ABSTRACT
In a series of important papers, G. A. Cohen has developed a forceful argument for the claim that workers are rendered unfree by capitalist institutions. It is worth pausing at this point to remark that the conception of freedom that Cohen deploys throughout his writings on proletarian unfreedom is not Marx's, but instead one derived from standard liberal discourse. In class society, the freedom of a proletarian to do something may indeed conflict with that of a capitalist, but in Communist society, as Marx sketchily conceives of it, it seems that there will be no important instances where freedoms conflict. Cohen's argument seems to depend on the assumption that, no matter how large the number of proletarians seeking to become capitalists, the number of opportunities to do so will remain fixed, or at least will not expand significantly. Thus the arguments Cohen adduces as to proletarian unfreedom are mostly formal.
