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“... Frank Parkin calls his challenging book ‘bourgeois’, but it is possible to be more bourgeois about class than Parkin is. Much bourgeois sociology denies the existence of distinct classes: it sees only gentle gradations of income, status and power. Parkin’s classes are as real as those of any Marxist. He thinks there is an exploiting bourgeoisie and an exploited proletariat ...”

“... Sidney Morgenbesser says that ‘All Philo is Philo l.’ He means, I think, that nothing is established in philosophy. At any time everything can be turned around, and the front line is pretty close to base camp. A book by Thomas Nagel proves Morgenbesser’s point. There is no better philosophical primer than Nagel’s What does it all mean? A Very Short Introduction to Philosophy (1987 ...”

“... overcome and advance beyond the predatory phase of human development’, and for G.A. Cohen ‘every market … is a system of predation.’ That is the essence of his short but trenchant and elegantly written last book – Cohen died last August. His object is to make what he calls a ‘preliminary’ case ...”

“... and giving people casts about the water is my business, which I would do for anybody.’ G.A. Cohen is one of the few socialists left today who is still drawn to this vision of an egalitarian community governed by the principle of freely-given service, and Self-Ownership, Freedom and Equality can be seen as an indirect attempt to reaffirm its ...”

“... that begins with engaging personal reminiscence and goes on to careful exegetical argument, G.A. Cohen recounts his experience as a student of Berlin’s, and then takes issue with his view of Marx as devoid of familiar moral attitudes toward social injustice, yet vindictively drawn by the prospect of a violent reckoning. Given the strategic lessons that the ...”

“... anyone else have been able to do much more than fill the gap with importations. In this situation, Cohen’s defence of historical materialism represents a significant new departure. Unlike most Marxists, and in particular most Marxist philosophers, Cohen sees great value in the techniques and achievements of British ...”

“... with him. He has in his sights the ‘neo-Augustinians’, as he calls them, like the late G.A. Cohen, for whom justice can be realised only in a secular version of Augustine’s City of God, thereby leaving political philosophers with nothing to do but lament the size of the gap between the disappointing actual and the impossible ideal. What use is a ...”

“... action, and historical materialism. The outstanding work in this respect is the book by G.A. Cohen, Karl Marx’s Theory of History. Within economics there are some instances of Marxism making a positive contribution to economic theory, if not yet to our understanding of actual economies. But there is a long way to go before one can talk of the state I ...”

“... Labour Party and its traditions. In a recent issue of New Left Review the political theorist G.A. Cohen criticised the Report (or rather one of its previously published working papers) on the ground that it has abandoned any ‘foundational’ beliefs. The commitment to equality as a principle has been forsaken for an instrumental definition whereby equality ...”

“... is not true (though he is careful not to tangle refutations with Marxist heavyweights like G.A. Cohen), its persistence has to be explained away. Marxism, he diagnoses, is not a system of rationally-held beliefs. Its structure is that of myth, designed to satisfy ‘the human desire for beliefs which are at the same time scientific and ...”

“... the Almighty and meting out condign punishment to malefactors. In similar vein, the late G.A. Cohen argued that ‘principles’ were ‘prior’ to facts: any given fact will have practical implications only if there is some principle which tells us why we should pay heed to that fact. For instance, someone who thinks it makes a difference, when ...”

“... is a kind of delusion, a substitute for reality and often an illicit improvement upon it.’ Ralph Cohen follows the transgeneric fortunes and misfortunes of George Barnwell, and Maximillian Novak pursues sincerity and authenticity in Defoe. He sees Bishop Hoadly as a catalyst here, but doesn’t note one irony: Hoadly may have ‘shared more than a few ideas ...”