¹ For example Patrick Riley interprets Kant's political philosophy in terms of a category taken from his theory of judgment, “teleology” (Kant's Political Philosophy [Totowa, N.J.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1983]Google Scholar). Susan Shell, in contrast, interprets Kant's system as a whole in terms of a category taken from his political philosophy, “property” (The Rights of Reason: A Study of Kant's Philosophy and Politics [Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1980]Google Scholar). The clearest exposition of Kant's political views in English is Williams, Howard, Kant's Political Philosophy (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1983).Google Scholar

² Kant, Immanuel, The Metaphysical Elements of Justice (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1965), p. 34Google Scholar. The emphasis on the “right” or the “just” (the German Recht can be translated both ways) was taken over by Kant from Rousseau, as Susan Shell has stressed (Rights of Reason).

³ At the turn of the century there was an extensive discussion in Germanspeaking countries between socialists and Kantians regarding the relationship of the two systems of thought. The major contributions to this debate are now collected in Marxismus und Ethik: Texte zum neukantianischen Sozialismus, eds. Vega, and Sandkuhler, (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1970)Google Scholar. This discussion broke off with the start of the First World War. It was renewed with Goldmann, Lucien's Immanuel Kant (London: New Left Books, 1971)Google Scholar. More recently Dick Howard has tackled this topic in a number of articles, especially, “Kant's Political Theory: The Virtues of His Vices,” Review of Metaphysics, 34 (1980).Google Scholar

⁴ Indeed it can be seen as the central principle of his system as a whole. See Kaulbach, Friedrich, Das Prinzip Handlung in der Philosophie Kants (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1978).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁵ See Hoffe, Otfried, “Kants Kategorischen Imperativ als Kriterium des Sittlichen,” Zeitschrift für Philosophische Forschung, 31 (1977)Google Scholar; Shalgi, M.'s “Universalized Maxims,” Kant Studien, 67 (1976)Google Scholar; and Rolling, Bernard, “There Is Only One Categorical Imperative,” Kant StudienGoogle Scholar, ibid.

⁶ On the distinction between a doctrine of virtue and a doctrine of right see Höffe, Otfried, “Recht und Moral; ein kantischen Problemaufriss” Neue Hefte für Philosophie, 17 (1979)Google Scholar. (In this paper we shall discuss under the heading “doctrine of right” not just the work with this title in German (translated into English as “Metaphysical Elements of Justice”) but his other works in political philosophy as well.)

⁷ Kant, , “Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch,” Kant's Political Writings, ed. Reiss, Hans (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1970), p. 113.Google Scholar

⁸ Kant, , “On the Common Saying: ‘This May be True in Theory, but it does not Apply in Practice,’” Political Writings, p. 73Google Scholar (henceforth “Theory and Practice”).

⁹ Metaphysical Elements of Justice, p. 34.Google Scholar

¹⁰ “Theory and Practice,” p. 79.Google Scholar

¹¹ Ibid., p. 74.

¹² “No one can compel me to be happy in accordance with his conception of the welfare of others, for each may seek his happiness in whatever way he sees fit, so long as he does not infringe upon the freedom of others to pursue a similar end which can be reconciled with the freedom of everyone else within a workable law — i.e. he must accord to others the same right as he enjoys himself (ibid., p. 74).

¹³ “External and rightful equality within a state is the relationship among the citizens whereby no one can put anyone else under a legal obligation without submitting simultaneously to a law which requires that he can himself be put under the same kind of obligation by the other person” (“Perpetual Peace,” p. 99).Google Scholar

¹⁴ These issues are discussed in Metaphysical Elements of Justice under the heading “Private Law.”

¹⁵ This is discussed in Metaphysical Elements of Justice under the heading “Private Law.”

¹⁵ This is discussed in Metaphysical Elements of Justice under the heading “Public Law.”

¹⁶ Ibid., p. 78 (45).

¹⁷ Ibid., pp. 92–93.

¹⁸ Ibid., pp. 93–94.

¹⁹ “Perpetual Peace,” p. 95.Google Scholar

²⁰ See Brandt, Reinhard, Eigentumstheorien von Grotius bis Kant (Stuttgart, 1974)Google Scholar. The key Kantian text is found in Metaphysical Elements of Justice, pp. 71–72 (42).Google Scholar

²¹ Ibid., p. 113.

²² Ibid., p. 83.

²³ This feature of Kant's political philosophy has been stressed by Jurgen Habermas. See his “Publizitat als Vermittlung von Politik und Moral,” in Strukturwandel der Offentlichkeit (Darmstadt: Luchterhand, 1962).

