"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? In his characteristically lucid, engaging and gently humorous style, Cohen begins by imagining a group of people on a camping trip. [...] Cohen says things that need to be said, often better than anyone else; and his last book is especially effective as an argument against the obstacles to socialism typically ascribed to human selfishness. His style of argument is very accessible, and it is certainly a more attractive mode of persuasion than dreary analyses of how capitalism actually works. But there is surely a way of being morally persuasive while still coming to grips with the realities of capitalism and what would really be required to correct its injustices."

"In Why Not Socialism? Cohen explains in a clear and accessible way why he thinks that socialism is morally desirable. In doing so, though, he leaves himself open to a challenge, and of this he is fully aware. Even if he could demonstrate that socialism is a morally superior system to capitalism, it might turn ought that socialism is impossible to establish. He endeavors to meet the difficulty but, as we shall see, he fails adequately to confront the principal reason that would derail a socialist economy."