For Liberation or Exploitation: Reviving the human needs debate

The United States’ use of conflict resolution practices and theories as part of its nation-building strategy in Afghanistan and Iraq requires us to reevaluate the aims of the conflict resolution project. It appears from this precarious vantage point that the practice of conflict resolution is moving in a dangerous and ineffective direction guided only by its desire to reduce violence. Instead of critically investigating the implications of our work during the course of violent conflict, the envelopment of conflict professionals within the military and intelligence industrial systems puts the interests of Western powers and for-profit ventures above the needs of indigenous or “host” (if you prefer) populations. Conflict resolution, once a visionary movement to recognize the existence of universal shared human needs, finds itself in the uncertain position of being exploited as a supplement to the aims of a failing counterinsurgency strategy. A return to a vibrant debate about the relevance of human needs to the field is an essential part of rediscovering the human element underlying a liberatory practice of conflict engagement. Thus, a primary task of peace and conflict studies in an age defined by globalization and dominated by threat narratives should be investigating the ways in which human needs are manipulated to feed the expansive thrust of hyper-capitalism.

Herbert Marcuse, one of the leading contributors of the Frankfurt School and New Left, offers an alternate vision to the discussion of human needs upon which much of the field’s early work rests. Marcuse, while sharing some similarities with pioneering peace and conflict theorists such as John Burton and Johan Galtung, presents an analysis of needs based in the historic conditions of advanced industrial societies. Marcuse’s (1991) groundbreaking work One-Dimensional Man expands a Marxist version of needs theory and focuses on the distinction between “true” and “false” needs; where false needs are a product of advanced capitalism. The psychosocial dimension of Marcuse’s insight reveals how false consciousness is embedded within mass consumer culture and as such remains a structural problem left unexamined by the larger field of conflict analysis and resolution. In returning to a debate about human needs the field is given a chance to re-envision the potential for conflict studies to see itself as a practice based on expanding the realm of human freedom and as a shift away from practices based on exploitation and oppression. The challenge Marcuse and other human needs theorists present us with is that we must come to recognize how factors within the capitalist modes of production influence the way we conduct our work. We must overcome tendencies that push us to embrace quick fix, status quo solutions (pacification), instead of searching for creative alternatives to meeting human needs (liberation).

An essential element of conflict studies and to Marcuse is the desire to understand how the individual functions within society.  How does a person come to understand their environment and how does this understanding determine our response to antagonistic conditions?  Starting from the basis that advanced industrial society is founded upon the production of commodities, Marcuse (like Marx before him), deduced that the range of human needs was expanded by the system’s ability to generate excess (Fitzgerald, 1985).  However, the production of new needs was not without consequence and the category of needs itself is dialectical. True needs are rather straightforward; they are biologically driven and without the satisfaction of them one does not survive. True or vital needs are a prerequisite for the realization of all needs and include food, shelter, and a minimum level of culture.  In turn, false needs are imposed by society. The distorted basis of our current system of labor and production revolves around developing and reproducing needs that are essentially social constructions.  Most mass manufactured products are produced to satisfy false needs.  They are manufactured as part of an unstable system dependent on a continual process of speculation and growth and underpinned by tensions between the labor, administrative, and ownership classes.   Marcuse writes:

"The intensity, the satisfaction and even the character of human needs, beyond the biological level, have always been preconditioned…In this sense, human needs are historical needs and, to the extent to which the society demands the repressive development of the individual, his needs themselves and their claim for satisfaction are subject to overriding critical standards” (1991, p. 4)."

The resultant situation reflects a reality where the generation of false needs by advanced capitalist societies dominates the true needs of the individual. Hence, water is used in the production of gold for export to the global market instead of being used to irrigate farmland to feed the indigenous population (whose labor is being used to mine the gold and turn a profit).

Capitalist development requires a veil of false consciousness and the construction of false needs to reproduce its destructive logic. No matter how much the individual may come to believe false needs as authentic needs they are “products of a society whose dominant interest demands repression” (Marcuse, 1991, p. 5). The individual’s desire for a certain level of safety and culture are determined by external sources over which the individual has little control and their quest to fulfill these false needs is often responsible for states of misery, injustice, and alienation.

