§ 261. In contrast with the spheres of private rights and private welfare (the family
and civil society), the state is from one point of view an external necessity and their
higher authority; its nature is such that their laws and interests are subordinate to it
and dependent on it. On the other hand, however, it is the end immanent within them, and
its strength lies in the unity of its own universal end and aim with the particular
interest of individuals, in the fact that individuals have duties to the state in
proportion as they have rights against it (see § 155).

The foregoing paragraph advises us that concrete freedom consists
in the identity (as it is supposed to be, two-sided) of the system
of particular interest (the family and civil society) with the
system of general interest (the state). The relation of these
spheres must now be determined more precisely.

From one point of view the state is contrasted with the spheres
of family and civil society as an external necessity, an authority,
relative to which the laws and interests of family and civil society
are subordinate and dependent. That the state, in contrast with
the family and civil society, is an external necessity was implied
partly in the category of ‘transition’ (Übergangs)
and partly in the conscious relationship of the family and
civil society to the state. Further, subordination under the
state corresponds perfectly with the relation of external necessity.
But what Hegel understands by ‘dependence’ is shown by the following
sentence from the Remark to this paragraph:

§ 261.... It was Montesquieu above all who, in his famous work L’Esprit
des Lois, kept in sight and tried to work out in detail both
the thought of the dependence of laws in particular, laws concerning
the rights of persons - on the specific character of the state,
and also the philosophic notion of always treating the part in
its relation to the whole.

Thus Hegel is speaking here of internal dependence, or the essential
determination of private rights, etc., by the state. At the same
time, however, he subsumes this dependence under the relationship
of external necessity and opposes it, as another aspect, to that
relationship wherein family and civil society relate to the state
as to their immanent end.

‘External necessity’ can only be understood to mean that the laws
and interests of the family and civil society must give way in
case of collision with the laws and interests of the state, that
they are subordinate to it, that their existence is dependent
on it, or again that its will and its law appear to their will
and their laws as a necessity!

But Hegel is not speaking here about empirical collisions; he
is speaking about the relationship of the ‘spheres of private
rights and private welfare, of the family and civil society,’
to the state; it is a question of the essential relationship
of these spheres themselves. Not only their interests but
also their laws and their essential determinations are dependent
on the state and subordinate to it. It is related to their laws
and interests as higher authority, while their interest and law
are related to it as its ‘subordinates’. They exist in their
dependence on it. Precisely because subordination and dependence
are external relations, limiting and contrary to an autonomous
being, the relationship of family and civil society to the state
is that of external necessity, a necessity which relates by opposition
to the inner being of the thing. The very fact that the laws
concerning the private rights of persons depend on the specific
character of the state and are modified according to it is thereby
subsumed under the relationship of external necessity’, precisely
because civil society and family in their true, that is in their
independent and complete development, are presupposed by the state
as particular spheres. ‘Subordination’ and ‘dependence’ are the
expressions for an external, artificial, apparent identity, for
the logical expression of which Hegel quite rightly uses the phrase
‘external necessity’. With the notions of ‘subordination’ and
‘dependence’ Hegel has further developed the one aspect of the
divided identity, namely that of the alienation within the unity.

On the other hand, however, it is the end immanent within them,
and its strength lies in the unity of its own universal end and
aim with the particular interest of individuals, in the fact that
individuals have duties to the state in proportion as they have
rights against it.

Here Hegel sets up an unresolved antinomy: on the one hand external
necessity, on the other hand immanent end. The unity of the universal
end and aim of the state and the particular interest of individuals
must consist in this, that the duties of individuals to the state
and their rights against it are identical (thus, for example,
the duty to respect property coincides with the right to property).

This identity is explained in this way in the Remark [to § 261]:

Duty is primarily a relation to something which from my point
of view is substantive, absolutely universal. A right, on the
other hand, is simply the embodiment of this substance and thus
is the particular aspect of it and enshrines my particular freedom.
Hence at abstract levels, right and duty appear parcelled out
on different sides or in different persons. In the state, as
something ethical, as the interpenetration of the substantive
and the particular, my obligation to what is substantive is at
the same time the embodiment of my particular freedom. This means
that in the state duty and right are united in one and the same
relation.

§ 262. The actual Idea is mind, which, sundering itself into
the two ideal spheres of its concept, family and civil society,
enters upon its finite phase, but it does so only in order to
rise above its ideality and become explicit as infinite actual
mind. It is therefore to these ideal spheres that the actual
Idea assigns the material of this its finite actuality, viz.,
human beings as a mass, in such a way that the function assigned
to any given individual is visibly mediated by circumstances,
his caprice and his personal choice of his station in life.

Let us translate this into prose as follows:

The manner and means of the state’s mediation with the family
and civil society are ‘circumstance, caprice, and personal choice
of station in life’. Accordingly, the rationality of the state
[Staatsvernunft] has nothing to do with the division
of the material of the state into family and civil society.

The state results from them in an unconscious and arbitrary way.
Family and civil society appear as the dark natural ground from
which the light of the state emerges. By material of the state
is meant the business of the state, i.e., family and civil society,
in so far as they constitute components of the state and, as such,
participate in the state.

This development is peculiar in two respects.

1. Family and civil society are conceived of as spheres of the
concept of the state, specifically as spheres of its finiteness,
as its finite phase. It is the state which sunders itself into
the two, which presupposes them, and indeed does this ‘only in
order to rise above its ideality and become explicit as infinite
actual mind’. ‘It sunders itself in order to...’ It ‘therefore
assigns to these ideal spheres the material of its finite actuality
in such a way that the function assigned to any given individual
is visibly mediated, etc’. The so-called ‘actual idea’ (mind
as infinite and actual) is described as though it acted according
to a determined principle and toward a determined end. It sunders
itself into finite spheres, and does this ‘in order to return
to itself, to be for itself’; moreover it does this precisely
in such a way that it is just as it actually is.

In this passage the logical, pantheistic mysticism appears very
clearly.

The actual situation is that the assignment of the material of
the state to the individual is mediated by circumstances, caprice,
and personal choice of his station in life. This fact, this actual
situation is expressed by speculative philosophy [der Spekulation]
as appearance, as phenomenon. These circumstances, this caprice,
this personal choice of vocation, this actual mediation are merely
the appearance of a mediation which the actual Idea undertakes
with itself and which goes on behind the scenes. Actuality is
not expressed as itself but as another reality. Ordinary empirical
existence does not have its own mind [Geist] but
rather an alien mind as its law, while on the other hand the actual
Idea does not have an actuality which is developed out of itself,
but rather has ordinary empirical existence as its existence [Dasein].

The Idea is given the status of a subject, and the actual relationship
of family and civil society to the state is conceived to be its
inner imaginary activity. Family and civil society are the presuppositions
of the state; they are the really active things; but in speculative
philosophy it is reversed. But if the Idea is made subject, then
the real subjects - civil society, family, circumstances, caprice,
etc. - become unreal, and take on the different meaning of objective
moments of the Idea.

2. The circumstance, caprice, and personal choice of station in
life, through which the material of the state is assigned to the
individual, are not said directly to be things which are real,
necessary, and justified in and for themselves; qua circumstances,
caprice, and personal choice they are not declared to be rational.
Yet on the other hand they again are, but only so as to be presented
for the phenomena of a mediation, to be left as they are while
at the same time acquiring the meaning of a determination of the
idea, a result and product of the Idea. The difference lies not
in the content, but in the way of considering it, or in the manner
of speaking. There is a two-fold history, one esoteric and one
exoteric. The content lies in the exoteric part. The interest
of the esoteric is always to recover the history of the logical
Concept in the state. But the real development proceeds on the
exoteric side.

Reasonably, Hegel’s sentences mean only the following:

The family and civil society are elements of the state. The material
of the state is divided amongst them through circumstances, caprice,
and personal choice of vocation. The citizens of the state are
members of families and of civil society.

‘The actual Idea is mind which, sundering itself into the two
ideal spheres of its concept, family and civil society, enters
upon its finite phase’ - thus the division of the state into
the family and civil society is ideal, i.e., necessary, belonging
to the essence of the state. Family and civil society are actual
components of the state, actual spiritual existences of will;
they are the modes of existence of the state; family and civil
society make themselves into the state. They are the active
force. According to Hegel they are, on the contrary, made by
the actual Idea. It is not their own life’s course which unites

them into the state, but rather the life’s course of the Idea,
which has distinguished them from itself; and they are precisely
the finiteness of this idea; they owe their existence to a mind
[Geist] other than their own; they are determinations
established by a third party, not self-determinations; for that
very reason they are also determined as finiteness, as the proper
finiteness of the ‘actual idea’. The purpose of their existence
is not this existence itself, but rather the Idea separates these
presuppositions off from itself in order to rise above its ideality
and become explicit as infinite actual mind. This is to say that
the political state cannot exist without the natural basis of
the family and the artificial basis of civil society; they are
its conditio sine qua non; but the conditions are established
as the conditioned, the determining as the determined, the producing
as the product of its product. The actual idea reduces itself
into the finiteness of the family and civil society only in order
to enjoy and to bring forth its infinity through their transcendence
[Aufhebung]. It therefore assigns (in order to
attain its end) to these ideal spheres the material of this its
finite actuality (of this? of what? these spheres are really its
finite actuality, its material) to human beings as a mass (the
material of the state here is human beings, the mass, the state
is composed of them, and this, its composition is expressed here
as an action of the Idea, as a parcelling out which it undertakes
with its own material. The fact is that the state issues from
the mass of men existing as members of families and of civil society;
but speculative philosophy expresses this fact as an achievement
of the Idea, not the idea of the mass, but rather as the deed
of an Idea-Subject which is differentiated from the fact itself)
in such a way that the function assigned to the individual (earlier
the discussion was only of the assignment of individuals to the
spheres of family and civil society) is visibly mediated by circumstances,
caprice, etc. Thus empirical actuality is admitted just as it
is and is also said to be rational; but not rational because of
its own reason, but because the empirical fact in its empirical
existence has a significance which is other than it itself. The
fact, which is the starting point, is not conceived to be such
but rather to be the mystical result. The actual becomes phenomenon,
but the Idea has no other content than this phenomenon. Moreover,
the idea has no other than the logical aim, namely, ‘to become
explicit as infinite actual mind’. The entire mystery of the
Philosophy of Right and of Hegelian philosophy in general
is contained in these paragraphs.

§ 263. In these spheres in which its moments, particularity
and individuality, have their immediate and reflected reality,
mind is present as their objective universality glimmering in
them as the power of reason in necessity
(see § 184), i.e.,
as the institutions considered above.

§ 264. Mind is the nature of human beings en masse and their nature is therefore
twofold: (i) at one extreme, explicit individuality of consciousness and will, and (ii)
at the other extreme, universality which knows and wills what is substantive. Hence they
attain their right in both these respects only in so far as both their private
personality and its substantive basis are actualised. Now in the family and civil
society they acquire their right in the first of these respects directly and in the
second indirectly, in that (i) they find their substantive self-consciousness in social
institutions which are the universal implicit in their particular interests, and (ii)
the Corporation supplies them with an occupation and an activity directed on a universal
end.

§ 265. These institutions are the components of the constitution
(i.e., of rationality developed and actualised) in the sphere
of particularity. They are, therefore, the firm foundation not
only of the state but also of the citizen’s trust in it and sentiment
towards it. They are the pillars of public freedom since in them
particular freedom is realised and rational, and therefore there
is implicitly present even in them the union of freedom
and necessity.

§ 266. But mind is objective and actual to itself not merely
as this (which?), necessity ....
but also as the ideality and the heart of this necessity. Only
in this way is this substantive universality aware of itself
as its own object and end, with the result that the necessity
appears to itself in the shape of freedom as well.

Thus the transition of the family and civil society into the political
state is this: the mind of those spheres, which is the mind of
the state in its implicit moment, is now also related to itself
as such, and is actual to itself as their inner reality. Accordingly,
the transition is not derived from the specific essence of the
family, etc., and the specific essence of the state, but rather
from the universal relation of necessity and freedom. Exactly
the same transition is effected in the Logic from the sphere
of Essence to the sphere of Concept, and in the Philosophy of
Nature from Inorganic Nature to Life. It is always the same categories
offered as the animating principle now of one sphere, now of another,
and the only thing of importance is to discover, for the particular
concrete determinations, the corresponding abstract ones.

§ 267. This necessity in ideality is the inner self-development
of the Idea. As the substance of the individual subject, it is
his political sentiment [patriotism] in distinction therefrom,
as the substance of the objective world, it is the organism of
the state, i.e., it is the strictly political state and its constitution.

Here the subject is ‘the necessity in ideality’, the ‘Idea within
itself" and the predicate is political sentiment and the
political constitution. Said in common language, political sentiment
is the subjective, and the political constitution the objective
substance of the state. The logical development from the family
and civil society to the state is thus pure appearance, for what
is not clarified is the way in which familial and civil sentiment,
the institution of the family and those of society, as such, stand
related to the political sentiment and political institutions
and cohere with them.

The transition involved in mind existing ‘not merely as necessity
and realm of appearance’ but as actual for itself and particular
as ‘the ideality of this necessity’ and the soul of this realm
is no transition whatever, because the soul of the family exists
for itself as love, etc.
[see §§ 161 ff.]
The pure ideality
of an actual sphere, however, could exist only as knowledge [Wissenschaft].

The important thing is that Hegel at all times makes the Idea
the subject and makes the proper and actual subject, like ‘political
sentiment’, the predicate. But the development proceeds at all
times on the side of the predicate.

§ 268. contains a nice exposition concerning political sentiment,
or patriotism, which has nothing to do with the logical development
except that Hegel defines it as ‘simply a product of the institutions
subsisting in the state since rationality is actually present
in the state’, while on the other hand these institutions are
equally an objectification of the political sentiment. Cf. the
Remark to this paragraph.

§ 269. The patriotic sentiment acquires its specifically
determined content from the various members of the organism of
the state. This organism is the development of the Idea to its
differences and their objective actuality. Hence these different
members are the various powers of the state with their functions
and spheres of action, by means of which. the universal continually
engenders itself, and engenders itself in a necessary way because
their specific character is fixed by the nature of the concept.
Throughout this process the universal maintains its identity,
since it is itself the presupposition of its own production.
This organism is the constitution of the state.

