Marx and the Politics of Need by Boss, George;

Short description:

Marx and the Politics of Need challenges one of the most pervasive habits in contemporary political theory and practice: treating needs as moral facts that sit outside of our politics, and which can be used to judge it. Against this depoliticising impulse, George Boss offers a provocative re-reading of Marx’s writings on need.

Long description:

Marx and the Politics of Need challenges one of the most pervasive habits in contemporary political theory and practice: treating needs as moral facts that sit outside of our politics, and which can be used to judge it. Against this depoliticising impulse, George Boss offers a provocative re-reading of Marx’s writings on need, interpreting them not as didactic statements of an abstract philosophy, but as subversive interventions and provocations inseparable from his radical political activism.

Re-read in this way, those writings take on new, hitherto unexplored dimensions. Building on them, Boss develops a distinctive Marxian framework that recasts needs as constitutively political, exposing the conflicts, stakes, and possibilities that shape how needs are defined, contested, and met. The result is a fresh, deeply political perspective on human need at a time when the politics of need is both increasingly urgent and increasingly unruly. Opening up what had become ossified and closed down in contemporary social thought, the book thus fashions new opportunities for radical political agency and portends new social possibilities.

As such, it will appeal to scholars of politics, sociology, and philosophy exploring Marxist thought, economic justice, and the political dimensions of human need.

‘This astonishing book resituates the politics of human needs because it resituates philosophical enquiry. It does so by recontextualising Marx as a theorising, change-making activist. Boss's bold approach to a philosophical problem resituates it as a political problem. How are needs produced, and why is there no satisfaction?’

Terrell Carver, Professor of Political Theory at the University of Bristol, author of 'The Postmodern Marx' and 'Marx'.

‘There have been a few good books on needs. There are libraries of books of a wide range of quality on Karl Marx. This book is excellent on both counts, providing a novel take on both needs and Marx’s firmly contextual, practical political thinking. It is a creative and carefully crafted account of the irreducibly political character of needs, taking needs as performative achievements in context riddled with struggle, oppression and suffering rather than natural givens. The author even ends off with how this approach can be marshalled to confront the political challenges of the present. A must read!’

Lawrence Hamilton, SA UK Bilateral Research Professor in Political Theory at the University of the Witwatersrand and the University of Cambridge, author of 'The Political Philosophy of Needs'.

‘Boss’s innovative reading highlights the deeply political character of Marx's perspective on need, recovering from his writings insights and interventions that could radically transform the theory and practice of politics today.’

Maeve Cooke, Professor of Philosophy at University College Dublin, author of 'Re-Presenting the Good Society'.

Table of Contents:

1. Introduction  2. The theory of need has a political problem  3.  Consciousness is a social product, even for philosophers  4. Performing capitalism, performing need  5. The needs of wage-labour  6. Conclusion: Re-presenting needs all over again