PUBLICATIONS
Books
2026
Routledge
This book challenges one of the most pervasive habits in contemporary political theory and practice: treating needs as moral facts that sit outside of our politics, and which can be used to judge it. Against this depoliticising impulse, George Boss offers a provocative re-reading of Marx’s writings on need, interpreting them not as didactic statements of an abstract philosophy, but as subversive interventions and provocations inseparable from his radical political activism. Re-read in this way, those writings take on new, hitherto unexplored dimensions. Building on them, Boss develops a distinctive Marxian framework that recasts needs as constitutively political, exposing the conflicts, stakes, and possibilities that shape how needs are defined, contested, and met. The result is a fresh, deeply political perspective on human need at a time when the politics of need is both increasingly urgent and increasingly unruly. Opening up what had become ossified and closed down in contemporary social thought, the book thus fashions new opportunities for radical political agency and portends new social possibilities.
Praise
“This astonishing book resituates the politics of human needs because it resituates philosophical enquiry. It does so by recontextualising Marx as a theorising, change-making activist. Boss's bold approach to a philosophical problem resituates it as a political problem. How are needs produced, and why is there no satisfaction?” (Terrell Carver, Professor of Political Theory at the University of Bristol)
“Boss’s innovative reading highlights the deeply political character of Marx's perspective on need, recovering from his writings insights and interventions that could radically transform the theory and practice of politics today.” (Maeve Cooke, Professor of Philosophy at University College Dublin)
“There have been a few good books on needs. There are libraries of books of a wide range of quality on Karl Marx. This book is excellent on both counts, providing a novel take on both needs and Marx’s firmly contextual, practical political thinking. It is a creative and carefully crafted account of the irreducibly political character of needs, taking needs as performative achievements in context riddled with struggle, oppression and suffering rather than natural givens. The author even ends off with how this approach can be marshalled to confront the political challenges of the present. A must read!” (Lawrence Hamilton, SA UK Bilateral Research Professor in Political Theory at the University of the Witwatersrand and the University of Cambridge)
Special issues
2026
Public Humanities (2026)
Contributors: Wendy Brown, Jonathan Floyd, Ian Olasov, Alice Baderin, Jamie Doughty, Lena Halldenius, Moa Petersén, Sarah Stitzlein, Simon Stevens, Guilherma Gonçalves, Lena Lavinas, and Lawrence Hamilton.
2025
"The theory and the politics of needs"
Critical Review of International Social & Political Philosophy (2025)
Contributors: Nicole Hassoun, Lawrence Hamilton, Carl Knight, Maeve Cooke, Attila Tanyi, Ashley Shaw, Sophie Harbour, Stephen K. McLeod, & Daniel Petz.
Articles and chapters
2026
Political philosophy is often said to stand at an uneasy distance from everyday politics. On one side lie the often-abstract normative arguments of philosophers; on the other, the messy, power-saturated realities of political life; and in between, what seems to be a sizable gulf in aims, topics, and practices that limits their mutual relevance. Taking that gap as both a diagnosis and a provocation, this issue draws together a diverse group of political philosophers to explore why it persists, why it matters, and how it might be reduced. This introduction sets the stage for that discussion in three ways. First, it advances a principled argument for the inescapability of public political philosophising. Beyond familiar pragmatic pressures to demonstrate relevance or impact, it argues that political philosophy is intrinsically bound to public life, and that both philosophers and public actors have good principled reasons to engage with one another. Second, it offers a conceptual map of the contributions organised around three themes: the varied ways political philosophers have engaged with the public, the growing integration of public voices and empirical methods into philosophical reasoning, and the experimental and innovative practices through which public political philosophy is reshaping the boundaries of the discipline itself. Third, it reflects on our own experience guest editing the collection, highlighting how the somewhat serendipitous discovery of a hugely varied and inventive field of contemporary public political philosophising—far exceeding anything we had anticipated—pushed us to rethink some of our own assumptions and preconceptions.
"‘Needs, politics, and the climate crisis"
Ethics, Policy & Environment, 29, no. 1 (2026): 29(1), 20–36
Responding to the unique challenge posed by the climate crisis, several recent commentators have invoked the concept of basic needs. Whilst that concept proves useful in meeting many of the distinctive practical and normative problems posed by climate change, those commentators largely neglect the politics surrounding our needs. This article responds by distinguishing three notionally sequential political moments – the politics behind needs, in specifying needs, and following needs – showing how each of these problematizes any attempt to determine the normative importance of needs outside of the political. I finish by considering the implications for needs-based approaches to the climate crisis.
