Analysis On G.A. Cohen’s Pespective Of Marxist View Of Justice

G. A. Cohen was a pioneer in analytical Marxism, he was regarded as the "egalitarian conscience". He believed that traditional Marxism generally ignored the legitimacy of norms and showed less interest in the principle of equality or any other interest, so they provided no moral justification for their own political ideals. Therefore, after Cohen lost confidence in the arguments on Marxist substantive conditions to achieve equality in the future, he shifted from the study of Marxist historical materialism to political philosophy, trying to develop a philosophy of equality to defend political ideals of Marxism.In order to guard the Socialist egalitarian principles, Cohen had argued with Rawls’s liberalism and Nozick’s libertarianism. This article had mainly discussed Cohen’s view on justice. He believed Marxist arguments on exploitation had recognized ownership which was being challenged by Nozick’s libertarianism. He also thought there were logical contradictions on Marxist theory of labor value and surplus value, we could not conclude workers was exploited by Capitalism. Furthermore, Cohen had discussed the necessary conditions of Marxism to achieve ideal society, and thought the prophecy of Communist society will come was not true. Cohen took the scarcity of resources as a logical premise, and pointed out the two principles of Socialism:an egalitarian principle and a community principle, and market socialism was a suboptimal principle to achieve socialism.Cohen’s idea had important theoretical and practical significance. He placed justice in an important position in the entire ideology of Marxism, enriched the ethical theory of Marxism, expanded the influence of Marxism in contemporary Western society. In addition, it had great influence on developing the socialist market economy and building a harmonious socialist society. However, due to the method of analysis philosophy, Cohen hadn’t realized Marxist self ownership was a historical concept, and also confused Marxist definition of value with its external conditions to achieve it. What’s more, Cohen misunderstood Marxist conditions to achieve an ideal society. And Cohen’s two principles of justice in ideal society wasn’t equal to the substantive equality. It was only facial or formal equality, which does not go beyond Marxist theory.