'Socialism', Albert Einstein said, is humanity's attempt 'to 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 - a tentative case that may, in the end, be defeated by inescapable realities - for a socialist alternative. Is it desirable, he asks, and if desirable is it feasible, to construct a society driven by something other than predation, which doesn't answer to the 'shabby', 'base', 'repugnant' motivations of the market but is guided instead by a moral commitment to community and equality?

LRB 28 January 2010 | PDF Download