Cohen’s Why Not Socialism?

By Jason Brennan On March 29, 2011 · 24 Comments · In Academic Philosophy, Book/Article Reviews

In Why Not Socialism?, G. A. Cohen argues that socialism is intrinsically desirable, and capitalism is intrinsically repugnant. I'm willing to bet most of you here will not be convinced by his argument. So, I will do my best to outline his position. Please tell me where he makes a mistake. (Note: I do not accept his conclusions, but I bet my objections are different from many of yours.)

Cohen’s book proceeds as follows. First, he has us imagine a camping trip among friends. Food and goods are shared freely. Everyone abides by (purportedly) socialist principles of community and equality. Everyone does his part. No one takes advantage of anyone else. No one free rides. Everyone contributes. Everyone shares.

After a while, people begin to act like capitalists (as Cohen understands realistic capitalistic behavior). Harry demands extra food because he is especially good at fishing. Sylvia demands payment when she finds a good fishing spot. Leslie demands payment for her special knowledge of how to crack nuts. Harry, Sylvia, and Leslie refuse to share without extra payment. Morgan, whose father left him a well-stocked pond 30 years ago, gloats over having better food than the others.

Cohen concludes that the camping trip was better when the campers acted like socialists. When the campers act like capitalists, the trip becomes stifling and repulsive.

(As Cohen might note, even defenders of the free market often assert such things. For instance, F. A. Hayek says, “…if we were always to apply the norms of the extended order [i.e., large-scale societies] to our more intimate groupings, we would crush them.” F. A. Hayek, The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), p. 18.)

Cohen then articulates the principles of the socialist camping trip. (He does not defend these principles at length or attempt to show they are preferable to other competing principles.) The principle of socialist equality of opportunity eliminates all inequalities resulting from undeserved disadvantages or advantages. This principle allows significant inequalities if such inequalities arise the right way. However, the campers also abide by a principle of community. The campers care about one another, and care that they care about one another. Cohen argues that as a result, the campers will not tolerate certain inequalities that socialist equality of opportunity would otherwise permit.

Cohen then argues that large-scale societies would be morally better if they were socialist. If we could figure out how to make societies run like the socialist camping trip, we would rejoice. He says,

I do not think that the cooperation and unselfishness that the trip displays are appropriate only among friends, or within a small community. In the mutual provisioning of a market society, I am essentially indifferent to the fate of the farmer whose food I eat: there is little or no community between us.… But it does seem to me that all people of goodwill would welcome the news that it had become possible to proceed otherwise, perhaps, for example, because some economists had invented clever ways of harnessing and organizing our capacity for generosity to others. (pp. 50–51)

We tolerate capitalism only because we think we must. Perhaps, given our moral and cognitive failings, capitalism delivers the goods. But socialism would be the preferred system if only human beings were better. On Cohen’s view, capitalism promotes the common good by relying upon greed, fear, and people’s limited knowledge.

Cohen says there are two main questions about socialism. First, is it intrinsically desirable? He thinks it clearly is. Second, is it feasible? Here he is less certain. He thinks it might be feasible, but is unsure. He is not convinced that people are too immoral or too dumb to make socialism work.

When people claim socialism is infeasible, they cite two different kinds of reasons. First, they might hold that socialism requires better moral character than people are likely (or perhaps even able) to have. For instance, the USSR was a disaster in part because its institutions, with near limitless power, created bad incentives and attracted power-hungry people. (Of course, if people were morally better, they would not respond badly to bad incentives.) It also failed to motivate people to work hard. Second, many economists argue that socialism is infeasible because people lack the cognitive capacities it requires to work. The “Calculation Problem” holds that in large-scale societies, it is impossible to make good economic calculations without market prices. Market prices convey information about the relative scarcity of a good in light of the effective demand for that good. Market prices provide a simple vehicle for producers and consumers to adjust their behavior to scarcity and demand. According to the Calculation Problem, socialist planning cannot work, even if everyone were motivated to make it work, because planners do not have access to real prices or to a workable substitute for prices. The problem of planning an economy is too hard for a small bureau of planners. (In contrast, in a capitalistic economy, everyone is a planner.)

