Needs and Wants as Relational Dynamics: A Marxist and Activity-Theoretical Framework

Introduction

Understanding needs and wants requires moving beyond seeing them as fixed individual traits or simple biological urges. Instead, this work adopts a Marxist and activity-theoretical perspective to define needs and wants as relational dynamics – evolving interactions between living beings and their modes of life. In this view, needs and wants are not static hierarchies – as in Maslow’s classic pyramid – but are historically and socially shaped, emerging through practical activity and evolving alongside organisms and their environments. Marxist theory emphasizes how humans produce and transform their own life conditions and thus their needs (Maidansky, 2021; Marx & Engels, 2022). Activity theory, rooted in the work of Lev Vygotsky and Aleksei Leontyev, similarly views needs and motives as arising through goal-directed action mediated by cultural and material objects (Nardi, 1996). Together, these approaches provide a systematic framework for analyzing how needs and wants develop from birth – ontogeny – and across evolutionary history – phylogeny – through the co-production of organisms and their environments. We will integrate insights from Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Mao Zedong, Antonio Gramsci, and Silvia Federici on the socio-historical production of needs, and from activity theorists – Vygotsky, Leontyev, Sergei Rubinstein, Yrjö Engeström, Gregory Bedny – on the psychological and practical mediation of needs. We will also incorporate theoretical approaches to emotion made by Vygotsky, Holodynski, Ratner, Roth, and Burkitt to show how feelings signal and shape needs in social contexts, and Michael Levin’s ideas on purposeful evolution and collective intelligence to ground needs in biological agency. Throughout, examples from Latin American health and veterinary contexts – spanning pets, livestock, pests, wildlife, and human communities – will illustrate how material, psychological, and spiritual dimensions of needs manifest in practice.

Marxist perspectives: Needs, labor, and historical development

Marxist theory provides a foundational understanding of needs as historically developing social relations. In The German Ideology, Marx and Engels famously argue that humans distinguish themselves from animals as soon as they begin to produce their means of subsistence – although this is no longer considered a way to tell humans apart form other animals – and that satisfying an existing need creates new needs in an ongoing cycle. They write that “as soon as a need is satisfied… new needs are made; and this production of new needs is the first historical act” (Marx & Engels, 2022). In other words, human and animal needs are not biologically fixed; they expand and change as people alter their mode of life. Each new tool or form of production – each new way of living – generates novel wants and dependencies. For example, the development of agriculture created needs for storage, land, and social organization; industrial capitalism created needs for wage income, clock-regulated time, and consumer goods beyond bare survival. Consider the evolution of farming throughout the ages: new breeds and production systems are constantly developed to fulfill mainly human needs and wants. Marx’s concept of the “metabolic” interaction between humans and nature – later highlighted in ecological Marxism – underscores that people continually transform external nature to meet their needs, and in doing so transform themselves (Maidansky, 2021). As Marx put it, “the production of life, both of one’s own labor and of fresh life – procreation – now appears as a double relationship: on the one hand as a natural, on the other as a social relationship” (Marx & Engels, 2022). Needs are thus simultaneously material, psychological, and spiritual. They are grounded in the practical requirements of life – food, shelter, health – and shaped by social relations and cultural ideas about what one “needs.”

Friedrich Engels extended this analysis to human evolution. In The Part Played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man, Engels argued that through tool-making and cooperative labor our pre-human ancestors reshaped their environment and themselves – in effect, labor “created man himself” (Engels, 1972). The hand freed by upright posture became a tool-making organ, the brain expanded, and early hominids developed new social needs – like coordination and communication – alongside basic survival needs (Engels, 1972). Engels showed that even at the phylogenetic scale, needs and capacities co-evolve: the mode of life – e.g. a tool-using, cooperative lifestyle – gives rise to new needs – such as more complex communication, sharing of resources – which then drive further biological and social evolution. This dialectical interplay of organism and environment – laboring activity and evolving needs – means that needs are relational: they exist not merely within an organism, but in the organism’s dynamic relation to its surroundings and community.

Marx’s later works – such as Capital – further distinguish use-values – the utility of things in satisfying needs – from exchange-values – their value in the market (Marx, 1867). Under capitalism, the satisfaction of needs becomes mediated by commodities and money. Capitalist production not only meets genuine needs but also creates artificial wants for the sake of profit. Antonio Gramsci, the Italian Marxist, noted how capitalist cultural hegemony naturalizes certain wants – for example, the “Americanism and Fordism” phenomenon, where mass production required mass consumption. Gramsci observed that the early 20th-century capitalist class, typified by Henry Ford, deliberately fostered new consumer desires – for automobiles, appliances – among workers by raising wages and promoting a new lifestyle, thus securing workers’ consent to the very system that exploited them. In Gramsci’s view, people’s “common sense” in a capitalist society comes to include acceptance of many wants – for commodities or status – that are not purely self-chosen, but shaped by advertising, media, and education. This aligns with Marx’s critique that capitalism tends to generate “false needs” – endless desires for commodities that overshoot basic human requirements and serve the market more than the individual. While Gramsci himself did not use the term “false needs,” his concept of cultural hegemony implies that dominant groups influence how the masses conceive their needs and satisfactions. For instance, a rural community might come to want a television and packaged foods due to media influence, even if their needs for information or nutrition could be met in other, locally sustainable ways. A Marxist approach thus asks: whose interests are served by defining certain things as “needs”? It also recognizes the potential for counter-hegemony – oppressed groups can develop their own understanding of needs – e.g. a need for land, for dignity, for community control – that challenge the status quo(Gramsci, 1971).

Mao Zedong’s writings provide a concrete political extension of Marxist thought on needs, especially in the context of revolutionary China. Mao emphasized the importance of starting from the actual needs and wants of the masses rather than imposing elitist agendas. Mao wrote that:

This highlights a crucial dynamic: people may not immediately perceive some of their needs due to lack of awareness – the masses might “objectively need a change” but are “not yet conscious of the need”. The revolutionary’s role is not to dictate wants, but to raise consciousness so that people recognize their own needs and collectively strive to fulfill them. Mao’s concept of the “mass line” – “from the masses, to the masses” – is essentially a method of articulating social needs from the ground up. For example, in a rural health campaign in Latin America inspired by such principles, health workers might first investigate what local villagers feel they want – perhaps relief from a particular disease or access to clean water – then help connect those expressed wants to underlying health needs – preventive sanitation, vaccination – and finally implement solutions in a way that communities find meaningful. Mao’s insistence on respecting both the material needs and felt wishes of people guards against technocratic or paternalistic approaches. It resonates with contemporary participatory development practices where communities define their priorities. It also warns that forcing changes “against the will of the masses” will fail – a lesson as relevant to public health and veterinary interventions as to political revolution. In sum, Mao contributes an approach to aligning objective needs with subjective wants through dialogue and praxis.

