Ideal socialism and capitalism.

An analysis of the positions of Cohen and Brennan.

Abstract

Philosophers Gerard Cohen and Jason Brennan, through their books Why Not Socialism? (2009) and Capitalism, why not? (2014) respectively, discuss the moral superiority of the system that each of them defends. Both authors aim to present an exposition of the system they support in its idealized form, which they confront with the ideal version each one has of the opposite model. Idealization implies, in addition to the fact that all people are morally perfect, subtracting from characteristics that the real expressions of said models present. However, as I will show in this work, none of them achieve their purpose because they fall into comparisons of the idealized model that they defend with a version of the one they attack that includes characteristics that correspond to its real manifestations, also ignoring the difficulties that arise from moving from the small societies in which they exemplify their models to the entire society.