G. A. Cohen

G. A. Cohen was a Canadian-born political philosopher who taught at University College London and then held the Chichele Professorship of Social and Political Theory at Oxford. A founder of analytical Marxism, he first defended historical materialism with the tools of analytic philosophy and later turned to normative egalitarianism. His critique of John Rawls from the left argued that the difference principle, consistently applied, condemns the inequalities produced by incentive payments and that justice must shape personal choices as well as institutions.

Key ideas

• Historical materialism can be defended as a functional explanation of social change using analytic rigour.
• Rawls's incentive argument for inequality fails if the talented are themselves committed to the difference principle.
• Justice applies to people's choices within institutions, not only to the basic structure of society.
• Inequalities that do not reflect genuine choice are unjust, a view often classed as luck egalitarianism.

Major works

• Karl Marx's Theory of History: A Defence (1978)
• Self-Ownership, Freedom, and Equality (1995)
• If You're an Egalitarian, How Come You're So Rich? (2000)
• Rescuing Justice and Equality (2008)

In the conversation

• Question Can someone explain Nozick’s Wilt Chamberlain argument and the strongest reply to it? Ethan Mercer · 4 replies
• Reading group Reading group: G. A. Cohen’s Why Not Socialism?, a short book for a long argument Hugo Marchetti · 5 replies