Cohen agrees that if socialism turns out to be infeasible (for either or both of these reasons), then we should not to try to instantiate it. However, he claims that if socialism were infeasible, this would not make it any less intrinsically desirable. The intrinsic desirability of a social regime is independent of its feasibility (or cost). In previous work, Cohen illustrates this point with an analogy. Suppose I see some grapes, the tastiest grapes ever. Now, suppose the grapes are out of reach—it is not feasible for me to get them. If so, it does not make them any less intrinsically desirable. It might mean that I should not attempt to pick the grapes, but their intrinsic value is independent of my ability to pick them.

Or, to borrow (and modify) a metaphor from David Estlund, suppose we go out for a picnic. On a hill in the distance, we see the perfect picnic spot. But suppose it is difficult or impossible to get there. A difficult maze blocks our path. A mysterious, magical fog surrounds the hill. This fog turns morally imperfect people into violent murderers, though morally perfect people are unaffected by it. If so, then we should not try to go to the picnic spot. Yet, none of these obstacles make the picnic spot on the hill any less perfect or desirable. The picnic spot, in itself, is still better than any spot we will reach. If we could get to that better spot, without having to suffer the costs of doing so, then we should.

Cohen finishes his argument by claiming that a certain form of market socialism is feasible, or, at least, that we do not know it is infeasible. Cohen is aware of the Calculation Problem, but is not convinced by it. He cites Joseph Carens’s work, which attempts to combine socialist distributive principles with the market’s information-gathering power. Of course, Carens is not the first to propose market socialism as a solution to the Calculation Problem. (In fact, most of the historical debate over the Calculation Problem concerned not whether central planning would work, but whether market socialism would avoid the problems of central planning.) Instead, Carens is trying to revive a debate about market socialism and make a better case for it than his intellectual predecessors. Cohen acknowledges that few people find Carens’s arguments convincing, and Cohen does not try to solve the problems critics see in Carens’s work. Instead, Cohen’s chapter on feasibility is best seen as a call for others not to lose hope but to attempt to solve the Calculation Problem.

I don’t find Carens’s response to the Calculation Problem persuasive. So, I’m not interested in chatting about this issue here.

Questions:

If Cohen goes wrong, where does Cohen go wrong and why? Forget about the word “justice”. The question is: Is Cohen right that it is intrinsically desirable to have society function like the camping trip, such that if only we could make it work that we, we’d have very strong reasons to do so? If so, does that mean that capitalism is intrinsically undesirable?

http://jiaoyan.org Jflycn

Too many assumptions …
Ivan

Socialism, as an ideal form, is desirable. Capitalism too. We should compare real implementations, not ideal forms.

Anyway, Cohen misses the point with his argument. Capitalism (by capitalism here I refer to a free market, whether with a minimal state or not) is all about voluntary transactions and private property. Is not about demanding extra food, more payment or refusing to share. That’s bullshit.
plutosdad

the problem with the camping trip analogy is that people are rewarded for doing “extra” without demanding rewards. For instance, by fully participating, they have more fun, eat better, etc, thus, the extra participation is not motivated by altruism but by plain old selfish incentives.

So THAT is what you spread to the larger society. If people believed that others far away were as important as their brother or their neighbor, society would probably be better, since we’d be more likely to help others and not take advantage of them. But even in that case, it would still be better due to self-interest, not altruism.

So is that, using self-interest instead of altruism to get people to help each other, the journey or the destination?
brad

Dunbar’s Number.

The maximum number of people that can form a cohesive group is about 150. His beautiful sounding camping analogy simply does not scale up to real economies with thousands or millions of people. Because of this, Cohen’s analogy is incorrect.

Just because socialism is desirable on a very small scale doesn’t mean it scales up. The “delicious grapes just out of reach” analogy is fallacious, because socialism applied at a societal scale is very different from socialism applied to a small group.
Jason Brennan

Brad,

What if Cohen said this: Yep, it is infeasible for this to scale up. But if it could scale up, it would be desirable for us to live this way. So, if we’re stuck with capitalism, that’s too bad.
Bernhard

the market economy is the order of actions which emerges from the institutions of a private law society. a private law society is the institutional framework which allows people a sphere of private autonomy to pursue their own ends individually or in voluntary cooperation with others, and prevents fraud and the use of force as a means of pursuing one’s ends. once a private law society is in place, “capitalism” emerges spontaneously from the propensity of individuals to truck, barter and exchange with others to better be able to reach one’s goals.

to reject the market economy in favour of socialism is synonymous with rejecting the individual autonomy of a private law society. it means rejecting the principle that people should be able to follow their own ends and goals, within a certain framework of rules. instead, people should follow the collectively chosen goals, and be rewarded for their participation in the collective enterprise in accordance with a collectively chosen scheme of just deserts.