Feminist Marxist scholar Silvia Federici adds another dimension by focusing on the role of reproductive labor and gender in the political economy of needs. Federici argues that under capitalism, the work of meeting human needs – cooking, cleaning, child-rearing, caring for the ill, birthing the next generation – has been largely assigned to women in the unpaid domain of the household, where it is treated as a limitless resource to be taken for granted (Federici, 2019). In works like Caliban and the Witch and Revolution at Point Zero (Federici, 2004, 2012), Federici shows that what is considered a “need” versus a “luxury” or a private matter is politically contested. For example, she discusses struggles over wages for housework: by demanding wages for domestic labor, feminists highlighted that housework produces value by fulfilling workers’ daily needs – food, cleanliness, emotional support – and thus reproducing labor power for the economy (Federici, 2019). Capitalism had mystified these needs as personal and feminine duties, not social responsibilities. Federici’s perspective reveals a hidden dimension of needs: the effort and labor required to fulfill them. The “need” for a worker to be rested and fed each day is met by someone’s labor – often a woman’s unpaid work at home – yet capitalism only recognizes the worker’s need in order to exploit their labor the next day, not the needs of the one who cares for the worker. This dynamic extends to veterinary and agricultural realms too – for instance, the need to care for farm animals – feeding, cleaning, tending to health – often falls to low-paid or unpaid family labor. Federici and other social reproduction theorists thus broaden Marx’s concept of production to include the production of life itself. In Latin America, this is evident in communal kitchens, cooperative childcare, and other grassroots initiatives – often led by women – to secure everyday needs under conditions of poverty and neoliberal austerity (Federici & Vishmidt, 2013). Federici notes that across Africa and Latin America, women have formed networks for cooperative forms of reproduction – e.g. community gardens, collective cooking – as survival strategies when state support is cut and market forces encroach (Federici, 2019; Federici & Vishmidt, 2013). By framing these as collective responses to needs, she politicizes the act of need-fulfillment: it becomes a site of resistance against a system that prioritizes profits over people’s well-being. Federici’s Marxist-feminist lens reminds us that needs are also about power: whose needs are valued and met, by whom, and at what cost. For example, in a community pest control scenario, whose need counts more – the agribusiness’s need to maximize crop yield or the peasant family’s need to not be poisoned by pesticides, or the ecosystem’s “need” to maintain biodiversity? Such questions are inherently political. In summary, Marxist perspectives contribute the idea that needs and wants are formed within relations of production and reproduction. They are historical – changing with new modes of production – social – mediated by class, gender, culture, ideology – and political – contested by different groups. Needs are never merely individual matters; they are relational dynamics among people and between people and nature.

Activity theory: Mediation, motives, and the emergence of needs

Cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT), which originated with Vygotsky and his students, complements Marxist theory by providing a psychological and developmental account of how needs and wants manifest through goal-directed actions and mediating artifacts. Lev Vygotsky, deeply influenced by Marx, posited that human mental functions arise from social activity. One of Marxism’s core ideas is that in practical activity, humans transform the external world and themselves (Maidansky, 2021). Vygotsky brought this into psychology:

In other words, our perception and cognition filter the world according to what matters for our current needs and goals. If an animal or person had no needs or motives, their behavior would be random and their perception overwhelmed by irrelevant data. Vygotsky’s insight was that consciousness is oriented by needs – we notice and remember what is meaningful for our activities, “distorting reality to the advantage of the organism” (Maidansky, 2021). For example, a hungry predator’s senses are attuned to potential prey movements, while a human medical student’s attention is attuned to symptoms relevant to disease. The psyche thus serves the active pursuit of needs, rather than passively mirroring all aspects of reality.

Aleksei N. Leontyev, a colleague of Vygotsky, advanced activity theory by clarifying the structure of activity in relation to needs. He distinguished between activities, actions, and operations, corresponding to different levels of analysis. Crucially, activity is driven by a motive, which is directly related to a need, whereas actions are driven by more proximate goals (Blunden, 2015; Leontyev, 2025). Leontyev famously stated that “the object of an activity is its true motive”, meaning that whatever a person is ultimately trying to attain – the object – corresponds to some need being fulfilled (Activity Analysis Center, 2023). He described the process by which an internal need becomes attached to an external object:

This is a profound idea: a need on its own – e.g. hunger – is a state of tension that “is not directed at anything in particular” until the organism encounters or envisions an object, or another living being that can satisfy it (Nardi, 1996). At that moment – the moment of recognizing something as able to satisfy the need – the need is transformed into a specific motive – desire for that object or living being – and the organism engages in an activity oriented towards obtaining it (Nardi, 1996). The implication is that needs are relational – between subject and object to fulfill a certain mode of life – and mediated by the environment. If the appropriate object is absent or unknown, the need remains diffuse or unmet. If a new potential object appears, it can generate a new form of activity. For instance, consider a thirsty wild animal that comes across a new source of water – the need, thirst, finds an object – the waterhole – which triggers a goal-directed activity – moving to drink – and perhaps even a new learned behavior – returning to this location in future. In human contexts, the objects can be highly complex or symbolic. A student might have a need for intellectual stimulation which only becomes a concrete motive when she discovers an object such as a challenging research project or a mentorship opportunity – then that object “crystallizes” her diffuse need into a want and leads to sustained activity – study, inquiry.

Leontyev also showed that through societal development, the connection between needs and activities can become indirect (Cong-Lem, 2022). In a hunting tribe, the hunger of the hunter is directly satisfied by the prey he hunts – the need and the motive coincide: food. But in a modern capitalist society, a worker’s need for food is satisfied via money earned from labor; the immediate motive for working might be a paycheck, while the underlying need is survival. This can lead to alienation, where people pursue goals that have become detached from their original human needs. Activity theory highlights these mediated chains: a need can be satisfied by an object that is two or three steps removed – e.g. need → money → supermarket → food. The meaning of the activity for the person may differ from its objective motive. Using Leontyev’s terms, collective activities have an objective that may not be identical to each individual’s personal motive. For example, a veterinarian in a public vaccination campaign might personally be motivated by compassion for animals – personal need for professional moral fulfillment – while the objective motive of the activity system might be eradicating rabies to protect public health. Both involve needs – the veterinarian’s need for a meaningful job and the community’s need for disease control – but they intersect in a shared activity – vaccination program – mediated by various tools – syringes, vaccines, cold chain logistics – and governed by rules – government policies, veterinary ethics, and the pursue of wellbeing.

Another key contribution from activity theory is the concept of mediation by tools and signs (Vygotsky). Human needs and actions are rarely direct responses to the environment; rather, humans insert mediating artifacts between themselves and the world. Language itself is a mediating tool that allows us to express needs, form plans, and coordinate with others. Vygotsky demonstrated that even higher psychological needs – like the need for achievement or for social approval – are formed through the internalization of social interactions. He noted that “human action in the environment is mediated by artifacts and signs”, meaning that everything from a hammer to a word can shape how we fulfill a need. A child who feels the need for support might first reach out with a gesture – physical tool – or cry – vocal signal; as language is acquired, that need might be mediated by the word “help” or by an internal dialogue reassuring themselves. The role of objects in needs, then, is not purely as lifeless things to be consumed, but as mediators imbued with cultural significance. A simple example: a baby’s blanket can become a mediating object for the need for comfort – it is not the fabric per se that the baby needs, but the warmth and security it symbolizes – sometimes called a transitional object in psychology. In non-human animals too, we see mediation: a hermit crab needs protection and uses a seashell as a “tool” to satisfy that need; a chimpanzee uses a twig to extract termites for food – the twig becomes an intermediary addressing the need for nutrition. What activity theory offers is a vocabulary to analyze such cases: subject -> tool -> object -> outcome, with the tool – or sign – enabling the subject to achieve the object of need. Yrjö Engeström (Engeström, 1987) later expanded this into the well-known activity system model, which includes community, rules, and division of labor as additional mediators in collective activity. Engeström emphasizes that in complex work settings, multiple stakeholders interact, and the object of activity is dynamic – it can be reinterpreted and expanded as participants learn. For example, in a One Health initiative in a Latin American village, the initial object might be defined narrowly as “vaccinate cattle” – to meet the need of disease control. But through dialogue – mediated by communication tools and community norms – the object may expand to “improve overall livestock health and farmers’ livelihoods,” incorporating additional needs like nutrition, economic stability, and ecological sustainability. Engeström calls this process expansive learning, where the community collectively reframes their needs and goals when facing contradictions – e.g. a vet campaign failing because farmers also need better grazing practices – a contradiction between animal health and agricultural methods. The activity-theoretical lens thus helps us see needs and wants not as isolated impulses, but as part of a system of activity involving people, artifacts, and cultural context.

