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Marx and the Politics of Need
Marx and the Politics of Need challenges one of the most pervasive habits in contemporary political theory and 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.
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.
218 pages, Kindle Edition
Published February 17, 2026
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February 23, 2026
A fine analysis with a significant payoff and some nice bits along the way.
The comparisons with Wittgenstein and Butler are intriguing, especially the idea of seeing anti-capitalist practices in Butlerian terms as iterative, that is, as citing the capitalist practices in new contexts such that their meaning changes. This seems like a helpful way to think of the relation between Levine’s conception of the ideal capital-based economy and existing capitalism, the former transformatively iterating aspects of the latter.
There is something to the idea that Marx’s approach to political economy is “therapeutic” in the Wittgensteinian sense. However, I reject the idea that such “therapy” can avoid theorization. This move — which is pretty standard for Wittgensteinians, and which Boss makes in describing for Marx’s rhetoric — seems to me to run afoul of the dialectical dictum that negation is always also affirmation. Besides, the evidence seems overwhelming that Marx did conceive of himself as engaging in theorization, the complexities of his style notwithstanding.
I thought it was unfortunate that there is (as far as I could tell) no mention of any of the Marxists in the autonomist tradition. In emphasizing the political nature of need according to Marx, Boss ends up quite close to thinkers like Antonio Negri, Mario Tronti, and Harry Cleaver, all of whom made very similar arguments decades ago. The similarities go deeper than the fact that all parties insist on the political nature of Marx’s theoretical interventions. Like Boss, the autonomist Marxists emphasize the political struggle underlying the wage contract and how this introduces an element of indeterminacy into capitalist economic relations. That said, they don’t write specifically on the subject of need; so it isn’t as if Boss’s work is treading entirely on ground that’s already been trodden.
Overall, I appreciated the discussion. It is surely one of the definitive texts on the subject of Marx’s theory of need.
The comparisons with Wittgenstein and Butler are intriguing, especially the idea of seeing anti-capitalist practices in Butlerian terms as iterative, that is, as citing the capitalist practices in new contexts such that their meaning changes. This seems like a helpful way to think of the relation between Levine’s conception of the ideal capital-based economy and existing capitalism, the former transformatively iterating aspects of the latter.
There is something to the idea that Marx’s approach to political economy is “therapeutic” in the Wittgensteinian sense. However, I reject the idea that such “therapy” can avoid theorization. This move — which is pretty standard for Wittgensteinians, and which Boss makes in describing for Marx’s rhetoric — seems to me to run afoul of the dialectical dictum that negation is always also affirmation. Besides, the evidence seems overwhelming that Marx did conceive of himself as engaging in theorization, the complexities of his style notwithstanding.
I thought it was unfortunate that there is (as far as I could tell) no mention of any of the Marxists in the autonomist tradition. In emphasizing the political nature of need according to Marx, Boss ends up quite close to thinkers like Antonio Negri, Mario Tronti, and Harry Cleaver, all of whom made very similar arguments decades ago. The similarities go deeper than the fact that all parties insist on the political nature of Marx’s theoretical interventions. Like Boss, the autonomist Marxists emphasize the political struggle underlying the wage contract and how this introduces an element of indeterminacy into capitalist economic relations. That said, they don’t write specifically on the subject of need; so it isn’t as if Boss’s work is treading entirely on ground that’s already been trodden.
Overall, I appreciated the discussion. It is surely one of the definitive texts on the subject of Marx’s theory of need.
Displaying 1 of 1 review