this is absurd. there is nothing inherently desirable in a system that imputes “value” only to collectively chosen goals and enterprises and denies the “value” of privately, individually chosen goals.

the absurdity of such a system is not a matter of mere costs of collective decision making, i.e. the difficulty and time cost of agreeing on a “common preference scale”. it is the absurdity of denying the citizens the basic individual autonomy to choose their own actions and goals independently from others, and individually bear the consequences of one’s privately chosen actions.
Ben

Jason,

Is there a point in answering such a question? I can understand why a philosopher might be interested in such hypotheticals, but should those of us with more practical interests be concerned with this problem? (please don’t read this as dismissive–I’m genuinely interested in the purpose of the question)

In any event, one could just as easily imagine a utopian capitalism and say that it’s a darned shame socialism will never be this great….
Bernhard

a private law society is of course compatible with a limited scheme of social insurance which guarantees a small minimum income level to all citizens.

however, it is incompatible with a collectively chosen scheme of who is to earn how much, who deserves how much, i.e. the collective choice of the whole distribution of wealth and income. one can only allow people to pursue their own ends if they are made to bear the consequences of their own actions (again, safeguarded by a basic safety net if it is so desired by the citizens).

anything else would be synonymous with organized irresponsibility.
Watoosh

Ivan: if you wish to impose your definition of the word “capitalism” to the discussion, then sure, distribution, unequal outcomes etc. are not intrinsic factors of capitalism. But that’s not the definition Cohen is using. It’s quite clear from the example that Cohen is not interested in figuring out the appropriate deontological axioms regarding natural rights, but rather what kind of sentiments should prevail in a society such that they influence the transactions in a generally positive way. Therefore “socialism” doesn’t mean “a system where economic decisions are imposed from above”, but “a system where principles of community and equality prevail”, and capitalism doesn’t mean “a system of free markets and private property”, but “a system where people act according to their own narrow self-interest” (whether in either case the former definition does or does not entail the latter is irrelevant).

This is one of the things that frustrates me the most about political discourse. Words like capitalism, socialism and liberalism have several meanings, and just because some group(the Mises crowd is especially vulgar) has clearly defined meanings for all of those terms, doesn’t mean members of said group have a monopoly on those words. When you enter a discussion where different definitions are used, it’s only courteous to commit to those definitions instead of trying to impose other meanings.
http://aaronmclin.blogspot.com/ Aaron

Hmm… From reading the camping trip example, my first thought was that Cohen was simply opening another front in The War on Straw. The assumptions that there is no attempt to use socialist principles for one’s own benefit, and no incentive for even minimal cooperation in capitalism seems skewed to the point of disingenuousness from the start. But in Cohen’s defense, if I couldn’t tell the difference between a Capitalist and a jackass, perhaps I’d be a Socialist, too. (Although that strikes me as a False Dichotomy.)

In the “Capitalist” camping trip, Harry, Sylvia, and Leslie seem to be engaged in rent-seeking. I’m not aware of any tenant of capitalism that mandates or praises such blatant selfishness. In this regard, Cohen seems to be taking the worst excesses of people who have styled themselves as Capitalists and making them into requirements of Capitalist behavior.
Paul

Isn’t the basic problem with Cohen’s argument the fact that his example of the camping trip is under-developed (as it lacks what we might call necessary and sufficient conditions of society, such as disagreements over what ends to devote our resources and disagreements over the good life – is bearing children intrinsically better than being childless, for instance?). We might all agree that given a rarefied situation, such as a camping trip or washing up on a desert island a la Dworkin, that basic equality is probably the least objectionable distribution, and that we ought, so far as the situation allows us, to treat one another as equals, and to cultivate a community.

