From Property Rights to Democratic Intermediated Capitalism

Suzanne Love presents Waheed Hussain’s interpretation of how Kantian rights and democratic governments can interact with a capitalist economy, and with that, allow for a new form of “intermediated capitalism” where both democracy and capitalism can coexist on a Kantian conception of individual equal freedom. I understand why Love presents Hussain’s argument as missing 1) the Kantian conception of freedom does not rank types of freedom, so any use of this would not work and 2) establishing Kantian property rights under the Kantian public/private sphere must be necessary to define the interaction between economic rights and Kantian ideals of individual freedom. 


First, I am wondering if there is any argument of Love’s that can explain how social institutions like markets can be subject to state regulation in a Kantian sense, beyond the background justice that Kant establishes in the conventional view of property rights. In Love’s example of dating, she supports the idea that a democratic government cannot touch social institutions like dating. However, taken this way, a social institution like the free market could fall under the same definition of social institutions, eliminating the possibility of government interference. Another way to interpret would be that the Kantian perspective would argue that this institution has to be regulated by an equal individual right to freedom because it involves external interactions that thus must follow the democratic system. This brings up an interesting claim to intermediation of what is a “social institution”, but for Kant, these institutions might not be separate from his principles of justice and freedom for individuals. 


Another point that I am left confused about, is what view of Kantian property rights that Love would argue is ideal for intermediated capitalism.This led me to my main questions about the Kantian application to Capitalism itself, namely economic rights including property rights. I do not see how property rights can be directly translated into economic markets and therefore capitalism. If property rights are most directly our claim to ownership of land and of space and of products, how does this private right translate to be defined as economic rights in a democratic sense? Kant clearly argues that property is a private right that is regulated by public institutions, but he has no other qualification about economic rights “to act on the world in [material] ways” (Love 58).  In terms of economic rights, where is the line between the government ensuring background justice (as Rawls calls it) and regulating markets which could be seen as regulating individual means to their ends. 


I think there has to exist something in between property rights and economic rights in order to successfully have a  Kantian/democratic application to intermediate capitalism, however this idea would definitely differ within the three conceptions of Kantian property rights. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

We're all separate but equal

During my tutorial with Dylan yesterday, he brought up the SCOTUS case Brown vs. Board of Education in our discussion of a minimal state. Whilst reading Marx, I realized that both the legal implication (state according rights to individuals) and the societal implication (abolishment of the 'separate but equal' doctrine) of the case are relevant to the claims Marx is making.  Marx delineates between two societies -- political and civil -- and further between the two lives one leads in each -- public and private. In a political society, man is entitled to the liberties given to him by the state, and considers himself a member of a functional community. Marx hints at the mirage of political society, writing that man is “the imaginary member of an imaginary sovereignty, divested of his real, individual life, and infused with an unreal universality” (34). In such a society, he leads a public life, one in which the state can establish political equality by abolishing “the distinctio...
Read more

What Brettschneider Ought to Admit: Democracy Is Substantive

Although Corey Brettschneider presents his value theory of democracy as a third way between pure proceduralism and outcome-based accounts, his framework collapses into substantivism. Despite insisting that democracy cannot be reduced to “procedure-independent evaluations of outcomes,”(2) he explicitly grounds democratic legitimacy in substantive rights that “limit those policy outcomes that would fail to respect citizens as rulers.” (20). Legitimacy therefore hinges not merely on fair participation but on conformity to three independently specified values—equality of interests, political autonomy, and reciprocity. These values operate as external normative standards against which democratic decisions are judged. Brettschneider treats policies such as ex post facto laws or vote buying as democratically illegitimate regardless of procedural authorization, making clear that outcomes remain subject to direct moral assessment. This is not procedural democracy supplemented by rights; it is ...
Read more

'Enough and as Good' for Whom?

 Both Hobbes and Locke describe a state of nature grounded in equality and natural law. Yet, they reach sharply different conclusions about property. Hobbes denies any possibility of owning property in the state of nature. Locke, by contrast, argues that individuals may aquire private property prior to any government by mixing their labor with common resources. By allowing pre-political appropriation, Locke commits himself to moral constraints on ownership.  Locke introduces these limits through two provisos. The Spoiling proviso requires that an individual only claim ownership over land/natural resources to what one can use before it spoils, critizicing waste as a violation of natural law: "Nothing was made by God for man to spoil or destroy" (21). To me, this limit is relatively clear and intuitive.  More demanding, however, is Locke's second proviso, claiming that appropriation is only legitimate if "enough, and as good" is left in common for others. At first...
Read more