Freedom and Money by G. A. Cohen
Brief Bio
Gerald Allan Cohen (1941 - 2009), was a Canadian political philosopher known for his work on Marxism, and later, egalitarianism and distributive justice. He was born in Montreal, Quebec into a working class, communist Jewish family. He studied at McGill University (BA in philosophy and political science) and later at the University of Oxford (Phil in philosophy). Cohen held prestigious positions including the Quain Professor of Jurisprudence at University College London and the Chichele Professor of Social and Political Theory at All Souls College, Oxford. Cohen was renowned for applying the analytic tradition to Marxism, his 1978 work Karl Marx’s Theory of History: A Defence was seminal in bringing about Analytic Marxism, or as Cohen called it, Non-Bullshit Marxism.” As his views evolved, he later focused more on egalitarianism and distributive justice. 1, 2
tl;dr
In “Freedom and Money,” G.A. Cohen argues that having more money typically equals having more freedom, as it allows people to access goods and services. However, he challenges the common right-wing view that therefore, market capitalism, which often leads to unequal wealth distribution, is a champion of freedom.
Cohen presents an analogy comparing money to “access tickets” in a hypothetical society, illustrating how money, like tickets, grants individuals access to various goods and services. But, unlike a state distributing these tickets, in a capitalist society, private individuals (or asset holders) control who gets what, based on who can pay.
He also delves into philosophical discussions on the definition of freedom, and critiques the idea that private property rights are strongly linked to freedom. He says that this connection is often used to justify current capitalist structures without thoroughly examining the implications on freedom for everyone, especially the less wealthy.
Cohen suggests that the conversation should instead focus on how freedom could be more equitably distributed, especially when resources are limited. He doesn’t outright dismiss capitalism but calls for a deeper examination of how it impacts freedom across different societal strata. Through his argument, Cohen invites readers to explore more nuanced and equitable interpretations of freedom in capitalist societies.
Section-by-section Summary
My principal contention, one that contradicts very influential things that Isaiah wrote, is that lack of money, poverty, carries with it lack of freedom. […] To put the point more precisely – there are lots of things that, because they are poor, poor people are not free to do, things that non-poor people are, by contrast, indeed free todo.
A poor person might say that she feels no longer free to visit her sister in a distant town, when the special bus service has been withdrawn. Maybe the intellectual can show that that is just a feeling: that she may feel less free than she was before, but that actually she isn’t. But I disagree with the relevant intellectuals: I believe that the feeling that the poor woman expresses represents a correct judgment.
Right-wing people celebrate the freedom enjoyed by all in a liberal capitalist society. Left-wing people respond that the freedom which the right celebrate is merely formal, that, while the poor are formally free to do all kinds of things that the state does not forbid anyone to do, their parlous situation means that they are not really free to do very many of them, since they cannot afford to do them, and they are, therefore, in the end, prevented from doing them. But the right now rejoin that, in saying all that, the left confuse freedom with resources. You are free to do anything that no one will interfere with, say the right. If you cannot afford to do something, that does not mean that you lack the freedom to do it, but just that you lack the means, and, therefore, the ability to do it. The problem the poor face is not that they lack freedomm but that they are not always able to exercise the freedom they undoubtedly have. When the left say that the poor, by virtue of being poor, lack freedom itself, the left, so the right claim, indulge in tendentious use of language.
Distilling the right-wing argument regarding freedom, poverty, and the role of government
The full right-wing position regarding freedom, poverty, and the role of government contains two movements.
The first movement concludes in a conceptual claim:
- Freedom is compromised by interference from others, not by a lack of means.
- To lack money is to suffer a lack of means, not interference.
- Therefore, poverty does not compromise freedom.
The second movement then concludes with a normative claim— what out to be done:
- (Again) Poverty does not compromise freedom.
- The primary task of government is to protect freedom.
- Therefore, relief of poverty is not a primary task of government.
Let’s illustrate the full argument using examples:
- Physically stopping someone from speaking compromises their freedom.
- But not affording a microphone (lack of means) does not compromise their freedom.
- A government is justified in prioritizing military spending to “protect freedom” over investing in social welfare programs.
Left-wing counter-arguments
A familiar left-wing response is to challenge proposition (1) by questioning how a person can reasonably be said to be free to do what they are unable to do.
