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Against Cohen On Proletarian Unfreedom*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 January 2009

John Gray
Affiliation:
Philosophy, Oxford University

Extract

In a series of important papers, G.A. Cohen has developed a forceful argument for the claim that workers are rendered unfree by capitalist institutions. His argument poses a powerful challenge to those (such as myself) who think that capitalist institutions best promote freedom. Yet, formidable as it is, Cohen's argument can be shown to be flawed at several crucial points. It is not one argument, but three at least, and one of the goals of my criticism of Cohen on this question is to distinguish and assess the various separate lines of reasoning that together make up his case for the unfreedom under capitalism of workers as a class. Cohen argues of workers that they are rendered unfree by the institution of private property on which the capitalist system depends, that they suffer a form of collective unfreedom under capitalism, and that they are forced to sell their labor power under capitalism.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Social Philosophy and Policy Foundation 1998

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References

1 “Capitalism, Freedom and the Proletariat” in the Idea of Freedom, ed. Alan, Ryan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979)Google Scholar; “Illusions about Private Property and Freedom,” J., Mepham and D., Ruben, eds., Issues in Marxist Philosophy, vol. IV (Hassocks, Sussex: Harvester Press, 1981)Google Scholar; “Freedom, Justice and Capitalism,” New Left Review, vol. 125 (1981); “The Structure of Proletarian Unfreedom,” J., Roemer, ed., Analytical Marxism (Cambridge University Press, 1986)Google Scholar; and “Are Workers Forced to Sell Their Labor-power?” Philosophy and Public Affairs, vol. 14, no. 1 (1985).

2 Cohen, , “Capitalism,” p. 12.Google Scholar

3 Cohen, , “Illusions,” p. 227.Google Scholar

4 ibid., pp. 226–227.

5 Cohen, , “Capitalism,” pp. 1112.Google Scholar

6 ibid., p. 11.

7 ibid., pp. 16–17.

8 ibid., p. 17.

9 The “negative” view of freedom as noninterference shifts easily into a view of freedom as nonrestriction of options. On this see John Gray, “Negative and Positive Liberty” John, Gray and Z.A., Pelczynsi, eds., Conceptions of Liberty in Political Philosophy (London and New York: Athlone Press and St. Martin's Press, 1984), pp. 321348.Google Scholar

10 Cohen, , “Structure,” p. 250Google Scholar, footnote 21.

11 On Berlin's conception of freedom, see Gray, “Negative.”

12 See Marcuse, H., “Repressive Tolerance,” in A Critique of Repressive Tolerance (Boston: Beacon Press, 1968)Google Scholar, and Arendt, H., “The Revolutionary Tradition and its Lost Treasure,” M., Sandel, ed., Liberalism and Its Critics (New York: New York University Press, 1984), pp. 239263.Google Scholar

13 Brenkert, George G., “Cohen on Proletarian Unfreedom,” Philosophy and Public Affairs, vol. 14 (1985), pp. 9398Google Scholar; Gray, John, “Marxian Freedom, Individual Liberty and the End of Alienation,” Social Philosophy and Policy, vol. 3, no. 2 (1986), pp. 170174.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

14 I do not mean to suggest that Cohen's is the best statement of a liberal negative view of freedom, but only that it is Cohen's that I shall deploy in my argument against him.

15 Cohen, , “Structure,” p. 244.Google Scholar

16 ibid., p. 245.

17 ibid., p. 242, footnote 7.

18 ibid., p. 242.

19 ibid., p. 244.

20 ibid., p. 241.

21 ibid., p. 248.

22 ibid., p. 250.

23 ibid., p. 250.

24 ibid., p.248.

25 ibid., p. 248.

26 Macpherson, C.B., Democratic Theory (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973), p. 154.Google Scholar

27 Cohen, , “Structure,” p. 248.Google Scholar

28 ibid.

29 ibid., p. 249.

30 ibid., p. 251.

31 Cohen coments approvingly (“Structure,” p. 245, footnote 10) on Elster's perceptive observation that “such structures [of collective unfreedom] pervade social life.”

32 Cohen, , “Structure,” p. 244.Google Scholar

33 Cohen, , “Capitalism,” pp. 1819.Google Scholar

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37 Cohen, , “Structure,” p. 243, footnote 8.Google Scholar

38 ibid.

39 Cohen, “Freedom,” p. 10.

40 Cohen, “Illusions,” p. 224.

41 Cohen, “Structure,” p. 242.

42 ibid., p. 244.

43 ibid., p. 241.

44 For example, Felix Oppenheim. See his “‘Constraints on Freedom’ as a Descriptive Concept,” Ethics, vol. 95 (1985), pp. 305–309, and Political Concepts: a Reconstruction (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981).

45 Raz, Joseph, The Morality of Freedom (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986), p. 14.Google Scholar

46 ibid., p. 16.

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48 The idea of a moral notion is explored in Kovesi, J., Moral Notions (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1971).Google Scholar

49 See, on this, Raz, The Morality of Freedom.

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51 Cohen, , “Illusions,” p. 232.Google Scholar

52 ibid., p. 233.

53 On this see Gray, John, “Liberalism and the Choice of Liberties,” T.A., Hig, D., Callen, and J., Gray, eds., The Restraint of Liberty: Bowling Green Studies in Applied Philosophy, vol. VII (1985), pp. 125.Google Scholar

54 Cohen, , “Illusions,” p. 233.Google Scholar

55 With reference to Rawls's later writings, I refer especially to “The Basic Liberties and Their Priority,” Tanner Lectures on Human Values (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1981).

56 See Gray, John, “Marxian Freedom, Individual Liberty, and the End of Alienation,” Social Philosophy and Policy, vol. 3, no. 2 (1986), pp. 180185.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

57 Hayek, F. A., The Constitution of Liberty (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1960), p. 121.Google Scholar The central content of Hayek's argument is stated in somewhat Marxian fashion by Reiman, Jeffrey, Philosophy & Public Affairs, vol. 16, no. 2 (Winter, 1987), p. 41Google Scholar: “The space between a plurality of centers of power may be just the space in which freedom occurs, and conflicts between the centers may work to keep that space open … as a material fact, state ownership might… represent a condition in which people were more vulnerable to, or less able to resist or escape from, force than they are in capitalism. It follows that, even if socialism ends capitalist slavery, it remains possible, on materialist grounds, that some achievable form of capitalism will be morally superior to any achievable form of socialism.”

58 Trotsky, Leon, The Revolution Betrayed (New York: Pathfinder Books, 1937), p. 76.Google Scholar

59 Cohen, , “Capitalism,” p. 258.Google Scholar

60 Hayek, , The Constitution of Liberty, p. 126.Google Scholar

61 For the argument that private property maximizes the liberty even of those who have none, see Gray, John, Liberalism (Milton Keynes: Open University Press and Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 1986), pp. 6668.Google Scholar

62 Cohen, , “Illusions,” p. 224.Google Scholar

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64 A mass of evidence exists as to the extent of politically enforced social stratifications in the USSR. A useful survey of some of it is to be found in Simis, K., “The Machinery of Corruption in the Soviet Union,” Survey, vol. 23, no. 4 (Autumn 1977–8).Google Scholar