You and I and a whole bunch of other people go on a camping trip. There is no hierarchy among us; our common aim is that each of us should have a good time, doing, so far as possible, the things that he or she likes best (some of those things we do together, others we do separately).We have facilities with which to carry out our enterprise: we have, for example, pots and pans, oil, coffee, fishing rods, canoes, a soccer ball, decks of cards, and so forth. And, as is usual on camping trips, we avail ourselves of those facilities collectively: even if they are privately owned things, they are under collective control for the duration of the trip, and we have shared understandings about who is going to use them when, and under what circumstances, and why. Somebody fishes, somebody else prepares the food, and another person cooks it. People who hate cooking but enjoy washing up may do all the washing up, and so on. There are plenty of differences, but our mutual understandings, and the spirit of the enterprise, ensure that there are no inequalities to which anyone could mount a principled objection.
It is commonly true on camping trips, and, for that matter, in many other non-massive contexts, that people co-operate within a common concern that, so far as is possible, everybody has a roughly similar opportunity to flourish, and also to relax, on condition that they contribute, appropriately to their capacity, to the flourishing and relaxing of others. In these contexts most people, even most anti-egalitarians, accept – indeed, take for granted – norms of equality and reciprocity. So deeply do most people take those norms for granted that no one on such trips questions them: to question them would contradict the spirit of the trip.
You could imagine a camping trip where everybody asserts their rights over the pieces of equipment, and the talents, that they bring, and where bargaining proceeds with respect to who is going to pay what to whom to be allowed, for example, to use a knife to peel the potatoes, and how much they are going to charge others for those now peeled potatoes which they bought in an unpeeled condition from another camper, and so on.You could base a camping trip on the principles of market exchange and strictly private ownership of the required facilities.
Now, most people would hate that. Most people would be more drawn to the first kind of camping trip than to the second, primarily on grounds of fellowship, but also on grounds of efficiency. (I have in mind the inordinate transaction costs that would attend a market-style camping trip. Too much time would be spent bargaining, and looking over one’s shoulder for more lucrative possibilities.) And this means that most people are drawn to the socialist ideal, at least in certain restricted settings.
To reinforce this point, here are some conjectures about how most people would react in various imaginable camping scenarios:
a) Harry loves fishing, and Harry is very good at fishing. Consequently, he catches, and provides, more fish than others do. Harry says: “It’s unfair, how we’re running things. I should have better fish when we dine. I should have only perch, not the mix of perch and catfish that we’ve all been having.” But his fellow campers say: “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Harry, don’t be such a schmuck. You sweat and strain no more than the rest of us do. So, you’re very good at fishing. We don’t begrudge you that special endowment, which is, quite properly, a source of satisfaction to you, but why should we reward your good fortune?”
b) Following a three-hour time-off-for-personal-exploration period, an excited Sylvia returns to the campsite and announces: “I’ve stumbled upon a huge apple tree, full of perfect apples.” “Great,” others exclaim, “now we can all have apple sauce, and apple pie, and apple strudel!” “Provided, of course,” so Sylvia rejoins, “that you reduce my labour burden, and/or furnish me with more room in the tent, and/or with more bacon at breakfast.” Her claim to (a kind of) ownership of the tree revolts the others.
c) The trippers are walking along a bridle path on which they discover a cache of nuts that some squirrel has abandoned. Only Leslie, who has been endowed from birth with many knacks and talents, knows how to crack them, but she wants to charge for sharing that information. The campers see no important difference between her demand and Sylvia’s.
d) Morgan recognises the campsite. “Hey, this is where my father camped 30 years ago. This is where he dug a special little pond on the other side of that hill, and stocked it with specially good fish. Dad knew I might come camping here one day, and he did all that so that I could eat better when I’m here. Great. Now I can have better food than you guys have.” The rest frown, or smile, at Morgan’s greed.
Of course, not everybody likes camping trips. I do not myself enjoy them much, because I’m not outdoorsy, or, at any rate, I’m not outdoorsy overnight-without-a-mattress-wise. There’s a limit to the outdoorsiness to which some academics can be expected to submit: I’d rather have my socialism in the warmth of All Souls College, Oxford, than in the wet of the Catskills, and I love modern plumbing. But the question I’m asking is not: Wouldn’t you like to go on a camping trip? Rather: Isn’t this, the socialist way, with collective property and planned mutual giving, rather obviously the best way to run a camping trip, whether or not you actually like camping?
The circumstances of the camping trip are multiply special: many features distinguish it from the circumstances of life in a modern society. One may therefore not infer, from the fact that camping trips of the sort that I have described are feasible and desirable, that society-wide socialism is equally feasible and equally desirable. There are too many major differences between the contexts for that inference to carry any conviction. What we urgently need to know is precisely what are the differences that matter, and how can socialists address them? Because of its contrasts with life in the large, the camping trip model serves well as a reference point for purported demonstrations that socialism across society is not feasible and/or desirable, since it seems eminently feasible and desirable on the trip.
Two principles are realised on the trip – an egalitarian principle, and a principle of community. The egalitarian principle in question is one of radical equality of opportunity. Equality of opportunity removes obstacles to opportunity from which some people suffer and others don’t, obstacles that are sometimes due to the enhanced opportunities that the more privileged people enjoy.
“Community” can mean many things, but the requirement of community that is central here is that people care about, and, where necessary and possible, care for, one another, and care that they care about one another.
Any attempt to realise the socialist ideal runs up against entrenched capitalist power and individual human selfishness. Politically serious people must take those obstacles seriously. But they are not reasons to disparage the ideal itself. I agree with Albert Einstein that socialism is humanity’s attempt “to overcome and advance beyond the predatory phase of human development”. Our attempt to get beyond predation has thus far failed. I do not think the right conclusion is to give up.
“Why Not Socialism?”, by G A Cohen, will be published by Princeton University Press in October (£10.95)
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