Democratic Society and Human Needs: Towards a Renewed Critique of Liberal Capitalism

Jay Newman is a professor of philosophy at the University of Guelph. His
latest book is Pious Pro-Family Rhetoric: Postures and Paradoxes in
Philosophical Perspective.

This philosophical critique of “liberal capitalism” contrasts what
the author characterizes as “classical liberal rights-based social
morality” with a more wholesome “needs-based social morality.” In
his criticism of liberalism, capitalism, globalization, and other
bugaboos of the academic left, Jeff Noonan of the University of Windsor
has added to what is already a vast theoretical and polemical
literature, and his essay contains, as we would expect, the customary
critical sketches of the political theories of Hobbes, Locke, Hume, and
Bentham. Among recent political philosophers, John Rawls, Jurgen
Habermas, and postmodernist theorist Chantal Mouffe are the primary
objects of Noonan’s criticism. While Noonan makes some astute
criticisms of Rawls and Habermas, the framework of his study ultimately
renders his analyses one-dimensional, and it is clear that he has
limited familiarity with the highly sophisticated debates of mainstream
analytical political philosophy, particularly those focusing on the
concept of rights.

Noonan’s work includes a number of extended historical case studies,
as he considers, for example, Gerrard Winstanley and the Diggers,
aspects of the French Revolution, and the Property Defence League. The
attention given to these case studies is perhaps disproportionately
large in relation to Noonan’s effort in the last part of his study to
outline a practical and realistic project for the internal
democratization of the socio-economic system. Here Noonan basically
derives his preferred model from Pat Devine’s Democracy and Economic
Planning (1988), which stresses negotiated coordination as an
alternative to reliance on external regulation. Noonan finishes up with
a very brief discussion of some unusual South American movements as well
as the constructive work of Toronto’s Parkdale Area Recreation Centre.
Although both his critical analyses and his outline of a constructive
project for a democratic society are inadequately developed, Noonan
comes across as an earnest, animated, well-meaning fellow. His writing
is clear, and he has provided a useful bibliography and index.