Soviet psychologist Sergei Rubinstein, a precursor of activity theory, encapsulated the relational essence of this framework by asserting that “activity creates its own subject.” By this he meant that through engaging in activity to meet needs, individuals actually form and transform themselves (Maidansky, 2021). One’s identity, capabilities, and even bodily habits are a result of one’s goal-directed actions over time. A person becomes a “reader” by engaging with books to satisfy curiosity, becomes a “healer” by engaging in caring activities to fulfill the desire to help others, and so on. Rubinstein’s principle of “creative self-activity” (Maidansky, 2021) ties closely to Marx’s idea of praxis: people make themselves through what they do. It follows that needs and wants are deeply linked to one’s sense of self – e.g., the more someone practices as a veterinarian out of a need to nurture animals, the more that need might grow and become part of their self-concept – “I need to work with animals; it’s not just a job, it’s who I am”. Inversely, through lack of activity, needs can atrophy or remain latent; a child who never has the chance to play with musical instruments might never discover a potential want or talent for music. This is why providing rich environments and tools can give rise to new constructive wants. Gregory Bedny, a contemporary activity theorist, applied these principles to ergonomics and human factors, analyzing how the design of work tasks can better fit human needs. Bedny’s work often examines the pragmatic dimension of needs: how real operators or workers adapt their actions to meet both the official task requirements and their own intrinsic needs – for safety, comfort, cognitive clarity. In doing so, he bridges the gap between the material aspects of work – physical conditions, tool design – and the psychological aspects – motivation, fatigue, satisfaction. For instance, in designing a veterinary clinic’s workflow, an activity analysis might reveal that vets and technicians create unofficial “shortcuts” or adopt certain tools to ease their cognitive load – signaling needs for efficiency or error-reduction that the formal procedure did not account for. Recognizing these needs can lead to redesigning the activity – perhaps introducing a computer system for tracking vaccinations – that better supports the humans in the system. Bedny’s approach is very much in line with Marx’s view of addressing the real needs of people in productive activity, rather than forcing them into a Procrustean bed of abstract rules. It underscores that even in highly structured environments, people’s wants – like wanting a less frustrating interface, or a safer way to handle a task – are expressions of legitimate needs that deserve consideration.

In summary, activity theory contributes the idea that needs and wants are realized in action and through mediation. A need becomes concrete only when an organism engages with some object or tool that can satisfy it, and through that engagement both the organism and the need itself can change. This perspective is invaluable for analyzing development – both the development of an individual – ontogeny – and the evolution of species or societies – phylogeny. We turn next to how needs and wants emerge developmentally with a special focus on the role of emotions and social relations in that process.

Emotions and the social formation of needs

No account of needs and wants is complete without examining emotions. Emotions are the felt aspect of needs; they signal to the organism and to others that a need is satisfied or unsatisfied, and they motivate action. A baby’s hungry cry, a farmer’s anxiety about a sick animal, a community’s outrage over polluted water – these emotional expressions are integral to how needs are recognized and addressed in social life. We draw on Vygotsky’s insights and those of modern scholars like Holodynski, Ratner, Roth, and Burkitt to understand emotions not as purely biological drives but as socially shaped communicative processes connected to needs.

Vygotsky viewed affect and intellect as unified: thinking and feeling are intertwined in human consciousness. He criticized theories that treat emotions as primitive biological pushes entirely separate from cognitive understanding. Instead, Vygotsky proposed that as children develop, their emotions become mediated by signs and acquire intellectual content, just as their thoughts become suffused with feeling. For example, an infant might feel distress as an undifferentiated state of discomfort – hunger, pain, loneliness all-in-one – and simply cry. But a toddler already begins to distinguish “I’m hurt” – physical pain – from “I’m scared” or “I want that toy” – desire frustration – cognitive labeling that refines the emotional need being expressed. By adulthood, human emotions like pride, shame, love, or indignation are richly infused with social meanings and personal narratives. Ian Burkitt, a sociologist of emotion, emphasizes that emotion “is a response to the way people are embedded in patterns of relationship” (Burkitt, 2014). Rather than being just inner pushes, emotions arise in relationships – to others, to social expectations, to one’s goals. Burkitt argues that even seemingly private feelings are shaped by social interaction and cultural context (Burkitt, 2014). For instance, the want for social recognition – a kind of affective psychological need – is experienced through emotions like pride when recognized or shame when disrespected, which depend on societal norms of honor, status, or dignity.

In early development, the role of caregivers is crucial in transforming raw needs into more complex wants through emotional exchange. Developmental psychologist Manfred Holodynski, building on Vygotsky, proposes an internalization theory of emotional development (Holodynski, 2013). He outlines how infants’ initially unregulated emotional expressions – cries, smiles – gradually become regulated through social interaction and then taken over by the child internally. At first, an infant’s emotions function in the realm of interpersonal regulation: they serve to signal the child’s needs to caregivers and to elicit a satisfying response (Holodynski, 2013). For example, a baby’s crying is an outward expression that “signalizes the prevailing needs of the child” – hunger, discomfort, fatigue – (Holodynski, 2013). Caregivers, attuned by evolution and empathy, respond to these signals – feeding the hungry baby, soothing the upset baby – thereby satisfying the need. Holodynski notes that this situation creates a feedback loop: the infant’s emotional display – cry – brings about an environmental change – caregiver’s help – that relieves the need, and over time, the infant begins to associate certain signals with the restoration of well-being (Holodynski, 2013). This is the start of emotion as a mediator of needs. By the end of the first year of life, infants use a range of culturally recognizable emotional expressions – smiling, frowning, reaching out arms to be held – each of which caregivers interpret in context to infer the child’s wants. Holodynski describes how, as children grow, they enter a stage where they start to use these expression signs not only to solicit help but to self-regulate . Around preschool age, children engage in private speech and pretend play, which Vygotsky identified as mechanisms for internalizing social dialogue. Emotions undergo a similar process: a child might talk themselves through a fear – “It’s okay, there’s no real monster” – or adopt a facial expression to influence their own mood – like deliberately smiling to feel better, a rudimentary form of emotion regulation. Through such processes, the interpersonal regulation – parent calming child – gives birth to intrapersonal regulation – child calms self using learned strategies. Holodynski and colleagues detail stages: a) – enculturation of expressions in early caregiver-child interaction, b) emergence of internal regulation by using those expressions covertly – e.g., imagining how Mom would comfort me – and c) eventual internalization where the regulation happens on a mental plane – I feel an emotion and immediately a learned coping thought kicks in (Holodynski, 2013).

Why is this important for needs and wants? Because it shows that even our most basic needs – for food, safety, affection – are from the start managed through social-emotional relations. An infant’s physical need – hunger – becomes a social want – “I want mommy to feed me now” – expressed through emotion. As maturity increases, the needs diversify and the wants become more complexly linked to emotional states. A teenager might need belonging and want acceptance from a peer group, feeling intense emotions of joy or despair depending on peer feedback. Those emotions are not just internal; they influence the teen’s behavior – perhaps driving them to conform or rebel – and also inform parents and teachers of the teen’s state. Emotions thus function as signals and drivers in the ecosystem of needs. As Holodynski writes, expressions are “designed to meet the infant’s basic needs” by enlisting caregivers and are “co-designed to complement the infant’s behavioral repertoire” (Holodynski, 2013). In effect, human infants outsource much of their need fulfillment to social others – unlike many animals that can walk or feed themselves shortly after birth. This profound dependency means human needs are from the outset intersubjective. We learn what to want through the rewards and punishments of social interaction: a child may learn that asking politely yields better results than crying, or that certain needs – like emotional comfort – can be met by hugging a favorite toy when parents are busy – an early example of an individual finding an object to mediate a psychological need.

