Bleached Foundations 117earlier, non-desert principles vary widely. One convenient way of typologizing them
is to distinguish betweentwodominant forms of non-desert orientated distributive
principles: rationalist and empiricist claims. The latter is concerned to establish an
uncontested empirical ground for distribution—characteristic of social needs-based
minimums within welfare states. The former is concerned with the ideal rational con-
ditions in which individuals come to a decision about the manner of distribution in
society, in specified rational circumstances. These themes, particularly the latter, have
dominated theoretical justice literature over the last three decades of the twentieth
century.
The empiricist claim argues, in effect, that human need is the crucial ground for
distribution of burdens and benefits. Therefore, in the eyes of some of its proponents,
it has no desert status. Needsrequireresponses. Agents do notdeservethem. Once
a need is discovered it automatically generates an obligation. There is therefore no
ambiguous or contestable moral or desert basis to the welfare state. To determine a
need does not require (in this view) ascertaining any moral or psychological status of
the agent. Needs are independent of the avowals of individuals. If you need something,
then you need it, whatever you might or might not say. Needs are empirically identi-
fiable by independent agents. They can therefore be ascribed to people whether they
are aware of them or not. They are not just expression of wants or interests. They are,
further, not just indicative of psychological states, interests, or individual preferences.
A cruder way of putting this is that wants are more psychological, whereas needs
are physiological. This is an important point for need proponents, partly because
market activity is concerned with satisfaction of individual preferences, wants, and
psychological preferences. Welfare, qua distributive justice, is however addressed to
common basic human physiological needs. The upshot of this distinction being that
the welfare state, if linked with distributive justice and focused on an empirical needs
principle,cannot, by definition, be subject to market forces or market testing. Thus,
for its proponents, needs, unlike moral desert or interests are clear, determinate and
objective entities. This makes them intrinsically more authoritative.
Historically, much welfare state literature is dominated, implicitly or explicitly, by
the concept of human need. Social services and social minimums are seen as meeting
such needs. For critics of need-based claims, there remain a number of unanswered
questions. Are there for example any absolute human needs? Needs, when actually
specified, always appear to be subject to social, geographical, historical, and many
other such contingencies. There are clearly different dimensions of need. Karl Marx,
for example, in his early writings differentiated a number of different human needs
that would be met under communism. Thus, there are needs of the body (food,
drink, shelter), needs of the mind (to understanding and knowledge), and needs for
social life (communication, work, and so forth). In consequence, there is an implicit
distinction here between absolute and relative needs. Once the distinction between
relative and absolute needs is accepted, it then becomes more difficult to make a clear
distinction between wants or preferences and needs. The line between these becomes
more difficult to negotiate. Further, there is a problem as to whether needs are purely
empirical. For example, X usually needs Yforsome Z. If you do not know what it is