²⁴ Kant, , “An Answer to the Question: ‘What is Enlightenment?’” Political Writings, p. 55.Google Scholar

²⁵ “Perpetual Peace,” p. 102.Google Scholar

²⁶ Ibid., p. 113; and Elements of Justice, p. 123.Google Scholar

²⁷ “Theory and Practice,” p. 78Google Scholar. This point is stressed by Saage, Richard in his Eigentum, Staat und Gesellschaft bei Immanuel Kant (Stuttgart: Kohlhemmer, 1973).Google Scholar

²⁸ “The uniform equality of human beings as subjects of a state is, however, perfectly consistent with the utmost inequality of the mass in the degree of its possessions” (“Theory and Practice,” p. 75).Google Scholar

²⁹ Ibid., p. 75.

³⁰ “What is Enlightenment?” p. 59.Google Scholar

³¹ Kant, , “Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose,” Political Writings, p. 50.Google Scholar

³² “Perpetual Peace,” p. 114.Google Scholar

³³ “Idea for a Universal History,” p. 51.Google Scholar

³⁴ This was first pointed out by Hemleben, S. J. in his Plans for Peace through Six Centuries (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1943).Google Scholar

³⁵ “(All nations) have a right to attempt to trade with a foreigner without his being justified in regarding anyone who attempts it as an enemy” (Metaphysical Elements of Justice, p. 125).Google Scholar

³⁶ “The lord of a country has the right to encourage foreigners (colonists) to immigrate and settle in his country, even though his native subjects do not regard this action favorably. He may do so, however, only providing that the private ownership of the land of the natives is not diminished” (ibid., p. 109).

³⁷ “Perpetual Peace,” p. 106Google Scholar (emphasis added). See also p. 117.

³⁸ Ibid., p. 107.

³⁹ This process is described in detail in Dobb, Maurice, Studies in the Development of Capitalism (New York: International Publishers, 1947)Google Scholar. The case of the United States is typical. In 1780, just before Kant wrote his major works in political philosophy, only 15 percent of the economically active population worked for a wage or salary. By 1880, after the shift from merchant to industrial capitalism, 63 percent had to work for wages or salaries. In 1970 only 9 percent were self-employed; 91 percent were wage and salary employees. See Main, Jackson, The Social Structure of Revolutionary America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1965), pp. 270–71CrossRefGoogle Scholar and “The Development of the Wage-Labor Force” in The Capitalist System, ed. Edwards, , Reich, and Weisskopf, (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1978), p. 180Google Scholar. Similiar data for France and Germany are presented in Mandel, Ernest, Marxist Economic Theory (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1968), pp. 164–65.Google Scholar

⁴⁰ Recent accounts of this are found in Braverman, Harry, Labor and Monopoly Capital (New York: Monthly Review, 1974)Google Scholar and Contested Terrain, ed. Edwards, Richard (New York: Basic Books, 1979)Google Scholar. In 1977 91.4 percent of all wage and salary workers in the United States worked under a supervisor or boss; only 8.6 percent worked without direct supervision (Quality of Work Survey, Ann Arbor: Institute for Social Research, 1979, p. 175Google Scholar). For a philosophical discussion of how work under capitalism denies autonomy see Sankowski, Edward, “Freedom, Work, and the Scope of Democracy,” Ethics, 91 (1981)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Sankowski's arguments are not at all undercut by the current fad for Quality Circles. These Quality Circles foster not the participation of workers in self-management, but pseudo-participation as defined by Pateman, Carole in Participation and Democratic Theory (London: Cambridge University Press, 1970).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁴¹ Metaphysical Elements of Justice, p. 79.Google Scholar

⁴² Here too we can take U.S. economic development as typical of a process that has occurred throughout the capitalist system since Kant's day. At the time of the American Revolution the least affluent 90 percent of families in the colonies owned well over half of all personal wealth. By 1870 they controlled only one third, the wealthiest 10 percent of families controlling the remaining two thirds, a distribution which has remained roughly constant since, despite the growth of transfer programs. See Jones, Alice, American Colonial Wealth (New York: Arno Press, 1977)Google Scholar and Soltow, Lee, Men and Wealth in the United States (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1975)Google Scholar. Inequality is even more extensive when we look at stock control and not just personal wealth. Less than one percent of U.S. households control half of all corporate stock (U.S. Bureau of the Census, Statistical Abstract of the United States [Washington, D. C.: U. S. Government Printing Office, 1981], Table 786Google Scholar). For white males someone from the wealthiest 10 percent of households is more than ten times as likely to end up in the top 20 percent of the income distribution as someone from the poorest 10 percent (Schooling in Capitalist America, Bowles, and Gintis, [New York: Basic Books, 1976], chap. 5Google Scholar). If an average boy from one of the poorest families could choose between acquiring “average intelligence” or joining a family of average affluence, the latter would be a ten times more effective way of “making it” (ibid., see data from figure 4–2).