The reason we would surely all object to saying that this demonstrates anything intrinsic about socialism is that, were this example scaled up, we would have to accept those other, more troublesome aspects of human society. Now (here I borrow heavily from Chandran Kukathas’s excellent SP&P article on socialism) given these cultural disagreements, we would actually want to abandon socialism, because it would interfere with our ability to divert resources only to those pursuits we find valuable. Or, to put it the other way around, it would commit us to diverting resources to things we find invaluable, objectionable or even, as John Kekes worries, to things we find evil. So Cohen’s argument fails because a) he misses that humans are intrinsically concerned with more than simply resource distribution and solidarity; b) even in an ideal world we would want to give people space (qua private property) to be themselves, and there are no reasons (at least, none given by Cohen) to suggest that one can only be oneself within the economic or communitarian requirements of the camping group.
Paul

oops, I meant ‘as there are no reasons’ in that final sentence.
http://Marginallyexplicative.umwblogs.org Sam

Maybe I’m misunderstanding the argument but I don’t see the intrinsic value in socialism. You can say there’s an intrinsic value to everyone having enough food in a society or everyone being equal, or everyone working together for the common good. Those are (semi) measurable goals. Socialism, or capitalism, is a means to those ends. Capitalism might cause moral harm by breaking with some of these goals but I don’t see how socialism is laudable except in light of some kind of goal and its efficacy in achieving it. When we say socialism is a moral good, we say it because it achieves one or more goals as a by product of functioning but “socialism” isn’t the goal. We say socialism fails because by and large it doesn’t achieve many of the goals its purported to.

Additionally, I think that the value of working for the good of the community is overstated as an intrinsic good, at least relative to other things, like feeding people, that we hold important. If we had a system of governance called “manafromheavenism” it would be good if it raised the material living standards of those using it, despite the fact that it would discourage people from working together.
JH

This is a challenging question. It is very plausible that there is something intrinsically desirable about the camping trip. But we need to be a bit careful here. It is fairly easy to show that something is intrinsically valuable, I think. Or, at least, it is easy to show that we have intrinsic reason to value something (see Mark Schroeder’s Slave of the Passions for more on this). I have intrinsic reason to value many pieces of art and beautiful sunrises and so on. Does this have any implications for political morality?

I’m not sure. But probably not. At least, it has little to do with the political morality of coercive states. Inevitably, if we tried to scale up the camping trip, we would need to force people to do things, given the diversity of people’s goals and preferences. There are pretty stringent constraints on coercing people to do things.

To make this concrete, let’s consider a scaled up camping trip where some people just don’t want to be bothered with helping out the other campers. What happens now? To maintain the sense of group solidarity and sharing, we need to force them to do things. This starts to look less fun.
Ivan

Watoosh, he is also applying his own definitions. And I didn’t define socialism as that. I would say that socialism is a system with public ownership of the means of production and where democracy prevails.

Also, there isn’t a clear definition of “narrow self-interest”. Maybe it’s in my “narrow self-interest” to preserve the group which I belong to, is that a contradiction maybe?

We can also abstract and point out those “sentiments that should prevail” in a socialist society, and not the “desirable ones”. I think he’s cherry-picking stuff in order to put forward his idea.

And I don´t believe in natural rights…
http://blog.hecker.org/ Frank Hecker

Per the discussion of Dunbar’s number above, even if we could maintain close relationships at a large scale, we may simply prefer not to. We might see the implied requirement that we maintain bonds of community with any and all persons to be an unwarranted imposition on our right to choose our own friends.
Steve Bradford

I suspect that Cohen has never been on a camping trip. No extended camping trip I have ever been on has functioned as he posits. Some people carry extra food and eat it themselves. Others carry more luxurious sleeping bags and pads and use them themselves. In each case, the person who is willing to bear the extra cost (the added weight and bulk) gets the extra benefit. And trading often occurs–e.g., I will give you half of my candy bar in return for half of your block of cheese. Sounds a lot like capitalism to me.
HH

I had a long comment written out about how Cohen handwaves the entire concept of equality, but there’s no reason to post it. This entire idea that something would be desirable if only humans were different strikes me as a silly philosophic exercise. It’s not significantly different from my own tract, “Why Not Dragons?” in which I argue that, if humans could only survive by eating dragon meat, dragons would be desirable. Cohen essentially denies the entire biological basis of humanity, with its inherent preferences, biases, moral leanings, and social views. Cohen and Christ may implore you to love your neighbor [and also the Indonesian] as yourself, but it’s not [yet] in human nature. The whole thing is just not worth discussing. Yes, a society in which everyone is maximally happy is desirable. But it’s a tweet and not a book.
Joshua Lyle

I’d say Cohen trips up in describing the socialist camp as more desirable than the capitalist camp. I’ve had a range of camping experiences, from highly socialized scout camps (with identical food and tents) to troop camps (with patrols having different endowments of ability and personal gear but equal endowments of shared gear and monetary value of consumable resources for that event) to large retreat camping (with some shared resources and mostly individual resources) to highly autonomous recreational adult camping (where people either camp with their own resources or in very small “firms” organized ad hoc), to list them in order of both “capitalism” and “enjoyability” of the camping experience per se. Maybe this is only the case because of elements counter-factual to the example, such as individual preferences, incentives, etc., but I don’t think he gets the case for his analogous construction off the ground, and thus renders the question of its application to society in general irrelevant.
Dan Kervick

Agreeing with Sam here.

