Date: Sat, 18 Oct 1997 17:21:27 -0400 Subject: M-I: Philosophers' Web Magazine Interview with G.A. Cohen (part 3) From: farmelantj-AT-juno.com (James Farmelant) G. A. Cohen Interviewed - Part III THE VALUE OF EQUALITY Scannella: Going back to your conception of socialism, one of the reasons why you favour it so much is because you feel that it ensures a much more fundamental sense of equality. Why, as a philosopher, do you feel that equality matters so much? Cohen: Well, there are two absolutely different reasons why it matters. It matters because it makes the worse off people in society better off that they would otherwise be, and it is a very compelling moral idea that when we organise society, the worst off in the society should not be worse off than anyone in a society needs to be. By and large, if you equalise things, you bring up those at the bottom, whatever happens to anyone else. One of the most common Tory arguments for inequality is that it makes those at the bottom better off, and if that factual claim about inequality were correct – if the trickledown theory, according to which as the rich get richer all boats rise and the poor get richer too than they otherwise would be – if it were true then the case for socialism on the grounds of justice would be severely prejudiced. But it isn’t correct and the statistics show that the material welfare of the worst off in this society was savaged by the government that propagated that ideology. So one reason to be in favour of equality is that it makes the worst off better off. But that is not the whole of it. The harder point to defend is that equality is good in itself. Here I would borrow some ideas of Ronald Dworkin, although I do not know how much I have added to them. His response to the argument that equality only matters as a means to make the worst off better and has no other value is this: Imagine that you are a parent of, say, four children, and you have resources to distribute among them: it is simply wrong to distribute them unequally. You are not going to distribute what you have to distribute to them unequally, even if, were they unequally treated, the one at the bottom would be better off than he would be if they were all equally treated. You are going to treat them equally because you believe it is appropriate: it is the right relationship between you and them that they be treated equally. Now, the complex question is, can we understand the society to which we belong as a collective agent which we together comprise, one that properly relates to each of us in a similar fashion, so that it is inappropriate or unjust if our society treats us unequally, quite apart from how badly off or well off any one of us in particular is? Suppose that the society we live in is invested with gigantic resources, which would enable everyone to be a millionaire, but instead it is so distributed so that some people are half-millionaires and some people are super-millionaires. Now nobody could make a song and dance about how badly off the people at the bottom are, that could hardy be regarded as an urgent matter, but the society would nevertheless be unjust, because it is not treating all those very fortunate people equally. So that is the way to go if you want to vindicate equality as an end in itself. THE PHILOSOPHER AND SOCIETY Scannella: As a philosopher, one value you must endorse is intellectual integrity. Do you think that there may be a tension between articulating a coherent philosophical defence of socialism and producing a revolutionary and political doctrine which stimulates people to action? Could not one argue that this tension is epitomised in your criticism of the labour theory of value and historical materialism? Alternatively, where is the politics in analytic Marxism? Cohen: I think there is a serious issue here. You cannot guarantee that the truth will always be good from a revolutionary point of view. How could that conceivably be guaranteed? Now if I did not believe that there was a broad coincidence between what’s true and what could and should motivate people, then my intellectual enterprise would be incoherent. I am a socialist intellectual because I believe in socialism and if, in general, discovering things about socialism is not going to advance the cause of socialism but to retard it then I have to choose between being an intellectual and being a socialist. I do not think that a broad contradiction exists, but I do concede that there may be individual contradictions, whether or not the ones you have mentioned are among them. You certainly do discover things which it might be better to hush up because they tarnish the ideal in various ways. I think that every person has a right to be honest. I think that individuals have rights against collective demands, even against the collective demand to produce a better society, and I think I have the right not to tell lies even when those lies would be beneficial for the socialist movement. This does not mean you have to be a political idiot and never take account of what the effect is going to be of what you say in a given context, but there is a difference between that kind of public tact and outright deception. One has a right not to engage in deception. So I would acknowledge that the two desiderata of promoting socialism and being honest can conflict, but I deny that they can conflict on a wide scale. If I thought they conflicted very broadly, then I would find it difficult to be a socialist. Where individual conflicts exist, a degree of diplomacy is clearly in order. But if no reasonable degree of diplomacy can conceal the damaging truth, then you cannot expect the intellectual to not come out with the damaging truth, because the intellectual does have a right to be honest. Scannella: So is this where you see the value of philosophy, in that it sharpens our analytic skills and thus enable us to be more honest as human beings? Cohen: Well, I do not think it has only one value, but that is perhaps one of its values. From a socialist political point of view, philosophy is invaluable because it assists in two essential tasks. The first is that it exposes the lies, the hypocrisy and the sophisms of those who defend inequality and injustice and capitalism. These deceptions are enormously powerful: look at the impact the arguments in favour of the capitalist system have had. That’s one of the reasons why so many people believe in it, because in a certain sense it is