The constitution of the state is the organism of the state, or
the organism of the state is the constitution of the state. To
say that the different parts of an organism stand in a necessary
relation which arises out of the nature of the organism is pure
tautology. To say that when the political constitution is determined
as an organism the different parts of the constitution, the different
powers, are related as organic determinations and have a rational
relationship to one another is likewise tautology. It is a great
advance to consider the political state as an organism, and hence
no longer to consider the diversity of powers as [in]organic,
but rather as living and rational differences. But how does Hegel
present this discovery?

1. ‘This organism is the development of the Idea to its differences
and their objective actuality.’ It is not said that this organism
of the state is its development to differences and their objective
actuality. The proper conception is that the development of the
state or of the political constitution to differences and their
actuality is an organic development. The actual differences,
or the different parts of the political constitution are the presupposition,
the subject. The predicate is their determination as organic.
Instead of that, the Idea is made subject, and the differences
and their actuality are conceived to be its development and its
result, while on the other hand the Idea must be developed out
of the actual difference. What is organic is precisely the idea
of the differences, their ideal determination.

2. But here the Idea is spoken of as a subject which is developed
to its differences. From this reversal of subject and
predicate comes the appearance that an idea other than the organism
is under discussion. The point of departure is the abstract Idea
whose development in the state is the political constitution.
Thus it is a question not of the political idea, but rather of
the abstract Idea in the political element. When Hegel says,
‘this organism (namely, the state, or the constitution of the
state) is the development of the Idea to its differences, etc.’,
he tells us absolutely nothing about the specific idea of the
political constitution. The same thing can be said with equal
truth about the animal organism as about the political organism.
By what means then is the animal organism distinguished from
the political? No difference results from this general determination;
and an explanation which does not give the differentia specifica
is no explanation. The sole interest here is that of recovering
the Idea simply, the logical Idea in each element, be it that
of the state or of nature; and the real subjects, as in this case
the political constitution, become their mere names. Consequently,
there is only the appearance of a real understanding, while in
fact these determinate things are and remain uncomprehended because
they are not understood in their specific essence.

‘Hence these different members are the various powers of the state
with their functions and spheres of action.’ By reason of this
small word ‘hence’ [‘so’] this statement assumes the appearance
of a consequence, a deduction and development. Rather, one must
ask ‘How is it’ [‘Wie so?’] that when the empirical fact
is that the various members of the organism of the state are the
various powers (and) their functions and spheres of action, the
philosophical predicate is that they are members of an organism
[?] Here we draw attention to a stylistic peculiarity of Hegel,
one which recurs often and is a product of mysticism. The entire
paragraph reads:

The patriotic sentiment acquires its specifically determined content
from the various members of the organism of the state. This organism
is the development of the Idea to its differences and their objective
actuality. Hence these different members are the various powers
of the state with their functions and spheres of action, by means
of which the universal continually engenders itself, and engenders
itself in a necessary way because their specific character is
fixed by the nature of the concept. Throughout this process the
universal maintains its identity, since it is itself the presupposition
of its own production. This organism is the constitution of the
state.

1. The patriotic sentiment acquires its specifically determined
content from the various members of the organism of the state
... These different members are the various powers of the state
with their functions and spheres of action.

2. The patriotic sentiment acquires its specifically determined
content from the various members of the organism of the state.
This organism is the development of the Idea to its differences
and their objective actuality ... by means of which the universal
continually engenders itself, and engenders itself in a necessary
way because their specific character is fixed by the nature of
the concept. Throughout this process the universal maintains
its identity, since it is itself the presupposition of its own
production. This organism is the constitution of the state.

As can be seen, Hegel links the two subjects, namely, the ‘various
members of the organism’ and the ‘organism’, to further determinations.
In the third sentence the various members are defined as the
various powers. By inserting the word ‘hence’ it is made
to appear as if these various powers were deduced from the interposed
statement concerning the organism as the development of the Idea.

He then goes on to discuss the various powers. The statement
that the universal continually engenders itself while maintaining
its identity throughout the process, is nothing new, having been
implied in the definition of the various powers as members of
the organism, as organic members; or rather, this definition of
the various powers is nothing but a paraphrase of the statement
about the organism being ‘the development of the Idea to its differences,
etc.’

These two sentences are identical:

1. This organism is ‘the development of the idea to its differences
and their objective actuality’ or to differences by means of which
the universal (the universal here is the same as the idea) continually
engenders itself, and engenders itself in a necessary way because
their specific character is fixed by the nature of the concept;
and

2. ‘Throughout this process the universal maintains its identity,
since it is itself the presupposition of its own production.’
The second is merely a more concise explication of ‘the development
of the Idea to its differences’. Thereby, Hegel has advanced
not a single step beyond the universal concept of the Idea or
at most of the organism in general (for strictly speaking it is
a question only of this specific idea). Why then is he entitled
to conclude that ‘this organism is the constitution of the state’?
Why not ‘this organism is the solar system’? The reason is that
he later defined the various members of the state as the various
powers. Now the statement that ‘the various members of the state
are the various powers’ is an empirical truth and cannot be presented
as a philosophical discovery, nor has it in any way emerged as

a result of an earlier development. But by defining the organism
as the development of the idea, by speaking of the differences
of the Idea, then by interpolating the concrete data of the various
powers the development assumes the appearance of having arrived
at a determinate content. Following the statement that the patriotic
sentiment acquires its specifically determined content from the
various members of the organism of the state’ Hegel was not justified
in continuing with the expression, ‘This organism. . .,’ but rather
with ‘the organism is the development of the idea, etc.’
At least what he says applies to every organism, and there is
no predicate which justifies the subject, ‘this organism’.
What Hegel really wants to achieve is the determination of the
organism as the constitution of the state. But there is no bridge
by which one can pass from the universal idea of the organism
to the particular idea of the organism of the state or the constitution
of the state, nor will there ever be. The opening statement speaks
of the various members of the organism of the state which are
later defined as the various powers. Thus the only thing said
is that the various powers of the organism of the state, or the
state organism of the various powers, is the political constitution
of the state. Accordingly, the bridge to the political constitution
does not go from the organism of the Idea and its differences,
etc., but from the presupposed concept of the various powers or
the organism of the state.

In truth, Hegel has done nothing but resolve the constitution
of the state into the universal, abstract idea of the organism;
but in appearance and in his own opinion he has developed the
determinate reality out of the universal Idea. He has made the
subject of the idea into a product and predicate of the Idea.
He does not develop his thought out of what is objective [aus
dem Gegenstand], but what is objective in accordance
with a ready-made thought which has its origin in the abstract
sphere of logic. It is not a question of developing the determinate
idea of the political constitution, but of giving the political
constitution a relation to the abstract Idea, of classifying it
as a member of its (the idea’s) life history. This is an obvious
mystification.

Another determination is that the specific character of the various
powers is fixed by the nature of the concept, and for that reason
the universal engenders them in a necessary way. Therefore the
various powers do not have their specific character by reason
of their own nature, but by reason of an alien one. And just
as the necessity is not derived from their own nature still less
is it critically demonstrated. On the contrary, their realisation
is predestined by the nature of the concept, sealed in the holy
register of the Santa Casa (the Logic). The soul
of objects, in this case that of the state, is complete and
predestined before its body, which ‘ is, properly speaking, mere
appearance. The ‘concept’ is the Son within the ‘Idea’, within
God the Father, the agens, the determining, differentiating
principle. Here ‘Idea’ and ‘Concept’ are abstractions rendered
independent.

§ 270. (1) The abstract actuality or the substantiality of
the state consists iii the fact that its end is the universal
interest as such and the conservation therein of particular interests
since the universal interest is the substance of these. (2) But
this substantiality of the state is also its necessity, since
its substantiality is divided into the distinct spheres of its
activity which correspond to the moments of its concept, and these
spheres, owing to this substantiality, are thus actually fixed
determinate characteristics of the state, i.e., its powers.
(3) But this very substantiality of the state
is mind knowing and willing itself after passing through the forming
process of education. The state, therefore, knows what it wills
and knows it in its universality, i.e., as something thought.
Hence it works and acts by reference to consciously adopted ends,
known principles, and laws which are not merely implicit but are
actually present to consciousness; and further, it acts with precise
knowledge of existing conditions and circumstances, inasmuch as
its actions have a bearing on these.

(We will look at the Remark to this paragraph, which treats the
relationship of state and church, later.)

The employment of these logical categories deserves altogether
special attention.

(1) The abstract actuality or the substantiality of the state
consists in the fact that its end is the universal interest as
such and the conservation therein of particular interests since
the universal interest is the substance of these.

That the universal interest as such and as the subsistence of
particular interests is the end of the state is precisely the
abstractly defined actuality and subsistence of the state. The
state is not actual without this end. This is the essential object
of its will, but at the same time it is merely a very general
definition of this object. This end qua Being is the principle
of subsistence for the state.

(2) But this (abstract actuality or) substantiality
of the state is its necessity, since its substantiality
is divided into the distinct spheres of its activity which correspond
to the moments of its concept, and these spheres, owing to their
substantiality, are thus actually fixed’ determinate characteristics
of the state, i.e., its powers.

This abstract actuality or substantiality is its (the state’s)
necessity, since its actuality is divided into distinct spheres
of activity, spheres whose distinction is rationally determined
and which are, for that reason, fixed determinate characteristics.
The abstract actuality of the state, its substantiality, is necessity
inasmuch as the genuine end of the state and the genuine subsistence
of the whole is realised only in the subsistence of the distinct
spheres of the state’s activity.

Obviously the first definition of the state’s actuality was abstract;
it cannot be regarded as a simple actuality; it must be regarded
as activity, and as a differentiated activity.

The abstract actuality or the substantiality of the state ... is... its necessity, since its substantiality is divided
into the distinct spheres of its activity which correspond to
the moments of its concept, and these spheres, owing to this substantiality,
are thus actually fixed determinate characteristics of the state,
i.e., its powers.

The condition of substantiality is the condition of necessity;
i.e., the substance appears to be divided into independent but
essentially determined actualities or activities. These abstractions
can be applied to any actual thing. In so far as the state is
first considered according to the model of the abstract it will
subsequently have to be considered according to the model of concrete
actuality, necessity, and realised difference.

(3) But this very substantiality of the state is mind knowing
and willing itself after passing through the forming process of
education. The state, therefore, knows what it wills and knows
it in its universality, i.e., as something thought. Hence it
works and acts by reference to consciously adopted ends, known
principles, and laws which are not merely implicit but are actually
present to consciousness; and further, it acts with Precise knowledge
of existing conditions and circumstances, inasmuch as its actions
have a bearing on these.

Now let’s translate this entire paragraph into common language
as follows:

1. The self-knowing and self-willing mind is the substance of
the state; (the educated self-assured mind is the subject and
the foundation, the autonomy of the state).

2. The universal interest, and within it the conservation of the
particular interests, is the universal end and content of this
mind, the existing substance of the state, the nature qua state
of the self-knowing and willing mind.

3. The self-knowing and willing mind, the self-assured, educated
mind attains the actualisation of this abstract content only as
a differentiated activity, as the existence of various powers,
as an organically structured power.

Certain things should be noted concerning Hegel’s presentation.

1. Abstract actuality, necessity (or substantial difference),
substantiality, thus the categories of abstract logic, are made
subjects. Indeed, abstract actuality and necessity are called
‘its’, the state’s, actuality and necessity; however (1) ‘it’
- i.e., abstract actuality or substantiality - is the state’s
necessity; (2) abstract actuality or substantiality is what is
divided into the distinct spheres of its activity which correspond
to the moments of its concept. The moments of its concept are,
‘owing to this substantiality ... thus actually fixed determinations,
powers. (3) Substantiality is no longer taken to be an abstract
characteristic of the state, as its substantiality; rather,
as such it is made subject, and then in conclusion it is said,
‘but this very substantiality of the state is mind knowing and
willing itself after passing through the forming process of education’.

2. Also it is not said in conclusion that the educated, etc.,
mind is substantiality, but on the contrary that substantiality
is the educated, etc., mind. Thus mind becomes the predicate
of its predicate.

3. Substantiality, after having been defined (1) as the universal
end of the state, then (2) as the various powers, is defined (3)
as the educated, self-knowing and willing, actual mind. The real
point of departure, the self-knowing and willing mind, without
which the end of the state and the powers of the state would be
illusions devoid of principle or support, inessential and even
impossible existents, appears to be only the final predicate of
substantiality, which had itself previously been defined as the
universal end and as the various powers of the state. Had the
actual mind been taken as the starting point, with the universal
end its content, then the various powers would be its modes of
self-actualisation, its real or material existence, whose determinate
character would have had to develop out of the nature of its end.
But because the point of departure is the Idea, or Substance
as subject and real being, the actual subject appears to be only
the final predicate of the abstract predicate.

The end of the state and the powers of the state are mystified
in that they take the appearance of modes of existence of the
substance, drawn out of and divorced from their real existence,
the self-knowing and willing mind, the educated mind.

4. The concrete content, the actual determination appears to be
formal, and the wholly abstract formal determination appears to
be the concrete content. What is essential to determinate political
realities is not that they can be considered as such but rather
that they can be considered, in their most abstract configuration,
as logical-metaphysical determinations. Hegel’s true interest
is not the philosophy of right but logic. The philosophical task
is not the embodiment of thought in determinate political realities,
but the evaporation of these realities in abstract thought. The
philosophical moment is not the logic of fact but the fact of
logic. Logic is not used to prove the nature of the state, but
the state is used to prove the logic.

There are three concrete determinations:

1. the universal interest and the conservation therein of the
particular interests as the end of the state;

2. the various powers as the actualisation of this end of the
state;

3. the educated, self-assured, willing and acting mind as the
subject of this end and its actualisation.

These concrete determinations are considered to be extrinsic,
to be hors d’oeuvres. Their importance to philosophy is
that in them the state takes on the following logical significance:

1. abstract actuality or substantiality;

2. the condition of substantiality passes over into the condition
of necessity or substantial actuality;

3. substantial actuality is in fact concept, or subjectivity.

With the exclusion of these concrete determinations, which can
just as well be exchanged for those of another sphere such as
physics which has other concrete determinations, and which are
accordingly unessential, we have before us a chapter of the Logic.

The substance must be ‘divided into the distinct spheres of its
activity which correspond to the moments of its concept, and these
spheres, owing to this substantiality, are thus actually fixed
determinate characteristics of the state’. The gist of this sentence
belongs to logic and is ready-made prior to the philosophy of
right. That these moments of the concept are, in the present
instance, distinct spheres of its (the state’s) activity and the
fixed determinate characteristics of the state, or powers of the
state, is a parenthesis belonging to the philosophy of right,
to the order of political fact. In this way the entire philosophy
of right is only a parenthesis to logic. It goes without saying
that the parenthesis is only an hors d’oeuvre of the real
development. Cf. for example the Addition to § 270.:

Necessity consists in this, that the whole is sundered into the
differences of the concept and that this divided whole yields
a fixed and permanent determinacy, though one which is not fossilised
but perpetually recreates itself in its dissolution. Cf also
the Logic.

