What are the relationships between modes of economic choice and a just society? Robert Benne, in this comprehensive moral evaluation of the American political economy, is convinced that democratic capitalism, rather than socialism in any of its forms, best provides for the achievement of justice within a system based on equitable market arrangements.

Drawing chiefly on the work of Reinhold Niebuhr and John Rawls, Benne constructs a normative vision of the just society and deals concretely and positively-within the framework of democratic capitalism with such pressing Issues as ecological health, relations with developing societies, pervasive poverty and racism, the extension of liberty and equality, and the character of social and cultural life. This is an exciting work that is timely and controversial.