Self-Ownership, Freedom, and Equality
Good Fit
- Readers interested in the intersection of Marxism, libertarianism, and egalitarian philosophy
- Readers who enjoy tracing how a philosophical argument takes shape through the author's own intellectual autobiography
- Readers who have read Robert Nozick's "Anarchy, State, and Utopia" and want a systematic Marxist reply
Not a Fit
- Readers wary of academic philosophical terminology who want lighter, more popular political writing
- Readers expecting a concrete political program or a practical policy solution
In the Preface, Cohen explains that seven of the book's chapters were previously published as separate articles (some substantially revised for inclusion here), while four chapters plus the Introduction were written specifically for this book — yet the whole represents a single intellectual journey: his response to the challenges libertarian political philosophy posed to his earlier dogmatic socialist beliefs.
In the Introduction, Cohen presents his own biography: raised in a communist, non-religious Jewish household in Montreal, educated in philosophy at McGill University, on the faculty of the Philosophy Department at University College London from 1963 to 1984, and a professor at Oxford from 1985 — known as a prominent defender of "Analytical Marxism" and a member of the "September Group."
His central claim: until 1972, he devoted himself solely to defending historical materialism — Marx's theory of history — treating it as a value-free, empirical theory (he compares it to nineteenth-century historical geology). But his colleague Jerry Dworkin's introduction of Robert Nozick's not-yet-published "Wilt Chamberlain" argument — the famous illustration of how free-market exchanges inevitably disrupt egalitarian "patterns" — redirected him fundamentally toward political philosophy; months spent at Princeton in 1975 alongside Thomas Nagel and Tim Scanlon accelerated the shift.
Cohen explains that classical Marxism grounded its demand for equality in two factual predictions: that the working class would grow into the overwhelming majority of society, and that developing productive forces would deliver limitless material abundance. He argues both predictions have been proven false historically — the working class fragmented rather than unified, and production now runs up against ecological resource limits — so equality must now be philosophically re-grounded not in a future of abundance, but in the condition of permanent scarcity brought on by the ecological crisis.
- A rare "confessional" style of academic prose that interweaves philosophical argument with personal intellectual biography
- A direct, step-by-step structure responding to Nozick's libertarian argument, each chapter building on the last
- Dismantles classical Marxist 'inevitability' arguments from within their own logic rather than attacking from outside
The foundational libertarian text Cohen responds to throughout the book — the Wilt Chamberlain argument originates here
The author's earlier landmark defense of historical materialism, frequently referenced in the Introduction
Another foundational text of modern equality/justice philosophy that Cohen repeatedly engages with
While the Introduction only sets the frame, the main body opens with an analysis of Nozick's Wilt Chamberlain argument (Chapter 1), followed by market exchanges and justice (Chapter 2), how self-ownership relates to owning the world and to equality (Chapter 3), and whether freedom and equality are compatible (Chapter 4).
The second half examines self-ownership's relation to communism and equality (Chapters 5-6), Marx's and Locke's theories of land and labor (Chapter 7), and the concept of exploitation in Marx (Chapter 8), before describing and evaluating the self-ownership thesis itself (Chapters 9-10) and closing with "the future of a disillusion" (Chapter 11).
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