§ 271. The constitution of the state is, in the first place,
the organisation of the state and the self-related process of
its organic life, a process whereby it differentiates its moments
within itself and develops them to self-subsistence.

Secondly, the state is an individual, unique and exclusive, and
therefore related to others. Thus it turns its differentiating
activity outward and accordingly establishes within itself the
ideality of its subsisting inward differentiations.

Addition: The inner side of the state as such is the civil
power while its outward tendency is the military power, although
this has a fixed place inside the state itself

## I. THE CONSTITUTION (on its internal side only)

§ 272. The constitution is rational in so far as the state inwardly differentiates and
determines its activity in accordance with the nature of the concept. The result of this
is that each of these powers is in itself the totality of the constitution, because each
contains the other moments and has them effective in itself, and because the moments,
being expressions of the differentiation of the concept, simply abide in their ideality
and constitute nothing but a single individual whole.

Thus the constitution is rational in so far as its moments can be reduced to abstract
logical moments. The state has to differentiate and determine its activity not in
accordance with its specific nature, but in accordance with the nature of the Concept,
which is the mystified mobile of abstract thought. The reason of the constitution is
thus abstract logic and not the concept of the state. In place of the concept of the
constitution we get the constitution of the Concept. Thought is not conformed to the
nature of the state, but the state to a ready made system of thought.

§ 273. The state as a political entity is thus (how
'thus'?) cleft into three substantive divisions:

(a) the power to determine and establish the universal - the Legislature;

(b) the power to subsume single cases and the spheres of particularity

(c) the power of subjectivity, as the will with the power of ultimate decision the
Crown. In the crown, the different powers are bound into an individual unity which is
thus at once the apex and basis of the whole, i.e., of constitutional monarchy.

We will return to this division after examining the particulars
of its explanation.

§ 274. Mind is actual only as that which it knows
itself to be, and the state, as the mind of a nation, is both
the law permeating all relationships within the state and also,
at the same time the manners and consciousness of its citizens.
It follows, therefore, that the constitution of any given nation
depends in general on the character and development of its self-consciousness.
In its self-consciousness its subjective freedom is rooted and
so, therefore, is the actuality of its constitution ... Hence
every nation has the constitution appropriate to it and suitable
for it.

The only thing that follows from Hegel's reasoning is that a state n which the character
and development of self-consciousness and the constitution contradict one another is no
real state. That the constitution which was the product of a bygone self-consciousness
can become an oppressive fetter for an advanced self-consciousness, etc., etc., are
certainly trivialities. However, what would follow is only the demand for a constitution
having within itself the characteristic and principle of advancing in step with
consciousness, with actual man, which is possible only when man has become the principle
of the constitution. Here Hegel is a sophist.

### (a) The Crown

§ 275. The power of the crown contains in itself the
three moments of the whole (see 5 :272) viz. [a] the universality
of the constitution and the laws; [b] counsel, which refers
the particular to the universal; and [c] the moment of
ultimate decision, as the self-determination to which everything
else reverts and from which everything else derives the beginning
of its actuality. This absolute self-determination constitutes
the distinctive principle of the power of the crown as such, and
with this principle our exposition is to begin.

All the first part of this paragraph says is that both the universality
of the constitution and the laws and counsel, or the reference
of the particular to the universal, are the crown. The crown
does not stand outside the universality of the constitution and
the laws once the crown is understood to be the crown of the (constitutional)
monarch.

What Hegel really wants, however, is nothing other than that the
universality of the constitution and the laws is the crown, the
sovereignty of the state. So it is wrong to make the crown the
subject and, inasmuch as the power of the sovereign can also be
understood by the crown, to make it appear as if the sovereign,
were the master and subject of this moment. Let us first turn
to what Hegel declares to be the distinctive principle of the
power of the crown as such, and we find that it is 'the moment
of ultimate decision, as the self-determination to which everything
else reverts and from which everything else derives the beginning
of its actuality', in other words this 'absolute self-determination'.

Here Hegel is really saying that the actual, i.e., individual
will is the power of the crown.
§ 12
says it this way:

When ... the will gives itself the form of individuality..., this constitutes the
resolution of the will, and it is only in so far as it resolves that the will is an
actual will at all.

In so far as this moment of ultimate decision or absolute self-determination
is divorced from the universality of content [i.e., the constitution
and laws,] and the particularity of counsel it is actual will
as arbitrary choice [Willkür]. In other words: arbitrary
choice's the power of the crown, or the power of the crown is
arbitrary choice.

§ 276. The fundamental characteristic of the state
as a political entity is the substantial unity, i.e., the ideality,
of its moments. [a] In this unity, the particular powers and their
activities are dissolved and yet retained. They are retained,
however, only in the sense that their authority is no independent
one but only one of the order and breadth determined by the Idea
of the whole; from its might they originate, and they are its
flexible limbs while it is their single self.

Addition: Much the same thing as this ideality of the moments in the state occurs with life in the physical organism.

It is evident that Hegel speaks only of the idea of the particular
powers and their activities. They are to have authority only
of the order and breadth determined by the idea of the whole;
they are to originate from its might. That it should be so lies
in the idea of the organism. But it would have to be shown how
this is to be achieved. For in the state conscious reason must
prevail; [and] substantial, bare internal and therefore bare external
necessity, the accidental entangling of the powers and activities
cannot be presented as something rational.

§ 277. [b] The particular activities and agencies
of the state are its essential moments and therefore are proper
to it. The individual functionaries and agents are attached
to their office not on the strength of their immediate personality,
but only on the strength of their universal and objective qualities.
Hence it is in an external and contingent way that these offices
are linked with particular persons, and therefore the functions
and powers of the state cannot be private property.

It is self-evident that if particular activities and agencies
are designated as activities and agencies of the state, as state
functions and state powers, then they are not private but state
property. That is a tautology.

The activities and agencies of the state are attached to individuals
(the state is only active through individuals), but not to the
individual as physical but political; they are attached to the
political quality of the individual. Hence it is ridiculous to
say, as Hegel does, that 'it is in an external and contingent
way that these offices are linked with particular persons'. On
the contrary, they are linked with them by a vinculum substantiale,
by reason of an essential quality of particular persons.
These offices are the natural action of this essential quality.
Hence the absurdity of Hegel's conceiving the activities and
agencies of the state in the abstract, and particular individuality
in opposition to it. He forgets that particular individuality
is a human individual, and that the activities and agencies of
the state are human activities. He forgets that the nature of
the particular person is not his beard, his blood, his abstract
Physis, but rather his social quality, and that the activities
of the state, etc., are nothing but the modes of existence and
operation of the social qualities of men. Thus it is evident
that individuals, in so far as they are the bearers of the state's
activities and powers, are to be considered according to their
social and not their private quality.

§ 278. These two points [a] and [b] constitute the
sovereignty of the state. That is to say, sovereignty depends
on the fact that the particular functions and powers of the state
are not self-subsistent or firmly grounded either on their own
account or in the particular will of the individual functionaries,
but have their roots ultimately in the unity of the state as their
single self.

Remark to § 278.: Despotism means any state of affairs where law has disappeared and
where the particular will as such, whether of a monarch or a mob ... counts as law, or
rather takes the place of law; while it is precisely in legal, constitutional government
that sovereignty is to be found as the moment of ideality - the ideality of the
particular spheres and functions. That is to say, sovereignty brings it about that each
of these spheres is not something independent, self-subsistent in its aims and modes of
working, something immersed solely in itself, but that instead, even in these aims and
modes of working, each is determined by and dependent on the aim of the whole (the aim
which has been denominated in general terms by the rather vague expression 'welfare of
the state').

This ideality manifests itself in a twofold way:

(i) In times of peace, the particular spheres and functions pursue the path of
satisfying their particular aims and minding their own business, and it is in part only
by way of the unconscious necessity of the thing that their self-seeking is turned into
a contribution to reciprocal support and to the support of the whole ... In part,
however, it is by the direct influence of higher authority that they are not only
continually brought back to the aims of the whole and restricted accordingly .... but
are also constrained to perform direct services for the support of the whole.

(ii) In a situation of exigency, however, whether in home or foreign
affairs, the organism of which these particular spheres are members
fuses into the single concept of sovereignty. The sovereign is
entrusted with the salvation of the state at the sacrifice of
these particular authorities whose powers are valid at other times,
and it is then that that ideality comes into its proper actuality.

Thus this ideality is not developed into a comprehended, rational
system. In times of peace it appears either as merely an external
constraint effected by the ruling power on private life through
direct influence of higher authority, or a blind uncomprehended
result of self-seeking. This ideality has its proper actuality
only in the state's situation of war or exigency, such that here
its essence is expressed as the actual, existent state's situation
of war and exigency, while its 'peaceful' situation is precisely
the war and exigency of self-seeking.

Accordingly, sovereignty, the ideality of the state, exists merely
as internal necessity, as idea. And Hegel is satisfied with that
because it is a question merely of the idea. Sovereignty thus
exists on the one hand only as unconscious, blind substance.
We will become equally well acquainted with its other actuality.

§ 279. Sovereignty, at first simply the universal
thought of this ideality, comes into existence only
as subjectivity sure of itself, as the will's abstract and to
that extent ungrounded self-determination in which finality of
decision is rooted. This is the strictly individual aspect of
the state, and in virtue of this alone is the state one. The
truth of subjectivity, however, is attained only in a subject,
and the truth of personality only in a person; and in a constitution
which has become mature as a realisation of rationality, each
of the three moments of the concept has its explicitly actual
and separate formation. Hence this absolutely decisive moment
of the whole is not individuality in general, but a single individual,
the monarch.

1. Sovereignty, at first simply the universal thought of
this ideality, comes into existence only as subjectivity sure
of itself. The truth of subjectivity is attained only in a subject,
and the truth of personality only in a person. In a constitution
which has become mature as a realisation of rationality, each
of the three moments of the concept has ... explicitly actual
and separate formation.

2. Sovereignty comes into existence only ... as the will's
abstract and to that extent ungrounded self-determination in which
finality of decision is rooted. This is the strictly individual
aspect of the state, and in virtue of this alone is the state
one ... (and in a constitution which has become mature as a realisation
of rationality, each of the three moments of the concept has its
explicitly actual and separate formation). Hence this absolutely
decisive moment of the whole is not individuality in general,
but a single individual, the monarch.

The first sentence says only that the universal thought of this
ideality, whose sorry existence we have just seen, would have
to be the self-conscious work of subjects and, as such, exist
for and in them.

Had Hegel started with the real subjects as the bases of the state
it would not have been necessary for him to let the state become
subjectified in a mystical way. 'However, the truth of subjectivity',
says Hegel, 'is attained only in a subject, and the truth of personality
only in a person.' This too is a mystification. Subjectivity
is a characteristic of subjects and personality a characteristic
of the person. Instead of considering them to be predicates of
their subjects, Hegel makes the predicates independent and then
lets them be subsequently and mysteriously converted into their
subjects.

The existence of the predicate is the subject; thus the subject
is the existence of subjectivity, etc. Hegel makes the predicates,
the object independent, but independent as separated from their
real independence, their subject. Subsequently, and because of
this, the real subject appears to be the result; whereas one has
to start from the real subject and examine its objectification.
The mystical substance becomes the real subject and the real
subject appears to be something else, namely a moment of the mystical
substance. Precisely because Hegel starts from the predicates
of universal determination instead of from the real Ens
(hypokimenou, subject), and because there must be a bearer
of this determination, the mystical idea becomes this bearer.
This is the dualism: Hegel does not consider the universal to
be the actual essence of the actual, finite thing, i.e. of the
existing determinate thing, nor the real Ens to be the
true subject of the infinite.

Accordingly, sovereignty, the essence of the state, is here first conceived to be an
independent being; it is objectified. Then, of course, this object must again become
subject. However the subject then appears to be a self-incarnation of sovereignty, which
is nothing but the objectified spirit of the state's subjects.

This basic defect of the development aside, let us consider the first sentence of the
paragraph. As it stands it says nothing more than that sovereignty, the ideality of the
state as person, as subject, exists evidently as many persons, many subjects, since no
single person absorbs in himself the sphere of personality, nor any single subject the
sphere of subjectivity. What kind of ideality of the state would it have to be which,
instead of being the actual self-consciousness of the citizens and the communal soul of
the state, were one person, one subject [?] Nor has Hegel developed any more with this
sentence. But consider now the second sentence which is joined with this one. What is
important to Hegel is representing the monarch as the actual, 'God-man', the actual
incarnation of the Idea.

§ 279. Sovereignty ... comes into
existence only ... as the will's abstract and
to that extent ungrounded self-determination in which finality
of decision is rooted. This is the strictly individual aspect
of the state, and in virtue of this alone is the state one...
In a constitution which has become mature as a realisation of
rationality, each of the three moments of the concept has its
explicitly actual and separate formation. Hence this absolutely
decisive moment of the whole is not individuality in general,
but a single individual, the monarch.

We previously called attention to this sentence. The moment of
deciding, of arbitrary yet determinate decision is the sovereign
power of will in general. The idea of sovereign power, as Hegel
develops it, is nothing other than the idea of the arbitrary,
of the will's decision.

But even while conceiving of sovereignty as the ideality of the
state, the actual determination of the part through the idea of
the whole, Hegel now makes it 'the will's abstract and to that
extent ungrounded self-determination in which finality of decision
is rooted. This is the strictly individual aspect of the state'.
Before, the discussion was about subjectivity, now it's about
individuality. The state as sovereign must be one, one individual,
it must possess individuality. The state is one not stay in this
individuality; individuality is only the natural moment of its
oneness, the state's determination as nature [Naturbestimmung].
'Hence this absolutely decisive moment of the whole is not individuality
in general, but a single individual, the monarch.' How
so? Because 'each of the three moments of the concept has its
explicitly actual and separate formation'. One moment of the
concept is oneness, or unity; alone this is not yet one individual.
And what kind of constitution would it have to be in which universality,
particularity, and unity each had its explicitly actual and separate
formation? Because it is altogether a question of no abstraction
but of the state, of society, Hegel's classification can be accepted.
What follows from that? The citizen as determining the universal
is lawgiver, and as the one deciding, as actually willing, is
sovereign. Is that supposed to mean that the individuality of
the state's will is one individual, a particular individual distinct
from all others? Universality too, legislation, has an explicitly
actual and separate formation. Could one conclude from that that
legislation is these particular individuals[?]

