Gerald Allen Cohen was born on 14 April 1941 in Montreal, Canada. Known for his work on Marxism, his book, Karl Marx’s Theory of History (1978), is the best exegetical work on the subject ever written. Appointed Assistant Lecturer at University College London in 1963, he remained for twenty-one years, eventually becoming Reader. In 1958, he took up the Chichele Chair in Social and Political Theory at All Souls College, Oxford until his retirement in 2008. He briefly returned to University College London as Quain Professor of Jurisprudence.
Cohen was a proponent of analytical Marxism and Founding Member of the September Group. Known for his flamboyant debate style, his friend and philosopher, Gerald Dworkin said that ‘nothing was too inappropriate, private, bizarre, or embarrassing to be suddenly brought into the conversation’. Notable works include History, Labour, and Freedom (1988), Self-Ownership, Freedom, and Equality (1995), Rescuing Justice and Equality (2008), On the Currency of Egalitarian Justice, and Other Essays in Political Philosophy (2011), Finding Oneself in the Other (2012), and Lectures on the History of Moral and Political Philosophy (2013).
