The Problem of Human Needs

One of the things that Agnes Heller’s recent excellent book on The Theory of Need in Marx (1976) serves to illustrate by its careful exposition of this concept in Marx’s writings, is that what we have come to understand by the Marxist theory of needs has little basis in Marx’s own writings. 1 Although, as she shows, the concept lurks in almost every aspect of Marx’s theory, it is by no means clear that in each case this is essentially the same concept. We have been forced back by the twentieth-century, neo-Marxist renaissance of the doctrine of true and false needs to try to find its roots in Marx’s own theory. But one can argue that this is a project that arises from twentieth-century imperatives more than from an essential unity in Marx’s own thought on the subject. If indeed the concept of needs had represented a central concept in Marx’s thought one would have expected a more systematic treatment of it, a more careful exposition of its various aspects, its range and limits. Were it even an essential underlying concept providing a key to disparate elements in Marx’s thought, one would expect greater congruence in Marx’s handling of the concept.