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Need, Humiliation and Independence

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 April 2017

John O'Neill
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The needs principle—that certain goods should be distributedaccording to need—as been central to much socialist andegalitarian thought. It is the principle which Marx famously takesto be that which is to govern the distribution of goods in the higherphase of communism. The principle is one that Marx himself tookfrom the Blanquists. It had wider currency in the radical traditionsof the nineteenth century. In the twentieth century it remainedcentral to the mutualist form of socialism defended by Tawney andTitmuss. The principle underlay the development and justificationof the modern welfare state—thus the National Health Service isstill founded upon the idea that the distribution of medicalresources should be determined by medical need, not by ability topay. One source of the power of the needs principle lies in the factthat it appears to be both a principle of justice and a principle ofcommunity or social solidarity. As a principle of justice it is offeredas a corrective to the particular forms of unequal distributions ofgoods that can result from market transactions, and as a principle ofcommunity or social solidarity as a corrective to the possessiveindividualism taken to be the corollary of a market order.

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Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements , Volume 57 , December 2005 , pp. 73 - 97
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Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy and the contributors 2005

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References

1 See for example Miller, D., Social Justice (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1976)Google Scholar, ch.4 and Principles of Social Justice (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press 1999)Google Scholar ch.10.

2 Marx, K., Critique of the Gotha Programme in Marx, K. and Engels, F.Selected Works (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1968)Google Scholar. For a discussion see Geras, N., ‘The Controversy about Marx and Justice’ in Literature of Revolution (London: Verso, 1986)Google Scholar.

3 Marx, K., ‘Excerpts from James Mill's Elements of Political Economy’ in Colletti, L. ed. Early Writings (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1975), 277Google Scholar.

4 Ibid.

5 For example in the work Kropotkin, while the needs principle is taken to be a principle of justice (Miller, D., Social Justice (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1976) ch.7Google Scholar), it is primarily introduced as a principle of distribution that expresses relations of community. Organisations based on the principle ‘to every man according to his needs’, such as museums, libraries, parks, and schools are presented as examples of local communism that run counter the ‘the current of Individualism’ that is fostered by market society (Kropotkin, P., The Conquest of Bread (London: Chapman Hall 1906), 33–35Google Scholar). So also are the variety of associations of mutual aid through which individuals responds directly to the needs of their fellows, such as the guild, the trade union, village communities, life-boat associations (Kropotkin, P., Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution (Boston: Porter Sargent, 1955) chs.6–8Google Scholar).

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8 It might be objected that distinguishing the needs principle as a principle of justice from its role in promoting a well-constituted community is somewhat artificial. One reason for thinking distribution according to needs is constitutive of a good community is that it is a condition of justice within a community. However, there are I think good reasons for analytically separating the two. A just society need not necessarily be one marked by strong bonds of community, and it may be that considerations of the quality of our social relations entail that sometimes we depart from strict justice. See Wolff, J., ‘Fairness, Respect and the Egalitarian Ethos’, Philosophy and Public Affairs, 27, 1998, pp.97–122Google Scholar and O'Neill, J., ‘Chekov and the Egalitarian’ Ratio (new series) 14, 2001, pp. 165–170Google Scholar. Likewise, questions of the adequacy of the needs principle as a principle of community raise different considerations from those concerned with justice.

9 Rule of St. Benedict, XXXIV in Bettenson, H., (ed.), Documents of the Christian Church (London: Oxford University Press, 1963), p. 167Google Scholar.

10 Other translations have ‘show humility’ in place of the rather more blunt phrase ‘be humiliated’. There are also complications about the term ‘respect of persons’ which since Kant has a particular meaning which differs from older usages. The denial of ‘respect of persons’, can be traced back to Ephesians 6.9. The standard gloss on the denial is that it is required by justice: ‘a just judge regards causes, not persons’. To give respect to persons is to grant a person some good in virtue of who they are—because they are that particular person—not in virtue of their qualities which renders that good their due (Aquinas Summa Theologica Ila-IIae 63.).

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13 I assume here that the needs principle concerns categorical or non-instrumental needs. See Wiggins, D., ‘Claims of Need’ in Needs, Values, Truth (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991)Google Scholar.

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23 Op.cit., I.i.4.9.

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26 Ibid.

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29 Op.cit., III.IV.ll.

