Many people would agree that the attempted practical implementation of socialism which the nations of Eastern Europe have witnessed in the second half of the century was a disaster. So as practical policy, socialism is discredited. But in his lecture, Prof. Cohen brings up socialism as a theoretical question: he is making, in his own words, a ”preliminary case” for socialism. The point of this short essay is to comment on some of the points that Prof. Cohen is making in his lecture. I selected three of his points for comment, one is Prof. Cohen’s characterisation of the workings of markets, another is the question of feasibility of socialism and the last one is the question of desirability of implementing socialist ideas in practice.

In describing how markets work, Prof. Cohen makes a distinction between the motivations that animate people living in a true community and the motivations that influence the behaviour of people in the market system. Prof. Cohen says that in a market situation, our motivation is largely accounted for by greed and by fear:

There are six billion people living on this planet, taking part in billions of bilateral and multilateral relationships every day. Will I be too bold in asserting that – even if we limit our focus to relationships related to matters economic – reducing their motivation to greed and fear is a gross oversimplification? There are people who work for Amnesty International in countries with oppressive regimes, risking their lives and freedom – surely, when they signed up for the work, they checked their contract for the wage rate – but was greed and fear (or other selfish considerations) their only – or primary – motivation? There are teachers at business schools who could, if they instead worked as managers, easily earn multiples of what they earn as teachers – where does greed and fear come into their motivation? There are top managers who spend sixteen hours a day at work, believing – make no mistake – that it is their mission to do the work they do. These are just a few of the most glaring examples of motivations other than greed and fear. Read the mission statements of most multinational companies. There will be no talk of large profits or high sales. It will be all about the ”commitment to quality”, ”efforts to provide the best service” and ”meeting your needs to your full satisfaction.” Doesn’t that meet Prof. Cohen’s notion of caring in a community? Of course, one would reply that these companies strive to provide the best possible services only as long as you pay your bills – so their alleged care is really as Prof. Cohen claims – instrumental. But then, just the same is the situation in the harmonious community which Prof. Cohen describes:

”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. … A non-marketeer relishes co-operation itself: what I want, as a non-marketeer, is that we serve each other. To be sure, I serve you in the expectation that (if you are able to) you will also serve me. I do not want to be a sucker who serves you regardless of whether (unless you are unable to) you are going to serve me,…” (bolding is added)

There we go, even in a community, if you ‘stop paying your bills’, your fellows’ care may taper off.

So, where is the difference between market and community? In the interest of fairness, I should quote the rest of the previous sentence, which concerned the communal motivations:

And at one other point, Prof. Cohen clarifies the distinction between community and market again:

It seems it is the sublime or abominable intentions (in community and in market, respectively) that matter, the difference is in our heads. The point is that, in communities, people care ”fundamentally,” while in market settings, they do not.

But how does Prof. Cohen know that? He does not seem to quote any sociological research into the sincerity of people’s care. No poll results, no large-scale psychological investigation. Moreover, even if there was a poll, the sincerity of anyone’s care is inside his or her head, so people can tell you whatever you want to hear.

So why should we a priori assume that, in market economies, people view each other as instruments? Take your insurance agent. He tries to make you sign up for the insurance scheme that he is selling. Many an insurance agent is willing to go out of his way to win you for the scheme. He will explain to you everything many times over, if you wish. He will give you his cell phone number. He may even buy you a drink in a pub (my agent certainly would). If he sells insurance to other people in your household, he may even become a sort of family friend. Why is he doing all that, in this current market economy? I guess, it follows from Prof. Cohen’s exposition that he is led by greed or some related motivation. He perhaps receives a percentage of what I put in the scheme, if I sign up. He may be materially interested in making me sign up. But isn’t it just as possible that he really cares whether I am insured or not? The market incentives certainly do not prevent a ”fundamental” care… So, on what grounds does Prof. Cohen actually rule out that possibility, condemning most marketers to greed and fear?

The point I am trying to make here is that reducing the current economic system to greed and fear is a presumptuous oversimplification. It would equally oversimplified – and I believe that every convinced socialist would agree – to perceive the socialists’ attraction to equality as no more than envy. There are many opponents of socialist ideas who hurl this accusation at the left wing of the political spectrum: why do the socialists want to redistribute wealth from the rich to the poor, these opponents say, even when the wealth was accumulated through legal and honourable means – if not because they are envious? Just as it would be oversimplified to say that all socialists are envious, it would be oversimplified to say that market relations are primarily inspired by greed and fear. – But if Prof. Cohen’s characterisation of the market is misplaced, then so is his criticism of it.

