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Rogers, Wendy
Mackenzie, Catriona
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Dodds, Susan
2021.
Medizinethik.
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189.
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Need, Humiliation and Independence
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 April 2017
Extract
The needs principle—that certain goods should be distributedaccording to need—as been central to much socialist andegalitarian thought. It is the principle which Marx famously takesto be that which is to govern the distribution of goods in the higherphase of communism. The principle is one that Marx himself tookfrom the Blanquists. It had wider currency in the radical traditionsof the nineteenth century. In the twentieth century it remainedcentral to the mutualist form of socialism defended by Tawney andTitmuss. The principle underlay the development and justificationof the modern welfare state—thus the National Health Service isstill founded upon the idea that the distribution of medicalresources should be determined by medical need, not by ability topay. One source of the power of the needs principle lies in the factthat it appears to be both a principle of justice and a principle ofcommunity or social solidarity. As a principle of justice it is offeredas a corrective to the particular forms of unequal distributions ofgoods that can result from market transactions, and as a principle ofcommunity or social solidarity as a corrective to the possessiveindividualism taken to be the corollary of a market order.
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References
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