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

The social context of early liberal theory -- The evolution of rights-based social morality : Hobbes to James Mill -- Case study in anti-democratic liberalism : the Property Defence League -- Liberal rights-based social morality and its social presuppositions -- Capitalism as moral revolution -- Gerrard Winstanley : freedom and the needs of life -- The dialectic of rights and needs in the French Revolution -- Needs and social struggles in England and France in the nineteenth century -- Socialism and democratic need satisfaction -- Social rights -- John Rawls : self-determination : moral or material? -- Habermas's one-dimensional democracy -- Chantal Mouffe : the self-contradictions of 'political' democracy -- The reaction against social democratization -- Needs-based social morality, the life ground of value, and the good for human beings -- Negotiated coordination and the project for a democratic society.