Refuting Cohen’s Criticism of Marxist Self-Ownership

Cohen criticized Marxism for being grounded in Nozick’s self-ownership. He based his criticism on the fact that Marxism did not reject self-ownership, but even unconsciously affirmed self-ownership, in both its criticism of capitalism and its conception of communism. However, Cohen’s evidence did not adequately support his conclusion. By deconstructing Cohen’s criticism logic, the paper finds that Cohen’s criticism lacks a necessary basis — the uniqueness of the perception of self-ownership, which is precisely the key to the validity of Cohen’s criticism. The paper proves the heterogeneity of Marx’s and Nozick’s theories of self-ownership in terms of origin logic, historical context and practical state, and development trend, and thus denies the necessary basis of “the uniqueness of the perception of self-ownership” to refute Cohen’s criticism. Cohen’s error stems from the confusion of his methodology. He tried to replace historical dialectical thinking with abstract logical thinking, and rational logic with the logic of belief.