You say, “G. A. Cohen argues that socialism is intrinsically desirable.”

Does he really say that? If he does, than that would suggest he is using the word “intrinsic” in a strange way.
http://notesfrombabel.com Tim Kowal

The problem with socialism, and specifically with Cohen’s camping trip, is that equality is a lie. As Cohen’s thought experiment concedes, each camper has unequal abilities. Worse, they KNOW they have unequal abilities. Because of this, they naturally chafe against a system that tells them there is no recourse for realizing the advantage of their special skills and efforts.

Thus, again, the difference comes down to one between procedural and substantive justice: the ideal of substantive justice (i.e., equality) cannot withstand the natural human urge to see procedural justice done (i.e., a proper respect to each’s special, individualized talents and efforts).

It is the basic falsity that anything resembling equality exists that ruins socialism as a viable theory.
http://aaronmclin.blogspot.com/ Aaron

If Cohen goes wrong, where does Cohen go wrong and why?

Cohen goes wrong, Mr. Brennan, in conflating the behaviors and motives of the campers with the economic philosophy of the trip. There is no reason to presume that “community and equality” must be linked solely to socialism, and that Harry’s, Sylvia’s and Leslie’s rent-seeking are necessary to capitalism. This is because there is no causal relationship between one’s theory of justice (I hope I’m using that properly in this context) and one’s character.

Is Cohen right that it is intrinsically desirable to have society function like the camping trip, such that if only we could make it work that we, we’d have very strong reasons to do so?

Yes. Any system that worked in exact accordance with its ideal (having plenty of benefits and minimal or no costs) would be intrinsically desirable. And that would provide a compelling reason to attempt to implement it. But…

If so, does that mean that capitalism is intrinsically undesirable?

No. There is nothing that says there is only a single way to run a society. Mutual exclusivity of ideas (only one idea can be good) has not been established. It’s like cars. The fact that my first car was a Toyota didn’t mean that I had a problem with Ford or Volkswagen. But I can’t drive more than one car at a time, and didn’t have the resources to own more cars than I needed. Even if you work under the assumption that perfect knowledge would lead me to make the best choice, it doesn’t necessarily follow from that that there must always be only a single best choice.

In other words, a compelling reason to attempt to implement any given idea does not mean, in and of itself, that there are no or fewer compelling reasons to attempt to implement any others.

Sorry for being wordy. Thanks for reading.
Jay Baldwin

His problem is that, on even the best camping trips, the best stocked cooler eventually runs out of beer. Then everyone is equally thirsty, and unwillingly sober, there is no intrinsic good in that.
HH

@Tim Kowal

The reason I think it’s pointless to discuss this work is that Cohen seems to say, “Yes, with current people, you’re right, but if we had better people who weren’t frustrated or otherwise stymied by unequal abilities, we could have equality.”

Basically, it’s a plan for a world that is not meant for human beings.
http://un-thought.blogspot.com/ Floccina

Socialism is also wrong because we each desire different things. Leisure verses work verses accomplishment. Also some independence of purpose is sacrificed. Some freedom is also lost.
http://un-thought.blogspot.com/ Floccina

And BTW Cohen and like minded people are free to live as in his camping trip. We will not stop them from doing so. they will not because not being a country exit is too easy and the more productive people will surely leave.
HH

@Floccina

Ironically, socialism is also wrong because we often want the same thing but we can’t all have it…
http://zatavu.blogspot.com Troy Camplin

To paraphrase something I heard Walter Williams once say, socialism works so long as you can keep up with the names. So long as I know everyone equally well, and we all mutually agree, then it can work. Otherwise, it cannot. It is impossible to know what another, unknown, person needs or likes or wants.

Cohen also fails to note that humans naturally develop hierarchies, so that there would likely be a leader who would emerge during the camping trip. Hierarchical network structures are organizational structures. Free market economies are decentralized, leaderless scale-free networks. They are self-organizing processes, not organizations. In other words, Cohen is making all the same old mistakes.
Dan Kervick

Because of this, they naturally chafe against a system that tells them there is no recourse for realizing the advantage of their special skills and efforts.

