[Open University set book]

Wow...I wouldn't normally try to give "the" summary for Kant's Groundwork. If you haven't read this -- read it! Kant asks what it would mean if morality exists. Unpacking this definition, he thinks that if morality exists, it has something to do with conformance to universal laws, and that if morality if binding for human beings, human beings have to be autonomous. For whether he thinks he can show that human beings are autonomous...read treatise 3!

In this lucidly argued book, A. H. Halsey offers a provocative analysis of the direction which British society has taken this century. He points to changes involving class and status, social and geographical mobility, standards of living, and the family, and explains how these changes have been affected by economic growth, liberal and Marxist theories, and the power of the state. This new and fully revised edition covers the whole of the twentieth century, including Margaret Thatcher's period as Prime Minister, and the premiership of John Major. It incorporates a wide range of issues which have arisen in the past few years: changes in education, the fortunes of political parties, the tightening of immigration control, the decline of the manufacturing industry, and the challenge which the 1990s poses to the nuclear family. Professor Halsey considers the implications of these recent events, and asks what their effects have been on liberty, equality, social cohesion, and conflict.

The Key work of Britain's leading postwar Marxist thinker (and father of British Labour politician Ed Miliband), which deconstructs the capitalist state, showing that it is not a neutral set of institutions but rather reflects the interests of the dominant capitalist class.