Cultural psychologist Carl Ratner extends this thinking by examining how different cultures shape the kinds of emotions people feel and the needs they prioritize. Ratner argues that emotions are not universal constants but are heavily influenced by cultural norms, values, and social structures. For example, in some cultures, the need for individual achievement may be strongly emphasized, and children are socialized to feel pride in personal success and shame in failure. In more collectivist cultures, the need for group harmony might be paramount, and emotions like empathy, loyalty, or fear of exclusion become salient. These cultural emotional patterns guide what people come to want. A person in a capitalist urban society might feel that they “need” a high-paying career to be respected, experiencing anxiety or inadequacy if they don’t achieve it – emotions tied to culturally transmitted desires for status. In contrast, a member of an indigenous community practicing subsistence agriculture may derive their emotional satisfaction from fulfilling communal obligations and maintaining ecological balance, feeling contentment in meeting those needs. Ratner’s work – and that of others in cultural psychology – teaches us that wants can be socially manufactured by shaping emotional associations. Advertising is a clear illustration: marketers attempt to link products to positive emotions – happiness, attractiveness, power – and to portray their absence as a source of negative emotion – fear of missing out, inadequacy. This can effectively create a felt need for something like a smartphone upgrade or a luxury item, even though objectively one’s survival does not require it. In Marxist terms, this is the commodification of desire, but at the level of subjective experience, it operates through emotional conditioning.

Educational researcher Wolff-Michael Roth brings a related perspective, showing how emotions play a role in learning and work activities. Roth, working within the activity theory tradition, has demonstrated that emotions “come into being in relation to the negotiations” a person undertakes in an activity setting – as one of his studies on mathematics learning notes. For instance, a student struggling to solve a problem might experience frustration or anxiety, which are not just personal feelings but responses to the activity system – perhaps the way the task is structured or the social context of the classroom. Those emotions, in turn, can become motives: frustration might either discourage further effort – the student decides “I don’t want to do this, I don’t need math” – or spur a new need – the student seeks help, indicating a need for support or a different approach. Similarly, in professional work, Roth found that emotions and motivation are intertwined: how a person feels about their work – proud, alienated, enthusiastic, burnt out – reflects how well their work activity is meeting their personal and social needs, and those feelings can lead them to change how they work or even whether they continue in that field. For example, a veterinarian who repeatedly faces moral stress – say, owners wanting to euthanize pets for convenience rather than medical necessity – may develop emotional exhaustion and question their role – effectively a clash between the want to uphold animal welfare and the demands of clients or employers, producing strong emotions that might result in the vet altering her practice or advocating for different policies. Activity theory researchers argue that rather than viewing such emotions as merely private matters, we should see them as emergent properties of activity systems that often signal underlying contradictions. In the vet’s case, the distress signals a contradiction between the ethos of care and the business model; addressing that need – for ethical consonance – might require structural changes – like better client education or clinic policies. Thus, emotions guide the evolution of the activity towards better alignment of needs and objectives.

Ian Burkitt’s relational approach adds that emotions are also shaped by power relations. Who is “allowed” to express certain needs emotionally is a political matter. Burkitt notes how historically, expressions of anger or desire were controlled differently for different groups – e.g. women or lower-class individuals often being expected to be more deferential. This means some people learn to suppress their wants or to feel guilt when they have needs that inconvenience others. Conversely, those in power may feel entitled to have their wants treated as needs by others – think of a feudal lord who “needs” lavish comforts that are, in fact, provided by the toil of peasants, or in a modern setting, a wealthy client whose slightest whim is catered to by service workers. Emotions here – satisfaction, indignation, humiliation, entitlement – all signal how needs are negotiated in relationships of inequality. In a Latin American community context, for instance, an indigenous community might express a collective grief or anger – emotions – when a mining project threatens their water – these emotions are tied to a (material need – clean water) and also a (spiritual/cultural need – the sacredness of land). Their powerful shared emotion becomes a motivator for social action – protest, advocacy. Understanding that these emotions arise from concrete relational dynamics – their mode of life in harmony with the environment being disrupted – helps external observers – like health professionals or environmental scientists – recognize the legitimacy of what the community wants. Rather than dismissing it as “emotional” or “irrational,” one sees that the wants – prevent pollution, protect our way of life – correspond to deep needs, some of which are material – health – and others symbolic – cultural identity.

To summarize, emotions are integral to the relational dynamics of needs and wants. They 1) signal needs – both to the self and others, pain signals bodily need, loneliness signals social need; 2) energize action to satisfy needs – desire pulls us toward something, fear pushes us to avoid harm; and 3) are shaped by social interaction – we learn when and how to express or modulate our needs through emotional socialization. The work of Vygotsky, Holodynski, Roth, Ratner, and Burkitt collectively shows that even something as visceral as an emotion is not just “natural” but also historical and cultural. We literally feel our relation to the world and to other people, and those feelings guide the emergence of our wants.

Evolutionary and biological dimensions: Purposeful behavior and collective need

While Marxist and activity theory frameworks were developed primarily for human social life, they resonate strongly with insights from biology about purposeful behavior in living organisms. The concept of needs can be extended across the phylogenetic scale, from simple organisms up to ecosystems, albeit cautiously and with proper nuance for each level of complexity. Here, we incorporate Michael Levin’s theories on goal-directedness in evolution and the idea of collective intelligence in living systems. We also touch on the dialectical view in biology, such as Richard Lewontin’s, that organisms and environments are co-constitutive. These perspectives help ground our framework in the recognition that life is inherently active and need-driven at all levels.

Michael Levin, a developmental biologist, has argued for a reassessment of teleology in biology – essentially, recognizing that even simple organisms and cells exhibit apparent goal-directed behavior (Ciskanik, 2024). He notes that defining “intelligence” as the ability to pursue goals by flexible means – after William James – allows us to see a continuum of problem-solving from microbes to humans (Ciskanik, 2024). Levin’s work on planarian flatworms and other systems shows that tissues and cells can coordinate to achieve specific end-states – like regenerating a correct body shape – without any central brain (Ciskanik, 2024). For example, a single-celled organism like Lacrymaria – a predatory protist – will actively seek out food and avoid obstacles, effectively fulfilling its metabolic needs by navigating its environment (Ciskanik, 2024). This is not “wanting” in the human sense, but it is a primitive analog of it – a systematic, purposeful interaction with the environment to meet a criterion – nutrient uptake. Levin describes such processes as “collections of intelligences” at multiple scales, where even a cell or an organ can be seen as having a kind of implicit goal – e.g., a tissue works to close a wound, each cell acting towards the need of restoring the organism’s integrity (Ciskanik, 2024). Importantly, Levin’s perspective reclaims teleological language carefully: he speaks of teleonomy – apparent purposefulness derived from natural selection and self-organization – rather than mystical teleology. But the upshot is that purposeful, need-driven behavior is abundant in nature, not just in humans with consciousness (Ciskanik, 2024). Evolution itself can be framed as a process where organisms with certain needs – survival, reproduction – evolve structures and behaviors to meet those needs in myriad ways. He and colleagues like Daniel Dennett have even suggested phrasing like “evolution on purpose,” meaning that organisms are not passive recipients of selection but active constructors of niches and solvers of survival problems, making evolution somewhat more agentic than a strict gene-centered view allows.

One example Levin gives is the regeneration of a salamander’s limb: if some fingers are cut off, the cells in the stump collectively “know” to regrow exactly the missing parts and then stop when the goal – complete limb – is reached (Ciskanik, 2024). This indicates a feedback mechanism that assesses progress towards a target morphology – analogous to how our brain might have a target for hunger satisfaction – feeling of fullness – and stops eating behavior when reached. Such biological error-correcting loops are essentially need-driven processes: the deviation from a desired state – nutrient level, body structure, homeostasis – triggers activities that cease once the state is achieved. In evolutionary time, organisms that better sensed and responded to their needs – and could enlist either their own body parts or other organisms in that enterprise – tended to survive and propagate. This leads to the concept of collective intelligence: e.g., an ant colony finds food and allocates labor in a way that serves the colony’s needs for sustenance and reproduction, even though no single ant comprehends the whole system. Likewise, the microbiome in an animal’s gut might collectively adjust to changes in diet to ensure their host – and thus themselves – get needed nutrients. Levin uses such examples to argue that intelligence and need-responsiveness are scale-independent properties of life – a cellular collective can exhibit rudimentary “cognition” about its goals (Ciskanik, 2024).

