a complex but coherent
socialism centering on the coexistence of community and distributive justice, where the
egalitarian ethos bridges these two values.
Community as a critique of liberal contractualism
The previous sections have discussed the value of community for Cohen and its relation to
distributive justice. In this section, we shift focus to capture an often neglected role
community plays alongside its other functions in Cohen's work. More particularly, we
present the inherent critique of liberal contractualism underlying Cohen's community
principle, which we see as a significant contribution to the understanding of Cohen's
socialism. Moreover, as liberal contractualism has become the standard view in
contemporary political philosophy, we should not underestimate the importance of this part
of Cohen's writings.
On communal reciprocity, Cohen says, "Where starting points are equal, and there are
independent (of equality of opportunity) limits put on inequality of outcome, communal
reciprocity is not required for equality, but it is nevertheless required for human
relationships to take a desirable form"(Cohen 2009, 66). Recall that within communal
reciprocity, people serve each other based on a mutual understanding that they both need
and want to be served by the other and that, for both, it is important that they want to serve
the other. The other-regarding part of this conjunction is as important as the self-interested
one, and this is what makes communal reciprocity different from market reciprocity.
Importantly, it is also what makes communal reciprocity morally distinct from the type of
reciprocity underlying contractualist accounts of justice within the tradition of liberal theory.
While Cohen touches upon several views, the works of Rawls, Nozick and Ronald
Dworkin entertain him the most, and while Rawls’ theory is the primary target of his
criticism here, we believe his elaboration of the value of community involves a critique of
them all. It is important to note, however, that the fact that communal reciprocity is most
notably the important socialist counterpart to market reciprocity together with our claim
that it also involves criticism of these liberals does not imply that liberal contractualism is
necessarily based on simple market logics. Arguably, as Buchanan noted (1990), we should
distinguish between on the one hand justice as reciprocity views, which hold that only those
14
who do or can contribute to the cooperative surplus have rights to social resources, and on
the other hand subject-centered justice views, which in contrast base the claim-right for
social resources on the moral status of individuals (regardless of ability to contribute). And
where David Gauthier’s contractualism (Gauthier 1986) and David Hume’s circumstances of
justice are examples of the former (though, according to Buchanan, different instantiations
of it), Rawls’ theory of justice and Dworkin’s ideal of equality of resources are better
described as instances of the subject-centered view. It follows that contractualist justice is
not at all committed to a simple market-like view on reciprocity in which one person is
willing to benefit another merely because she rationally suspects that this will ultimately
benefit her. Certainly, communal reciprocity captured in the expression, "I serve you and you
serve me – and in that conjunction itself I do not regard the first part – I serve you – as
simply a means to my real end, which is that you serve me" (Cohen 2009, 67), can be seen as
a direct antithesis to that marketeer form of reciprocity, but it is yet to be seen how this is
also a critique of the liberal justice theories of Rawls and Dworkin, with which Cohen takes
issue.
Now, Cohen is trying to convince us that the market has this inherent marketeerreciprocity logic that will often lead us to relate to each other in this unequal and self-serving
manner. But Cohen's critique here is not merely against markets. It is similarly an objection
to the relational basis of contractualist justice in the liberal tradition. Some inequalities are
not condemned by justice – e.g., when they are the direct outcome of chosen differences or
fair bargains – but are repugnant to socialists nonetheless because they impede community.
But why would justice allow repugnant inequalities in the first place? The explanation is that
the assumptions laying the foundation for just institutions in a liberal contractualist theory
are provided in reference to the malign, self-interested (and not the social, communal) parts
of our human nature. In the liberal tradition, justice obtains, consequently, as a result of
rational, self-interested persons engaging in collective production for the purpose of mutual
benefit. So defined, communal reciprocity has already been excluded from the context out
of which justice is given.
This theory-critical part of Cohen’s community has often been overlooked, and indeed it
is often implicit in his writings. However, he brings it to the fore in some of his discussions of
the incentives argument in his Gifford lectures from 1996 (Cohen 2001, 117–33). Cohen’s
basic argument against Rawls’ liberal contractualism is that a just society is wider and more
15
morally comprehensive than what can be captured merely by just institutions anchored in
human self-interest. To bring out the liberal-contractualist assumption he wishes to target,
he quotes the following passage from Rawls’ early version of Justice as Fairness,
If, as is quite likely, these inequalities work as incentives to draw out better efforts, the
members of this society may look upon them as concessions to human nature: they, like
us, may think that people ideally should want to serve one another. But, as they are
mutually self-interested, their acceptance if these inequalities is merely the acceptance
of the relations in which they actually stand, and a recognition of the motives which lead
them to engage in their common practices ((Rawls 1958, 173) cited from Cohen 2001, p.
121).
The italics are Cohen’s, he uses them to highlight the part of the paragraph that is changed
in the later A Theory of Justice version of the text, but the passage brings forward the basic
assumption of liberal contractualism, which Cohen wishes to abandon, that the brute fact of
selfish human nature is a bedrock of a just society. Cohen ends the section with these critical
remarks,
It is as both the Rawls of 1957 and the Rawls of 1971 agree with Bernard Mandeville
(and Adam Smith) that “private vices” make for “publick benefits”—that (in other
words) human selfishness can be made to benefit everyone—but that the Rawls of 1971
is unwilling to acknowledge that it is indeed vices which are in question. I agree with
Mandeville—and Adam Bede—that that’s what they are (Cohen 2001, p. 122).
