ABSTRACT
In developing needs in György Márkus and Ágnes Heller, and then by returning to Márkus, this chapter highlights how the authors’ positions can, to varying degrees, satisfy the need for a radical theoretical clarification of our particular conjuncture. After capitalism’s 2008 crisis and the subsequent slow or non-existent recovery, there has been a resurgence of interest in Marxism as a vehicle to explain and motivate responses to the incredible power of capitalism to both satisfy but also produce and reproduce unmet human need and suffering. At this moment, the Budapest School’s development of a critical theory of human needs, their production, and their alienation or stultification holds great social promise. In tracking Márkus’s and Heller’s key philosophical moves, we can see how this promise can be developed in liberal, postmodern directions as well as in more radical, revolutionary ways.