Another left-wing response, such as by Berlin and Rawls, accepts the conceptual claim but denies proposition (4) and says: Lack of means is just as confining as lack of freedom. Therefore, lack of means is just as important for the state to rectify.
Cohen doesn’t necessarily agree or disagree with either response. However, he will instead reject premise (2) because he believes it’s more powerful as it meets the right-wing on their own conceptual ground.
Section 1
Both Rawls and Berlin, according to Cohen, unfortunately accept the right-wing contrast between freedom and money. They agree with the right’s conceptual claim, even though they reject the right’s normative claim.
In Berlin’s conception of The New Deal, comparatively poor and powerless people gained security and resources, while wealthy people lost some resources, and everyone lost some freedoms. In the net result of the New Deal, on Berlin’s view, security was enhanced, and certain freedoms were rendered more valuable, at the (justifiable) expense of freedom itself.
Rawls differentiates between the impact of poverty and the essence of freedom, suggesting that poverty affects the worth of liberty but not liberty itself. It’s like saying being poor doesn’t stop someone from having the right to buy a house, but it does affect the value of that right since they can’t exercise it.
There’s an inconsistency in Rawls’ argument as he accepts that vague laws restrict liberty by creating fear, but doesn’t see poverty, which can completely prevent the exercise of liberty, as a constraint on liberty itself. It’s akin to arguing that a foggy sign (vague laws) that makes a driver slow down restricts freedom, but a total lack of fuel (poverty) that halts the car doesn’t.
If fear due to vague laws is a constraint on liberty, the absolute barrier that poverty creates should also be recognized as a constraint on liberty.
Section 2
In this section, Cohen is arguing against a simplistic view of money and urging a nuanced, real-world-oriented exploration of freedom, pushing beyond mere legalistic or theoretical frameworks to understand the interplay between economic conditions and individual liberty.
He will refute proposition (2): asserting that lack of money does in fact accompany interference.
I shall argue that the poor lack freedom, even in the right’s, and Berlin’s and Rawls’s, preferred sense of freedom, where freedom is identified with lack of interference, and whether or not that identification of freedom is too restrictive.
In setting up his argument, Cohen distinguishes between legal freedom and “effective freedom”, and assumes a scenario where the law is fully enforced.
We shall consider only the central case, in which the law prevails, and where legal freedom therefore runs alongside what we may call effective freedom.
Cohen suggests that Berlin’s position wrongly treats money as a mere thing (reified view), similar to things like intelligence or strength. Unlike money, having less intelligence or strength doesn’t always lead to interference or restriction in freedom.
Example: A less intelligent person might take longer to solve a puzzle but isn’t physically stopped from trying, unlike a poor person who could be physically stopped from entering a paid facility.
[The] Berlin position depends upon a reified view of money: that is, it wrongly treats money as a thing… The Berlin view is false, because money is unlike intelligence or strength, poor endowments of which do not always, indeed, prejudice freedom, as long as freedom is identified with absence of interference.
Cohen continues…
Even if incapacities like illness and ignorance do not restrict freedom, because no interference need obtain where they are present, poverty demonstrably implies liability to interference… [People on the center-left] accede needlessly to the right’s misrepresentation of the relationship between poverty and freedom when they treat poverty […] as restricting not freedom itself but only “what [people] can do with their freedom”.
Example 1: An ill person might not be stopped from entering a public park, but a poor person might be stopped from entering a paid amusement park due to lack of money.
Example 2: If a poor individual tries to take a bus ride without paying the fare, they’ll face interference in the form of being kicked off the bus.
Cohen continues by challenging the idea that a liberal capitalist society is inherently a free society by emphasizing the crucial role of money in structuring freedom.
He acknowledges that every society has its own structure of granting and withholding freedom but argues that the role of money in this structure is often underestimated or missed in capitalist societies.
[Societies] have structurally different ways of inducing distributions of freedom, and, in a society like ours, where freedom is to a massive extent granted and withheld through the distribution of money, that fact, that money structures freedom, is often not appreciated… and an illusion develops that freedom in a society like ours is not restricted by the distribution of money.
Cohen points out that both private and public goods and services require money for access, thus making money a direct enabler of freedom.
