I never really rated Geras that much, a view confirmed first time when I saw him debate Sean Sayers (I think, at a Radical Philosophy conference), and secodn when I read his latest miserable book, the 'contract of mutual indifference'.
As to 'natural needs', I think this is a bit of a myth to. Man himself is an artificial creation, his own. Without labour (like early agriculture and hunting), man would never have remade himself from ape to man.
Our basest beggars are, in the poorest things, superfluous Allow not nature more than nature needs Man's life's as cheap as beast's Such a poor, bare forked creature is unencumbered man
(all Lear, from memory)
Food is a natural need? Well, maybe, but isn't that what Marx is getting at when he says hunger is hunger, but the hunger that is satisfied with teeth and claws is different from that that is satisfied with a knife and fork.
The ambition to uncover the natural substratum of human nature is a bit of a fool's errand (best sort to set Lear and Norman Geras). I think it is the same error as looking for the intrinsic human essence, when, as Marx says, the human essence is nothing more than the ensemble of social relations.
The food component of expenditure says it well. It is just a tenth of the average Brit or yank household's shopping basket. Imagine if people only ate what was nutritionally necessary: it would fall to a single percentage point.
Charles asks some good questions. I think the reason that the British do not see health care as a basic need is because they already have it guaranteed by the state, and tend to assume it.
The proposition that the telephone or television is an 'essential' tells us that we value our ability to communicate just as much as our eating.
In message <c2.15c2621.270c94b1 at aol.com>, JKSCHW at aol.com writes
>Surely not all needs are artificial: we need certain minimum dietary
>requirements; protection from exposure to extremes of heat and cold; and indeed-
>-although the form of these will of course vary--love, attention, and engagement
>with activities that use and develop our capacities. Marx knew this. See Norman
>Geras, Marx and Human Nature: Refutation of a Legend; also J. Archbald Petty and
>(an older book) Vernon Venable on Marx and Human Nature. --jks
>
>Well, OK, but I think that Marx's point is that ALL NEEDS are
>artificial.
>
>Per cent of disposable income spent on food
>
>Year US UK
>50 20.6 -
>55 18.8 -
>60 17.4 35
>65 15 31.1
>70 13.8 25
>75 13.9 22.7
>80 13.4 20.9
>85 12 18.4
>90 11.6 15.8
>95 10.9 13.9
>99 - 12.8
>
>According to the Rowntree Trust survey those things that are considered
>necessities has expanded considerably, (a consequence of past
>productivity increases). More than half those interviewed considered the
>following to be necessities: annual holiday away from home (not with
>relatives), television, telephone, deep freezer/fridge freezer, insuring
>home contents, hobby or leisure activity, washing machine (September 11,
>2000).
>
>
>In message <s9d9f2c6.009 at mail.ci.detroit.mi.us>, Charles Brown
><CharlesB at CNCL.ci.detroit.mi.us> writes
>>CB: In the case of gym shoes , they add to my rich individuality as a use-value
>>in running and playing sports ( actually a need that persists from the human
>>phase of what Mandel calls primitive natural needs, from the exilharation and
>>pleasure of using muscles to the feel good of better health; although even 200,
>>000 years ago there were historically created needs, probably sports). Getting
>>harassed because my gym shoes are out of style with the Nike type merely
>>detracts and distracts from my fulfillment of my rich individuality.
>
>No, I think running is a small part of the pleasure of running shoes.
>Otherwise, why Nike? To treat such symbolic hierarchies as without
>substance is to become otherworldly.
>
>>
>>In general, not every commodity coming out of the bourgeois cornucopia enhances
>>our rich individualities, and the "keeping up with the Jones" phenomenon often
>>represses our individual potentials.
>
>But 'keeping up with the Joneses' is an important thing for Marx who
>says in Wage Labour and Capital, that a modest home becomes a lowly
>hovel next to a palace. His point is that it is not the absolute
>physical needs htat are important, but one's social needs relative to
>other people - in principle, he means the contrast between profits and
>wages, as expressed in consumption goods.
>
>The idea that one should not want to 'keep up with the Joneses' is
>capitalist ideology.
>
>
-- James Heartfield
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