A Utopian Dialectic of Needs? Heller's Theory of Radical Needs

Abstract

The concept of `radical needs' has been a constant element in Heller's social philosophy over the last 25 years despite the fact that her own perspective moved progressively away from Marxian philosophical anthropology towards the position that she now characterizes as reflective post-modernism. This article charts this theoretical journey with a close examination of her articulation of the concept of radical needs in various phases of her work. Beginning with an attempt to rescue Marxism from the clutches of objectivism and voluntarism, Heller locates Marx's understanding of `radical needs' as those needs which cannot be satisfied in the bourgeois configuration of society. These needs provide the revolutionary motivation which leads the workers from economic struggle to politicisation. However, a critical distance is already evident in Heller's realization that in Marx these `radical needs' did not yet actually exist for the proletariat but were a construct of the theory, a product of revolutionary faith in their further development. It is this gap between theory and reality which provides both the concern and the avenue of Heller's later modifications of the concept. She moves from a shared faith in the existence of these needs in contemporary bourgeois society to an attempt to block the potential enlistment of this concept in the service of political substitutionalism and reconstruct it beyond the Marxist philosophy of history amidst the social setting of the welfare state. Finally, the article argues that this reconstruction has only been partially successful as the concept remains awkwardly straddled between normativity and weakened factuality.