Abstract
Readers familiar with Harry Frankfurt's On Bullshit will know what I mean when I say that this is a small book. It is approximately eight inches tall, and 83 pages long. It is the sort of thing one might expect to pull from one's Christmas stocking. However small the package, though, the problems that Cohen addresses in this slim volume are of enormous importance, and can be taken seriously by readers ranging from those with only a tangential interest in the field, to serious scholars of egalitarian and socialist thought.
Cohen attempts to begin to answer the cover question ‘Why not socialism?’ with a simple thought experiment. A group of people are on a camping trip. Someone has brought a Frisbee, someone else has brought fishing poles. Some people do the cooking, others the cleaning up, all depending on their preferences and skills. But no-one on this camping trip questions how much any other individual should pay for the use of any of the equipment, or how much anyone ought to be compensated for, for example, the market value of his skill in fishing.
Obviously, this hypothetical camping situation is meant to model the possibility of a larger-scale socialist market economy, in which the means of production are publicly owned, the output of which would be directed toward an egalitarian consideration of the advantage of all involved. If the question remains ‘Why not socialism?’, an obvious observer might reply that the camping situation, and the economic situation of societies as a whole, are vastly, and importantly, different.
In the remainder of this thin volume, Cohen attempts to undermine this worry that large societies are relevantly different from camping trips, such that socialism is the correct response to the latter, but not the former.
One concern I have is that if this text is meant to be a primer or introduction to the virtues of a socialist political economy, then Cohen lets the arguments slip into the esoteric and academic. Chapter 2, for example, gets bogged down in the remarkable debate between Cohen and Ronald Dworkin regarding the correct currency of egalitarian justice (Cohen supporting access to advantage, Dworkin defending equality of resources). Relevant though it may be, this argument is an aside for those looking for a clear, concise, honest and intelligent introduction to socialist thinking. However, if lay readers are willing to wade through the esoterica, this is exactly what they will find.