But this is not the only factual mistake in Prof. Cohen’s lecture. I believe that his notion of community is just as mistaken as his notion of market economy. Consider the following claim he makes:

Historically, there have been many communities which have prospered in spite of immense internal inequalities. Haven’t, for example, Jewish communities throughout the ages displayed an astonishing degree of cohesion in spite of vast material differences inside them? Large families are able to get on well in spite of large differences in wealth. So, it is false to claim that community cannot exist, if the members do not, or cannot, directly share in the challenges that individual members face. Many communities have overcome much worse internal differences than just wealth. It depends on the members of the community and on what they perceive as the right thing. Some communities believe property rights are sacrosanct and they are happy to bear wealth inequality as a consequence of that.

If we take into account the aforementioned reservations concerning Prof. Cohen’s characterisation of markets and communities, then the contrast between the two becomes much les pronounced. If fundamental care is possible – or even frequent – in capitalism, then markets do not look as inhumane and horrible as Prof. Cohen makes them out to be. If community can obtain in spite of wealth inequality, then the requirements for community life suddenly become less rigid. In other words, the two are not contradictory or mutually exclusive, markets do not rule out a full community life. And if a community breaks down, markets are not to blame: it’s not the system, it’s people.

Another of the questions that Prof. Cohen addresses in his lecture is the problem of feasibility of socialism in a national polity. It is important to bear in mind how the whole idea of socialism is introduced in the lecture. For Cohen, a camping trip is a small-scale model of how the interaction between individuals could work in a socialist society: people share their property and what prevails in their lives is a spirit of community (that same spirit of community which Prof. Cohen contrasts with market) and the socialist concept of equality. Why cannot these socialist ideals, realised on a camping trip, be implemented on a nation-wide or even a world-wide level? Is socialism unfeasible on a large scale?

The first thing to be pointed out here is that the model of a camping trip is not a fitting one. Cohen’s description of the trip situation is this:

But if it should in any relevant way reflect the real world, the set-up of the camping trip should go something like this: ”You are stuck on a trip with a bunch of people, some of whom you like, some of whom you hate, some of whom you even have strong prejudices against and most of whom you do not know.” One of the reasons why the principles of a community can prevail on a camping trip is that the participants are there of their own free will, usually know each other and agreed to go on the trip because there is, between them, a shared understanding as to what the point of the trip is. Real world is not like that. We can only get to know a fraction of people we live with in a country – and only a fraction of those we know would we accept as buddies for a trip, i.e. only with some would we agree to live according to socialist principles. Or: on a trip, if people who hate cooking do the washing up, it is all OK. But some people hate both cooking and washing up. In a trip situation, you can send them home and not take them next time, because they spoil the fun. But in real world, there is no humane analogy to ”sending people home”. A camping trip is a very special situation, so modelling real world on it is entirely inappropriate.

Second, when Prof. Cohen writes about sharing property, it remains unclear how far he would be willing to go. Even on a camping trip, most people – socialists including – would hesitate to share their toothbrush or underwear. Some things better be private. Or I may well take my guitar on a camping trip, for a sing-along will surely raise everyone’s spirit – but I cannot but be reluctant to ”collectively share” it with the guy with an axe. And I doubt that you would be willing to share your diary or wedding ring even if someone ”desperately” needed it (however unlikely that may be), no matter what the collective said. The main point that I am making here is that certain principles may actually sound fairly straightforward when simply stated but their eventual implementation may run into unsolvable difficulties. This criticism would also apply, for example, to the following principle which Prof. Cohen formulates in the part of the lecture where he talks about the desirability of socialism:

This remark, in my opinion, displays a surprising degree of naivety. Of course, if it be viewed as a call for everyday politeness, then there should be nothing wrong with that. But if Prof. Cohen advocates that strangers should be treated with same amount of affection, trust and openness as one’s closest friends, then I seriously doubt whether it is in anyone’s power to live up that standard (not to mention the fact that the desirability to follow such a standard is equally dubious).

