Democratic society and human needs / Jeff Noonan.

Includes bibliographical references (pages [249]-258) and index.

Introduction : toward a renewed critique of liberal capitalism -- Pt. 1. The emergence of liberal social morality -- 1. The social context of early liberal theory -- 2. The evolution of rights-based social morality : Hobbes to James Mill -- 3. Case study in anti-democratic liberalism : the property defence league -- 4. Liberal rights-based social morality and its social presuppositions -- Pt. 2. The emergence of needs-based social morality -- 5. Capitalism as moral revolution -- 6. Gerrard Winstanley : freedom and the needs of life -- 7. The dialectic of rights and needs in the French revolution -- 8. Needs and social struggles in England and France in the nineteenth century -- 9. Socialism and democratic need satisfaction -- Pt. 3. The evolution of classical liberal social morality -- 10. Social rights -- 11. John Rawls : self-determination - moral or material? -- 12. Haberma's one-dimensional democracy -- 13. Chantal Moufee : the self-contradictions of "political" democracy -- Pt. 4. A project for social democratization -- 14. The reaction against social democratization -- 15. Needs-based social morality, the life ground of value, and the good for human beings -- 16. Negotiated coordination and the project for a democratic society.

"Democratic Society and Human Needs is an assessment of liberal, rights-based social morality from the perspective of an alternative, needs-based system. For Jeff Noonan, a democratic society is one in which human beings collectively control necessary life-resources, using them to promote the essential human value of free capability realization. His critique of globalization and liberal capitalism vindicates radical social and economic democratization and provides an essential step towards understanding the vast discrepancies between rich and poor within and between democratic countries."--BOOK JACKET.