well argued for. In order to address those powerful arguments you have to be highly skilled and that’s one of the reasons why philosophy is important from a socialist point of view. It is important to combat the enemies’ lies because they are not such straightforward lies. Equally, in the more positive task of socialist construction, it is very important for philosophers to participate with economists, sociologists and others in addressing the problems of the design and functioning of a socialist society. Marx used to say when he was asked what socialism would be like, "I do not want to write recipes for future kitchens." He thought the issues of socialist construction would come up in the future and that they could only be addressed in the future. That was one of his biggest mistakes because unless socialists have a tolerably definite conception of the socialist society which they favour, they will not attract anyone else to their vision. You cannot get people to abandon capitalism in favour of socialism just because socialism sounds good. You need a tolerably detailed prospectus. If I say I am going to build you a wonderful house and that it is going to meet all your dreams and you will love it, and you then ask how many rooms it will have, how will it be heated, and so forth, and I say "I cannot answer any of these questions, but, believe me, it will all work itself out," you will rightly be sceptical. So socialists need to provide maps and blueprints and discussions about practical issues about how socialism would function for the political purpose of winning people to the cause. They also need to do that for the more evident direct reason that if and to the extent that socialists gain some power, they have to be intelligent about what they are going to do with it, and if they do not do a lot of prethinking they are going to get into a mess; and that’s been the record of history. Scannella: Beyond combating capitalist ideology, what other advice would you give academic socialists as to carrying out practical political action? Cohen: Well, partly it depends on how old they are and how much experience they already have. If you are a young person and profess to be a socialist, you should get into some real experience of real struggle with people on the ground, as many young people do. I am not going to say you should belong to the Socialist Workers’ party rather than the Young Socialists or The Socialist party, but it is very important to engage in some action, to know what political activity is and also to be with people who are not just intellectuals and see how they experience things. It is not because your body is needed. You as an intellectual will probably ultimately make a greater contribution by sitting at your desk and working on these difficult problems. There is a division of labour. But you will not know what it is to be a socialist or what socialism is, unless you mingle with non-intellectual people for whom socialism is designed, and not just relatively privileged people like yourself. The political activity that an intellectual specifically engages in is the activity of trying to get questions about socialism clear and that is important for the reasons I gave in my previous answer to your question. Scannella: Do you feel that, at least to some extent, intellectual socialists merely interpret the world rather than change it? Cohen: Intellectual socialists have for a hundred years contributed to important changes in the world by virtue of their interpretations of the world that they have offered. If there had never been intellectual socialists criticising capitalism, talking about ways of diminishing its impact on exposed and weak people, talking about different ways of organising society, there would never have been the massive changes that there have been over the last hundred years, even though those changes also cost blood. They did cost blood and of course they were not the immediate result of a good idea in an armchair or at a desk. Not if there had not been a lot of pain and struggle at that armchair and at that desk there would have been less clarity about what people were fighting for and there would have been less good changes. So to say that you are interpreting the world, not changing it, is an utterly false dichotomy. A major way of contributing to social change is by correct, incisive and innovative interpretation of the world that we live in. Scannella: Surely, most of the people you wish to commit to action are not intellectuals and will not be able to understand or wish to read our ideas. Cohen: Well, there are different intellectual levels at which the ideas can be articulated and some of my ideas are expressed in a way that makes them pretty widely accessible and others are much too refined and arcane to be widely accessible. I teach people who are influenced by my ideas and these people in turn go into professions and activities where they express those ideas in fashions which are much more accessible than the one in which they heard it from me. Therefore it is false that in order for my ideas to reach ordinary people I have to express them in a fashion that makes them accessible. The process of ideological change in a society is much more complex than that; it’s millions of different people talking to one another at all kinds of levels, sometimes symmetrically and sometimes asymmetrically. You are part of a very large process. Scannella: You argue in general that Marxism should be completely and utterly philosophically justified, or as you put it, "free of bullshit." How guilty do you think some of your philosophical predecessors, particularly Marx, are guilty of bullshitting? Cohen: I think that a bullshitter is someone who does not care about the truth but simply wants to appear to be right whatever the truth may or may not be, and when you criticise a bullshitter they will dishonestly shift ground, and not change their position. They prefer wilful obscurity to clarity because clarity can undermine your own position. Although he was at times obscure, because of the influence of Hegel on him, Marx was not a bullshitter. He was not disposed to defend his theories in an intellectually disreputable way. Your comments on this article Back to Main Back to Current Edition --------- End forwarded message ---------- --- from list marxism-international-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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