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Book Cover for: Self-Ownership, Freedom, and Equality, G. A. Cohen

Self-Ownership, Freedom, and Equality

G. A. Cohen

Defenders of capitalism claim that its inequality is the necessary price of the freedom that it guarantees. In that defense of capitalist inequality, freedom is self-ownership, the right of each person to do as he wishes with himself. The author shows that self-ownership fails to deliver the freedom it promises to secure. He thereby undermines the idea that lovers of freedom should embrace capitalism and the inequality that comes with it. In the final chapter he reaffirms the moral superiority of socialism, against the background of the disastrous Soviet experiment.

Book Details

  • Publisher: Cambridge University Press
  • Publish Date: Nov 24th, 1995
  • Pages: 288
  • Language: English
  • Edition: undefined - undefined
  • Dimensions: 8.90in - 5.90in - 0.80in - 0.90lb
  • EAN: 9780521477512
  • Categories: History & Theory - GeneralCivil Rights

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Book Cover for: If You're an Egalitarian, How Come You're So Rich?, G. A. Cohen
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Book Cover for: History, Labour, and Freedom: Themes from Marx, G. A. Cohen

Praise for this book

"...provides an extended and masterful examination of the relationships between the concepts of self-ownership, freedom, and equality." Nancy Holmstrom, The Philosophical Review
"Cohen's book is crammed with intricate, interesting, and often ingenious arguments." Jan Narveson, The Journal of Ethics