This modern scientific framing has a remarkable parallel to Engels’ and Marx’s dialectical understanding of life: Engels in Dialectics of Nature wrote about the emergence of qualitative novelty and the interdependence of parts and whole in organisms – though 19th-century science lacked today’s detail. Marx, in his Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts, talked about life as a “being with needs”, highlighting that to be alive is to be in a state of need and active engagement with nature to satisfy those needs. This applies to all organisms: an animal has needs dictated by its species – food type, climate, social interaction if it’s a social species – and will behave accordingly; humans have the additional dimension of conscious will and social organization.

Biologist Richard Lewontin articulated a dialectical view of evolution, famously stating that organisms do not simply adapt to a given environment, but organisms construct their environments as well (Blute & Armstrong, 2011; Bryant, 2011). He argued that the classical view of niche – environmental conditions given, organism adapts – is incomplete; instead, organisms modify their surroundings – physically and chemically, and by choosing micro-environments – in ways that feed back into their own survival. This is known as niche construction. For example, earthworms change soil composition, which in turn affects the nutrients available to them; beavers build dams, creating ponds that meet their need for safety but also transform the ecosystem for many others. Human evolution is an extreme case of niche construction – we build shelters, cultivate fields, create cities, altering our selective environment dramatically – sometimes to our detriment, as in climate change. Lewontin emphasized that “the environment is not a structure imposed on living beings… but is in fact a product of the activity of organisms” (Bedau, 2001). Thus, needs and environment are in a constant dance of co-production: an organism’s needs lead it to alter the environment, which then presents new challenges and opportunities, leading to new needs. Over evolutionary time, this can ratchet up complexity. The development of oxygen-producing photosynthesis – by ancient bacteria – created an oxygen-rich atmosphere, which then was a new environment in which oxygen-breathing life evolved – a dramatic example of one group’s “waste product” becoming another’s essential need. In human socio-ecological terms, think of how the need for energy led to fossil fuel use, which altered the global climate, which now creates new needs – for adaptation, for renewable energy.

Levin’s work ties into this by highlighting that at every step, there is a kind of agency at work – not necessarily conscious agency, but a directional, need-oriented process (Levin, 2023). It invites us to imagine evolution itself as a multi-level learning process, where living systems “explore” ways to meet their imperatives of life – persist, grow, replicate. Those that hit upon stable solutions proliferate – natural selection – but the process is fueled by the constant generation of variation – analogous to creativity – and environmental feedback. Some, like biologist Stuart Kauffman, have even spoken of life “investigating” its adjacent possible states (Kauffman, 1993). In this sense, purposeful evolution does not mean evolution has an external purpose, but that organisms are active participants in shaping their destinies, constrained by physics and history but not reducible to blind accident. This resonates with Marx’s assertion that humans make history, but not under conditions of their choosing. Similarly, bacteria or bees pursue their needs, but in doing so collectively, they can change the very conditions of life for themselves and others.

Additionally, Levin’s concept of collective intelligence provides a bridge to understanding social needs in human society (Watson & Levin, 2023). Just as a beehive has a collective need – survive the winter, which none of the bees could do alone – human communities have collective needs that transcend individual ones – for instance, public health, safety, or a shared meaning or identity. These often manifest as institutions or cultural practices. For example, in a small Latin American village, the collective need for water might lead to a communal irrigation system, and associated norms about water usage. Accordingly, individuals must coordinate and sometimes curb their personal wants – like one farmer wanting more than his share of water – to maintain the system that meets everyone’s need. Here, the idea of “the common good” is essentially about collective needs – which may include intangibles like justice or harmony.

One more notion to mention here is the “spiritual” or existential aspect of needs, which becomes especially salient in humans – though one could argue some intelligent animals exhibit glimmers of it, such as elephants showing behaviors around death that suggest mourning, implying some need to emotionally process loss. Humans, once material survival needs are met, often experience a need for meaning, purpose, or belonging to something larger. Marx touched on this in the concept of species-being (Santilli, 1973): the idea that humans have a need to express their life activity freely and cooperatively, which under alienated labor is stunted. Many religions and philosophies address the spiritual needs of humans – the need to have answers to big questions, to feel connected to the cosmos, to have hope and moral guidance. While this chapter’s focus is theoretical and materialist, it acknowledges that what people want is not only food, shelter, and knowledge, but often also spiritual fulfillment. In Marxist humanism, this might be reframed as the need for self-realization and unalienated life; in activity theory, perhaps as the need for creative, meaningful activity. Michael Levin’s notion of a “purposeful universe” – as some interpreters call his views – might metaphorically extend purpose down to the level of atoms, but practically, at the human level, it reminds us that having a purpose is itself a fundamental human need. People strive not just to live, but to live for something. This might be caring for family, contributing to community, excelling in a craft, or spiritual practice. These higher-order needs, once articulated, loop back to affect material practices. A veterinarian who feels a strong purpose in alleviating animal suffering might volunteer in low-income areas, thereby meeting the needs of underserved communities’ animals; an indigenous healer in the Amazon might protect certain plants because of their spiritual and medicinal value, thus contributing to biodiversity conservation. Purpose can align wants with broader, long-term needs in a synergistic way.

The interplay of biological, psychological, and spiritual needs is evident in approaches like One Health, which explicitly links human health, animal health, and environmental health as one integrated need. For example, consider a zoonotic disease like rabies or leptospirosis in a tropical region. The collective need is to control the disease – to save human and animal lives – but tackling it will require addressing multiple layers: the material need for vaccination and sanitation – dogs need vaccines, people need clean water – the educational need – people may want knowledge or may need to overcome cultural misconceptions about the disease – and often economic needs – the funding or resources to carry out interventions. To achieve this purpose, community members, health workers, and veterinarians may form a team to reduce rabies. They have to align the wants of different parties: pet owners want their dogs healthy but may fear vaccines or cost; local government may want compliance with public health regulations; the community as a whole needs freedom from the fear of rabies. By treating the community as a collective intelligence – gathering local knowledge about roaming dog populations, for example – the campaign can strategically meet the needs – setting up accessible vaccination posts, educating children who in turn persuaded adults. This reflects Levin’s point about not micromanaging but leveraging the “large-scale cognitive capacities” of distributed agents (Ciskanik, 2024). In plain terms, a successful needs-based intervention must harness the local people’s and animals’ own tendencies: dogs naturally roam where there is trash to feed on, so improve waste management; people naturally care for their children, so emphasize rabies risks to children to motivate dog vaccination, etc. These solutions use an understanding of innate drives and collective behavior rather than fighting against them.

In sum, viewing needs and wants through an evolutionary and systems lens highlights that: a) Needs are intrinsic to life – to live is to act towards goals that maintain and enhance life; b) even simple organisms exhibit proto-wants in how they seek what they require; c) organisms alter their world, creating new conditions and thus new needs – a continuous co-evolution; d) in humans, biological, social, and existential needs form a hierarchy that is dynamic, not rigid basic needs usually demand attention first, but higher needs can sometimes take precedence – e.g. hunger strike for a political cause; and e) addressing complex needs – like health, ecological balance – often requires recognizing the collective dimension of intelligence and need, coordinating many actors at different scales. This integrated perspective enriches the Marxist and activity-theoretical framework by rooting it in the larger story of life, reminding us that our human world is an extension of natural processes of need and fulfillment, though vastly accelerated and morphed by culture.