Different strokes for different folks. I used to let my sister win sometimes when we played board games. Did I chafe? Maybe a little. But not as much as my conscience would have chafed from not being nice to her. Sometimes being cooperative and helpful feels good. It feels even better than taking everything your “talents” would enable you to take, if taking the most you can get is what you are all about.
http://aaronmclin.blogspot.com/ Aaron

“they will not because not being a country exit is too easy and the more productive people will surely leave.”

It seems to me that this makes one of the very same errors that Cohen makes (while at the same time, buttressing the error on his part). If you assume that “the more productive people” have everything they want, why would they go elsewhere simply to have more? Because, wouldn’t a properly functioning ideal socialist economy supply its citizens with enough? After all, there would be a surplus to distribute. While I understand that your point it that socialism only appeals to “unproductive people,” your wording can also be taken to say that the main draw of capitalism is the greed of people who think they will benefit from it. Either way, it reinforces the idea that political philosophy is linked to character.
T.J.

To answer the question. Yes, it would be intrinsically desirable to function like the camping trip. It is not feasible, but it is intrinsically desirable. Yet, to the second part, this desirability has no bearing on the desirability of capitalism. Capitalism in its pure form, the form assumed for socialism, may be just as intrinsically desirable. Essentially accepting that there would be two picnic areas worth using. However, in the context of this example, you would be making a wild leap that capitalism in its pure form is any more feasible than socialism in its pure form.
http://profile.typepad.com/6p0147e2f357f9970b Matt Zwolinski

J – I need to look at Cohen’s essay again to refresh my memory. But does he allow us to make the same idealizing assumptions about capitalism as he does about socialism? In other words, are we allowed to compare a capitalist economy in which everyone behaves generously and in accordance with the correct view of justice, with a socialist economy in which people do the same?
brad

To follow up on my comment about Dunbar’s Number, but try to answer the question as posed more directly: I grant that socialism as defined by the camping trip example would be intrinsically desirable.

But I could construct dozens of other social models (benevolent dictatorship anyone?) that would also be intrinsically desirable at “camping trip” scale.

How is this informative to a political philosopher? At least as I consider the term, political philosophy is strictly about group dynamics beyond the tribe (beyond Dunbar’s number, to belabor that point a bit). So, absent a convincing explanation of how a structure scales to this size, any argument seems simply irrelevant to me.
Artifex

Cohen’s thinking strikes me less as erroneous and more as shallow and confused. He starts by taking an aspect the the camping trip that would be better categorized as harmonious cooperation and attempts to paint his chosen term “socialism” as an extension of that concept. He then chooses another term “capitalism” and attempts to vilify it by associating it with the lack of cooperation. This is merely an exercise in assuming one’s conclusions.

Here’s a clue for Mr. Cohen. In a world of perfect harmony and universal cooperation, it really doesn’t matter what you call the system of government because everyone is going to get along splendidly. No system is required. It is only when the real world creeps up on us and we find we have different priorities that we need systems to deal with the inevitable conflicts. Like capitalism, socialism exists to deal with the problem of incomplete cooperation. This makes assuming complete cooperation particularly silly. The real question is which system is more effective at increasing general utility and doing so in a principled fashion.

Amusingly, I think Mr Cohen example actually inadvertently addresses the above point. Successful group camping trips inherently revolve around the personal give and take and the negotiation that is inherent is more the capitalistic model. If I don’t like a particular task, I can trade for another one to someone who feels differently. If we can’t make each other happy, we can always opt out and camp with someone else. Doesn’t socialism imply centralized control and an inability to opt out ? Doesn’t sound much like any vacation I would be willing to take.
http://notesfrombabel.com Tim Kowal

@HH,

Right. It’s the old “right idea, wrong species” saw. The idea that “socialism would be the preferred system if only human beings were better” might be more accurately stated: “socialism would be the preferred system if only human beings either were truly equal.” Again, they’re not, and basing a theory off a fundamental untruth results in a fundamentally flawed theory.

Alternatively, it might be said that “socialism would be the preferred system if only human beings truly didn’t care about procedural justice.” But they do. So socialism has a rough time mustering any intellectual force as a workable political theory.
http://millsrevenge.wordpress.com millsrevenge

I agree — the difference between the camping trips isn’t economic philosophy. It’s plain old philosophy philosophy. In the “socialist” trip, they’re acting as utilitarians. Doesn’t have to be totally equal, but they’re all acting for the greater good.

