Why not
| Author | Edward Hall |
| Date | 01 January 2018 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1474885115595805 |
| Published date | 01 January 2018 |
| Subject Matter | Review Articles |
European Journal of Political Theory
2018, Vol. 17(1) 109–117
!The Author(s) 2015
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DOI: 10.1177/1474885115595805
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EJPT
Review Article
Why not
Edward Hall
University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK
Jason Brennan, Why not capitalism? Routledge: Oxford, 2014, 114 pp. ISBN:
9780415732970.
In 2009, Princeton University Press published a short book entitled Why Not
Socialism? (hereafter WNS) by the late Canadian political philosopher G.A.
Cohen. In it Cohen attempts to articulate a compelling moral argument in
favour of socialism by asking his readers to imagine the best possible way of
organising a camping trip. According to Cohen, on the best camping trip the
resources the group use – pots, pans, fishing rods, etc. – would be under collective
control and shared understandings will arise about who will fish, cook and wash
up, etc. based on people’s enjoyment of such activities. This ensures that ‘there are
no inequalities to which anyone could mount a principled objection’ (WNS: 4).
This makes the trip uniquely enjoyable: each camper enjoys ‘a roughly similar
opportunity to flourish, and also to relax, on condition that she contributes, appro-
priately to her capacity, to the flourishing and relaxing of others’ (WNS: 4–5).
Two key socialist principles are realised on Cohen’s camping trip. The first of
these, socialist equality of opportunity, ‘seeks to correct for all unchosen disadvan-
tages, disadvantages that is, for which the agent cannot herself reasonably be held
responsible, whether they be disadvantages that reflect social misfortune or disad-
vantages that reflect natural misfortune’ (WNS: 17–18). Thus when socialist equal-
ity of opportunity prevails ‘differences of outcome reflect nothing but difference of
taste and choice, not differences in natural and social capacities and powers’ (WNS:
18). This principle, as many readers will know, is the central intuition behind the
philosophical position known as ‘luck-egalitarianism’ with which Cohen is closely
associated. The second, the community principle, ‘constrains the operation of the
egalitarian principle by forbidding certain inequalities that the egalitarian principle
permits’ (WNS: 12). It captures the fact that on the best possible camping trip
‘people care about, and, where necessary and possible, care for, one another, and,
too, care that they care about one another’ (WNS: 34–35). Even if certain inequal-
ities would be permitted by the first principle, the second ensures that inequality
between the campers can never be too great because this would preclude them from
empathising with each other in the most attractive way possible.
Corresponding author:
Edward Hall, University of Sheffield, Sheffield S10 2TU, UK.
Email: edward.hall@sheffield.ac.uk
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