The Common Man:

2. The monarch has the sovereign power, or sovereignty.

3. Sovereignty does what it wills.

Hegel:

2. The sovereignty of the state is the monarch.

3. Sovereignty is 'the will's abstract and to that extent ungrounded self-determination in which finality of decision is rooted'.

Hegel makes all the attributes of the contemporary European constitutional
monarch into absolute self-determinations of the will. He does
not say the will of the monarch is the final decision, but rather
the final decision of the will is the monarch. The first statement
is empirical, the second twists the empirical fact into a metaphysical
axiom. Hegel joins together the two subjects, sovereignty as
subjectivity sure of itself and sovereignty as ungrounded self-determination
of the will, as the individual Will, in order to construct out
of that the Idea as 'one individual'.

It is evident that self-assured subjectivity also must actually
will, must will as unity, as an individual. But who ever doubted
that the state acts through individuals? If Hegel wanted to develop
the idea that the state must have one individual as representative
of its individual oneness, then he did not establish the monarch
as this individual. The only positive result of this paragraph
is that in the state the monarch is the moment of individual will,
of ungrounded self-determination, of caprice or arbitrariness.

Hegel's Remark to this paragraph is so peculiar that we must examine
it closely:

Remark to § 279. The immanent development of a science,
the derivation of its entire content from the concept in its simplicity
... exhibits this peculiarity, that one and the
same concept - the will in this instance - which begins by being abstract
(because it is at the beginning), maintains its identity even
while it consolidates its specific determinations, and that too
solely by its own activity, and in this way gains a concrete content.
Hence it is the basic moment of personality, abstract at the
start in immediate rights, which has matured itself through its
various forms of subjectivity, and now - at the stage of absolute
rights, of the state, of the completely concrete objectivity of
the will - has become the personality of the state, its certainty
of itself. This last reabsorbs all particularity into its single
self, cuts short the weighing of pros and cons between which it
lets itself oscillate perpetually now this way and now that, and
by saying 'I will', makes its decision and so inaugurates all
activity and actuality.

To begin with it is not a peculiarity of science that the fundamental
concept of the thing always reappears.

But also no advance has then taken place. Abstract personality
was the subject of abstract right; there has been no progress,
because as personality of the state it remains abstract personality.
Hegel should not have been surprised at the real person - and persons
make the state - reappearing everywhere as his essence. He should
have been surprised at the reverse, and yet still more at the
person as personality of the state reappearing in the same impoverished
abstraction as does the person of private right.

Hegel here defines the monarch as the personality of the state, its certainty of itself.
The monarch is personified sovereignty, sovereignty become man, incarnate state - [or
political - ] consciousness, whereby all other persons are thus excluded from this
sovereignty, from personality, and from state - [or political - ] consciousness. At the
same time however Hegel can give this 'Souverainété - Personne' no more content than 'I
will', the moment of arbitrariness in the will. The state-reason and state-consciousness
is a unique empirical person to the exclusion of all others, but this personified Reason
has no content except the abstract on, 'I will'. L'Etat c'est moi.

Further, however, personality like subjectivity in general, as infinitely self-related,
has its truth (to be precise, its most elementary, immediate truth) only in a person, in
a subject existing 'for' himself, and what exists 'for' itself is just simply a unit.

It is obvious that personality and subjectivity, being only predicates of the person and
the subject, exist only as person and subject; and indeed that the person is one. But
Hegel needed to go further, for clearly the one has truth only as many one's. The
predicate, the essence, never exhausts the spheres of its existence in a single one but
in many one's.

Instead of this Hegel concludes: 'The personality of the state
is actual only as one person, the monarch.'

Thus, because subjectivity is actual only as subject, and the
subject actual only as one, the personality of the state is actual
only as one person. A beautiful conclusion. Hegel could just
as well conclude that because the individual man is one the human
species is only a single man.

Personality expresses the concept as such; but at the same time
the person enshrines the actuality of the concept, and only when
the concept is determined as a person is it the Idea or truth.

To be sure, personality is merely an abstraction without the person,
but only in its species-existence as persons is person the actual
idea of personality.

A so-called 'artificial [moralische] person', be it a society,
a community, or a family, however inherently concrete it may be,
contains personality only abstractly, as one moment of itself
In an 'artificial person', personality has not yet achieved its
true mode of existence. The state, however, is precisely this
totality in which the moments of the concept have attained the
actuality correspondent to their degree of truth.

A great confusion prevails here. The artificial person, society,
etc., is called abstract, precisely those species-forms [Gattutigsgestaltungen]
in which the actual person brings his actual content to existence,
objectifies himself, and leaves behind the abstraction of 'person
quand même'. Instead of recognising this actualisation
of the person as the most concrete thing, the state is to have
the priority in order that the moments of the concept, individuality,
attain a mystical existence. Rationality does not consist in
the reason of the actual person achieving actuality, but in the
moments of the abstract concept achieving it.

The concept of the monarch is therefore of all concepts the hardest
for ratiocination, i.e., for the method of reflection employed
by the Understanding. This method refuses to move beyond isolated
categories and hence here again knows only raisonnenient, finite
points of view, and deductive argumentation. Consequently it
exhibits the dignity of the monarch as something deduced, not
only in its form but in its essence. The truth is, however, that
to be something not deduced but purely self-originating is precisely
the concept of monarchy. Akin then to this reasoning (to
be sure!) is the idea of treating the monarch's right
as grounded in the authority of God, since it is in its divinity
that its unconditional character is contained. [Remark to § 279]

In a certain sense every inevitable existent is purely self-originating;
in this respect the monarch's louse as well as the monarch. Hegel,
in saying that, has not said something special about the monarch.
But should something specifically distinct from all other objects
of science and of the philosophy of right be said about the monarch,
then this would be real foolishness, correct only in so far as
the 'one Person-idea' is something derived only from the
imagination and not the intellect.

We may speak of the 'sovereignty of the people' in the sense that
any people whatever is self-subsistent vis-a-vis other
peoples, and constitutes a state of its own, etc. [Remark to § 279]

That is a triviality. If the sovereign is the actual sovereignty of the state then the
sovereign could necessarily be considered vis-a-vis others as a self-subsistent state,
even without the people. But he is sovereign in so far as he represents the unity of the
people, and thus he is himself merely a representative, a symbol of the sovereignty of
the people. The sovereignty of the people is not due to him but on the contrary he is
due to it.

We may also speak of sovereignty in home affairs residing in the people, provided that
we are speaking generally about the whole state and meaning only what was shown above
(see §§ 277-8), namely that it is to the state that sovereignty belongs.

As though the people [das Volk] were not the real state.
The state is an abstraction; the people alone is the concrete.
And it is noteworthy that Hegel, who without hesitation ascribes
living qualities to the abstraction, ascribes a living quality
like that of sovereignty to the concrete [ - i.e. to the people
- ] only with hesitation and conditions.

The usual sense, however, in which men have recently begun to
speak of the sovereignty of the people is that it is something
opposed to the sovereignty existent in the monarch. So opposed
to the sovereignty of the monarch, the sovereignty of the people
is one of the confused notions based on the wild idea of the 'people'.

The confused notions and the wild idea are only here on Hegel's
pages. Certainly if sovereignty exists in the monarch then it
is foolishness to speak of an opposed sovereignty in the people,
for it lies in the concept of sovereignty that it can have no
double and absolutely opposed existence. But:

1. the question is exactly: Is not the sovereignty existent in
the monarch an 1 illusion? Sovereignty of the monarch or sovereignty
of the people, that is the question;

2. a sovereignty of the people in opposition to that existent
in the monarch can also be spoken of. But then it is not a question
of one and the same sovereignty taking form on two sides but rather
of two completely opposed concepts of sovereignty, one such that
it can come to existence in a monarch, the other such that it
can come to existence only in a people. This is like asking,
is God the sovereign or is man? One of the two is a fiction [eine
Unwarheit] even though an existing fiction.

Taken without its monarch and the articulation of the whole which
is the indispensable and direct concomitant of monarchy, the people
is a formless mass and no longer a state. It lacks every one
of those determinate characteristics - sovereignty, government,
judges, magistrates, class-divisions [Stände], etc., - which
are to be found only in a whole which is inwardly organised.
By the very emergence into a people's life of moments of this
kind which have a bearing on an organisation, on political life,
a people ceases to be that indeterminate abstraction which, when
represented in a quite general way, is called the 'people'.

This whole thing is a tautology. If a people has a monarch and
an articulation which is its indispensable and direct concomitant,
i.e., if it is articulated as a monarchy, then extracted from
this articulation it is certainly a formless mass and a quite
general notion.

If by 'sovereignty of the people' is understood a republican form
of government, or to speak more specifically ...
a democratic form, then... 1 such a notion cannot be further discussed
in face of the Idea of the state in its full development.

That is certainly correct if one has only such a notion and no
developed idea of democracy.

Democracy is the truth of monarchy, monarchy is not the truth
of democracy. Monarchy is necessarily democracy in contradiction
with itself, whereas the monarchial moment is no contradiction
within democracy. Monarchy cannot, while democracy can be understood
in terms of itself In democracy none of the moments obtains a
significance other than what befits it. Each is really only a
moment of the whole Demos. In monarchy one part determines
the character of the whole; the entire constitution must be modified
according to the immutable head. Democracy is the generic constitution;
monarchy is a species, and indeed a poor one. Democracy is content
and form; monarchy should be only form, but it adulterates
the content.

In monarchy the whole, the people, is subsumed under one of its
modes of existence, the political constitution; in democracy
the constitution itself appears only as one determination, and
indeed as the self-determination of the people. In monarchy we
have the people of the constitution, in democracy the constitution
of the people. Democracy is the resolved mystery of all constitutions.
Here the constitution not only in itself, according to essence,
but according to existence and actuality is returned to its real
ground, actual man, the actual people, and established as its
own work. The constitution appears as what it is, the free product
of men. One could say that this also applies in a certain respect
to constitutional monarchy; only the specific difference of democracy
is that here the constitution is in general only one moment of
the people's existence, that is to say the political constitution
does not form the state for itself.

Hegel proceeds from the state and makes man into the subjectified
state; democracy starts with man and makes the state objectified
man. just as it is not religion that creates man but man who creates
religion, so it is not the constitution that creates the people
but the people which creates the constitution. In a certain respect
democracy is to all other forms of the state what Christianity
is to all other religions. Christianity is the religion kat
exohin, the essence of religion, deified man under the form
of a particular religion. In the same way democracy is the essence
of every political constitution, socialised man under the form
of a particular constitution of the state. It stands related
to other constitutions as the genus to its species; only here
the genus itself appears as an existent, and therefore opposed
as a particular species to those existents which do not conform
to the essence. Democracy relates to all other forms of the state
as their Old Testament. Man does not exist because of the law
but rather the law exists for the good of man. Democracy is human
existence, while in the other political forms man has only
legal existence. That is the fundamental difference of
democracy.

All remaining forms of the state are certain, determined, particular
forms of the state. In democracy the formal principle is simultaneously
the material principle. For that reason it is the first true
unity of the universal and the particular. In monarchy for example,
or in the republic as merely a particular form of the state, political
man has his particular and separate existence beside the unpolitical,
private man. Property, contract, marriage, civil society appear
here (just as Hegel quite rightly develops them for abstract forms
of the state, except that he means to develop the Idea of the
state) as particular modes of existence alongside the political
state; that is, they appear as the content to which the political
state relates as organising form, or really only as the determining,
limiting intelligence which says now 'yes' now 'no' without any
content of its own. In democracy the political state, as placed
alongside this content and differentiated from it, is itself merely
a particular content, like a particular form of existence of the
people. In monarchy, for example, this particular entity, the
political constitution, has the meaning of the universal which
governs and determines all the particulars. In democracy the
state as particular is only particular, and as universal it is
the real universal, i.e., it is nothing definite in distinction
from the other content. The modern French have conceived it thus:
In true democracy the political state disappears [der
politische Staat untergehe]. This is correct inasmuch
as qua political state, qua constitution it is no longer
equivalent to the whole.

In all states distinct from democracy the state, the law, the
constitution is dominant without really governing, that is, materially
permeating the content of the remaining non-political spheres.
In democracy the constitution, the law, the state, so far as
it is political constitution, is itself only a self-determination
of the people, and a determinate content of the people.

Furthermore it is evident that all forms of the state have democracy
for their truth, and for that reason are false to the extent that
they are not democracy.

In the ancient state the political state shaped the content of
the state, with the other spheres being excluded; the modern state
is an accommodation between the political and the non-political
state.

In democracy the abstract state has ceased to be the governing
moment. The struggle between monarchy and republic is itself
still a struggle within the abstract form of the state. The political
republic [ - that is, the republic merely as political constitution - ]
is democracy within the abstract form of the state. Hence the
abstract state-form of democracy is the republic; but here [in
true democracy] it ceases to be mere political constitution.

Property, etc., in brief the entire content of law and the state
is, with small modification, the same in North America as in Prussia.
There, accordingly, the republic is a mere state form just as
the monarchy is here. The content of the state lies outside these
constitutions. Hence Hegel is right when he says that the political
state is the constitution, i.e., that the material state is not
political. Merely an external identity, a mutual determination,
obtains here. It was most difficult to form the political state,
the constitution, out of the various moments of the life of the
people. It was developed as the universal reason in opposition
to the other spheres i.e., as something opposed to them. The
historical task then consisted in their revindication. But the
particular spheres, in doing that, are not conscious of the fact
that their private essence declines in relation to the opposite
essence of the constitution, or political state, and that its
opposite existence is nothing but the affirmation of their own
alienation. The political constitution was until now the religious
sphere, the religion of popular life, the heaven of its universality
in opposition to the earthly existence of its actuality. The
political sphere was the sole sphere of the state within the state,
the sole sphere in which the content, like the form, was species-content,
the true universal, but at the same time in such a way that, because
this sphere opposed the others, its content also became formal
and particular. Political life in the modern sense is the Scholasticism
of popular life. Monarchy is the fullest expression of this alienation.
The republic is the negation of this alienation within its own
sphere. It is obvious that the political constitution as such
is perfected for the first time when the private spheres have
attained independent existence. Where commerce and property in
land are not free, not yet autonomous, there is also not yet the
political constitution. The Middle Ages was the democracy of
nonfreedom.