In the “capitalist” trip, they’re douchebags.

Sure, there are a lot of capitalist douchebags (see Jon Stewart’s takedown of GE), and that’s why you need some sort of regulation. But really, this just proves that when you stop acting toward the greater good, calamity happens.

Utilitarianism trumps all!
John

I’m looking forward to hearing Jason’s view.

I think the biggest error is that in the camping trip world we’re basically doing the things we want — I fish because I like it not because someone needs fish. It is true that we’ll help one another but only to a limited point. If you like hiking and I like fishing you’re not getting up very often before the sun is up to fish with me and I’m not going to spend the rest of the day hiking to the top of the mountain. If we start insisting the hiker fish more our friendship breaks down, as does the society.

The result I would expect in such a world would be that the least able to fend for themselves will be worse off under the camping trip regime than under a capitalistic one — Cohen may find that counterintuitive. But if the least capable in society are worse off under the camping trip world than under capitalism (though I only suggest that above) it seems undesirable even if unachievable.
Dan Kervick

Is Cohen right that it is intrinsically desirable to have society function like the camping trip, such that if only we could make it work that we, we’d have very strong reasons to do so?

Why are you drawn to questions like this? It’s like saying, “Is an orgasm intrinsically good, such that if only we could turn all of human existence into one prolonged orgasm, we would have very strong reason to make it so?”

And if you don’t like orgasm as the touchstone of intrinsic goodness, please feel free to substitute “enlightenment experience”, “profound mathematical insight”, “worshipful awe in the sublime”, “dance around the Maypole” or any other peak human experience.

What does any of this have to do with mature philosophical inquiry into the political and social dimensions of life? It just seems like indulgent escapism.
http://www.cygne-gris.blogspot.com Simon Grey

As seems to be well-established, Cohen’s logical flaw is that he assumes scalability.
plutosdad

Frank Heckler wrote re; dunbar’s number “We might see the implied requirement that we maintain bonds of community with any and all persons”

Yes, that would be the wrong way to go about it. But in The Origins of Virtue by Ridley, I read about some ways Dunbar’s Number can be overcome without force. The basic point is, instead of public land / water / resources that are subject to the Tragedy of the Commons, everything is owned equally by the citizens. People then treat each other better, and treat their common resources better, because it is in their interest to do so. They are truly partners in ownership of those resources, and so do not take more than their share. In these cases, shares are defined, not some nebulous concept – “your fair share” – that someone wants to impose from above.

In that sense, we recognize that everyone in the community equally owns public resources. I don’t think of that as force.

One example he gives is a fishing village of 15000 people, that all share fishing rights. No one takes more than their share, or takes from others. (There is another example of sharing grazing land, and a third example of shared irrigation systems). They all act to help each other because it is in their self interest to do so. They are all equal owners. Force may be used against someone from taking more than their share, but that can be seen as someone trying to break the contract between them all as private parties. And there would be no reason someone couldn’t pay another for part of his share. But he couldn’t just take from others without compensation.

In many ways, shared ownership can overcome the Dunbar number, without forcing people care or act against their interests.
wintercow20

“In many ways, shared ownership can overcome the Dunbar number, without forcing people care or act against their interests”

Then we have the tragedy of the anti-commons.
http://economicliberty.net liberty

plutosdad – I may be misunderstanding you, but I don’t see how the solution you describe actually helps. The cause of the tragedy of the commons is that it *is* shared collectively, or equally. The problem is that each share is so small that people free-ride off each other’s work, and overuse because their small addition to overuse won’t likely change much in the effect it has on their small portion of ownership.

[The problem is worse of course in proportion to the size of the group sharing the resource, which results in the smaller portion owned by each person - hence a family of 5 people will have less problem than a village of 15,000, which in turn will have less problem than a city of 10,000,000; but this is just the Dunbar number again]

For example, in the village of 10,000 people, each person may have a share of the lake, and of the other resources. If my fishing-lake share earns me $200/annum in dividends from the sale of the fish, I have some incentive not to spoil it. But if I see others exploiting it and earning extra cash on top of their $200 share by doing so, I may also exploit it, even knowing that my exploitation may reduce the profit, and hence my dividend down to $190, especially if my exploitation earns me more than $10. As soon as one person does this, it is likely to spread. If the lake were owned by a small family the cost of the exploitation per dividend-holder would be great (hence family businesses don’t suffer from these problems). In a small town, it could go one way or the other. In a city the exploitation is quite likely.
Andrew Lynch

I see two flaws in Cohen’s reasoning which invalidate his conclusions. First, as has been discussed, equal morals must be in place for both economic systems before their outcome can be compared. It is inappropriate to give the Socialism camp pristine morals while giving the Capitalism camp stereotypical capitalist morals. My initial belief (though not fully developed) is that given the same high level of ‘morality’ both camps would reach the same end result.