⁴³ See Nichols, David, Financing Elections: The Politics of an American Ruling Class (New York: Franklin Watts, 1974).Google Scholar

⁴⁴ One does not have to be a Marxist to acknowledge this point. Consider the following passage from Max Weber: “The formal right of a worker to enter into any contract whatsoever with any employer whatsoever does not in practice represent for the employment seeker even the slightest freedom in the determination of his own conditions of work, and it does not guarantee him any influence on this process. It rather means, at least primarily, that the more powerful party in the market, i.e., normally the employer, has the possibility to set the terms, to offer the job ‘take it or leave it,’ and, given the normally more pressing economic need of the worker, to impose his terms upon him…. Coercion is exercised to a considerable extent by the private owners of the means of production and acquisition, to whom the law guarantees their property and whose power can thus manifest itself in the competitive struggle of the market” Economy and Society (New York: Bedminster Press, 1968), 2:729–30.Google Scholar

⁴⁵ “Theory and Practice,” p. 76.Google Scholar

⁴⁶ See Cirino, Robert, Don't Blame the People (New York: Vintage, 1972)Google Scholar and Kellner, Douglas, “Network Television and American Society: Introduction to a Critical Theory of Television,” Theory and Society, 10 (1981)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Some of the conceptual issues that arise regarding this form of power are discussed in Lukes, Steven, Power (New York: Macmillan, 1976).Google Scholar

⁴⁷ See Williams, William Appleman, Empire as a Way of Life (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980)Google Scholar for empirical confirmation of this point.

⁴⁸ This was pointed out by Howard Williams: “Kant's optimism is misplaced though where he suggests that the growth of international trade and commerce can only lead to co-operation and peace … competition for markets and raw materials has led to great political instability and often war” (Kant's Political Philosophy, pp. 17–18).Google Scholar

⁴⁹ “Perpetual Peace,” p. 95Google Scholar

⁵⁰ Magdoff, Harry and Sweezy, Paul, The Deepening Crisis of U.S. Capitalism, (New York: Monthly Review, 1981), p. 164.Google Scholar

⁵¹ Nozick, Robert, Anarchy, State and Utopia (New York: Basic Books, 1974).Google Scholar

⁵² “Theory and Practice,” p. 78.Google Scholar

⁵³ “Rawls and the Structural Contradictions of the Capitalist State,” Journal of Social Philosophy, 14:689–703Google Scholar. Rawls's major work, of course, is A Theory of Justice (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971).Google Scholar

⁵⁴ Marx's defense of council democracy is most explicit in his writings on the Paris Commune, especially “The Civil War in France” (included in The Marx-Engels Reader, ed. Tucker, [New York: Norton Press, 1978], pp. 618ffGoogle Scholar). He argues there, for instance, that the working class should safeguard itself against its own deputies and officials by having all those who exercise authority be elected, subject to recall, and paid only average workperson's wages. The following description of how a council democracy system might function is based on Socialism Today and Tomorrow by Albert, and Hahnel, (Boston: South End Press, 1981)Google Scholar. In the text the discussion is limited to the exercise of economic power. Albert and Hahnel extend the principle of democratic participation to the political, kinship, and community spheres as well.

⁵⁵ For example, the question whether one large steel mill should be built to take advantage of economies of scale as opposed to building a number of small mills close to places of production could not be answered appropriately on the local level.

⁵⁶ An example of the issues that would arise here would be those involving public goods such as regional parks and cultural centers.

⁵⁷ For a summary of these studies see Blumberg, Paul, Industrial Democracy: The Sociology of Participation (New York: Schocken Books, 1973), pp. 124–28Google Scholar. Of course under capitalism these experiments have been quite limited in scope. Those who own-control capital generally choose to retain control over production at the cost of a more efficient method of production.

⁵⁸ “Theory and Practice,” p. 78.Google Scholar

⁵⁹ Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals (New York: Harper & Row, 1964), p. 98.Google Scholar

⁶⁰ “Perpetual Peace,” pp. 112–13.Google Scholar

⁶¹ This passage, taken from Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, is found in Political Writings, p. 191.Google Scholar

⁶² See Williams, , Kant's Political Writings, p. 79.Google Scholar

⁶³ Metaphysical Elements of Justice, p. 90.Google Scholar

⁶⁴ Ibid., p. 91.

⁶⁵ “Perpetual Peace,” p. 101.Google Scholar

⁶⁶ Of course measures would have to be taken to ensure the protection of minorities from the “tyranny of the majority.” Some of these measures are discussed in Albert, and Hahnel, , Socialism, pp. 353–54.Google Scholar

⁶⁷ “Perpetual Peace,” p. 101.Google Scholar

⁶⁸ Metaphysical Elements of Justice, p. 78.Google Scholar

⁶⁹ See Groundwork, p. 100.Google Scholar