The abstraction of the state as such belongs only to modern times
because the abstraction of private life belongs only to modern
times. The abstraction of the political state is a modern product.

In the Middle Ages there was serf, feudal property, trade corporation,
corporation of scholars, etc., that is, in the Middle Ages property,
trade, society, man was political; the material content of the
state was fixed by reason of its form; every private sphere had
a political character or was a political sphere, or again, politics
was also the character of the private spheres. In the Middle
Ages the political constitution was the constitution of private
property, but only because the constitution of private property
was a political one. In the Middle Ages popular life and state
[i.e., political] life were identical. Man was the actual principle
of the state, but he was unfree man. It was therefore the democracy
of unfreedom, accomplished alienation. The abstract, reflected
opposition [between popular life and state-, or political-life]
belong only to modern times. The Middle Ages was the real dualism;
modern times is the abstract dualism.

At the stage at which constitutions are divided, as above mentioned,
into democracy, aristocracy, and monarchy, the point of view taken
is that of a still substantial unity, abiding in itself, without
having yet embarked on its infinite differentiation and the plumbing
of its own depths. At that stage, the moment of the filial, self-determining
decision of the will does not come on the scene explicitly in
its owl) proper actuality as an organic moment immanent in the
state. [Remark to § 279]

In immediate monarchy, democracy, aristocracy there is yet no
political constitution in distinction from the actual material
state or from the remaining content of popular life. The political
state does not yet appear as the form of the material state.
Either, as in Greece, the res publica was the real private
concern, the real content of the citizens and the private man
was slave, that is, the political state as political was the true
and sole content of the citizen's life and will; or, as in Asiatic
despotism, the political state was nothing but the private will
of a single individual, and the political state, like the material
state, was slave. What distinguishes the modern state from these
states in which a substantial unity between people and state obtained
is not that the various moments of the constitution are formed
into particular actuality, as Hegel would have it, but rather
that the constitution itself has been formed into a particular
actuality alongside the real life of the people, the political
state has become the constitution of the rest of the state.

§ 280. This ultimate self in which the will of the
state is concentrated is, when thus taken in abstraction, a single
self and therefore is immediate individuality. Hence its
natural character is implied in its very conception. The monarch,
therefore, is essentially characterised as this individual,
in abstraction from all his other characteristics, and this
individual is raised to the dignity of monarchy in an immediate,
natural fashion, i.e., through his birth in the course of nature.

We have already heard that subjectivity is subject and that the
subject is necessarily an empirical individual, a one. Now
we are told that the concept of naturality, of corporeality, is
implied in the concept of immediate individuality. Hegel has
proven nothing but what is self-evident, namely, that subjectivity
exists only as a corporeal individual, and what is obvious, namely,
that natural birth appertains to the corporeal individual.

Hegel thinks he has proven that the subjectivity of the state,
sovereignty, the monarch, is 'essentially characterised as this
individual, in abstraction from all his other characteristics,
and this individual is raised to the dignity of monarch in an
immediate, natural fashion, i.e., through his birth in the course
of nature'. Sovereignty, monarchial dignity, would thus be born.
The body of the monarch determines his dignity. Thus
at the highest point of the state bare Physis rather than
reason would be the determining factor. Birth would determine
the quality of the monarch as it determines the quality of cattle.

Hegel has demonstrated that the monarch must be born, which no
one questions, but not that birth makes one a monarch.

That man becomes monarch by birth can as little be made into a
metaphysical truth as can the Immaculate Conception of Mary.
The latter notion, a fact of consciousness, just as well as the
empirical fact of the birth of man to the monarchy, can be understood
as rooted in human illusion and conditions.

In the Remark, which we examine more closely, Hegel takes pleasure
in having demonstrated the irrational to be absolutely rational.

This transition of the concept of pure self-determination into
the immediacy of' being and so into the realm of nature is of
a purely speculative character, and apprehension of it therefore
belongs to logic.

Indeed it is purely speculative. But what is purely speculative
is not the transition from pure self-determination, from an abstraction,
to pure naturality (to the contingency of birth), to the other
extreme, car les extrêmes se touchent. What
is speculative is that this is called a 'transition of the concept',
and that absolute contradiction is presented as identity, and
ultimate inconsistency presented as consistency.

This can be considered as Hegel's positive acknowledgment: with
the hereditary monarch in the place of self-determining reason,
abstract natural determinacy appears not as what it is, not as
natural determinacy, but as the highest determination of the state;
this is the positive point at which the monarchy can no longer
preserve the appearance of being the organisation of the rational
will.

Moreover, this transition is on the whole the same (?)
as that familiar to us in the nature of willing in general, and
there the process is to translate something from subjectivity
(i.e., some purpose held before the mind) into existence.
... But the proper form of the Idea and of the transition
here under consideration is the immediate conversion of the pure
self-determination of the will (i.e., of the simple concept itself)
into a single and natural existent without the mediation of a
particular content (like a purpose in the case of action). [Remark to § 280]

Hegel says that the conversion of the sovereignty of the state
(of a self-determination of the will) into the body of the born
monarch (into existence) is on the whole the transition
of the content in general, which the will makes in order to actualise
an end which is thought of, that is, to translate it into an existent.
But Hegel says 'on the whole'. And the proper difference which
he specifies [ - namely, immediate conversion of the pure self-determination
of the will into a single and natural existent without the mediation
of a particular content - ] is so proper that it eliminates all
analogy and puts magic in the place of the 'nature of willing
in general'.

First of all, the conversion of the purpose held before the mind
into the existent is here immediate, magical. Second, the subject
here is the pure self-determination of the will, the simple concept
itself; it is the essence of will which, as a mystical subject,
decides. It is no real, individual, conscious will; it is the
abstraction of the will which changes into a natural existent;
it is the pure Idea which embodies itself as one individual.

Third, since the actualisation of the volition in a natural existent
takes place immediately, i.e., without a medium - which the will
requires as a rule in order to objectify itself - then even a particular,
determinate end is lacking; no mediation of a particular content,
like a purpose in the case of action, takes place, which is evident
because no actin g subject is present, and the abstraction, the
pure idea of will, in order to act must act mystically. Now an
end which is not particular is no end, and an act without an end
is an endless, senseless act. Thus this whole parallel with the
teleological act of the will shows itself finally to be a mystification,
an empty action of the Idea. In fact, the medium here is the absolute
will and the word of the philosopher; the particular end is the
end of the philosophising subject, namely, constructing the hereditary
monarch out of the pure Idea; and the actualisation of the end
is Hegel's simple affirmation.

In the so-called 'ontological' proof of the existence of God,
we have the same conversion of the absolute concept into existence
(the same mystification),' which conversion has constituted the
depth of the Idea in the modern world, although recently (and
rightly), it has been declared inconceivable.

But since the idea of the monarch is regarded as being quite familiar
to ordinary (i.e., understanding), consciousness, the Understanding
clings here all the more tenaciously to its separation and the
conclusions which its astute ratiocination deduces therefrom.
As a result, it denies that the moment of ultimate decision in
the state is linked implicitly and actually (i.e. in the
rational concept) with the immediate birthright of the monarch.
[Remark to § 280]

It is denied that ultimate decision is a birthright, and Hegel
asserts that the monarch is the ultimate decision through birth.
But who has ever doubted that the ultimate decision in the state
is joined to a real bodily individual and is linked with the immediate
birthright?

§ 281. Both moments in their undivided unity - (a)
the will's ultimate ungrounded self, and (b) therefore its similarly
ungrounded objective existence (existence being the category which
is at home in nature) - constitute the Idea of something against
which caprice is powerless, the 'majesty' of the monarch. In
this unity lies the actual unity of the state, and it is only
through this, its inward and outward immediacy, that the unity
of the state is saved from the risk of being drawn down into the
sphere of particularity and its caprices, ends and opinions, and
saved too from the war of factions round the throne and from the
enfeeblement and overthrow of the power of the state.

The two moments are [a] the contingency of the will, caprice,
and [b] the contingency of nature, birth; thus, His Majesty: Contingency.
Contingency is thus the actual unity of the state.

The way in which, according to Hegel, an inward and outward immediacy
[of the state] is to be saved from collision, [due to caprice,
factions,] etc., is incredible, since collision is precisely what
it makes possible.

What Hegel asserts of the elective monarch applies even more to
the hereditary monarchy:

In an elective monarchy ... the nature of the relation between
king and people implies that the ultimate decision is left with
the particular will, and hence the constitution becomes a Compact
of Election, i.e., a surrender of the power of the state at the
discretion of the particular will. The result of this is that
the particular offices of state turn into private property, etc.
[Remark to § 281]

§ 282. The right to pardon criminals arises from the
sovereignty of the monarch, since it is this alone which is empowered
to actualise mind's power of making undone what has been done
and wiping out a crime by forgiving and forgetting it.

The right to pardon is the right to exercise clemency, the ultimate
expression of contingent and arbitrary choice. Significantly
this is what Hegel makes the essential attribute of the monarch.
In the Addition to this very paragraph he defines the source
of pardon as 'self-determined [or .groundless] decision' [die
grundlose Entscheidung].

§ 283. The second moment in the power of the crown
is the moment of particularity, or the moment of a determinate
content and its subsumption under the universal. When this acquires
a special objective existence, it becomes the supreme council
and the individuals who compose it. They bring before the monarch
for his decision the content of current affairs of state or the
legal provision required to meet existing needs, together with
their objective aspects, i.e., the grounds on which decision is
to be based, the relative laws, circumstances, etc. The individuals
who discharge these duties are in direct contact with the person
of the monarch and therefore the choice and dismissal alike of
these individuals rest with his unrestricted caprice.

§ 284. It is only for the objective side of
decision, i.e., for knowledge of the problem and the attendant
circumstances, and for the legal and other reasons which determine
its solution, that men are answerable; in other words, it is these
alone which are capable of objective proof. It is for this reason
that these may fall within the province of a council which is
distinct from the personal will of the monarch as such. Hence
it is only councils or their individual members that are made
answerable. The personal majesty of the monarch, on the other
hand, as the final subjectivity of decision, is above all
answerability for acts of government.

Here Hegel describes in a wholly empirical way the ministerial
power as it is usually defined in constitutional states. The
only thing philosophy does with this empirical fact is to make
it the existence and the predicate of the moment of particularity
in the power of the crown.

(The ministers represent the rational objective side of the sovereign
will. Hence also the honor of being answerable falls to
them, while the monarch is compensated with the imaginary coin
of 'Majesty'.) Thus the speculative moment is quite poor. But
then the development is based particularly on wholly empirical
grounds, and indeed very abstract and bad empirical grounds.

Thus, for example, the choice of ministers is placed in the unrestricted
caprice of the monarch because they are in direct contact with
the person of the monarch, i.e., because they are ministers.
In the same way the unrestricted choice of the monarch's personal
servants can be developed out of the absolute Idea.

The basis for the answerability of the ministers is certainly
better: 'It is only for the objective side of decision, i.e.,
for knowledge of the problem and the attendant circumstances,
and for the legal and other reasons which determine its solution,
that men are answerable: in other words, it is these alone which
are capable of objective proof' Evidently 'the final subjectivity
of decision', pure subjectivity, pure caprice, is not objective,
hence also capable of no objective proof nor therefore of responsibility,
once an individual is the blessed, sanctioned existence of caprice.
Hegel's proof is conclusive if the constitutional provisions
are taken as the point of departure; but these provisions themselves
are not proven simply by analysing them, and this is all Hegel
has done.

The whole uncritical character of Hegel's philosophy of right
is rooted in this confusion.

§ 285. The third moment in the power of the crown
concerns the absolute universality which subsists subjectively
in the conscience of the monarch and objectively in the whole
of the constitution and the laws. Hence the power of the crown
presupposes the other moments in the state just as it is presupposed
by each of them.

§ 286. The objective guarantee of the power
of the crown, of the hereditary right of succession to the throne,
and so forth, consists in the fact that just as monarchy has its
own actuality in distinction from that of the other rationally
determined moments in the state, so these others explicitly possess
the rights and duties appropriate to their own character. In
the rational organism of the state, each member, by maintaining
itself in its own position, eo ipso maintains the others
in theirs.

Hegel does not see that with this third moment, the 'absolute
universality', he obliterates the first two, or vice versa. 'The
power of the crown presupposes the other moments in the state
just as it is presupposed by each of them.' If this supposition
is taken as real and not mystical, then the crown is established
not through birth but through the other moments, and accordingly
is not hereditary but fluid, i.e., determined by the state and
assigned by turns to individuals of the state in accordance with
the organisation of the other moments. In a rational organism
the head cannot be iron and the body flesh. In order to preserve
themselves the members must be equally of one flesh and blood.
But the hereditary monarch is not equal, he is of other stuff.
Here the prosaic character of the rationalistic will of the other
members of the state faces the magic of nature. Moreover, members
can mutually maintain themselves only in so far as the whole organism
is fluid and each of them is taken up [aufgehoben] in this
fluidity, in so far as no one of them, as in this case the head
of the state, is unmoved and inalterable. Thus by means of this
determination Hegel abolishes sovereignty by birth.

A second point has to do with the question of irresponsibility.
if the prince violates the whole of the constitution, and the
laws, his irresponsibility ceases because his constitutional existence
ceases. But precisely these laws and this constitution make him
irresponsible. Thus they contradict themselves, and this one
stipulation abolishes law and constitution. The constitution
of constitutional monarchy is irresponsibility.

Hegel, however, is content with saying that just as monarchy has
its own actuality in distinction from that of the other rationally
determined moments in the state, so these others explicitly possess
the rights and duties appropriate to their own character. Therefore
he must call the constitution of the Middle Ages an organisation.
Thus Hegel has only a mass of particular spheres united in a
relation of external necessity, and indeed an individual monarch
belongs only to this situation. In a state wherein each determination
exists explicitly, the sovereignty of the state must also be established
as a particular individual.

### Résumé of Hegel's development of the Crown or the Idea of State Sovereignty

The Remark to § 279 says:

We may speak of the sovereignty of the people in the sense that
any people whatever is self-subsistent vis-a-vis other
peoples, and constitutes a state of its own, like the British
people for instance. But the peoples of England, Scotland, or
Ireland, or the peoples of Venice, Genoa, Ceylon, etc. are not
sovereign peoples at all now that they have ceased to have rulers
or supreme governments of their own.