Marcuse’s insights on needs are a necessary supplement to the path breaking work of the late John Burton (though followers of Burton may object to this claim). As with Burton’s (1993) theory of basic human needs, there is recognition of needs as a driving factor in most conflicts. Burton’s vibrant investigation of the relationship between basic needs and conflict over the course of his life positioned him to understand how unfulfilled needs prevent the resolution of conflict. Burton, along with his collaborator Dennis Sandole (1986), attempted to demonstrate a biological basis of human needs, a position Marcuse’s true needs certainly supports. The difference is that Burton never articulated a proper critique of capitalism and largely focused on creating a normative hierarchy of needs that had to be satisfied. Sandole (1993), in particular, asserted the idea that basic human needs was a paradigm shift into what he considered the “Non-Marxist Radical Thought” underlying conflict resolution and was thus an attempt to circumnavigate the impending class conflict of Marxist theory. Burton and Sandole’s positivistic tendencies opened their biological/non-historical needs based argument up to attacks from the culture camp (most notably from Avruch and Black, 1987), a charge Marcuse avoids by focusing on the historic conditions responsible for the repressive nature of advanced capitalism, which is absent from the Burtonian view.

One of the tasks of peace and conflict studies in an age of globalization becomes illuminating the false needs buried within the antagonisms of hyper-capitalism. Galtung’s (1969) insights on structural violence surely brought this to the forefront, but in the time since his highly influential work was published the human centered aims of the field have been replaced by a normative vision of conflict resolution as one that supports the nation-state system and corporate democracy. It was Marcuse’s concern that advanced capitalism lead toward the creation of one-dimensional society, which was both totalitarian in nature and robbed individuals of their creativity. The destruction of the creative impulse within the life world was detrimental to human freedom. Instead of focusing our energies on the complexities of human liberation, we are forced to solve problems produced by the system for its own maintenance. Hence, we spend trillions of dollars in the name of deterrence or terrorism (in both cases, threats that have been blown widely out of proportion), but we cannot seem to find the money to solve the global pandemic that is the AIDS crisis (a largely non-profit making venture). Our notions of security are manipulated to serve the profit margins of an ever-expanding war based economic system and have become the very justification for domination. We are forced to trade both our creativity and freedom for the administration of safety.

The move away from a rigorous study and debate about human needs has left the field of peace and conflict studies open to abuse and misuse. We are a field without a code of ethics or standards of practice. Indeed, the influx of security and defense professionals into the field illustrates the instrumental use of conflict resolution practices when they are not supported by critical examination and a concern for humans over market values. Defense contractors like Northrop Grumman have specialists dedicated to peacebuilding, which raises numerous ethical concerns when combined with U.S. polices determined to portray the use of violence by any group other than the U.S. as evil. Returning to a debate about human needs and examining the dialectic between true and false needs is a step toward reestablishing the foundation of our field based on its radical potential and a concern for the freedom of the individual.

Works Cited:

Avruch, K., & Black, P. W. (1987). A Generic Theory of Conflict Resolutions A Critique. Negotiation Journal, 3(1), 87-96. doi:10.1111/j.1571-9979.1987.tb00395.x

Burton, J. W. (1993). Conflict Resolution as a Political Philosophy. In D. J. D. Sandole & H. V. D. Merwe (Eds.), Conflict Resolution Theory and Practice (pp. 55-64). Manchester University Press ND.

Burton, J. W., & Sandole, D. J. (1986). Generic Theory: The Basis of Conflict Resolution. Negotiation Journal, 2(4), 333-344. doi:10.1111/j.1571-9979.1986.tb00373.x

Fitzgerald, R. (1985). Human Needs and Politics: The Ideas of Christian Bay and Herbert Marcuse. Political Psychology, 6(1), 87-108.

Galtung, J. (1969). Violence, Peace, and Peace Research. Journal of Peace Research, 6(3), 167-191.

Marcuse, H. (1998). Beyond One Dimensional Man. In D. Kellner (Ed.), Collected Papers of Herbert Marcuse: Towards a critical theory of society (Vol. 2, pp. 111-120). London: Routledge.

Marcuse, H. (1991). One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society. Routledge classics. London: Routledge.

Sandole, D. J. D., & Merwe, H. V. D. (Eds.). (1993). Conflict Resolution Theory and Practice: Integration and Application. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press.