Or consider a moneyless woman who wants to pick up, and take home, a sweater on the counter at Selfridge’s. If she contrives to do so, she will be physically stopped outside Selfridge’s and the sweater will be removed. The only way you won’t be prevented from getting and using things that cost money in our society - which is to say: most things - is by offering money for them.
Cohen suggests that lacking money equates to being liable to interference, which opposes the idea that money is merely an object or means like physical or mental resources.
So to lack money is to be liable to interference, and the assimilation of money to physical, or even mental, resources is a piece of unthinking fetishism, in the good old Marxist sense that it misrepresents social relations of constraint as people lacking things. In a word: money is no object.
He emphasizes that the value of money lies in the freedom it affords, even if one doesn’t want to exercise all such freedoms or money alone isn’t sufficient to achieve total freedom.
Example: Money provides the freedom to choose where to live, what to eat, or how to educate oneself, even if one doesn’t utilize all these freedoms.
The value of money is that it gives you freedom, and that is so even though (a) you may not want to exercise (all the) freedom in question, and (b) money alone never suffices, by itself, to supply the freedom its seekers seek.
Cohen notes people may desire money for various reasons, like power or prestige, yet these motivations don’t undermine money’s role in providing freedom.
(a) is true because a person may desire money other than in order to spend it. She may, for example, desire it because of the power that possessing the freedoms in question bestows upon her: she can, for example, threaten to sue others in circumstances where a like threat from a poor person would not be credible. She may also desire money because of the prestige that it brings: many people admire the rich.
Cohen highlights that besides money, other conditions like age, information, or willingness of the seller are needed to acquire goods, yet these conditions apply to both rich and poor alike. The unique difference is the poor person’s lack of money.
He describes money as an “inus condition” of the freedom to acquire. For example, having money is a necessary condition to buy a house, though it’s insufficient since other conditions, like legal eligibility, are also required.
| “INUS condition” |
|---|
| An INUS condition stands for an “Insufficient but Necessary part of an Unnecessary but Sufficient condition.” Consider a complex event that can be caused by multiple combinations of factors. An INUS condition is one part, which on its own isn’t enough to cause the event, but is necessary in that particular combination for the event to occur. Example: Imagine a house fire. The fire could be caused by various combinations of conditions like a gas leak, an ignited spark, oxygen, and flammable material. Each are necessary parts of a specific combination of conditions but on their own, they are insufficient to cause the fire. |
Money, then, is an inus condition of the freedom to acquire, an insufficient but necessary part of an unnecessary but sufficient condition. But the key point is that the other conditions apply to rich and poor alike, yet the poor, as such, are far less free than the rich are, as such, because in their case the relevant inus condition is widely unsatisfied, and this makes that condition worthy of special focus.
Other factors like ignorance or ugliness could hinder freedom, but unlike money, these factors don’t distinguish between rich and poor and are not a pervasive condition that limits freedom.
Money’s defining function is to extinguish interference, according to Cohen, making it unique compared to other attributes like intelligence or beauty.
Cohen acknowledges that wealth can bring its own set of unfreedoms, yet emphasizes that the lack of money distinctly marks the poor as unfree.
Example: Rich individuals may face issues like excessive attention to investments or fear of kidnapping, yet these don’t negate the freedoms money affords them.
Section 3
Section 3 applies the section 2 argument, to, and against, a number of Berlin’s formulations.
Berlin defines “negative freedom” as freedom from interference, likening it to open, versus closed, doors. Cohen, illustrates how lack of money acts as a closed door, thereby challenging Berlin’s separation of freedom and money. A narrower interpretation of Berlin considers only state interference as impeding freedom. But Cohen emphasizes that any hindrance, such as poverty, clearly restricts freedom. Furthermore, in a law-abiding society, blockages by anyone would effectively be upheld by the state, making the government-only distinction irrelevant. Finally, Cohen calls out the absurdity and vapidness of the counter-argument which claims the poor could just break the law to get what they want.
And the “absence” of said “freedom is due to the closing of…doors or failure to open them, as a result, intended or unintended, of alterable human practices, of the operation of human agencies” (p. xl and cf. p. xlviii). Yet it seems evident, in contradiction of the contrast between freedom and money on which Berlin insisted, that lack of money implies lack of freedom in just that sense.
Cohen challenges Berlin’s criticism of left-wing politics as overlooking or sacrificing the essence of freedom (non-interference or negative freedom) in their pursuit of making freedom actionable via policies that focus on alleviating poverty (positive freedom.) Contrary to Berlin’s claim, the New Deal actually increased individual liberty for most people.