What Cohen is targeting here is not capitalism with its market logics and marketeer
reciprocity but the founding assumptions of liberal theory that human self-interest is a
legitimate (if not sufficient) rational foundation for justice. Community, in Cohen’s writings,
here reminds us that this cannot be the case. The value of community enables us to see why
we should accept the first part of the conjunction, that I serve you, even when separated
from the second part, that you serve me. We demand more of a just society than an
institutional scheme built upon liberal assumptions about rational human self-interest.
16
This is evident, for example, in Why Not Socialism? where the value of community
explains why we from a socialist point of view find some inequalities repugnant, even when
they are not unjust. Cohen’s particular example is a special high-grade fishpond, which one
of the participants on the camping trip won fairly in a lottery in which everyone took part
and is now the winner’s private individual resource. There is nothing in liberalism, nor
indeed in any type of contractualist account of institutional distributive justice, that objects
to this distributive state of affairs, but Cohen insists that “even though there is no injustice
here, you are cut off from our common life, and the ideal of community condemns that”
(Cohen 2009, 66). To the extent that this scenario violates the ideal of community,
communal reciprocity requires that the camping trip participants themselves condemn this
and take genuine interest in its rectification. Community, not justice, is doing the normative
work for equality in this case, and this is another example of Cohen’s value pluralism. It is
important to stress that nothing is implied about the ranking of these values. It does not
follow – and Cohen is not claiming – that community takes precedence over justice. They are
simply separate values in a pool of incommensurable values, and hence the critique invoked
by the value of community against contractualist justice is not intended to demean justice as
a value in its own right but rather to show that justice, as grounded on rational human selfinterest, cannot account for a sufficiently equal and decent society.
This does not imply that justice and community are necessarily incompatible. As we
have seen, community in other ways – through the egalitarian ethos – facilitates a just
distribution. Moreover, principles of distributive justice may be justified in their own right,
and will, as is the case with Cohen's socialist equality of opportunity, be supported by
socialism. But it does show that communal reciprocity is not only a critical alternative to
motivational forces on the market but similarly that the ideal of community invites an
objection to the view of humanity provided by liberal contractualism. Since rational selfinterest in bargains about the mutual benefits derived from social production is the basis for
both capitalist markets and principles of justice, socialists ought, by their commitment to
community, object to both.
Here Cohen is reiterating an area for critique of contractualism that other critics have
pointed out more explicitly. Nussbaum, for example, pushes a similar critique against Rawls'
theory of justice and specifically targets the necessary exclusion of disabled parties within
the bargain, but her general point is against the contractualist circumstances of justice as
17
setting an artificial and unnecessary restriction on "being equals" as being of equal normal
bargaining power (Nussbaum 2004). This is acknowledged accordingly in Nussbaum’s list of
universal entitlement of justice, specifically in her capability for affiliation, which is partly
described as the capability to, “live with and toward others, to recognize and show concern
for other human beings to engage in various forms of social interaction; to be able to
imagine the situation of another” (Nussbaum 2000, 78–79).
Cohen’s community principle seems to hold a similar critique of liberal contractualist
justice, but unlike Nussbaum’s critique, which we may reasonably interpret as an objection
coming from a perspective external to the contractualist framework, Cohen is explicitly
aware that the critique invoked by community will to some extent problematize his own luck
egalitarianism. The objection is that since resource allocation following from a redistributive
scheme constructed around the hypothetical preferences of free and equal rational
individual persons (in particular, Rawls’ veil of ignorance or Dworkin’s auction) already
assumes a relational basis similar to that on the free market – Dworkin explicitly assumes
this (Dworkin 2000, 66–67) – where free and equal individuals compete for their share of
goods within a rational and fair bargain, and where this procedure in itself secures that the
outcome cannot be unjust, we will find the same violation of community within liberal
contractualism as we find on the market. Thus, just as marketeers, so liberal contracteers
violate community, but not necessarily in the same way or to the same extent. Unlike free
markets, a liberal contractualist procedural account of justice is not satisfied merely by free
entry and bargaining efficiency. Still, it aims for a much more demanding account of fairness,
in terms of eliminating background injustices and levelling the playing field to secure fairness
in the bargain. But in the sense of how to perceive of the relationship between contracteers,
the analogy is fitting. We need the social contract with its fair procedure, according to
liberals, because the selfish nature of humans is so pervasive that it will otherwise make
justice an impossible ideal. Just institutions, within liberal contractualism, are the result of a
hypothetical procedure wherein the individual person uses her rational powers to make
intrapersonal bindings upon herself, from which she extends her moral entitlements and
obligations to others like her. Where liberal contractualism is in that sense intrapersonal, the
value of community is fundamentally interpersonal. Hence, there is a stark contrast here
between the liberal contractualist view on humanity and the one expressed by Cohen’s
18
communal caring, although they are both ascribed to human persons as part of their nature
and therefore preceding justice.
