G. A. Cohen on Self-Ownership, Property, and ... - Tom G. Palmer

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3238 Critical Review VoL 12, No. 3quires close scrutiny.’’ I shall set to the side questions about whether<strong>Cohen</strong> has fairly characterized Nozick’s proviso as constituting hisprinciple of appropriation: and will merely reproduce the conclusionof his treatment, as prolegomenon to his central argument that“self-ownership” can be so construed or integrated with otherarrangements as to necessitate completely equal distribution of wealthandincome. .<strong>Cohen</strong> (1995,90) insists that any appropriation will make someoneworse off,for no other reason than that someone will no longer beable to appropriate the now-appropriated item: “It is clear beyonddoubt that an appropriation of private property can contradict an individual’swill just as much as levying a tax on him can.” If contradictingone’s will is the criterion for a theory that is supposed to bebased on liberty, then, according to <strong>Cohen</strong>, no private appropriationcould meet the requirements of a suitably formulated Nozickian proviso,for, even if a latecomer finding no unappropriated resources lefrto appropriate were to be compensated by greater material wealth,this compensation could not undo the fact that the latecomer’s willhas been overruled. As <strong>Cohen</strong> (ibid., 89) argues, “Nozick disallowsobjectively paternalist use of people’s private property. But he permitsobjectively paternalist treatment of people in ocher ways. For, sincehe permits appropriations that satisfy nothing but his proviso, he allowsA to appropriate against B’s will when B benefits as a result, or,rather, as long as B does not lose.” If someone were to chop off myarm, even if he later made me better off, we would still say that myrights had been violated.In the process of making this move, allegedly showing that Nozick’sapproach cannot justifi appropriation by individuals (or groups)&om an unowned commons, <strong>Cohen</strong> suggests that Nozick‘s baselineof comparison-what one could get in a condition of no appropriationor ownership at all-is arbitrary, and that a variety of collectiveownership arrangements should be considered as candidates for thebaseline, as well.6 There are, according to <strong>Cohen</strong> (1995, 78), “otherintuitively relevant counterfactuals, and . . . they show that Nozick’sproviso is too lax, that he has arbitrarily narrowed the class of alternativeswith which we are to compare what happens when an appropriationoccurs with a view to determining whether anyone. is harmedby it.” The alternative rhat he singles out as “intuitively relevant” isthat ofjoint ownership, according to which a resource
Palmer <strong>Cohen</strong> on Property and Eqrcaliiy 229is owned, by all together, and what each may do with it is subject tocollective decision. The appropriate procedure €or reaching that decisionmay be hard to define, but it wil certainly not be open to anyone of the joint owners to privatize all or part of the asset unilaterally,no matter what compensation he offers to the rest. . .. . So if jointownership rather than no ownership is, mody speaking, the initialposition, then B has the right to forbid A to appropriate, even if Bwould benefit by what he thereby forbids. (Ibid., 83)In setting up the problem, <strong>Cohen</strong> (1995, 92) strives to “reconcileself-ownership with equality (or not too much inequality) of condition,by constructing an economic constitution which combines selfownershipwith an egalitarian approach to raw worldly resources.’’(<strong>Cohen</strong> never makes clear what “not too much inequality” can orshould mean, or how one might know how much was too much.)The principle of joint ownership, according to <strong>Cohen</strong>, when combinedwith strict “self-ownership,” would: I) preclude individual ‘orsubgroup property rights (or property in severalty through subdivision)through fkee agreement, and 2) generate completely equal distributionsof income (or, if any inequalities were to be allowed, theywould not reflect differences in control over productive powers, i.e.,they would not be due to one’s property in one’s person). <strong>Cohen</strong>tries to base both of those conclusions on the rationality of the parties.The point of <strong>Cohen</strong>’s exertions is to attempt to show that selfownershipwould not entail rights to several property, or world-ownership,under conditions of initial joint ownership of resources otherthan labor. <strong>Cohen</strong> claims that no individual or subgroup appropriationcan meet a properly formulated Nozickian proviso against harm,so there can be no legitimate individual or subgroup appropriation&om a condition of no-ownership. His next two steps are to arguethat rationality would preclude mutually agreeable individual or subgroupdivision of the jointly owned assets, and that it would be irrationalforjoint owners to agree to unequal distribution of their jointproduct. These are the steps I will now contest.Is Unequal Division ofjointly Owned Resources Irrational?The first of <strong>Cohen</strong>’s two rationality-based arguments concerns thedivision of assets (“appropriation”). He rejects individual or subgmup
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G. A. Cohen on Self-Ownership, Property, and ... - Tom G. Palmer

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