Exploitation, Incentives, and Community: A Socialist Reading of the Parable of the Talents

According to G.A. Cohen’s socialist egalitarianism, distributive justice applies to both institutions and personal choices, challenging John Rawls’s liberal egalitarian view which holds that the basic structure of society is the primary subject of justice. Cohen endorses the Christian social nostrum that social revolution demands fundamental changes in motivation and not only in the institutional structure. He also contends that incentives should not be permitted in a society based on the idea that contingent personal assets are morally irrelevant in distributive terms. These ideas find a vivid illustration in a radical construal of the Parable of the Talents, where the traditionally reviled third servant becomes the hero by refusing to take unfair advantage of his position. Contrary to the conventional reading that extolls exploitative profit-making, his choice shows that justice cannot be achieved only by institutional means and that incentivized inequalities, which undermine communal ties, are unjust.