Berlin’s diagnosis of the supposed error of the left, namely, that they are so concerned with the ability to use freedom that they confuse it with freedom itself, is inconsistent with his prognosis that they will tend to forget that freedom itself is an essential value. Why should the left insist that freedom be capable of use if they do not, in the end, care about freedom?
Perhaps the individual liberty of already economically secure people was reduced by the New Deal, but, given his own characterisation [sic] of liberty, Berlin had no right to the conclusion, implied by his talk of “compromise” between liberty and economic security, that individual liberty as such (and not just that of members of certain classes) was reduced.
Section 4
In section 4, I seek to fortify, but also to nuance, my argument, by presenting some analogies and disanalogies between the freedom conferred by money and (directly) state-regulated freedom.
Cohen illustrates how money acts as a facilitator of freedom by analogizing between money and “access tickets” in a hypothetical moneyless society to demonstrate how money provides access to goods and services, thus representing a form of freedom from interference.
Imagine, then, a society without money, in which, in the first instance, the state owns everything, and in which courses of action available to people, courses they are free to follow without interference, are laid down by the law. […] So I may have a ticket which says that I am free to plough and sow this land, and to reap what comes as a result; another one which says that I am free to go to that opera, or to walk across that field, while you have different tickets, with different freedoms inscribed on them. (We could suppose, further, that tickets are tradeable, so that I can swap some of my freedoms for some of yours.)
Cohen acknowledges the limits of this analogy, pointing out that in the access ticket society, the government directly restricts a person’s freedom. In contrast, in a monetary economy, asset-holders restricts access (unless payment is received), with the government enforcing their will. Additionally, money is not always necessary or sufficient for access since a seller may give away or withhold the good.
To better align with the real-world complexities of a monetary economy, Cohen refines the analogy to include state-appointed asset administrators with a small degree of discretion to freely grant or arbitrarily deny access. Despite this refinement, Cohen emphasizes that, by and large, both money and tickets determine a person’s freedom of access.
We can therefore say that, in the normal case, lack of money carries with it lack of freedom. The prospect of freedom to travel to Glasgow for the woman too poor to buy the ticket is not much enhanced by the possibility that Richard Branson’s Virgin Trains might give her a free ride, since the probability of that is negligibly small. And the discrepancy, in general, between money and freedom, is comparably negligible.
Section 5
In section 5, I discuss the bearing of certain Marxian theses about the difference between bourgeois and pre-bourgeois society on the widespread failure to perceive that money confers freedom and that its lack restricts it.
Cohen delves deeper into how money influences the dynamics of freedom and unfreedom in society. He describes the unique nature of money as a social instrument that facilitates or hinders freedom, rather than a mere physical object or inherent ability like strength or intellect. For example, physically swapping ten one-pound coins for one ten-pound note will maintain the same level of social power or freedom of access.
Money, and its lack, imply social relations of freedom and unfreedom. Money is, of course, a resource, but it is not a resource like strength or brains. It is, as Karl Marx said, “social power in the form of a thing” , but it is not, like a screwdriver or a cigarette lighter, itself a thing (meaning, here, by a “thing”, a physical object), for social power is not a thing. If you swap your ten one-pound coins for a ten-pound note, you’ve got a different thing from what you had before, but the very same money. You’ve got the same license to travel, to acquire goods and services and so on, the same social entitlement, the same prospects of non-interference that you had before […]
Cohen underlines that these clarifications make obvious how money confers freedom in the same sense as a ticket does. And in doing so, make clear that the left’s protest against inequality is in fact a cry for freedom for all, including the poor.
Section 6
I close (section 6) with a few words about the importance of the semantic tangle that I believe I am unravelling here.
Cohen emphasizes his arguments and conclusions are conceptual, not normative, and defends this move as effective at undermining normative arguments.
[…] conceptual claims are sometimes key premisses in arguments with normative conclusions, and the right-wing movement from (1) through to (5) is a case in point. That important normative argument is defeated when its critical conceptual sub-conclusion, (3), is shown to be false, as it has been here. And this way of countering normative arguments is often more effective than a properly normative confrontation with them, which so often leads to impasse.
