Mark J. Kaswan is Assistant Professor of Government at the University of Texas at Brownsville and J. Robert Beyster and Michael W. Huber Fellow, Rutgers University School of Management and Labor Relations.

• PrefaceIntroductionPart I: What is Happiness? 1. The Two Faces of Happiness: A Brief History2. Between Pleasure and Well-being: Bentham3. William Thompson’s Social HappinessPart II: The Politics of Happiness 4. Happiness and Utility5. The Politics of Happiness and Democratic Principles6. From Theory to Practice: Cooperatives, Happiness, and Democratic Social ChangeConclusionAppendix 1: Laws and Objects of the Rochdale Society of Equitable Pioneers, adopted 1844 (abridged)Appendix 2: International Co-operative Alliance Statement on the Co-operative IdentityNotesBibliographyIndex

"This is an original and impressive piece of scholarship that calls attention to an important but neglected figure (Thompson) and provides an innovative and timely reading of his work. In the author's hands, applied theory is given new life and new purpose." — Stephen Engelmann, editor of Selected Writings: Jeremy Bentham"In this remarkable book, Mark Kaswan rescues and rehabilitates the reputation of a long-forgotten and unjustly neglected thinker—the radical Irishman, feminist, non-Benthamite Utilitarian, and a writer of remarkable range and power—William Thompson. In Kaswan, Thompson has finally found the expositor he so richly deserves. And we might in turn find in Thompson a vision of democratic possibilities that we so sorely need." — Terence Ball, author of Reappraising Political Theory: Revisionist Studies in the History of Political Thought