Objective/Context:

In the camping trip model, Gerald Cohen proposes two principles that would be desirable for socialism: a principle of radical equality of opportunities and a community principle. Against this model, the liberal objection condemns its goal monism; the objection about motivations holds that self-interest prevails over practices based on selfless reciprocity, and the anarcho-capitalist objection denounces a fallacious comparison and the idealization of human nature. I rebut all three objections by arguing a) that there is no such goal monism since the principles are not goals and allow much room for self-realization; b) that a self-interested expectation of reciprocity is not a sine precondition to enter the camping-trip and that noninstrumental reciprocity is a device of assurance within the community principle; and c) that the Cohenite model does not presuppose morally perfect persons-since it anticipates regrettable and risky choices. Moreover, it does not commit the fallacy of comparing ideal socialism with real capitalism.

Methodology:

The argumentation is developed according to the analytic method, keeping with the standards employed in post-Rawlsian contemporary political theory.

Conclusions:

The camping-trip model does not fall into goal-monism, nor into a wrong characterization of motivations, nor into the utopianism of conceiving morally perfect subjects.

Originality:

This defense of the Cohenite model against the three objections reinforces its robustness and permits us to understand it as an attempt to reconcile luck egalitarianism with fraternal or relational egalitarianism.