Needs and Drives
In the 1844 Manuscripts the young Marx wrote:
Man is directly a natural being. As a natural being and as a living natural being he is on the one hand endowed with natural powers, vital powers – he is an active natural being. These forces exist in him as tendencies and abilities – as instincts. On the other hand, as a natural, corporeal, sensuous objective being he is a suffering, conditioned and limited creature, like animals and plants. That is to say, the objects of his instincts exist outside him, as objects independent of him; yet these objects are objects that he needs – essential objects, indispensable to the manifestation and confirmation of his essential powers.
In the Grundrisse Marx says his nature is a 'totality of needs and drives, which exerts a force upon me' . In The German Ideology he uses the formulation: 'their needs, consequently their nature' . We can see then, that from Marx's early writing to his later work, he conceives of human nature as composed of 'tendencies', 'drives', 'essential powers', and 'instincts' to act in order to satisfy 'needs' for external objectives. For Marx then, an explanation of human nature is an explanation of the needs of humans, together with the assertion that they will act to fulfill those needs. (c.f. The German Ideology, chapter 3 .) Norman Geras gives a schedule of some of the needs which Marx says are characteristic of humans:
...for other human beings, for sexual relations, for food, water, clothing, shelter, rest and, more generally, for circumstances that are conducive to health rather than disease. There is another one ... the need of people for a breadth and diversity of pursuit and hence of personal development, as Marx himself expresses these, 'all-round activity', 'all-round development of individuals', 'free development of individuals', 'the means of cultivating gifts in all directions', and so on.
Marx says 'It is true that eating, drinking, and procreating, etc., are ... genuine human functions. However, when abstracted from other aspects of human activity, and turned into final and exclusive ends, they are animal.'
Read more about this topic: Marx's Theory Of Human Nature
Famous quotes containing the word drives:
“What people do who go into politics I can’t think; it drives me almost mad to see mismanagement over only a few hundred acres.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)