The evolution of Cohen’s political position has taken a turn
that will seem to many to be, quite literally, mystifying. If You’re an
Egalitarian, How Come You’re So Rich? is, in part, a defence of religion
and religious morality, and the provocative title asks all on the Left
to examine their individual moral views. The book is based on a set of
lectures delivered in Edinburgh, established by a Lord Gifford in 1886 for
promoting and advancing the knowledge of God. Cohen’s broad view of his remit
results in a text that begins with personal memoir, provides an
interpretation and criticism of scientific socialism and an
egalitarian critique of Rawlsian liberalism, and concludes
with a ‘thought for the day’ for rich egalitarians (a quote from Mark’s
Gospel).
Cohen’s politicized, working-class family home is sketched in
contrast to the strong religious affinities—and divisions—that
characterized his school and home town, Montreal. A divided society, in its
turn, leaves Cohen’s intellectual views and emotional attachments at
variance. A leftist Jewish primary school taught the young Marxist about his
religious heritage, including a ‘History of the Class Struggle’ in Yiddish,
before it was disbanded in McCarthyite manner in 1952. At his Protestant
secondary school, the majority Jewish intake made Cohen feel that he had to
conceal both his lack of a bar mitzvah and his political views.
Press-ganged into a prayer group at summer camp, he then had to hide an
enjoyment of bible-reading—the rebellion of a revolutionary—from his
antireligious family. The final fault-line between heart and mind was
Cohen’s view of Israel, his initial anti-Zionism swayed by singing the
Israeli national anthem and, later, the Six Day War, to settle into
‘anti-anti-Zionism’—intellectually dismayed by, but feeling emotionally
responsible for, Israeli policy in the occupied territories.
The tales of Cohen’s childhood are set in the context of a
discussion about nurtured beliefs, with Cohen proposing that it is irrational
to continue to hold such beliefs once it is realized that a different
upbringing would have instilled rival ones. The first exhibit is Cohen’s
Marxist heritage, but in order to generalize beyond the political and religious
he cites his views, nurtured during an Oxford degree, about the distinction
between analytic and synthetic truths. Proposing irrationality seems rather
strained, for few are prepared to view their beliefs as irrational on the
grounds that an as-yet-unheard case might be just as strong: to do so would be
rather like listening to those politicians who speak on behalf of the ‘silent
majority’. Cohen, it would seem, intends to invoke the power of nurtured
belief and its hold over our life and actions. Moral and religious beliefs,
both in the family and across society, constitute a structure that forms
opinions, influences subsequent actions and constrains our future choices.
Cohen’s political views were initially defined by his
relation to Marxism, culminating in his involvement with the
‘Analytical Marxists’, who sought to reformulate Marx’s work
within the parameters dictated by analytic philosophy. The case against Marx in
these lectures continues a familiar theme from that work: isolating and
criticizing the Hegelian legacy in Marxist theory. The defender of
Karl Marx’s theory of history has now become a critic, and the first target
in these lectures is what Cohen has called the ‘obstetric motif’
in Marxism—the claim that the solution to the contradictions of capitalism is
to be found within capitalism; that the route to communism, and its main
features, can be detected within the current order; and that any potential
socialist transformation can usefully be described as the old order
‘giving birth’ to the new.
The critique of Hegel therefore focuses on the
proposition that a solution is only available when a problem is fully
developed, and that this solution is endogenous to the fully formed problem.
Applied to society, this aspect of the dialectical method results in
the view that any political solution is necessarily endogenous: any blueprints
for socialism, or ideals upon which to found it, that are applied from
‘without’ cannot be part of a real transformation. Cohen argues that the
obstetric motif has encouraged a ‘criminal inattention’ to the problems of
developing a socialist conception of justice and envisaging the structure of a
socialist state, both being necessitated by people’s reasonable adherence to
‘the devil they know’. It is conceded that politically viable normative
structures are inevitably related to the current social and economic
conditions—what is right must be possible—but that does not rule out a role
for a conception of justice, or of a wider morality, in bringing about
political change.
Cohen argues that a strong moral case provided the implicit
basis for the traditional critique of capitalism, and was a vital
element in the political success of socialist movements. This was founded upon
the fact that the proletariat was perceived to combine four distinct features:
being the majority of society; producing the wealth of society; being the
exploited in society; and being the needy people in society. A wide variety of
existing moral viewpoints—democratic views, the right to the product of
one’s labour, and humanitarian concern—would therefore be politically
inclined to support Marxism. The evolution of capitalism has ensured that these
features have now come apart: the working class in the West is much better off,
and the most needy are those unable to work. The result is to undermine the
view that socialist revolution is inevitable in two respects. Firstly, there is
no prospect of a unified working class having a direct interest in socialist
transformation—due to exploitation and need—and being able to carry it out.
Secondly, any case for socialism that wishes to combine the same range of moral
viewpoints now has its work cut out, for they are more widely seen to conflict.
It is worth noting that Marx directly addressed the conflict between
distribution according to need and the right to the product of your labour in
the Critique of the Gotha Programme:Cohen dismisses this discussion on
the grounds that the solution proposed was not chosen from a ‘menu of policy
options’.
In reply to those who hold that the four features cohere at the
international level, Cohen asserts that the working class ‘do not form a
majority within or across the societies in question’. This is due to the
disaggregation of the Western working class into distinct and relatively
well-off groups, the continuing agrarian majority in the developing world, and
the ability of transnational capital to absorb and expel sets of workers at
will. The international cooperation of labour is not an option: there are too
many cultural barriers for labour to organize effectively at this level. Worse
still, for the socialist hope of material equality, is the environmental
crisis. Aggregate consumption will have to be reduced, and we therefore need a
political morality which presumes that conditions of scarcity will persist for
the foreseeable future.