Summary

As anti-globalization protests show, the public is searching for ways to explain and rethink material inequity between developed democracies and those across the development divide. Jeff Noonan provides a strategy for analyzing these issues. In Democratic Society and Human Needs Noonan examines the moral grounds for liberalism and democracy, arguing that contemporary democracy was created through needs-based struggles against classical liberal rights, which are essentially exclusionary. For him, 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.