December 15, 2015
The Dreary Utopia of the Socialists
David Gordon reviews Why Not Capitalism here, in a cogent review in which he also advances novel criticisms of Cohen’s work. An excerpt: Finally, it is worth pointing out that Cohen…
Posts filed under g. a. cohen
March 06, 2015
Community and Diversity in Cohen’s Socialist Utopia
Some excerpts/summary from a paper of mine, forthcoming in a symposium on Cohen’s Why Not Socialism? Lots of typos, I’m sure. In Why Not Socialism?, Cohen articulates a number of moral principles…
June 18, 2014
Don’t Dumb Down Justice to Accommodate Bad Motivations
Cohen says, and I agree, that whether something is desirable or better from a moral point of view has nothing to do with whether it’s feasible. It’s not possible for…
June 16, 2014
The Cohen Fallacy: Why Cohen’s and Rawls’s Arguments about Institutions Are, Well, Garbage
Chapter 3 of Why Not Capitalism? explains why Cohen’s argument for the intrinsic moral superiority of socialism fails. Even though I agree with Cohen that we should not dumb down the…
June 11, 2014
Why Not Capitalism? Should Appear in Paperback Today
Why Not Capitalism? should appear in paperback today. And, with it, the moral case for socialism dies. Capitalists and socialists used to duke it out on which system would work best in…