Geras and the other writes I listed all insist, with Marx, that human needs are not exogenously given but are constructed in a network of social relations, so it's strawman satlking to say otherwise. But they also argue that Marx thinks, correctly, that the cinstruction doesn't go all the way down, that it has a biological and with respect to psychological needs, a mental basis in what people are like.
I didn't use the term "natural need," and I don't know what it means. I do know that if my caloric intake falls below a certain level for a certain period time, it will cause weakness, then death, and thsi is not something that can be avoided by talk about forks. I also know that if a normal person is made to do dull, repetitive, mechanical work day in and day out for many hours, she will not be happy under any circumstances. I take it these are facts about human nature--not abstracted from any social relations. of course, but within any social relations.
--jks
In a message dated 10/4/00 12:10:11 PM Eastern Daylight Time, jim at heartfield.demon.co.uk writes:
<< 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.
>>