ABSTRACT
A number of points have already been made about the kind of theory required, and the kind of outcomes worth pursuing. In this chapter and the next we shall endeavour to merge them. The project is a daunting one, for there remains a wide theoretical gap for the democratic left to fill. It didn't look all that difficult twenty-five years ago. Knowing that the world needed improving and knowing what needed to be done seemed much the same thing. With hindsight, we can see that the radicals of the 1960s and 1970s too often ignored the institutional context of the principles espoused, as if the values inherent in them were somehow detachable from the ways of life in which they were imbedded.
