How to Undo a Few Centuries

In Freedom, Democracy, and Economic Rights: A Kantian View, S.M. Love makes an important in view three (natural rights view): "If original acquisition is the legitimate basis for property rights, then nearly all currently recognized property rights are illegitimate" (12). Tracing today's distribution of wealth and land back to slavery, conquest, and colonization, Love argues that even the most committed natural rights theorists must concede that current property holdings cannot be justified on their own terms. Even Nozick, most associated with the minimal state and robust property rights, acknowledges this issue in his principle of rectification. Love uses this to show that extensive government involvement in the economy is required by right, regardless of which view of property rights you hold (14). 

Upon reading this argument, I found myself wondering: what would adequate rectification actually look like in practice? Love compellingly establishes that rectification is required by right, and that this would demand a "complete overhaul" of property systems (13). However, I am left wondering how intermediated capitalism - "the incorporation of democratic governance into corporate governance... [where] representatives of worker, consumer, and environmental groups take direct part in governing corporations from within" (8) - relates to the sweeping scale of historical injustice she describes. This may be due to my limited familiarity with intermediated capitalism, but it is difficult to see how it, or would, respond to the depth of historical injustice Love outlines. Is intermediated capitalism intended as a starting point toward something more expansive? Or does Love see it as sufficient? 

I find myself curious whether Love's argument points toward something more radical, and if so, what that might look like within her Kantian framework. 

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