Next, the system that Prof. Cohen describes has no means of addressing the free-rider problem. On a camping trip, everyone can reasonably well see what others are doing and any shirking of duty can be punished accordingly. But in a large society, this is difficult to enforce. My hairdresser has no idea whether I go to work, am unemployed or study at a university. In a large socialist society, if I did not work and turned up at my hairdresser’s door, she wouldn’t know whether to punish me for free-riding by not cutting my hair or whether to cut my hair, as I would deserve, if I worked properly.

Next, there is the allocation problem. Campers know what to produce because they can communicate their needs between them fairly easily. With national economies, the problem gets so complicated that any allocation based on aggregation of information about individual needs (e.g. national planning) is an absurdity. No wonder that central planning as a model of national economy has been discredited – it really is a stupid idea. Prof. Cohen suggests what he calls market socialism in which the market mechanism would be allowed to operate in its allocative function but not in its distributive functions.

The difficulty with this notion is that it is a mere analytical tool, in real life, every transaction, be it wages paid to workers, interest paid to an investor or a tax paid to a government, is both allocative and distributive. Allocation and distribution cannot be realistically separated – except in one’s head – because they are the same thing. If you are a manager and you make a decision on whether to hire a plumber or a carpenter, then you are making a decision about the allocation of your resources but at the same time you decide to distribute your money to one but not the other. One of them will receive wages, the other will receive nothing from you. If you are a consumer, then your consumer choice between a shampoo and an ice-cream is not only a signal as to what to produce but also an act by which one producer shall end up with more money than the other.

From this point of view, even the Carensian system in which people are told what they would be paid under capitalism – in order to achieve the allocative efficiency of capitalism – but eventually all get the same pay – so that the distribution of wealth meets socialist requirements of equitable distribution – is quite impossible to achieve. The amount that you get is what counts and that is what you base your decisions on. To illustrate the point: if I asked for a list of things you would buy if you won a lottery, you would most likely draw up a completely different list of things than if you actually won the lottery – if only because in the actual events you would spend days thinking about it while otherwise, you have better things to do than daydreaming.

Overall, it seems to me that socialism scores poorly on feasibility. Even on theoretical level, certain aspects entail considerable complications. On that note, it is worth pointing out that one of the greatest advantages of current capitalism over any theoretical system is that, whether we like the system or not, we at least know how it works – and in considerable detail. That presents a truly Shakespearean indictment of socialism, for the high probability that its implementation may lead to even worse outcomes ”makes us rather bear those ills we have, than fly to others that we know not of…” Add to it the fact that one attempt at socialism has already ended in a terrible catastrophe – and it is clear that our view of feasibility of socialism will be rather sceptical.

The final point which I should address in this essay is that of desirability of socialism. It is worth noting that no matter how hard Prof. Cohen tries to separate the two aspects of feasibility and desirability, they are in fact a joint question. Because if the likelihood of success in implementing an idea – however beautiful – is slim, then there is really not much point in trying one’s luck. So, if the question of feasibility of socialism has already been answered in the previous paragraphs in the negative, it follows that the chances of socialism turning out to be desirable look rather low. But the question deserves a separate consideration: Should we strive to extend the camping trip principles to national societies and economies? Would it make us happier – would it make anyone happier?

I have already confessed to serious scepticism about the question. First of all, there is the question of justice. I seriously doubt that, on closer considerations, anyone would accept the socialist idea of equality of opportunity as fair and just. Let us take Prof. Cohen’s description of it:

In the camping trip setting, this idea seems perfectly acceptable. Cohen even gives an example in which one camper, Harry, tries to convert his extraordinary fishing skills into an ”unfair” advantage over others, claiming that better fishers should have better food. He is told off by his fellow campers. In real life, the situation may be more complicated. Take this example: one guy called Mozart and another guy called Salieri are commissioned to write an opera. Mozart comes back the next day and brings the astonishing Zauberflöte. Salieri turns up two weeks later and brings some mediocre piece of work called Tarare (it is supposed to be his greatest success). They ask their socialist paymaster to pay the wages: the answer is clear, Salieri walks off with fourteen times more money because he spent fourteen times more time on his lousy Singspiel, Mozart’s talents will win no special reward.