2025
"Depending on work: Human needs in the 'radical turn' on workplace domination"
Critical Review of International Social & Political Philosophy, online first (2025)
This article argues that contemporary radical republican critiques of wage-labour rely on an unduly narrow conception of human needs. While radical republicans have rightly highlighted how structural dependence on work can produce a form of domination, they typically frame that dependence as arising from the worker’s separation from the means to meet their ‘basic’ or ‘fundamental’ needs. As a result, their focus has predominantly been on material deprivation, the wage as a means to subsistence, and the distribution of material productive assets. Against this trend, I argue that domination can also arise through the processes in which the needs themselves are constructed. Drawing on contemporary needs theory, I propose that republicans adopt a political conception of need that treats needs not as fixed prerequisites for a decent human life, but as historically contingent, socially mediated, and contested objects of political struggle. This reframing extends and deepens the radical republican critique of work by shifting focus from material subsistence to the broader terrain of need production. On that basis, I illustrate how dominators manipulate that terrain in two key ways: first, by reshaping the norms and values that define what counts as a legitimate or intelligible need; and second, by reorganising productive processes to render workers dependent not just on the wage, but on the very form of modern work itself. Dependence on work to meet needs is thus driven not only by separation from the means of production, but also by shaping human needs in ways that compel individuals into wage-labour.
"The theory and the politics of need: Introduction"
Critical Review of International Social & Political Philosophy, online first (2025)
This introduction sets the stage for our special issue on the theory and the politics of need. The concept of need has long been marginalised in political theory, but is now undergoing a significant revival. Historically, needs have often been overshadowed by other normative concepts (like wellbeing, preferences, interests, rights, and – more recently – capabilities), and were often dismissed by historical commentators as paternalistic, parochial, pacifying, or even just hopelessly vague. But in recent years, theorists and policymakers alike have returned to the language of need in response to mounting social, economic, political, and ecological crises. This special issue brings together leading and emerging voices in this growing field to explore the renewed relevance of needs in political, social, and moral philosophy. In this introduction, I identify three key themes that run through the issue. The first concerns the grounding of needs: that is, what makes some needs claims normatively significant, others not, and on what basis can they generate duties or entitlements? The second concerns the politics of need, examining the processes of contestation, institutions, and power relationships surrounding our needs. The third addresses the many applications of needs theory to practical and philosophical challenges, ranging – in this issue – from climate ethics to workplace domination, sufficientarianism, the nature of harm, and duties of care. Together, these contributions offer a pluralistic but conceptually rigorous exploration of how and why needs matter, and what it means to take them seriously in contemporary political theory.
2023
"Political theory and the politics of need"
European Journal of Political Theory 24, no.3 (2025): 357-380.
The theory of needs has a political problem. Whilst contemporary theorists largely recognise that politics plays an important part in many of the processes surrounding our needs, they nevertheless hang onto the notion that our most important needs can be determined outside of the political. This article challenges that framing. It does so through a taxonomy and critique of the major contemporary approaches to needs. Considering the works of Len Doyal and Ian Gough, Martha Nussbaum, and Lawrence Hamilton, I divide these into three strands: theories that attempt to avoid, solve, and improve the politics of need. Despite some major differences, these approaches share an understanding of the underlying challenges involved in discerning which needs matter. That framing, I argue, is responsible for certain intractable difficulties that leave needs theorists unable to provide the solutions they demand to the theoretical dilemma they posit. Moreover, in attempting to find those solutions, these theories end up ignoring their partisan implications. The conclusion I reach is that the political theory of needs is not very ‘political’ at all, and that this represents the root of the problem. I thus suggest an alternative, politically realist framing that conceptualises needs as constitutively political.
Global Social Challenges 2, no.2 (2023): 86-104 [co-authored with Alix Dietzel, Dan Godshaw, & Alice Venn]
The city of Bristol, UK, set out to pursue a just transition to climate change in 2020. This paper explores what happened next. We set out to study how just transition is unfolding politically on the ground, focusing on procedural justice. Over the course of a year, we conducted interviews and observations to study decision making at three levels–public sector, private sector and civil society. We found that not only is it difficult to define what just transition means, even for experts, but that the process of deciding how to pursue such a transition is highly exclusionary, especially to women and ethnic minorities. We therefore argue there is an urgency to revise decision-making procedures and ensure that there is ample opportunity to feed into decision-making processes by those who are typically excluded.
"Basic human needs: Abstraction, indeterminacy, and the political account of need"
Critical Review of International Social & Political Philosophy 26, no.7 (2023): 1140-1162
The basic human needs approach contends that the needs which matter – the basic needs – are human needs. This article conducts a critical examination of that approach, and finds it wanting. My claim is that the abstract, indeterminate nature of human needs makes it impossible to establish their normative priority (or ‘basicness’). I begin by showing why human needs are necessarily abstract. This follows from the standard response given by basic human needs theorists to the problem of cultural diversity: to avoid favouring one way of life over others, and to plausibly apply universally, human needs must be specified at a high level of generality. The problem, however, is that this abstract specification undermines the capacity of basic human needs to offer guidance in concrete contexts.