Thus here sovereignty of the people is nationality, and the sovereignty
of the prince is nationality; or in other words the principle
of principality is nationality, which explicitly and exclusively
forms the sovereignty of a people. A people whose sovereignty
consists only in nationality has a monarch. The different
nationality of peoples cannot be better established and expressed
than by means of different monarchs. The cleft between one .absolute
individual and another is the cleft between these nationalities.

The Greeks (and Romans) were national because and in so far as
they were the sovereign people. The Germans are sovereign because
and in so far as they are national. (Vid. p. xxxiv.)

(ad xii) A so-called 'artificial person', the same Remark says
further, be it a society, a community, or a family, however inherently
concrete it may be, contains personality only abstractly, as one
moment of itself In an artificial person', personality has not
achieved its true mode of existence. The state, however, is precisely
this totality in which the moments of the concept have attained
the actuality correspondent to their degree of truth.

This artificial person, society, family, etc., has personality
within it only abstractly; against that, in the monarch, the person
has the state in him.

In fact, the abstract person brings his personality to its real
existence only in the artificial person, society, family, etc.
But Hegel conceives of society, family, etc., the artificial
person in general, not as the realisation of the actual, empirical
person but as the real person which, however, has the moment
of personality in it only abstractly. Whence also comes his notion
that it is not actual persons who come to be a state but the state
which must first come to be an actual person. Instead of the state
being brought forth, therefore, as the ultimate reality of the
person, as the ultimate social reality of man, a single empirical
man, an empirical person, is brought forth as the ultimate actuality
of the state. This inversion of subject into object and object
into subject is a consequence of Hegel's wanting to write the
biography of the abstract Substance, of the Idea, with human activity,
etc., having consequently to appear as the activity and result
of something other than man; it is a consequence of Hegel's wanting
to allow the essence of man to act for itself as an imaginary
individual instead of acting in its actual, human existence, and
it necessarily has as its result that an empirical existent is
taken in an uncritical manner to be the real truth of the Idea,
because it is not a question of bringing empirical existence to
its truth but of bringing the truth to empirical existence, and
thereupon the obvious is developed as a real moment of the idea.
(More later concerning this inevitable change of the empirical
into speculation and of speculation into the empirical.)

In this way the impression of something mystical and profound
is also created. That man has been born is quite vulgar, so too
that this existence established through physical birth comes to
be social man, etc., and citizen; man becomes everything that
he becomes through his birth. But it is very profound and striking
that the idea of the state is directly born, that it has brought
itself forth into empirical existence in the birth of the sovereign.
In this way no content is gained, only the form of the old content
altered. It has received a philosophical form, a philosophical
certification.

Another consequence of this mystical speculation is that a particular
empirical existent, a single empirical existent in distinction
from the others is conceived to be the existence of the Idea.
It makes once again a deep mystical impression to see a particular
empirical existent established by the Idea, and hence to encounter
at all levels an incarnation of God.

If the modes of man's social existence, as found for example in
the development of family, civil society, state, etc., are regarded
as the actualisation and objectification of man's essence, then
family, civil society, etc., appear as qualities inhering in subjects.
Man then remains what is essential within these realities, while
these then appear as his actualised universality, and hence also
as something common to all men. But if, on the contrary, family,
civil society, state, etc., are determinations of the idea, of
Substance as subject, then they must receive an empirical actuality,
and the mass of men in which the idea of civil society is developed
takes on the identity of citizen of civil society, and that in
which the idea of the state is developed takes on that of citizen
of the state. In this case the sole concern is with allegory,
i.e., with ascribing to any empirical existent the meaning of
actualised Idea; and thus it is evident that these receptacles
have fulfilled their destiny once they have become a determinate
incarnation of a life-moment of the Idea. Consequently the universal
appears everywhere as a determinate particular thing, while the
individual nowhere arrives at his true universality.

At the most profound and speculative level it therefore appears
necessary when the most abstract determinations which in no way
really ripen to true social actuality, the natural bases of the
state like birth (in the case of the prince) or private property
(as in primogeniture), appear to be the highest, immediate Idea-become-man.

It is evident that the true method is turned upside down. What
is most simple is made most complex and vice versa. What should
be the point of departure becomes the mystical result, and what
should be the rational result becomes the mystical point of departure.

If however the prince is the abstract person who has the state in him, then this can
only mean that the essence of the state is the abstract private person. It utters its
secret only when at the peak of its development. He is the lone private person in whom
the relation of the private person in general to the state is actualised.

The prince's hereditary character results from his concept. He is to be the person who
is specified from the entire race of men, who is distinguished from all other persons.
But then what is the ultimate fixed difference of one person from all others? The body.
And the highest function of the body is sexual activity. Hence the highest
constitutional act of the king is his sexual activity, because through this he makes a
king and carries on his body. The body of his son is the reproduction of his own body,
the creation of a royal body.

### (b) The Executive

§ 287. There is a distinction between the monarch's decisions and their execution and
application, or in general between his decisions and the continued execution or
maintenance of past decisions, existing laws, regulations, organisations for the
securing of common ends, and so forth. This task of ... subsuming the particular under
the universal is comprised in the executive power, which also includes the powers of the
judiciary and the police. The latter have a more immediate bearing on the particular
concerns of civil society and they make the universal interest authoritative over its
particular aims.

This is the usual interpretation of the executive. The only thing
which can be mentioned as original with Hegel is that he coordinates
executive, police, and judiciary, where as a rule the administrative
and judiciary powers are treated as opposed.

§ 288. Particular interests which are common to everyone
fall within civil society and lie outside the absolutely universal
interest of the state proper (see § 256). The administration
of these is in the hands of Corporations (see § 251),
commercial and professional as well as municipal, and their officials,
directors, managers, and the like. It is the business of these
officials to manage the private property and interests of these
particular spheres and, from that point of view, their authority
rests on the confidence of their commonalties and professional
equals. On the other hand, however, these circles of particular
interests must be subordinated to the higher interests of the
state, and hence the filling of positions of responsibility in
Corporations, etc., will generally be effected by a mixture of
popular election by those interested with appointment and ratification
by higher authority.

This is a simple description of the empirical situation in some
countries.

§ 289. The maintenance of the state's universal interest,
and of legality, in this sphere of particular rights, and the
work of bringing these rights back to the universal, require to
be superintended by holders of the executive power, by (a) the
executive civil servants and (b) the higher advisory officials
(who are organised into committees). These converge in their
supreme heads who are in direct contact with the monarch.

Hegel has not developed the executive. But given this, he has
not demonstrated that it is anything more than a function, a determination
of the citizen in general. By viewing the particular interests
of civil society as such, as interests which lie outside the absolutely
universal interest of the state, he has only deduced the executive
as a particular, separate power.

[Remark to § 289:] Just as civil society is the battlefield
where everyone's individual private interest meets everyone else's,
so here we have the struggle (a) of private interests against
particular matters of common concern and (b) of both of these
together against the organisation of the state and its higher
outlook. At the same time the corporation mind, engendered when
the particular spheres gain their title to rights, is now inwardly
converted into the mind of the state, since it finds in the state
the means of maintaining its particular ends. This is the secret
of the patriotism of the citizens in the sense that they know
the state as their substance, because it is the state that maintains
their particular spheres of interest together with the title,
authority, and welfare of these. In the corporation mind the
rooting of the particular in the universal is directly entailed,
and for this reason it is in that mind that the depth and strength
which the state possesses in sentiment is seated.

This is especially worth noting:

1. because of the definition of civil society as the bellum omnium contra omnes;

2. because private egoism is revealed to be the secret of the patriotism of the citizens
and the depth and strength which the state possesses in sentiment;

3. because the 'burgher', the man of particular interest as opposed to the universal,
the member of civil society, is considered to be a fixed individual whereas the state
likewise in fixed individuals opposes the 'burghers'.

One would suppose that Hegel would have to define 'civil society'
as well as the 'family' as a determination of each political individual,
and so too the later state qualities as equally a determination
of the political individual. But with Hegel it is not one and
the same individual who develops a new determination of his social
essence. It is the essence of the will, which allegedly develops
its determinations out of itself. The subsisting, distinct and
separated, empirical existences of the state are conceived to
be immediate incarnations of one of these determinations.

Just as the universal as such is rendered independent it is immediately
mixed in with what empirically exists, and then this limited existent
is immediately and uncritically taken for the expression of the
Idea.

Here Hegel comes into contradiction with himself only in so far
as he does not conceive of the 'family' man in the same way he
conceived of the member of civil society, i.e., as a fixed breed
excluded from other qualities.

§ 290. Division of labor... occurs in the business
of the executive also. For this reason, the organisation of officials
has the abstract though difficult task of so arranging that (a)
civil life shall be governed in a concrete manner from below where
it is concrete, but that (b) none the less the business of government
shall be divided into its abstract branches -armed by special
officials as different centers of administration, and further
that (c) the operations of these various departments shall converge
again when they are directed on civil life from above, in the
same way as they converge into a general supervision in the supreme
executive.

The Addition to this paragraph is to be considered later.

§ 291. The nature of the executive functions is that they are objective and that in
their substance they have been explicitly fixed by previous decisions (see Paragraph
287); these functions have to be fulfilled and carried out by individuals. Between all
individual and his office there is no immediate natural link. Hence individuals are not
appointed to office on account of their birth or native personal gifts. The objective
factor in their appointment is knowledge and proof of ability. Such proof guarantees
that the state will get what it requires; and since it is the sole condition of
appointment, it also guarantees to every citizen the chance of joining the class of
civil servants [dem allgemeinen Stande].

§ 292. Since the objective qualification for the civil service is not genius (as it is
for work as an artist, for example), there is of necessity an indefinite plurality of
eligible candidates whose relative excellence is not determinable with absolute
precision. The selection of one of the candidates, his nomination to office, and the
grant to him of full authority to transact public business-all this, as the linking of
two things, a man and his office, which in relation to each other must always be
fortuitous, in the state which is sovereign and has the last word, is the subjective
aspect of election to office, and it must lie with the crown as the power.

§ 293. The particular public functions which the monarch entrusts to officials
constitute one part of the objective aspect of the sovereignty residing in the crown.
Their specific discrimination is therefore given in the nature of the thing. And while
the actions of the officials are the fulfilment of their duty, their office is also a
right exempt from contingency.

Note only the objective aspect of the sovereignty residing in the crown.

§ 294. Once an individual has been appointed to his official position by the sovereign's
act (see § 292), the tenure of his post is conditional on his fulfilling his duties.
Such fulfilment is the very essence of his appointment, and it is only consequential
that he finds in his office his livelihood and the assured satisfaction of his
particular interests (see § 294), and further that his external circumstances and his
official work are freed from other kinds of subjective dependence and influence.

What the service of the state ... requires, it says in the Remark, is that men shall
forgo the selfish and capricious satisfaction of their subjective ends; by this very
sacrifice, they acquire the right to find their satisfaction in, but only in, the
dutiful discharge of their public functions. In this fact, so far as public business is
concerned, there lies the link between universal and particular interests which
constitutes both the concept of the state and its inner stability (see § 260) ... The
assured satisfaction of particular needs removes the external compulsion which may tempt
a man to seek ways and means of satisfying them at the expense of his official duties.
Those who are entrusted with affairs of state find in its universal power the protection
they need against another subjective phenomenon, namely the personal passions of the
governed, whose primitive interests, etc., suffer injury as the universal interest of
the state is made to prevail against them.

§ 295. The security of the state and its subjects against the misuse of power by
ministers and their officials lies directly in their hierarchical organisation and their
answerability; but it lies too in the authority given to societies and Corporations,
because in itself this is a barrier against the intrusion of subjective caprice into the
power entrusted to a civil servant, and it completes from below the state control which
does not reach down as far as the conduct of individuals.

§ 296. But the fact that a dispassionate, upright, and polite demeanour becomes
customary [in civil servants], is (i) partly a result of direct education in thought and
ethical conduct. Such an education is a mental counterpoise to the mechanical and semi-
mechanical activity involved in acquiring the so-called 'sciences' of matters connected
with administration, in the requisite business training, in the actual work done, etc.
(ii) The size of the state, however, is an important factor in producing this result,
since it diminishes the stress of family and other personal ties, and also makes less
potent and so less keen such passions as hatred, revenge, etc. In those who are busy
with the important questions arising in a great state, these subjective interests
automatically disappear, and the habit is generated of adopting universal interests,
points of view, and activities.

§ 297. Civil servants and the members of the executive constitute the greater part of
the middle class, the class in which the consciousness of right and the developed
intelligence of the mass of the people is found. The sovereign working on the middle
class at the top, and Corporation-rights working on it at the bottom, are the
institutions which effectively prevent it from acquiring the isolated position of an
aristocracy and using its education and skill as means to an arbitrary tyranny.

Addition to § 297. The middle class, to which civil servants belong, is politically
conscious and the one in which education is most prominent. ... It is a prime concern of
the state that a middle class should be developed, but this can be done only if the
state is an organic unity like the one described here, i.e., it can be done only by
giving authority to spheres of particular interests, which are relatively independent,
and by appointing an army of officials whose personal arbitrariness is broken against
such authorised bodies. Action in accordance with everyone's rights, and the habit of
such action, is a consequence of the counterpoise to officialdom which independent and
self-subsistent bodies create.

What Hegel says about 'the Executive' does not merit the name
of a philosophical development. Most of the paragraphs could
be found verbatim in the Prussian Landrecht. Yet the administration
proper is the most difficult point of the development.

Because Hegel has already claimed the police and the judiciary
to be spheres of civil society, the executive is nothing but the
administration, which he develops as the bureaucracy.

First of all, the 'Corporations', as the self-government of civil
society, presuppose the bureaucracy. The sole determination arrived
at is that the choice of the administrators and their officials,
etc., is a mixed choice originating from the members of civil
society and ratified by the proper authority (or as Hegel says,
'higher authority').

Over this sphere, for the maintenance of the state's universal
interest and of legality, stand holders of the executive power,
the executive civil servants and the advisory officials, which
converge into the monarch.

A division of labour occurs in the business of the executive.
Individuals must prove their capability for executive functions,
i.e., they must sit for examinations. The choice of the determinate
individual for civil service appointment is the prerogative of
the royal authority. The distribution of these functions is given
in the nature of the thing. The official function is the duty
and the life's work of the civil servants. Accordingly they must
be paid by the state. The guarantee against malpractice by the
bureaucracy is partly its hierarchy and answerability, and on
the other hand the authority of the societies and Corporations;
its humaneness is a result partly of direct education in thought
and ethical conduct and partly of the size of the state. The
civil servants form the greater part of the middle class. The
safeguard against its becoming like an aristocracy and tyranny
is partly the sovereign at the top and partly Corporation-rights
at the bottom. The middle class is the class of education. Voila
tout! Hegel gives us an empirical description of the bureaucracy,
partly as it actually is, and partly according to the opinion
which it has of itself And with that the difficult chapter on
'the Executive' is brought to a close.