My second problem is with scalability. I know many have touched on this related to socialism….but my problem is with capitalism. It is not that capitalism is designed to be scalable, it is that it is designed to be scaled. Many of the problems Cohen identifies in the capitalism camp (i.e. rent seeking) would be alleviated if (1) the camp were bigger or (2) there were alternate camps people could move between. I do not find it enlightening to compare socialism in its theoretically most favorable condition (small group) to capitalism in its theoretically least favorable condition (small group). Again, I haven’t thought through this sufficiently, but my initial thought is that capitalism would stand up much more favorably when the comparison is made in large groups (this is not a practicality argument, but still a theoretical ideal argument).
http://blog.hecker.org/ Frank Hecker

@liberty: I took plutosdad to be talking about informal or semi-formal regimes for managing common pool resources, like those explored by Elinor Ostrom and others. I agree that those are interesting and well-worth exploring; I presume they are only effective under certain conditions, and hence am skeptical about the possibility of their scaling beyond a certain size. However I haven’t read enough to know much about what exactly those conditions are.

@wintercow20: Re the anti-commons problem: I’m quite familiar with it. We encountered this in the context of the Mozilla project, and it was a bear to work through. (Briefly, we were trying to change the open source licensing of the source code for the Firefox browser, and had to track down all copyright holders and secure permissions for the relicensing.)

In any case, as I understand it the tragedy of the anti-commons potentially affects capitalistic societies as well as socialist ones, and in fact is often used as an argument against over-extending property regimes, particularly in areas like information goods.
Ray

Cohen also goes wrong in this way: feasibility should be a necessary criterion of desirability. It is meaningless to think something is desirable but infeasible.
bill woolsey

To me, the key issue for libertarianism vs. socialism (and not exactly capitalism vs. socialism) is who chooses to go camping with which group of people how often. The libertarian answer is that each person can choose. The socialist answer is that we must camp with the same group of people forever (or at least, on a fixed schedule, say, once per week.)

It may well be that we will naturally camp with a group of people where there is enough shared values and common abilities that everyone working according to their abilities and taking according to their needs will work out just fine.

But suppose Sally isn’t really enjoying these trips much. And she doesn’t come on all of them. Is Socialism the theory that we demand that she continue to come?

Dave is starting to camp with some other people. Do we build a wall to keep him from defecting to the west?

And, of course, if the purpose of our group isn’t vacationing, but rather something more concrete (spending part of the day producing things to exchange with strangers for camping gear and other things that we will use with friends on a vacation,) then perhaps then rather than everyone with similar abilities and tastes grouping together, there might be advantages to people with different abilities and tastes grouping together.
http://aaronmclin.blogspot.com/ Aaron

The socialist answer is that we must camp with the same group of people forever (or at least, on a fixed schedule, say, once per week.)

Really? What does that have to do with Socialism?

Is Socialism the theory that we demand that [Sally] continue to come?

Do we build a wall to keep [Dave] from defecting to the west?

I don’t understand what these authoritarian measures have to do with Socialism as an economic theory. Yes, I understand that we tend to define a given theory by the actions of the people who claim to practice that theory, but just because a nation that claims to be X does action Y or has characteristic Z does not mean that Y and Z are necessary parts of X. This seems no different than Cohen’s assertion that greed and selfishness are intrinsic to Capitalism, because one can find examples of greedy and selfish Capitalists.
Joshua Corning

Cohen concludes that the camping trip was better when the campers acted like socialists. When the campers act like capitalists, the trip becomes stifling and repulsive.

Why is trade stifling and repulsive?

Every society does it, it is as natural as breathing.

Perhaps Cohen has an explanation and your crib of it does not spell it out.

If your crib is accurate then why even debate it. It is a gaping hole in his argument and seems to simply say Cohen does not like reciprocity and even hates the negotiation of reciprocity even more.

He is a weird cat so simply accept he is a weird cat and read somehting else.