Ontogeny: The development of needs and wants from birth

Having traversed from socio-historical and phylogenetic scales, let us focus on ontogeny – the development of needs and wants within an individual’s lifespan. We have already touched on infancy in discussing emotions. Here we provide a more systematic view of how an individual’s repertoire of needs and wants expands and changes over time, mediated by their environment. This is where the material, psychological, and spiritual dimensions of needs become evident at different stages, and where the co-production of individual and environment is perhaps most tangible.

Infancy (0-2 years): The human newborn enters the world with a set of basic material needs – nutrition, warmth, sleep, hygiene – and some hard-wired ways to signal them – crying, rooting reflex. There are also basic psychological needs present from the start: developmental psychology shows infants need attachment – emotional bonding with a caregiver – just as crucially as they need food. In fact, physical and emotional needs are fused in infancy: being fed often coincides with being held and comforted, so the infant experiences satiation of hunger and affection together as overall security. At this stage, wants are almost purely aligned with needs: a baby “wants” exactly those things it needs – there is no spoilage or caprice yet. The environment – usually the family – is literally a part of the infant’s regulatory system. The concept of co-regulation describes how a caregiver’s body and actions extend the infant’s self-regulation. For example, an infant cannot self-regulate its body temperature well; the parent provides blankets or adjusts room temperature. Likewise, the infant cannot obtain food, so the caregiver’s responsiveness is effectively part of the infant’s mechanism for satisfying hunger. This underscores the relational nature of needs from birth: an isolated infant cannot survive; its needs can only be met in relation with other humans – or in modern contexts, with human-created technology like incubators and formula. By the end of infancy, with walking and first words, the child starts to have wants that go a bit beyond immediate physiological needs – e.g. a toddler might show preference for a certain toy or food even if alternatives are available. This indicates the emergence of individual flavor in wants, shaped by what gives them joy or interest – a psychological element. Yet, toddlers still largely operate on an “as-needed” basis: they eat when hungry, cry when uncomfortable, seek caregivers when afraid.

Early Childhood (2-6 years): In this stage, children’s needs and wants diversify rapidly due to mobility, language, and imagination. According to Vygotsky, a pivotal development is make-believe play, where children create imaginary situations to fulfill unrealizable wishes. For instance, a child who “needs” to understand adult roles may want to play pretend family or doctor. In doing so, the child is exploring higher needs like competence, autonomy, and understanding social roles, in a safe simulated way. This aligns with the idea that new needs emerge from the old: once a child is no longer constantly struggling to walk or talk – basic sensorimotor challenges largely overcome – they develop needs for activity and exploration. They often ask “Why?” repeatedly, reflecting a need for knowledge. They want stories, which could be seen as fulfilling a nascent spiritual or cognitive need for meaning and narrative structure in life. Emotionally, this age is marked by the development of self-conscious emotions like embarrassment or empathy, showing that the need for social approval and the need to not harm others are kicking in. The family and preschool environment co-produce these needs by offering reinforcement – praise, scolding, explanations of feelings. For example, if a child helps a friend and is praised, they internalize a value that helping is good, and they may develop a want to be helpful – a prosocial need for being a “good child”. If they touch a hot stove and feel pain, they learn to want to avoid that – a straightforward link of need – safety – and experience. By age 5 or 6, children in most cultures also show an emerging need for peer interaction – playmates – not just interaction with caregivers. This is when group norms start to influence wants: a child might want a toy because all their friends have it, indicating the social-symbolic dimension of need – the toy is a material object, but what the child really needs is inclusion and equality with peers.

Middle Childhood (7-12 years): This period often involves formal schooling and more structured socialization. Cognitive abilities grow, enabling long-term goal pursuit. Children learn to postpone immediate wants to meet larger needs – studying instead of playing to do well in school, for instance. The concept of competence need becomes salient – as per psychologist Erik Erikson, this stage is about industry vs. inferiority: children need to feel competent in skills valued by their society. Thus they want to do well on tests, or in sports, or art, depending on context. Their wants start to reflect internalized standards. Emotions like pride in achievement or shame in failure strongly guide them. Lev Vygotsky and Aleksei Leontyev both discussed how education introduces new motives: initially a child might study only to please parents or get rewards – external motive – but gradually they might develop an intrinsic need to master knowledge – internal motive. This is the transformation of a socially-given task into a personal want. Cultural tools – books, computers, musical instruments – become important mediators – a child might discover a passion – a need for creative expression – upon finding the right tool – like a piano or a paintbrush. The environment – teachers, mentors, availability of activities – co-produces the child’s needs by offering or withholding opportunities. A village child with access to nature might develop a profound need to interact with animals and plants, whereas an urban child might develop a need for digital connectivity or structured hobbies – neither is inherent at birth, but formed through interaction with what the environment affords. By this age, moral needs also start to consolidate: a sense of fairness, justice, right and wrong. Children want things to be fair, they want rules to be clear – reflecting a need for social order and predictability in their world, which when violated produces strong emotions – “It’s not fair!”.

Adolescence (13-18 years): Now the social-spiritual dimension of needs often comes to the forefront. Teenagers experience a surge of identity formation; they have a need to establish autonomy from parents and to belong to peer groups or subcultures. This can create tension as their wants diverge from what adults think they need. A teen might want to dress or behave in ways that express their identity, essentially fulfilling a psychological need for self-definition, even if it conflicts with practical needs – like appropriate clothing for weather or safety. Risk-taking behavior in adolescence can be seen as a want for excitement or peer acceptance overshadowing the need for safety – but biologically, this might have an evolutionary basis – pushing boundaries to learn independence. Emotions are intense and can dominate decision-making; love, shame, anger, inspiration – these feelings are tied to emerging adult needs like sexual fulfillment, respect, freedom, purpose. Societies often channel adolescent needs through rites of passage, education, and gradual granting of responsibility. When channels are lacking or mismatched, conflict ensues – e.g., a teen in a very authoritarian environment might rebel because the environment isn’t accommodating their need for autonomy. According to activity theory, adolescents expand their activity contexts: work, romantic relationships, ideological engagement – activism, music, art that expresses their worldview. Each context adds new objects of motivation. For instance, involvement in a community project can instill a need for civic engagement; falling in love can create a profound new need for emotional intimacy that was absent before. This ontogenetic emergence parallels phylogenetic emergence – as organisms become more complex, new needs like social bonding appear – here as the person matures, more complex social/spiritual needs appear. The co-production is evident in how an adolescent’s peer culture and family culture shape what they desire – a supportive, stimulating environment might guide them to want productive goals – e.g., desire to go to university or learn a trade they enjoy – whereas a deprived or chaotic environment might leave them with unmet needs that express in maladaptive wants – e.g., joining a gang to fulfill the need for belonging and protection.

Adulthood (18+): In adulthood, ideally, individuals learn to balance and integrate the various dimensions of need. Early adulthood often focuses on material and relational needs – finding a livelihood – job, income – perhaps a mate and starting a family, establishing one’s role in society. These reflect needs for security, sexual/reproductive fulfillment, and social status. Wants are pursued more independently – unlike children, adults are expected to take primary responsibility for meeting their own needs and often others’ – their children, aging parents. This is where the pragmatic dimension – practical know-how to meet needs – becomes very important. A farmer in Latin America, for example, must know how to irrigate, when to plant, how to treat a sick animal – skills that directly translate to satisfying material needs for food and income. If he wants a good harvest, he must align with the objective needs of crops and animals – water, nutrients, health care – – a convergence of human want and other living beings’ needs. Adulthood is also when self-actualization needs – in Maslow’s terms – or spiritual needs in a broad sense often become pressing, especially once basic stability is achieved. People may seek fulfillment through career achievement, creative endeavors, community leadership, or spiritual practice. The want to “make a difference” or to live according to one’s values indicates a higher-order need for meaning. Not everyone gets to focus on this – many struggling with poverty or conflict remain stuck fighting for basic needs. But interestingly, even in very harsh conditions, humans often preserve some pursuits of spiritual or cultural wants – such as music, art, or religious faith – because these provide psychological resilience.

