Mahr’s article is a conceptual intervention in public-finance theory. It asks whether “collective needs” name a distinctive economic phenomenon or conceal political selection behind psychological language. The opening problem is the instability of the inherited category:
Der Begriff der Kollektivbedürfnisse ist in der finanzwissenschaftlichen Theorie stark umstritten.
English translation: The concept of collective needs is strongly contested in the theory of public finance.
From Hermann onward, Mahr reconstructs a tradition that tried to ground fiscal activity in needs. His first refusal is directed against the organic image of the state as bearer of its own wants. A community, municipality, or state can act only through persons and institutions; it cannot itself experience lack or satisfaction. Hence public finance must not be explained as satisfaction of a super-individual psyche:
Sei dem wie immer: Die Ansicht, es handle sich hier um die Bedürfnisse einer staatlichen Gemeinschaft als solcher, wird heute mit Recht abgelehnt.
English translation: Be that as it may: the view that what is at issue here are the needs of a state community as such is today rightly rejected.
Mahr then tests the more plausible individualist version: collective needs are needs felt by individuals because they belong to a community. This view, associated especially with Sax, preserves the psychological vocabulary while avoiding the fiction of a group soul. Yet it still cannot explain how public purposes are selected. If citizens attach different intensities to security, roads, schooling, redistribution, or welfare, no mere summation of felt wants determines what the state will actually do.
Die relative Stärke der Kollektivbedürfnisse innerhalb der Bedürfnissysteme der einzelnen entscheidet nach Sax auch darüber, in welchem Ausmaß sie verwirklicht werden⁶.
English translation: According to Sax, the relative strength of collective needs within the systems of needs of individuals also determines the extent to which they are realized⁶.
The next doctrine defines collective needs not by their psychological source but by their mode of satisfaction: they are individual needs fulfilled through public institutions. Mahr sees why this is attractive, because it connects finance theory to observable provision. But the definition becomes circular. Whether a service is public or private depends on constitutional order, policy choice, ideology, and power. The same transport, health, education, or insurance aim may be privately purchased, publicly subsidized, monopolized by the state, or absorbed into planning.
Kollektivbedürfnisse waren demnach solche individuell empfundene Bedürfnisse, deren Realisierung durch die öffentliche Hand erfolgt.
English translation: Collective needs were accordingly those individually felt needs whose realization is effected by the public authorities.
The deeper correction concerns the word “need.” Mahr argues that finance theory narrows the field when it treats economic action as the pursuit of felt lack or pleasure. Many economically relevant ends are obligations, standards, precautions, risks to be avoided, or social imperatives. Scarcity compels ranking among ends, not merely the satisfaction of wants. For this reason he prefers the language of goals: “collective needs” should be redescribed as “collective goals,” because public expenditure is organized around institutionally chosen ends.
This shift produces the article’s central political thesis. Only a small range of purposes—internal legal protection and external security—appears necessarily tied to the state, and even these are disputed in intensity and form. Beyond that minimum, the extent of public activity is not deduced from need-classes. In democracy it reflects majorities, coalitions, parties, compromises, and constitutional procedures; in oligarchy or dictatorship it may reflect the ruling minority.
Kollektivziele sind demnach die Ziele, welche jener Teil der Bevölkerung, der die politische Macht innehat, für die staatliche Tätigkeit festgelegt hat.
English translation: Collective goals are accordingly the goals which that part of the population which holds political power has set for state activity.
Mahr’s achievement is demystification. He does not deny that people have socially conditioned wants, nor that states must perform some functions. He denies that fiscal theory can infer expenditure from an alleged natural class of collective needs. The analytic unit is instead the politically authorized goal realized through public means: scarcity remains economic, but the allocation of public purposes is ultimately political.
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