John Rawls and the Death of Western Marxism

I think a key part of this is that the Labor Theory of Value has fallen flat. (which he mentions in the article)

In our increasingly complex and technologically advanced society, the LTV looks more and more out of date, especially since the marginal revolution proved its worth with societies exponential growth on the basis of its theories. The value of a good comes from what people each value it and are willing to pay, and there are clearly other factors than labor that go into a good.

Does anyone have any information on where the author gets his claim that Cohen has a "road to Damascus moment" upon arriving at Harvard? I can't find anything on that, or even anyone else claiming Cohen was a "liberal".

This article is very light on supporting quotes or references, so im very suspect of his claims that analytical Marxist converted to beliefs that are opposed to Marxist analysis. Especially given many of Cohen's later works are focused on scientific socialism.

It's easy to say it failed, but if you look at the communist manifesto's actual demands:

> the abolition of private property in land and inheritance; introduction of a progressive income tax; confiscation of rebels' property; nationalisation of credit, communication, and transport; expansion and integration of industry and agriculture; enforcement of universal obligation of labour; and provision of universal education and abolition of child labour.

Most, if not all of these are now uncontroversial standards in modern states. It's not considered Marxist that we have ended child labor, and we have universal education, or that we have progressive incomes taxes, or that the state regulates credit/communications/transport. In fact these are just common sense practices that we all know would be a disaster if we abandoned them.

So we've basically adopted the majority of what the manifesto recommended, and now we're high-fiving and saying Marxism is dead. Capitalism arguably survived because it adopted these.

In western democracies we have many functions roads, health, education, security in which a government provided service exists side by side with market alternatives. I think the public confidence in those functions in different countries is a good metric of that countries ability to operate a service for the public good. There’s no need for revolution, just keep shaping a culture that understands how to eliminate corruption and govern services for the universal good, and we can iterate our way to automated luxury communism: Lets fix schools & hospitals first, then we can talk more

> Marxists, after having removed all of the bullshit from Marxism, discovered that there was nothing left but liberalism.

This is not true. Marxism deals with much more metaphysical questions than liberalism does. The issue is not just that some people are poor and others are rich and that that's unfair. That has been true since time immemorial, but Marx's object of inquiry was specifically the economic system brought into being by the industrial revolution and other material changes. That system by its nature produces specific classes of people (proletariats and bourgeoisie), and Marxism is really about an analysis of those classes and the ethical questions brought about by their interaction.

So for example a big issue Marx is concerned with that is totally absent from liberalism is this concept of 'alienation'[1], whereby a worker becomes wholly estranged, in an artificial way, from the product that he creates; and whereby labour, normally a self-realizing and delightful undertaking, becomes instead commoditized as merely a means to existence.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marx%27s_theory_of_alienation

I hate how impossible this topic is to discuss, most people have a preconceived notion of what Marxism is that is usually so off base and you have to argue with their idea of what it is and not what it actually if

If only it had killed it. It just made it a bit sickly.

We know it's a complete failure, yet people are continuing to make the attempt at totalitarian Marxist government. Capitalism and oligarchy are a terrible combination, as we're seeing now. How about we go back to democracy and capitalism instead of trying on the Marxist hat?

I think this is very wrong. Rawls isn't liberalism, or at least A Theory of Justice isn't liberalism. Maybe he imagined it to be, but there is no actual relation to it.

The equal opportunity principle is probably impossible in a society that permits large capital owners. Campaign donations are certainly right out, because there's always people on margins who can't afford to give them, and they do lead to people not have an opportunity to influence politics.

People can imagine that Rawls' system is liberal, and I imagine he imagined it, but the reality is that liberalism is not an implementation of Rawls' system and there is in fact no connection between it and liberalism other than people's imaginings.

It's like 'Here's an axiomatisation of arithmetic' and you find that it has nothing to do with arithmetic at all-- it's some kind of nonabelian not-even-a-ring which might exist, but where nobody has even tried to prove it.

This idea about not taxing ultra-productive individuals is actually compatible with the Marxian conception of socialism. 'to each according to his contribution', so for a Marxist there's nothing problematic with Nozicks argument. Marxism is an ideology for people who want to build things and want the whole thing they build, not an ideology for egalitarian-- the text presents this as something which leads people not to be Marxists, and that's probably true in academia-- after all, social scientists aren't usually building things that they want to enjoy in their entirety and of which they want the whole thing, so of course they're not going to be Marxists, but they aren't really the people it's made for either.

"My best suggestion for overcoming this challenge, when reading A Theory of Justice, is to go into it thinking “this is the book that killed Western Marxism,” and then focus on figuring out how it managed to do so."

I've argued a related point, that if you want to build a successful Communism, in which all property is held by the government, then you have to do that by first embracing liberalism. See "How to build a pragmatic Communism that works intelligently and efficiently":

https://demodexio.substack.com/p/how-to-build-a-pragmatic-co...

The problem with this discussion is thinking that the good life is about access to material resources and that we should examine unequal access to them and fix that.

It is simply missing that there are other more important inequalities and that people are being deprived of other things in life. Main one being mating opportunities and access to attractive sexual partners. You could fix inequality in access to material resources, but then people who are ugly would still be deprived of having attractive mates who love them.

Interesting read: https://www.overcomingbias.com/p/comparing-income-sex-redist...