Cohen's Argument For The Desirability Of Socialism

G.A Cohen aims to provide a concise argument for the desirability and feasibility of socialism. To accomplish this task, Cohen first describes a situation in which applied socialistic principles appear to be universally preferred to capitalistic principles. He then builds off of this model in order to demonstrate the desirability of socialism. Cohen acknowledges that desirability alone is insufficient to pursue socialism, thus beginning his discussion on the feasibility of this ideology. His primary argument in favor of the feasibility of socialism is that, although past efforts to create societies based on socialist principles have failed, it has not yet been proven that these attempts will always fail. Cohen thinks that the cause of these

In the final portion of the book Cohen writes that there are two primary arguments which explain why socialism has failed in the past; human selfishness and poor social technology. When discussing this, Cohen does not believe that human selfishness is a primary factor to the past and current infeasibility of socialism, but rather points almost entirely to poor social technology. Cohen states that people are both greedy and generous, and capitalism is an economic system built on the former. He continues to say that socialism is an economic system built on the latter; society has merely failed to understand how to effectively build this system. In mitigating the role of human nature, Cohen is arguing that human nature is not limited, but rather has the potential to be more moral and just if under the right systems. However, if human nature were such that it would flourish in a system based on generosity, why would generosity not be more evident under the freedom provided in a market system? Cohen does acknowledge that care for others motivates individuals, and cites careers in teaching and medicine as examples to this reality, but this is in reference to the calculation problem rather than to the existence of higher ideals within a capitalist system. Cohen states that in a socialist system individuals will have greater concern for others, but does not adequately explain the process through which this will