The influence of Karl Marx’s notion of justice on Martha Nussbaum’s capabilities approach

Abstract

This paper aims to explore the relationship between Karl Marx’s concept of justice and Martha Nussbaum’s capabilities approach. Nusbaum follows the Aristotelian idea of man as a political animal, which is intrinsically consistent with Marx’s view of human nature, but she provides us with a new normative perspective to reconsider Marxism. When she initially began to design the list of core capabilities, Nussbaum stated that her capabilities approach originated from Marx’s idea of ‘genuinely human functions’, which requires society to provide a reasonable political arrangement so that humans have the ability to obtain real freedom. Her approach relies on Marx’s early understanding of ‘human flourishing’, and it is also influenced by Marx’s ideas about ‘the theory of need’ and ‘the theory of alienation’. From this point of view, Nussbaum’s capability theory of justice reveals different aspects of Marx’s understanding of justice.