Hegel proceeds from the separation of the state and civil society,
the separation of the particular interests and the absolutely
universal; and indeed the bureaucracy is founded on this separation.
Hegel proceeds from the presuppositon of the Corporations; and
indeed the bureaucracy presupposes the Corporations, in any event
the 'corporation mind'. Hegel develops no content of the bureaucracy,
but merely some general indications of its formal organisation;
and indeed the bureaucracy is merely the formalism of a content
which lies outside the bureaucracy itself.

The Corporations are the materialism of the bureaucracy, and the
bureaucracy is the spiritualism of the corporations. The Corporation
is the bureaucracy of civil society, and the bureaucracy is the
Corporation of the state. In actuality, the bureaucracy as civil
society of the state is opposed to the state of civil society,
the Corporations. Where the bureaucracy is to become a new principle,
where the universal interest of the state begins to become explicitly
a singular and thereby a real interest, it struggles against the
Corporations as every consequence struggles against the existence
of its premises. On the other hand once the real life of the
state awakens and civil society frees itself from the Corporations
out of its inherent rational impulse, the bureaucracy seeks to
restore them; for as soon as the state of civil society falls
so too does the civil society of the state. The spiritualism
vanishes with its opposite materialism. The consequence struggles
for the existence of its premises as soon as a new principle struggles
not against the existence of the premises but against the principle
of their existence. The same mind that creates the Corporation
in society creates the bureaucracy in the state. Thus as soon
as the corporation mind is attacked so too is the mind of the
bureaucracy; and whereas the bureaucracy earlier fought the existence
of the Corporations in order to create room for its own existence,
now it seeks vigorously to sustain the existence of the Corporations
in order to save the Corporation mind, which is its own mind.

The bureaucracy is the state formalism of civil society. It is
the state's consciousness, the state's will, the state's power,
as a Corporation. (The universal interest can behave vis-a-vis
the particular only as a particular so long as the particular
behaves vis-a vis the universal as a universal. The bureaucracy
must thus defend the imaginary universality of particular interest,
i.e., the Corporation mind, in order to defend the imaginary particularity
of the universal interests, i.e., its own mind. The state must
be Corporation so long as the Corporation wishes to be state.)
Being the state's consciousness, will, and power as a Corporation,
the bureaucracy is thus a particular, closed society within the
state. The bureaucracy wills the Corporation as an imaginary
power. To be sure, the individual Corporation also has this will
for its particular interest in opposition to the bureaucracy,
but it wills the bureaucracy against the other Corporation, against
the other particular interest. The bureaucracy as the completed
Corporation therefore wins the day over the Corporation which
is like incomplete bureaucracy. It reduces the Corporation to
an appearance, or wishes to do so, but wishes this appearance
to exist and to believe in its own existence. The Corporation
is civil society's attempt to become state; but the bureaucracy
is the state which has really made itself into civil society.

The state formalism, which the bureaucracy is, is the state as
formalism, and Hegel has described it precisely as such a formalism.
Because this state formalism constitutes itself as a real power
and becomes itself its own material content, it is evident that
the bureaucracy is a tissue of practical illusion, or the illusion
of the state. The bureaucratic mind is through and through a
Jesuitical, theological mind. The bureaucrats are the Jesuits
and theologians of the state. The bureaucracy is la république
prêtre.

Since the bureaucracy according to its essence is the state as
formalism, so too it is according to its end. The real end of
the state thus appears to the bureaucracy as an end opposed to
the state. The mind of the bureaucracy is the formal mind of
the state. It therefore makes the formal mind of the state, or
the real mindlessness of the state, a categorical imperative.
The bureaucracy asserts itself to be the final end of the state.
Because the bureaucracy makes its formal aims its content, it
comes into conflict everywhere with the real aims. Hence it is
obliged to present what is formal for the content and the content
for what is formal. The aims of the state are transformed into
aims of bureaus, or the aims of bureaus into the aims of the state.
The bureaucracy is a circle from which no one can escape. Its
hierarchy is a hierarchy of knowledge. The highest point entrusts
the understanding of particulars to the lower echelons, whereas
these, on the other hand, credit the highest with an understanding
in regard to the universal; and thus they deceive one another.

The bureaucracy is the imaginary state alongside the real state;
it is the spiritualism of the state. As a result everything has
a double meaning, one real and one bureaucratic, just as knowledge
is double, one real and one bureaucratic (and the same with the
will). A real thing, however, is treated according to its bureaucratic
essence, according to its otherworldly, spiritual essence. The
bureaucracy has the being of the state, the spiritual being of
society, in its possession; it is its private property. The general
spirit of the bureaucracy is the secret, the mystery, preserved
inwardly by means of the hierarchy and externally as a closed
corporation. To make public -the mind and the disposition of
the state appears therefore to the bureaucracy as a betrayal of
its mystery. Accordingly authority is the principle of its knowledge
and being, and the deification of authority is its mentality.
But at the very heart of the bureaucracy this spiritualism turns
into a crass materialism, the materialism of passive obedience,
of trust in authority, the mechanism of an ossified and formalistic
behaviour, of fixed principles, conceptions, and traditions.
As far as the individual bureaucrat is concerned, the end of the
state becomes his private end: a pursuit of higher posts, the
building of a career. In the first place, he considers real life
to be purely material, for the spirit of this life has its separate
existence in the bureaucracy. Thus the bureaucrat must make life
as materialistic as possible. Secondly, real life is material
for the bureaucrat, i.e. in so far as it becomes an object of
bureaucratic action, because his spirit is prescribed for him,
his end lies outside of him, his existence is the existence of
the bureau. The state, then, exists only as various bureau-minds
whose connection consists of subordination and dumb obedience.
Real knowledge appears to be devoid of content just as real life
appears to be dead, for this imaginary knowledge and life pass
for what is real and essential. Thus the bureaucrat must use
the real state Jesuitically, no matter whether this Jesuitism
be conscious or unconscious. But given that his antithesis is
knowledge, it is inevitable that he likewise attain to self-consciousness
and, at that moment, deliberate Jesuitism. While the bureaucracy
is on one hand this crass materialism, it manifests its crass
spiritualism in its will to do everything, i.e., in its making
the will the causa prima, for it is pure active existence
which receives its content from without; thus it can manifest
its existence only through forming and restricting this content.
The bureaucrat has the world as a mere object of his action.

When Hegel calls the Executive power the objective aspect of the
sovereignty residing In the crown, it is precisely in the same
sense that the Catholic Church was the real existence of the sovereignty,
content, and spirit of the Blessed Trinity. In the bureaucracy
the identity of the state's interest and the particular private
aim is established such that the state's interest becomes a particular
private aim opposed to the other private aims.

The abolition [Aufhebung] of the bureaucracy can
consist only in the universal interest becoming really - and not,
as with Hegel, becoming purely in thought, in abstraction - particular
interest; and this is possible only through the particular interest
really becoming universal. Hegel starts from an unreal opposition
and thereby brings it to a merely imaginary identity which, in
fact, is itself all the more contradictory. Such an identity
is the bureaucracy.

Now let's follow his development in its particulars.

The sole philosophical statement which Hegel makes concerning
the Executive is that of the 'subsuming' of the individual and
particular under the universal, etc.

Hegel is satisfied with that. On one hand, the category of 'subsumption'
of the particular, etc. This category must be actualised. Now,
he picks anyone of the empirical existences of the Prussian or
Modern state (just as it is), which among other things actualises
this category even though this category does not express its specific
nature. Applied mathematics is also a subsuming of the particular,
etc. Hegel doesn't enquire whether this is the rational, the
adequate mode of subsumption. He holds fast only to the one category
and is satisfied with finding a corresponding existence for it.
Hegel gives his logic a political body; he does not give the
logic of the political body (§ 287).

On the relationship of the Corporations and societies to the executive
we are told first of all that it is required that their administration
(the nomination of their magistracy) generally be effected by
a mixture of popular election by those interested with appointment
and ratification by higher authority. The mixed choice of administrators
of the societies and Corporations would thus be the first relationship
between civil society and state or executive, their first identity
(§ 288). This identity, according to Hegel himself,
is quite superficial, a mixtum compositum, a mixture.
To the degree that this identity is superficial, opposition is
sharp. It is the business of these officials (namely the officials
of the Corporations, societies, etc.) to manage the private property
and interests of these particular spheres and, from that Point
of view, their authority rests on the confidence of their commonalties
and professional equals. On the other hand, however, these circles
of particular interests must be subordinated to the higher interests
of the state. From this results the so-called 'mixed choice'.

The administration of the Corporation thus has within it the opposition
of private property and interest of the particular spheres against
the higher interest of the state: opposition between private property
and state.

We need not emphasise that the resolution of this opposition in
the mixed choice is a simple accommodation, a treaty, an avowal
of the unresolved dualism which is itself a dualism, a mixture.
The particular interests of the Corporations and societies have
a dualism within their own sphere, which likewise shapes the character
of their administration.

However, the crucial opposition stands out first in the relationship
of these 'particular interests which are common to everyone',
etc., which 'lie outside the absolutely universal interest of
the state proper', and this 'absolutely universal interest of
the state proper'. But the first instance once again, it is within
this sphere.

The maintenance of the state's universal interest, and of legality,
in this sphere of particular rights, and the work of bringing
these rights back to the universal, require to be superintended
by holders of the executive power, by (a) the executive civil
servants, and (b) the higher advisory officials (who are organised
into committees). These converge in their supreme heads who are
in direct contact with the monarch. (§ 289)

Incidentally, let us draw attention to the construction of the
executive committees, which are unknown, for example, in France.
To the same extent that Hegel adduces these officials as advisory
it is certainly obvious that they are organised into committees.

Hegel has the state proper, the executive, move into the management
of the state's universal interest and of legality, etc. within
civil society via holders [of the executive power]; and according
to him these executive office holders, the executive civil servants
are in reality the true representation of the state, not 'of' but
'against' civil society. The opposition between state and civil
society is thus fixed; the state does not reside within but outside
of civil society; it affects civil society merely through office
holders to whom is entrusted the management of the state within
this sphere. The opposition is not overcome by means of these
office holders but has become a legal and fixed opposition. The
state becomes something alien to the nature of civil society;
it becomes this nature's otherworldly realm of deputies which
makes claims against civil society. The police, the judiciary,
and the administration are not deputies of civil society itself,
which manages its own general interest in and through them. Rather,
they are office holders of the state whose purpose is to manage
the state in opposition to civil society. Hegel clarifies this
opposition further in the candid Remark to § 289 which
we examined earlier.

The nature of the executive functions is that they are objective
and ... have been explicitly fixed by previous
decisions. (§ 291)

Does Hegel conclude from this that [the executive functions] all
the more easily require no hierarchy of knowledge, that they could
be executed perfectly by civil society itself? On the contrary.

He makes the profound observation that they are to be executed
by individuals, and that between them and these individuals there
is no immediate natural link. This is an allusion to the crown,
which is nothing but the natural power of arbitrary choice,
and thus can be born. The crown is nothing but the representative
of the natural moment in the will, the dominion of physical nature
in the state.

The executive civil servants are distinguished by the fact that
they earn their appointments; hence they are distinguished essentially
from the sovereign.

The objective factor in their appointment (namely, to
the State's business) is knowledge (subjective
caprice lacks this factor) and proof of ability. Such
proof guarantees that the state will get what it requires; and
since it is the sole condition of appointment, it also guarantees
to every citizen the chance of joining the class of civil servants
[dem allgemeinen Stande].

The chance which every citizen has to become a civil servant is
thus the second affirmative relationship between civil society
and state, the second identity. Like the first it is also of
a quite superficial and dualistic nature. Every Catholic has
the chance to become a priest (i.e., to separate himself from
the laity as well as the world). Does the clergy on that account
face the Catholic any less as an opposite power? That each has
the possibility of gaining the privilege of another sphere proves
only that his own sphere is not the actuality of this privilege.

In a true state it is not a question of the possibility of every
citizen to dedicate himself to the universal in the form of a
particular class, but of the capability of the universal class
to be really universal, i.e., to be the class of every citizen.
But Hegel proceeds from the postulate of the pseudo-universal,
the illusory universal class, universality fixed in the form of
a particular class.

The identity which he has constructed between civil society and
the state is the identity of two hostile armies in which each
soldier has the 'chance' to become through desertion a member
of the other hostile army; and in this Hegel indeed correctly
describes the present empirical state of affairs.

It is the same with his construction of the examinations. In
a rational state, taking an examination belongs more properly
to becoming a shoe-maker than an executive civil servant because
shoemaking is a skill without which one can be a good citizen
of the state, a social man; but the necessary state knowledge
is a condition without which a person in the state lives outside
the state, is cut off from himself, deprived of air. The examination
is nothing other than a masonic rite, the legal recognition of
the privileged knowledge of state citizenship.

The link of state office and individual, this objective bond between
the knowledge of civil society and the knowledge of the state,
in other words the examination, is nothing but the bureaucratic
baptism of knowledge, the official recognition of the transubstantiation
of profane into holy knowledge (it goes without saying that in
the case of every examination the examiner knows all). No one
ever heard of the Greek or Roman statesmen taking an examination.
But then what is a Roman statesmen even as against a Prussian
official!

In addition to the objective bond of the individual with the state
office, in addition, that is, to the examination, there is another
bond - royal caprice:

Since the objective qualification for the civil service is not
genius (as it is for work, an artist, for example), there is of
necessity an indefinite plurality of eligible candidates whose
relative excellence is not determinable with absolute precision.
The selection of one of the candidates, his nomination to office,
and the grant to him of full authority to transact public business-all
this, as the linking of two things, a man and his office, which
in relation to each other must always be fortuitous, is the subjective
aspect of election to office, and it must lie with the crown as
the power in the state which is sovereign and has the last word.
[§ 292.]

The prince is at all times the representative of chance or contingency.

Besides the objective moment of the bureaucratic confession of
faith (the examination) there belongs in addition the subjective
[moment] of the royal favour, in order that the faith yield fruit.

