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" I do not know whether the needed refinements are possible, nor do I know, speaking more generally, whether the full socialist ideal is feasible, in the Carensian, or in some other form. We socialists don’t now know how to replicate camping trip procedures on a nationwide scale, amid the complexity and variety that comes with nationwide size. We don’t now know how to give collective ownership and equality the real meaning that it has in the camping trip story but which it didn’t have in the Soviet Union and in similarly ordered states. The camping trip’s confined temporal, spatial, and population scale mean that, within its confines, the right to personal choice can be exercised, without strain, consistently with equality and community. But while that can happen in the small, we do not know how to honor personal choice, consistently with equality and community, on a large social scale. But I do not think that we now know that we will never know how to do these things: I am agnostic on that score. The "

G.A. Cohen , Why Not Socialism?


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G.A. Cohen quote : I do not know whether the needed refinements are possible, nor do I know, speaking more generally, whether the full socialist ideal is feasible, in the Carensian, or in some other form. We socialists don’t now know how to replicate camping trip procedures on a nationwide scale, amid the complexity and variety that comes with nationwide size. We don’t now know how to give collective ownership and equality the real meaning that it has in the camping trip story but which it didn’t have in the Soviet Union and in similarly ordered states. The camping trip’s confined temporal, spatial, and population scale mean that, within its confines, the right to personal choice can be exercised, without strain, consistently with equality and community. But while that can happen in the small, we do not know how to honor personal choice, consistently with equality and community, on a large social scale. But I do not think that we now know that we will never know how to do these things: I am agnostic on that score. The