30 Smith, A., The Theory of Moral Sentiments, I.iii.2.1, p.50Google Scholar.

31 This line of defence of commercial society finds expression in a different idiom in Hegel's account of civil society. Through contract individuals recognise each other as independent rights holders, as individuals of standing. Correspondingly, the direct alleviation of poverty by welfare payments from public sources of income or the wealthy leads to a dependency that is incompatible with the principle of civil society: ‘the needy would receive subsistence directly, not by means of their work, and this would violate the principle of civil society and the feeling of individual independence and self-respect in its individual members.’ (Hegel, G., Philosophy of Right (London: Oxford University Press 1967Google Scholar), paragraph 245). The difficulty for Hegel is that poverty is also taken to be an inevitable consequence of the workings of civil society. Central to Hegel's solution is alleviation of poverty through corporations based on particular skills, where membership of the association already confirms an individual's standing (Op.cit., para. 253A). The problem with the solution, as Hegel recognises, is that those who are most vulnerable to poverty, unskilled day labourers, are excluded from corporations (Op.cit., para. 252A).

32 Marx, K.Grundrisse (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973) 163Google Scholar.

33 Ibid.

34 A variation on this theme is to be found in the work of Kant: ‘[M]oney makes one independent, one gains respect by the possession of it; one has worth, needs no one and depends on no one. But in making us independent of others, money in the long run makes us dependent on itself; it frees us from others in order to enslave us.’ (Kant, Lectures on Ethics (London: Methuen, 1979), 177Google ScholarPubMed).

35 K. Marx, Op.cit., 162.

36 Op.cit., 163.

37 I discuss this further in O'Neill, J., The Market: Ethics, Knowledge and Politics (London: Routledge 1998), ch.10CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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40 Op.cit., 9–10.

41 p.cit., 18

42 Op.cit., 18

43 Titmuss, R., The Gift Relationship (London: Allen and Unwin, 1970)Google Scholar and Archard, D. ‘Selling Yourself: Titmuss's Argument against a Market in Blood,’ The Journal of Ethics, 6, 2002, 87–103Google Scholar.

44 The thought that it might be is central to some of Simone Weil's scepticism about rights and to ‘the shrill nagging of claims and counter-claims’ that she took the language of rights to engender. Hence the following comment: ‘to place rights at t he centre of social conflicts is to inhibit any possible impulse of charity on both sides …” (Weil, S., ‘O n Human Personality’ in McLellan, D.Simone Weil (London: Macmillan 1989), p.280)Google Scholar. For a discussion of Weil's arguments see Winch, P., Simone Weil: ‘The Just Balance’ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), ch.14Google Scholar.

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47 The claim is one about which there are good grounds for scepticism. Market relations themselves require a background of social relations of positive regard. As Maclntyre notes, if one's butcher has a heart attack before one, the response Ah! Not in a position to sell me my meat today I see’ (Maclntyre, Rational Dependent Animals (London: Duckworth 1999), 117Google Scholar) would not just be improper, it would make the workings of a market society itself impossible.

48 ‘Justice is charity a habit of loving conformed to wisdom. Thus when one is inclined to justice, one tries to procure the good of everybody … in proportion to the needs and merits of each.’ (Leibniz ‘Felicity’ in Riley, P., (ed.) Political Writings. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988) 83Google Scholar).

49 Rousseau, J. J., Emile Foxley, B., (trans.) (Dent: London, 1911), book IV, 185Google Scholar.

50 Ibid.

51 Aristotle, Rhetoric Roberts, W., (trans.) (Clarendon Press: Oxford, 1946), II.8 85bl2ffGoogle Scholar.

52 Hobbes, T., Leviathan (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1968), 1.6 126Google Scholar.

53 Smith, A., The Theory of Moral Sentiments, VII.iii.1.4Google Scholar.

54 Rousseau, J. J., Emile p. 185Google Scholar.

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56 Cited in Thompson, E. P., The Making of the English Working Class (Penguin: Harmondsworth, 1968), 461Google Scholar; see chapter 12 for a discussion of this tradition.

57 Smith, A., The Theory of Moral Sentiments, VI.ii.1.1Google Scholar.

58 Op.cit., VI.ii.1.3.

59 Op.cit., II.ii.3.1.

60 Op.cit., IV.1.8.

61 Op.cit., I V.I. 9–10.

62 Op.cit., IV.1.10; cf. Smith An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations Ill.iv. 17 and IV.ii.9Google Scholar.

63 Smith, A., The Theory of Moral Sentiments, I.iii.3.1Google Scholar.

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66 See O'Neill, J., The Market: Ethics, Knowledge and Politics ch.7 and Keat, R., Cultural Goods and the Limits of the Market (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000)Google Scholar.