Whereas liberal contractualism ascribes a reasonably thin account of morality to human
nature as the relevant conditions for living together as equals, Cohen’s socialism requires a
thicker view. The morality of being human, on Cohen’s account, is not satisfied with being
impartial, respecting others’ autonomy, ad identifying equal moral commitments and
entitlements, it explicitly demands caring for fellow humans, and that this caring serves as a
central purpose within one’s projects. It should, therefore, be of central moral importance
for any human person living in a community how well the lives of others in her community
are going. This communally binding morality is already, preceding any instance of
distributive justice, required as part of what it means to be a human among other humans.
Thus understood, the camping trip in Why Not Socialism? can be interpreted as a
thought experiment designed to explore the relationship between distributive justice and
community but also serves to investigate basic human morality in a state of nature, and from
this investigation criticize the view of humanity underlying liberal theory. One obvious, and
non-trivial, way to give body to this critique invokes Marx’s alienation. His writings
commonly distinguish between at least four forms of alienation (Marx 1982, 12–19): (i)
objectification, where the worker is being alienated from the product of labor as he “puts his
life into the object, and his life then belongs no longer to himself but to the object”; (ii)
coercion, as the worker is alienated from the process of labor production, since “his work is
not voluntary but imposed, forced labour. It is not the satisfaction of a need, but only a
means for satisfying other needs”. These two forms of alienation are related to the labor
production. Here, the worker becomes, as famously put by Marx and Engels in the manifest,
“an appendage of the machine”(Marx and Engels 2002). The last two forms of alienation
relate to persons as members of the human species. Here we can distinguish between (iii)
dehumanization, as the worker in making his labor a means only to acquire necessities not
only alienates himself from his labor but by the same token is alienated from the whole
human species since, “in the type of life activity resides the whole character of a species, its
species-character; and free, conscious activity is the species-character of human beings”;
and finally (iv) nonsocialization, as the worker no longer sees others primarily as peers,
friends or compatriots but as competitors and trading partners. Hence, “a direct
19
consequence of the alienation of man from the product of his labour, from his life activity
and from his species-life, is that man is alienated from other men”.
The last form of alienation – nonsocialization – gives body to the critique of
contractualist justice involved in Cohen’s socialism through communal caring. We can
borrow this point from one of Cohen’s less known (and unfinished) works, in which he claims
that to live with others without realizing their innate equal status “is to commit the sin of
demeaning one’s own humanity”, thereby expressing that in so doing, one is alienated from
one’s natural humanity (Cohen 2013a). The Marxist point of alienation brings to the
community principle that being human, essentially, requires a certain way of living together
with others as equals, where being equals is thicker than the liberal impartial respect for
individual autonomy, but also requires caring for others out of the fundamental moral
acknowledgment that their humanity is the same humanity as one’s own.
Upon these reflections, we can sum up the third role of community in Cohen’s thought.
In addition to being independently valuable and being constitutively related to egalitarian
justice, community plays the part as a critique of the view of humanity provided by liberal
contractualism. The inherent critique of liberal contractualism, we conjecture, is inspired by
Marxist ideas about alienation, and while it is often overlooked in discussions on Cohen’s
philosophy, and not exclusive to Cohen’s writings, it does play a central role in his socialism.
Note that due to the importance of liberal contractualism for Cohen’s theorizing on
distributive justice, the community critique of contractualist justice also infringes upon
Cohen’s luck egalitarianism. But where it pertains to a fundamental critique of liberal theory
(because of liberalism’s insistence on a thin rational, self-interested view of humanity), the
community critique, when turned against Cohen’s own luck egalitarianism, serves merely to
elaborate the complexity of the underlying value pluralism in Cohen’s writing, and thereby
restricting the scope of egalitarian justice as well as committing on a thicker moral account
of humanity. While this certainly contributes to the complexity of the relationship between
justice and community, it does not necessarily involve any inconsistency.
Conclusion
In exploring Cohen’s community, which is an important part of his vision of socialism, we
have identified that the content of the community principle is threefold: It has a
motivational element, a justificatory element and two variations of communal caring: one
20
concerning motivation and one concerning an ability to relate to the experiences and
challenges of others. Moreover, we have argued that community plays three distinct roles in
Cohen’s work. First, it is an independent socialist value including both basic moral equality
and subjective endorsement of communal reciprocity. Second, community is a necessary
adjacent counterpart to socialist justice both restricting and constitutive of distributive
equality. Third and finally, community holds an inherent critique of the liberal contractualist
view of human nature. To understand Cohen’s socialism in detail, we should acknowledge
these elements of community and the different roles community plays in his writings. We
have argued that while the value of community and its relation to distributive justice are
certainly complex, the different elements can be combined in one coherent socialist
position. This socialism acknowledges the independent value of community as living
together as equals, it explains well the complex but possible and feasible relationship
between community and justice through the egalitarian ethos, and it offers a plausible
alternative to the liberal contractualist view of humanity. We conclude that the elaboration
of community in Cohen’s writings binds together the central elements of his socialism to
make it a strong contender for a leading contemporary political ideology.
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