Civil Society as a 'System of Needs' in Hegel

Hegel, in the Philosophy of Right , develops a theory of needs which synthesises his own reflections on ontology and the significance of desire in the Phenomenology with certain themes of classical political economy, while referring back and forth to Rousseau, Locke (although not by name), the Hellenistic schools, Enlightenment materialism and moral sense theories on the question of needs, desires, the will, judgement, the expansion of needs, luxury and their relation to civil society and the state. One may safely say that these reflections of Hegel on the subject of needs contain the substance of most of what Marx has to say on the subject, even though, we may guess, he was not keen to admit this — in Marx’s Critique of Hegel’s ‘Philosophy of Right ’ mention of Hegel’s theory of need or his concept of a ‘system of needs’ is conspicuously absent.