Late adulthood and old age reconfigure needs again: physical decline can reactivate basic needs for care and health; social needs may shift as one retires or children move away. The want for legacy – to leave something behind, to see the next generation thrive – becomes salient, reflecting perhaps a species-level need for continuity. Elders often have wisdom and knowledge to contribute, satisfying a community’s need for cultural continuity, and in turn elders fulfill their need to remain valued. However, in societies that isolate the elderly, we see emotional needs – companionship, purpose – going unmet, causing feelings of despair despite material provisions. This highlights the always-present multiple facets of need: material support alone is not enough for human well-being; psychological and relational fulfillment are equally crucial.

Throughout ontogeny, the environment and social context co-produce the individual’s needs and wants. Good education, nutrition, love, and stimulation tend to broaden a person’s capabilities and hence the range of things they value and pursue – their wants – often in healthy alignment with their true needs. Adverse environments – neglect, abuse, extreme poverty – can warp this development: individuals might develop defensive wants – e.g., hoarding food if one grew up hungry, or distrusting relationships if betrayed early on – that may not serve their long-term well-being. Yet humans are adaptive and can also transform their environment to better meet needs. This is seen in how many people as adults create families, networks, or communities that provide what they lacked – an example of the dialectic of need where deprivation in one’s upbringing creates a strong motive to ensure fulfillment in the future.

In a Latin American setting, one can consider a healthcare professional’s ontogeny as an illustrative case. A young medical or veterinary student enters training with certain motivations – perhaps a personal experience of illness or love of animals sparked a need to care for others. Through years of study – activity – they internalize a professional ethos – their needs evolve to include things like staying current with knowledge, adhering to ethical principles, and gaining respect in their field. Their wants might include opening a clinic in their hometown to serve their community, which corresponds to a mature integration of personal ambition and social need. Over a career, they might face moments that reshape their priorities – witnessing a public health crisis might ignite a need to advocate for systemic change, not just treat individual patients. By the time they are mentors themselves, they likely have a need to pass on knowledge – a want to teach. In doing so, they contribute to the reproduction of the social activity – training new professionals, linking back to Federici’s point on reproductive labor in a different guise – intellectual reproduction. This one person’s life course shows how needs/wants are activity-specific and stage-specific , yet form a coherent trajectory shaped by both personal agency and the opportunities/constraints given by society.

Objects and mediation: Material, symbolic, and pragmatic dimensions of needs

A recurring theme has been the role of objects – both material things and symbolic artifacts – in mediating needs and wants. Here we delve deeper into how objects carry material, symbolic, and pragmatic dimensions that help satisfy needs, and how these dimensions manifest differently depending on the complexity of the organism or social context.

In Marx’s analysis, objects of labor – tools, raw materials, products – are the means through which humans appropriate the world to meet their needs. A material dimension of an object refers to its concrete use-value: e.g., a loaf of bread satisfies hunger – physiological need; a house provides shelter – safety need; a dose of vaccine confers immunity – health need. These are direct, functional relations. However, even the simplest tool also has a pragmatic dimension – relating to how it is used in practice – and often a symbolic dimension – relating to the meanings and social signals attached to it.

Consider the example of a stethoscope in a veterinary clinic. Materially, it is a device to listen to animal heart and lung sounds, addressing the need for diagnostic information. Pragmatically, using a stethoscope requires skill; it mediates an interaction between vet and animal – the vet must approach the animal calmly, place the instrument correctly, interpret sounds. The pragmatic dimension includes the techniques and routines around the object. Symbolically, a stethoscope is iconic of the medical profession; it can evoke trust or anxiety in clients. A pet owner might feel reassured seeing the vet use it – signifying professionalism and care – thus satisfying a psychological need for trust. So a single object serves material need – data gathering – pragmatic need – aiding the vet’s practice efficiently – and symbolic need – communicating care to the client and perhaps the veterinarian’s own identity as a healer.

For non-human animals, objects mostly fulfill material and pragmatic roles, but some higher animals also attach rudimentary symbolic meaning. For instance, a dog’s leash is a material restraint tool for the owner, but many dogs come to see the leash as a positive symbol – walk time! – they get excited at the sight of it, indicating it has become associated with the fulfillment of their need for exercise and social exploration. In training, animals learn that certain objects – a whistle, a food bowl, a leash – signify upcoming events that satisfy needs or wants. This parallels how human children learn that the refrigerator or the sound of a cooking pot lid clanging signals food is coming – objects and sounds become symbols of need satisfaction.

In subsistence communities, everyday objects often carry multiple dimensions of need fulfillment. A single item like a machete in a rural Latin American community can illustrate this well. Materially, a machete is used to clear brush, harvest crops, butcher animals – it meets needs of food production and safety – clearing dangerous snakes, for example. Pragmatically, one must learn to sharpen and swing it properly; it’s a skill passed down, becoming almost an extension of the body in daily chores. Symbolically, owning a machete and wearing it can be a sign of adulthood or responsibility, and it may feature in folklore or ritual – some communities bless their tools at sowing season. Thus, the machete is embedded in a network of human-object relations that sustain both life and culture.

In advanced industrial societies, many objects are designed primarily to satisfy wants rather than basic needs, yet they can become “needs” in a practical sense once they are integrated into life. For example, a smartphone: materially, it’s not a biological necessity, but pragmatically it becomes necessary for communication, work, access to services – to the point one might say there’s a real need for connectivity in modern society. Symbolically, smartphones convey social status – the latest model as a prestige item – and facilitate identity needs – through social media expressions. They also illustrate how objects can create new wants: the myriad apps and features generate wants that didn’t exist – need to check updates, to play games – which can even become addictive. This shows the two-edged nature of mediated needs: tools empower us to meet needs – you can call a doctor in an emergency – critical need met by phone – but also can spawn artificial needs – compulsive need to refresh Instagram. Activity theory would frame this as the way new mediational means reconfigure our motives. The key is to distinguish: a rationalized need – like effective communication – versus a manufactured want – like craving social media “likes” for validation. They often intertwine in one object.

Now, different organisms experience these dimensions differently. Simple organisms like bacteria interact with objects purely on a physical-chemical level – nutrients, substrates. A bacterium’s “object” might be a sugar molecule – it either can metabolize it or not; there is no symbolism, just direct material interaction fulfilling a metabolic need. Plants have needs – light, water, soil nutrients – and in a sense use “objects” like the soil – roots extracting minerals – or supports to climb, but again, no symbolic layer – though one could anthropomorphize that a sunflower “wants” to face the sun – really a growth response. Animals introduce a pragmatic dimension: a bird uses twigs to build a nest, not eating the twigs but employing them functionally to satisfy the need for a secure breeding spot. Some animals even have something akin to aesthetic or play wants – bowerbirds collect colorful objects to decorate nests – symbolic sexual display needs – dolphins play with seaweed or bubbles. So as complexity increases, we see glimmers of non-material uses of objects fulfilling psychological or mating-related needs.