Cohen agrees with critics that his paper will not compel the hard-core, right-wing “libertarians”, who are not truly interested in freedom, to change their stance. Instead, undecided or centrist voters who value liberty, are most likely to be swayed by his arguments.
The counter-argument that I have provided will not detach hard-core “libertarians” from their political position, but that is precisely because, despite their rhetoric, they do not care about liberty or freedom as such. But others, who are not hard-core “libertarians”, do care about liberty, and are attracted to the right-wing position because it appears to have liberty on its side. It is those “floating voters”, rather than either the committed left or the committed right, who represent the constituency whose political opinion is most likely to be affected by this paper.
Cohen then moves to discuss the right’s attitude to interference in relation to private property more generally.
Cohen points out a contradiction in the right-wing stance. While they claim to oppose interference in general, they actually only oppose interference with private property rights. They support restricting the poor’s access to this property.
Cohen acknowledges that some readers might find the mingling of illegal interference (like trespassing) and legal actions against such interference, unusual or provocative. However, he clarifies that the point being made is conceptual, not normative; it’s not about what’s morally right or wrong in protecting or violating private property.
The right profess to be hostile to interference, as such, but they do not really oppose interference as such. They oppose interference with the rights of private property, but they support interference with access by the poor to that same private property, and they consequently cannot defend property rights by invoking the value of freedom, in the sense of non-interference. They cannot, on the basis of a principled aversion to interference, defend private property against the grievance that poverty represents by recourse to the familiar tactic that I have sought to discredit here.
Cohen delineates two contrasting interpretations of “freedom”:
- Rights-free view of freedom: In this view, endorsed by Cohen, freedom is about the absence of interference full stop, irrespective of moral rights. So, if an officer arrests a trespasser, the trespassers freedom has been interfered with.
- Rights-laden view of freedom: In this view, freedom is interfered with only if it violates someone’s moral rights. So, if a shopkeeper stops a thief, the owner is not curtailing the thief’s freedom.
Cohen contends that the rights-laden view complicates the defense of private property’s legitimacy via the concept of freedom because one must first evaluate the morality of private property.
For instance, if society believes it is morally right for resources to be redistributed to meet everyone’s basic needs, then private property could be seen as morally wrong. In this scenario, defending private property by invoking freedom does not work because the definition of freedom is tied to moral rights, thereby challenging the legitimacy of private property.
But such a rights-laden understanding of freedom, whether or not it is otherwise acceptable, renders impossible a defence of the legitimacy of private property by reference to freedom, since, on the rights-laden view of it, one cannot say what freedom (so much as) is until one has decided (on, perforce, grounds other than freedom) whether or not private property is morally legitimate.
Cohen reiterates that neither the rights-laden nor rights-free conceptions of freedom provide a satisfactory theoretical basis to justify private property via a conceptual link to freedom. However, Cohen is wary but does not reject the possibility of a more real-word data-driven justification for private property on the grounds of promoting freedom.
| A note on empirical justification for private property rights |
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| An empirical justification would be less theoretical and based on the complexities of the real-world. This is powerful because it does not confuse the map for the terrain, but it is also difficult because the real-world is a lot messier than abstract philosophical discourse. An attempt at empirical justification might use measurements such as the Human Freedom Index, control for confounding variables such as political stability and education levels, apply statistical analysis, and conduct longitudinal studies. |
Cohen is critical of arguments, common among defenders of capitalism, that hastily bypass complex empirical realities so as to link private property to freedom.
Cohen then talks about the difference between a government giving a passport (broad availability) and an airline giving a seat (scarce availability). When the government gives a passport, no one loses out, but when an airline gives a seat, others might lose the chance to get that seat because seats are limited.
Cohen notes that where resources are limited, restrictions on freedom will necessarily arise. So, the real question should be about how to fairly distribute access freedom when resources are limited.
The right-wing argument, in his view, sidesteps this core issue by hastily, and without empirical evidence, associating market capitalism with optimal freedom.
So the real issue, which is illicitly circumvented by the right-wing argument, and as was suggested in the fourth paragraph of section 2 above, is how freedom is to be distributed where resource finitude makes limitations on freedom unavoidable. The claim that, in the face of resource finitude, market capitalism is optimal for freedom, has not been proved. But the case against that claim is not made by the defeat of the short-circuiting argument that has been refuted here.