Of course, one could argue that this was a special, extreme, case. But similar situations, though less extreme, happen everyday – perhaps not with opera composers but examples abound from politicians to, say, university professors: some lecturers spend hours in preparation and then still do a lousy job. Others do no more than turn up and their lectures are a cruise…Under what Cohen calls the bourgeois concept of equality, the two would receive different wages depending on the quality of their work. The socialists, with their socialist notion of equality, prefer to think that ”natural-born teachers” must be punished for their talents while wannabes take the prize. I personally cannot see how this socialist idea of equality could be viewed as in any way fair or just or equitable. This is one of the reasons why socialism is not desirable.

Second, the combination of equality and community which makes up socialism is undesirable because it – even on theoretical level – would be a relatively oppressive regime. The personal freedoms would have to be necessarily limited. If nothing else, the socialist principle of equality severely restricts bargaining freedom. Trade – even the most trivial barter – would have to be forbidden, for it might give rise to inequalities.

Or take this example. In today’s capitalist world, if a group of people decides to live according to socialist ideal, they can form a community, move away from the capitalist world and there share the products of their labour in line with the ideals which are dear to them. In the capitalist society, this is possible, as long as the group infringes on no-one else’s rights. If, however, socialism was the governing principle of the day and a group of marketeers decided to live according to their market creed, they could not do so without breaking the laws of the larger society: since the socialist concept of equality would be embedded in the law. Even if the marketers all joined their community of their own free will, even if they accepted the idea that the life in their community will produce inequalities, even if they did not infringe upon anyone else’s rights, they would still have to be prosecuted for breaking the socialist laws on equality. That, too, is an unjustified limitation on freedom. It shows that freedoms would be restricted compared to current capitalist system. This is another reason why socialism is undesirable.

Would birthday presents be compatible with the socialist idea of equality or with the principle of community? Perhaps, one could use Prof. Cohen’s example with the sets of oranges and apples to show there is no problem with that. If I choose my set and Sheila chooses hers and I then decide to give her one of my apples, then I really should have no reason to complain about inequality, since I did not have to give her anything. But things can get more complicated than that. Sheila may be really personable, outspoken and friendly while, say, Joe is shy and keeps to himself. Joe is like that not by deliberate choice, it is his natural inclination, just as Shelia’s natural inclination is to be on first-name terms with anyone in five minutes – she has a talent of sorts. Now comes their birthday: Sheila is swamped with presents, Joe receives gifts only from his closest friends. And that is inequality. Doesn’t this situation fit perfectly with Cohen’s principle that

“there is injustice in a system that confers high rewards on people who happen to be unusually talented”?

The birthday present inequality may well arise under socialism and the principle of community, which Prof. Cohen invokes in the lecture, would call for a rectification of the birthday situation. Prof. Cohen describes the socialist idea of equality as follows:

Sheila has a natural talent for making friends and the amount of birthday presents is a clear result of that. If she is unfortunate enough to live in a true socialist society, it’s tough luck for her: no presents.

This idea of socialist equality would in fact kill charity entirely. Of course, this would be in part a result of the fact that with equality, there would be no poor people to be cared for and no rich people to actually take care of them. But other forms of charity would have to perish as well. Donating to universities or outstanding artists or top scientists would have to disappear, for it may create inequalities. I do not see anything desirable in that.

It is now time for me to come to the conclusion in which I should sum up my verdict. On the basis of the arguments I have tried to present above, I believe that market system, or capitalism, deserves much less criticism that Prof. Cohen has for it. It seems that, in contrast to most of the twentieth century, the socialists have finally come to terms with the fact that markets have the virtue of allocative efficiency, superior to any known system of organisation of economic activity. But there is still resistance against the claim that the market system is defensible not only on economic grounds (i.e. in terms of efficiency) but also on moral grounds. I did not want to go as far as to establish moral qualities of markets, I merely hoped to cast doubt on the socialist notion that market is necessarily and inherently morally deficient in comparison with the ideal of community. Second, concerning the feasibility of socialism, I think the answer is no, socialism is not feasible on a nationwide scale. I actually believe that, when taken literally, it is unfeasibly even on a camping trip. Finally, as regards the desirability of socialism, I again am inclined to answer in the negative. If asked to vote on whether another attempt should be made to make our society socialist, I would vote against – and my decision would not be led so much by the technical considerations (i.e. the questions of feasibility) but by moral consideration: for even on a theoretical basis, I have yet again concluded that socialism as a system is morally indefensible and plainly wrong.