Humans, with language and complex society, operate in a world where virtually all needs are mediated by cultural artifacts and symbols. Food is not just calories; it’s cuisine, tradition, identity. Clothing is not just warmth; it’s fashion, modesty norms, group identity. We thus constantly deal in the triad of material-psychological-spiritual through objects. For a concrete example, think of (corn – maize) in a Latin American context. Materially, it’s a staple food – need for nourishment. Pragmatically, it requires knowledge to grow and prepare – need for agricultural skill, proper tools like ploughs, mills, and techniques like nixtamalization to unlock its nutrients – a practice developed by indigenous cultures. Symbolically and spiritually, corn is sacred in many Mesoamerican traditions – the Maya even have a myth of humans being made of corn. In rural communities today, offering corn in rituals or sharing tortillas in a communal meal fulfills a social-spiritual need for connection to heritage and community. If a policy or market change forces farmers to switch away from corn to cash crops, they might meet a material need for income but suffer a cultural-spiritual loss – a real instance where “need” cannot be viewed in purely caloric or monetary terms.

Another key aspect is how objects mediate between different species’ needs in veterinary practice. A vaccine vial is an object that, through human action, mediates the health need of an animal and the safety need of a human community – preventing zoonoses. The milking stool and bucket mediate between a cow’s need to release milk, a farmer’s need for dairy produce, and a calf’s need – if artificially managed. The design of such interfaces can either align these needs or cause conflict – e.g., poorly designed cattle chutes cause stress to animals – psychological harm – whereas well-designed ones by experts like Temple Grandin accommodate the animal’s behavioral needs while allowing the work to be done safely. This highlights a pragmatic dimension: the importance of ergonomics and empathy in design to meet the needs of multiple stakeholders. If animals “want” to behave naturally and humans “want” efficiency, objects like humane handling equipment or enrichment toys for zoo animals can be solutions that fulfill both parties’ needs – the animal’s need for movement or stimulation, the human’s need for a healthy, non-stressed animal.

In sum, objects are the nexus where needs, wants, and modes of life intersect. They have:

- Material dimensions – their physical properties and functions that directly address bodily or practical needs – what Marx would call use-value.

- Symbolic – or semiotic – dimensions – the meanings, signals, and cultural stories attached to them, which address psychological, social, or spiritual needs – status, identity, belonging.

- Pragmatic dimensions – the way they are incorporated into activities and practices, which addresses the operational aspect of needs – the need for efficiency, reliability, ease of use, compatibility with routines.

These dimensions manifest according to the organism’s complexity: from none but material in microbes, to material+pragmatic in many animals, to all three in humans and human societies. A thoughtful approach to meeting needs – in design, policy, or intervention – must consider all these dimensions. For instance, a program to introduce a new water filtration device in a community must ensure the device materially purifies water – material – is user-friendly and maintainable – pragmatic – and is culturally acceptable – symbolic – e.g., it should not conflict with local beliefs, or maybe it should visibly show clear water to build trust. Overlooking any dimension can lead to failure: a filter that works in lab – material – but is too complex to operate or fix will not meet the need; one that works but is associated with an imposed foreign aid agenda might be rejected on symbolic grounds – people might prefer their traditional methods unless respectfully integrated.

Marx talked about the “sensuous appropriation” of objects and also warned of commodity fetishism, where the social relations behind objects are hidden and objects are imbued with almost mystical desirability. Our analysis echoes that: by peeling back the layers of an object’s role in needs, we can see the social relations – who needs what and who provides what through that object – clearly, rather than treating the want for the object as isolated. For example, the want for the latest smartphone can be dissected: material – faster internet to meet communication needs – pragmatic – works with new apps needed for work/school – symbolic – status, modern identity. If we realize perhaps the symbolic has overtaken the material – one’s current phone works fine for actual communication needs – one might question the push to consume – an insight relevant to sustainability.

Finally, objects can become extensions of the self – as McLuhan said, tools are extensions of man. This means they can also extend our capacity to meet others’ needs. A doctor with a medical bag can go out to meet a community’s health needs better than one without. A community with a shared radio or phone gains a collective ability to call for help or coordinate, meeting their communal needs. In veterinary extension, giving a community a solar-powered vaccine refrigerator is giving them an object that empowers them to meet livestock health needs reliably – again combining material – keeps vaccines cold – pragmatic – works off-grid – symbolic – signals investment in the community’s self-sufficiency.

In essence, the mediating role of objects teaches us that needs and wants are not direct; they are funneled through the available material culture. What we desire and how we fulfill it are profoundly shaped by tools and artifacts. Changing the toolkit can change what we need or how we conceive our needs. In development work or any change effort, providing appropriate tools – with training – can actually create new, healthier wants: for example, introducing engaging educational media might create a new want in children to learn about science, which corresponds to the need for scientific literacy in society. This is a positive harnessing of object-mediated want creation. Conversely, flooding a market with cheap sugary drinks creates a want – for sweetness/convenience – that undermines nutritional needs. Thus, a relational, activity-aware perspective always asks: what is the role of artifacts here, and how do they mediate between the living being and its mode of life?

Case applications in Latin American health and veterinary contexts

To ground these theoretical concepts, we turn to several scenario-based examples from Latin America that span human and animal domains – illustrating how needs and wants are negotiated by beneficiaries, professionals, and communities in practice. These examples show the interplay of material, psychological, and cultural dimensions of needs for pets, livestock, pests, wild fauna, and people, highlighting the importance of a relational, systemic understanding.

Conclusion

In this chapter, we have developed a comprehensive framework for understanding needs and wants as relational, dynamic, and mediated phenomena. Using Marxist theory, we situated needs in their historical and material context: humans produce new needs as they develop new modes of life (Marx & Engels, 2022), and dominant ideologies can shape perceived wants – sometimes against people’s true interests. Through activity theory, we saw that needs are realized through goal-directed actions with objects as mediators, and that an organism’s needs connect to its environment in a two-way process – the subject and object mutually transform. The inclusion of emotions highlighted that needs are experienced and signaled through feelings that are socially shaped – from a baby’s cry to a community’s outrage, emotions link the personal and the collective, the biological and the cultural. Michael Levin’s perspective on purposeful behavior in biology reminded us that agency in pursuing needs exists at all levels of life, reinforcing the notion that even as we analyze societal issues, we must respect the inherent goal-directedness of all living beings – whether it’s a cell, an animal, or a human community.

We applied these concepts across different contexts – pets, livestock, pests, wildlife, and human public health – particularly in Latin America, to illustrate how a systemic, relational approach can yield better outcomes. In each case, acknowledging the material, psychological, and spiritual dimensions of needs – for all participants in the system – allowed us to find integrative solutions: ones that are sustainable, just, and culturally appropriate. Key insights include:

In academic terms, the chapter demonstrates how Marxist humanism and cultural-historical activity theory, enriched with emotion research and contemporary biology, can be synthesized into a powerful lens for analyzing and acting upon complex issues of needs and wants. This integrated framework is valuable for students and practitioners in health, veterinary, and life sciences because it moves us beyond reductionist thinking – whether economic or biological reductionism – to see the full picture of life: organisms and people in constant interaction with each other and their environment, collectively crafting the conditions for satisfying their needs. It reaffirms that to truly understand a being’s needs, one must understand its relations – to labor, to society, to culture, to tools, to others of its kind, and to other species.

Ultimately, this approach carries an optimistic implication: if needs and wants are socially and activity-mediated, then by changing the relationships, the activity structures, and the mediating artifacts, we can change needs and wants for the better. Human history is a testament to this malleability – feudal serfs likely never “wanted” universal literacy because it was outside their horizon of needs, whereas modern people feel it as a need; such transformations were driven by changes in productive forces, struggles for justice, and educational activities. In our contemporary challenges – from public health to climate change – we can harness this understanding to help guide people and communities toward new wants that correspond to what is truly needed for a thriving, equitable, and sustainable mode of life. By relating to each other and to our world in conscious, cooperative activity, we can produce a future where the satisfaction of one species’ or group’s needs does not come at the expense of another’s, but rather all needs are met in a balanced, dialectical harmony. This is, in essence, a vision of collective intelligence and co-evolution – Marx’s species-being acting in concert with nature – where needs and wants cease to be a site of conflict and become a domain of freedom.