G.A. Cohen and the Ethical Core of Socialism: Equality or Life-Sufficiency?
Bibliographic record
Abstract
In this paper I will critically examine G.A.’s Cohen understanding of equality as the normative foundation of socialism. Cohen consistently maintained that inequality was the primary social problem systematically generated by capitalism, and that equality was the primary normative foundation of the socialist alternative. The general question that I want to pose in this paper is: is Cohen’s understanding of equality as the normative foundation of socialism consistent with his general conception of socialism as a systemic alternative to capitalism? I will answer that it is not, because equality is not the best normative foundation for socialism conceived of as a systematic alternative to capitalism, and that elements of Cohen’s own work imply a deeper normative foundation in what I call the principle of life-sufficiency. Cet article examine la façon dont G.A. Cohen comprenait l’égalité comme l’un des fondements normatifs du socialisme. Cohen a argumenté que l’inégalité est le premier problème social du capitalisme, et que l’égalité est le premier fondement normatif de l’alternative socialiste. Dans cet article, je m’interroge sur la cohérence entre l’idée portée par Cohen selon laquelle l’égalité est le fondement normatif du socialisme et sa conception générale du socialisme comme une alternative systémique au capitalisme. Je répondrai à cette question par la négative, dans la mesure où l’égalité n’est pas le meilleur fondement d’un socialisme qui cherche à constituer une alternative systémique au capitalisme, et où certains éléments du travail de Cohen suggèrent un fondement plus profond dans ce que j’appelle le principe d’« autosuffisance ».
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.006 | 0.010 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.004 | 0.030 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.005 | 0.007 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Research integrity | 0.005 | 0.006 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".