A Review Of Argument On G.A.Cohen’s Socialism Political Philosophy

G.A.Cohen is one of the founders and schoolleaders of Marxist analysis, who was regarded as the most respectedMarxist in English-speaking world. There is a big inference fromCohen’s upbringing of family, political and academic environment,so he formed a firm belief in socialism. In the seventies and eightiesof twentieth century, the socialist beliefs and traditions of Marxisttheory that he insists met with the disapproval and challenges ofWestern liberalism. Meanwhile, socialist movement，located in lowebb，after the disintegration of the Soviet Union, was under severesetback in the Western developed countries. In this case, Cohen’sresearch turned to political philosophy, which is committed toconduct feasibility studies for the socialist political philosophy. In1988, his book named "History, labor and freedom" was published,which proposed three questions: namely, what kind of socialism dowe want? Why should we need this kind of socialism? How toachieve socialism? His academic career is committed to addressingthese three issues. His theory reflects the traditional Marxistsocialism, which responded to Nozick as the representative of theright-wing liberal capitalist inequality defense openly. He alsocriticized the realization of social equality on Rawls’ Theory on thelargest possible range by subjective effort, but he was implicitly todefend capitalist inequality subjectively. Finally, Cohen proposed thetwo basic principles of socialism——the egalitarian principle and the principle of community and the path of the socialist ideal toachieve equality under the socialist market economy about the basisof reciprocity, such as the one establishing to meet the needs ofothers and striving socialist systems. Meanwhile, strengthen theconstruction of socialist morality. Cohen reflection of the traditionalMarxist theory, criticisms of contemporary capitalism, theestablished principles of socialism and the path of socialist ideals torealize, namely Cohen’s argument for a socialist political philosophy,which is good for contemporary building of socialism with Chinesecharacteristics.