The Theory of Need in Marx

Abstract

Marx defines the commodity as use-value in the following way: “A commodity is … a thing that by its properties satisfies human needs of some sort or another”. According to Marx industrial production makes it possible to resolve the opposition between natural needs and socially produced needs, even if in capitalist society this takes place in a contradictory way, and even if this society—temporarily—reproduces the contradiction. While the group of natural needs is not open to interpretation within the philosophy of Marx as a whole, the idea that Marx wished to express with the creation of this group is plausible and simple. Marx develops the general philosophical concept of need in the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 and in The German Ideology . Very deliberately, Marx emphasizes the fact that capitalism creates needs that are rich and many-sided at the same time that it impoverishes man and makes the worker a person without needs.

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