The particular public functions which the monarch entrusts to
officials constitute one part of the objective aspect of the sovereignty
residing in the crown. (The monarch distributes and entrusts the
particular state activities as functions to the officials, i.e.,
he distributes the state among the bureaucrats, entrusts it like
the holy Roman Church entrusts consecrations Monarchy is a system
of emanation; the monarch leases out the functions of the state.)
Here Hegel distinguishes for the first time the objective aspect
front the subjective aspect of the sovereignty residing in the
Crown. Prior to this he mixed the two together. The sovereignty
residing in the crown is taken here in a clearly mystical way,
just as theologians find the personal God in nature. Earlier it
still meant that the crown is the subjective aspect of the sovereignty
residing in the state (§ 293).

In § 294 Hegel develops the salary of the civil servants
out of the Idea. Here the real identity of civil society and
the state is established in the salary of the civil servants,
or in the fact that civil service also guarantees security in
empirical existence. The wage of the civil servant is the highest
identity which Hegel constructs out of all this. The transformation
of the activities of the state into ministries presupposes the
separation of the state from society.

When Hegel says in the Remark to § 294:

What the service of the state. . . requires is that men shall
forgo the selfish and capricious satisfaction of their subjective
ends, (this is required in the case of every post of service)
and by this very sacrifice they acquire the right to find their
satisfaction in, but only in, the dutiful discharge of their public
functions. In this fact, so far as public business is concerned,
there lies the link between universal and particular interests
which constitutes both the concept of the state and its inner
stability,

this holds good (1.) of every servant, and (2.) it is correct
that the salary of the civil servants constitutes the inner stability
of the most modern monarchies. In contrast to the member of civil
society only the civil servants existence is guaranteed.

At this point Hegel cannot fail to see that he has constructed
the executive as an antithesis to civil society, and indeed as
a dominant extreme. How does he now establish a condition of
Identity?

According to § 295 the security of the state and its
subjects against the misuse [den Missbrauch] of
power by ministers and their officials lies partly in their hierarchical
organisation (as if the hierarchy itself were not the principal
abuse [der Hauptmissbrauch], and the matching personal
sins of the civil servants were not it all to be compared with
their inevitable hierarchical sins; the hierarchy punishes the
civil servant to the extent that he sins against the hierarchy
or commits a sin in excess of the hierarchy; but it takes him
under its protection when the hierarchy sins through him; moreover
the hierarchy is only with great difficulty convinced of the sins
of its member) and in the authority given to societies and Corporations,
because in itself this is a barrier against the intrusion of subjective
caprice into the power entrusted to a civil servant, and it completes
front below the state control (as if this control were not exercised
with the outlook of the bureaucratic hierarchy) winch does not
reach down as far as the conduct of individuals.

Thus the second guarantee against the caprice of the bureaucracy
lies in the privileges of the Corporations.

Thus if we ask Hegel what is civil society's protection against
the bureaucracy, he answers:

1. The hierarchal organisation of the bureaucracy. Control.
This, that the adversary is himself bound hand and foot, and
if he is like a hammer vis-a-vis those below he is like
all anvil in relation to those above. Now, where is the protection
against the hierarchy? The lesser evil will surely be abolished
through the greater inasmuch as it vanishes in comparison with
it.

2. Conflict, the unresolved conflict between bureaucracy
and Corporation. Struggle, the possibility of struggle,
is the guarantee against being overcome. Later (§ 297)
in addition to this Hegel adds as guarantee the 'institutions
[of] the sovereign working ... at the top', by which is to be
understood, once again, the hierarchy.

However Hegel further adduces two moments (§ 296):

In the civil servant himself, something which is supposed to humanise
him and make dispassionate, upright, and polite demeanour customary,
namely, direct education in thought and ethical conduct, which
is said to hold 'the mental counterpoise' to the mechanical character
of his knowledge and actual work. As if the mechanical character
of his bureaucratic knowledge and his actual work did not hold
the 'counterpoise' to his education in thought and ethical conduct.
And will not his actual mind and his actual work as substance
triumph over the accident of his prior endowment? His office
is indeed his substantial situation and his bread and butter.
Fine, except that Hegel sets direct education in thought and
ethical conduct against the mechanism of bureaucratic knowledge
and work! The man within the civil servant is supposed to secure
the civil servant against himself. What a unity! Mental counterpoise.
What a dualistic category!

Hegel further adduces the size of the state, which in Russia certainly doesn't guarantee
against the caprice of the executive civil servants, and in any case is a circumstance
which lies outside the 'essence' of the bureaucracy.

Hegel has developed the 'Executive' as bureaucratic officialdom
[Staatsbediententum].

Here in the sphere of the 'absolutely universal interest of the
state proper' we find nothing but unresolved conflict. The civil
servants' examination and livelihood constitute the final synthesis.

Hegel adduces the impotency of the bureaucracy, its conflict with
the Corporation, as its final consecration.

In § 297 an identity is established in so far as 'civil
servants and the members of the executive constitute the greater
part of the middle class'. Hegel praises this 'middle class'
as the pillar of the state so far as honesty and intelligence
are concerned (in the Addition to this paragraph).

It is a prime concern of the state that a middle class should
be developed, but this can be done only if the state is an organic
unity like the one described here, i.e., it can be done only by
giving authority to spheres of particular interests, which are
relatively independent, and by appointing an army of officials
whose personal arbitrariness is broken against such authorised
bodies.

To be sure the people can appear as one class, the middle class,
only in such an organic unity; but is something that keeps itself
going by means of the counterbalancing of privileges an organic
unity? The executive power is the one most difficult to develop;
it, much more than the legislature, belongs to the entire people.

Later (in the Remark to § 308) Hegel expresses the
proper spirit of the bureaucracy when he characterises it as 'business
routine' and the 'horizon of a restricted sphere'.

### (c) The Legislature

§ 298. The legislature is concerned (a) with the laws as such in so far as they require
fresh and extended determination; and (b) with the content of home affairs affecting the
entire state (a very general expression). The legislature is itself a part of the
constitution which is presupposed by it and to that extent lies absolutely outside the
sphere directly determined by it; nonetheless, the constitution becomes progressively
more mature in the course of the further elaboration of the laws and the advancing
character of the universal business of government.

Above all it is noteworthy that Hegel emphasises the way in which
the legislature is itself a part of the constitution which is
presupposed by it and lies absolutely outside the sphere directly
determined by it, since he had made this statement neither of
the Crown nor of the Executive, for both of which it is equally
true. But only with the Legislature does Hegel construct the
constitution in its entirety, and thus he is unable to presuppose
it. However, we recognise his profundity precisely in the way
he always begins with and accentuates the antithetical character
of the determinate elements (as they exist in our states).

The legislature is itself a part of the constitution which lies
absolutely outside the sphere directly determined by it. But
the constitution is certainly not self-generating. The laws which
'require fresh and extended determination' must have received
formulation. A legislature must exist or have existed before
and outside of the constitution. There must exist a legislature
outside of the actual empirical, established legislature. But,
Hegel will answer, we presuppose an existing state. Hegel, however,
is a philosopher of right, and develops the generic idea of the
state [die Staatsgattung]. He is not allowed
to measure the idea by what exists; he must measure what exists
by the idea.

The collision is simple. The legislature is the power which is
to organise the universal. it is the power of the constitution.
It extends beyond the constitution.

On the other hand, however, the legislature is a constitutional
power. Thus it is subsumed under the constitution. The constitution
is law for the legislature. It has given laws to the legislature
and continues to do so. The legislature is only legislature within
the constitution, and the constitution would stand hors de
loi if it stood outside the legislature. Voilà la
collision! In recent French history much nibbling away
[at the constitution] has occurred.

How does Hegel resolve this antinomy?

First of all it is said that the constitution is presupposed by
the legislature and to that extent it lies absolutely outside
the sphere directly determined by it. 'Nonetheless' -
nonetheless in the course of the further elaboration of
the laws and the advancing character of the universal business
of government it becomes progressively more mature.

That is to say, then: directly, the constitution lies outside
the sphere of the legislature; indirectly, however, the legislature
modifies the constitution. The legislature does in an indirect
way what it neither can nor may do in a direct way. It picks
the constitution apart enti détail, since it cannot
alter it en gros. It does by virtue of the nature of things
and circumstances what according to the constitution it was not
supposed to do. it does materially and in fact what it does not
do formally, legally, or constitutionally.

With that, Hegel has not resolved the antinomy; he has simply
transformed it into another antinomy. He has placed the real
effect of the legislature, its constitutional effect, in contradiction
with its constitutionally determined character. The opposition
between constitution and legislature remains. Hegel has defined
the factual and the legal action of the legislature as a contradiction
- the contradiction between what the legislature should be and
what it really is, between what it believes itself to be doing
and what it really does.

How can Hegel present this contradiction as the truth? 'The
advancing character of the 'universal business of government'
enlightens us just as little, for it is precisely this advancing
character which needs explanation.

In the Addition [to this paragraph] Hegel contributes hardly anything
to the solution of these problems. He does, however, bring them
more into focus:

The constitution must in and by itself be the fixed and recognised
ground on which the legislature stands, and for this reason it
must not first be constructed. Thus the constitution is, but
just as essentially it becomes, i.e., it advances and matures.
This advance is an alteration which is imperceptible and which
lacks the form of alteration.

That is to say, according to the law (illusion) the constitution
is, but according to reality (truth) it becomes. According
to its determinate character the constitution is unalterable;
but it really is changed, only this change is unconscious and
lacks the form of alteration. The appearance contradicts the
essence. The appearance is the conscious law of the constitution,
and the essence is its unconscious law, which contradicts the
other. What is in the nature of the thing is not found in the
law. Rather, the opposite is in the law.

Is it the fact, then, that in the state - which, according to
Hegel, is the highest existence of freedom, the existence of self-conscious
reason - not law, the existence of freedom, but rather blind natural
necessity governs? And if the law of the thing is recognised
as contradicting the legal definition, why not acknowledge the
law of the thing, in this case reason, ,is the law of the state?
And how then consciously retain this dualism? Hegel wants always
to present the state as the actualisation of free mind; however,
re vera he resolves all difficult conflicts through a natural
necessity which is the antithesis of freedom. Thus, the transition
of particular interest into universal interest is not a conscious
law of the state, but is mediated through chance and ratified
contrary to consciousness. And in the state Hegel
wants everywhere the realisation of free will! (Here we see Hegel's
substantial viewpoint.)

Hegel uses as examples to illustrate the gradual alteration of
the constitution the conversion of the private wealth of the German
princes and their families into state property, and the conversion
of the German emperors' personal administration of justice into
an administration through delegates. His choice of examples is
unfortunate. in the first case, for instance, the transition happened
only in such a way that all state property was transformed into
royal private property.

Moreover, these changes are particular. Certainly, entire state
constitutions have changed such that as new requirements gradually
arose the old broke down; but for the new constitution a real
revolution was always necessity.

Hence the advance from one state of affairs to another, Hegel
concluded [in the Addition], is tranquil in appearance and unnoticed.
In this way a constitution changes over a long period of time
into something quite different from what it was originally.

The category of gradual transition is, first of all, historically
false; and secondly, it explains nothing.

In order not only that the constitution be altered, thus that
this illusory appearance not be in the end forcefully shattered,
but also that man do consciously what he is otherwise forced to
do unconsciously by the nature of the thing, it is necessary that
the movement of the constitution, that progress, be made the principle
of the constitution, thus that the real corner stone of the constitution,
the people, be made the principle of the constitution. Progress
itself is then the constitution.

Should the constitution itself, therefore, belong within the domain
of the legislature? This question can be posed only (1) if the
political state exists as the pure formalism of the actual state,
if the political state is a domain apart, if the political state
exists as constitution; (2) if the legislature is of a source
different than the executive etc.

The legislature produced the French Revolution. In general, when
it has appeared in its special capacity as the ruling element,
the legislature has produced the great organic, universal revolutions.
It has not attacked the constitution, but a particular antiquated
constitution, precisely because the legislature was the representative
of the people, i.e., of the species-will [des Gattungswillens].
The executive, on the other hand, produced the small, retrograde
revolutions, the reactions. It revolted not against an old constitution
in favour of a new one, but against the constitution as such, precisely
because the executive was the representative of the particular
will, subjective caprice, the magical part of the will.

Posed correctly, the question is simply this: Does a people have
the right to give itself a new constitution? The answer must
be an unqualified 'yes!' because the constitution becomes a practical
illusion the moment it ceases to be a true expression of the people's
will.

The collision between the constitution and the legislature is
nothing more than a conflict of the constitution with itself,
a contradiction in the concept of the constitution.

The constitution is nothing more than an accommodation between
the political and non-political state; hence it is necessarily
in itself a treaty between essentially heterogeneous powers.
Here, then, it is impossible for the law to declare that one of
these powers, which is a part of the constitution, is to have
the right to modify the constitution itself, which is the whole.

In so far as we speak of the constitution as a particular thing,
however, it must be considered a part of the whole.

In so far as the constitution is understood to be the universal
and fundamental determinations of the rational will, then clearly
every people (state) presupposes this and must form it to its
political credo. Actually, this is a matter of knowledge rather
than of will. The will of a people can no more exceed the laws
of reason than can the will of an individual. In the case of
an irrational people one cannot speak at all of a rational organisation
of the state. In any case, here in the philosophy of right we
are concerned with the species-will.

The legislature does not make the law, it merely discovers and
formulates it.

The resolution of this conflict has been attempted by differentiating
between assemblée constituante and assemblée
constituée.

§ 299. Legislative business (the concerns of the
legislature) is more precisely determined in relation to private
individuals, under these two heads: (a) provision by the state
for their well being and happiness, and [b] the exaction of services
from them. The former comprises the laws dealing with all sorts
of private rights, the rights of communities, Corporations, and
organisations affecting the entire state, and further it indirectly
(see § 298) comprises the whole of the constitution.
As for the services to be exacted, it is only if these are reduced
to terms of money, the really existent and universal value of
both things and services, that they can be fixed justly and at
the same time in such a way that any particular tasks and services
which an individual may perform come to be mediated through his
own arbitrary will.

Concerning this determination of the legislature's business, Hegel
himself notes, in the Remark to this paragraph:

The proper object of universal legislation may be distinguished
in a general way from the proper function of administrative officials
or of some kind of state regulation, in that the content of the
former is wholly universal, i.e., determinate laws, while it is
what is particular in content which falls to the latter, together
with ways and means of enforcing the law. This distinction, however,
is not a hard and fast one, because a law, by being a law, is
ab initio something more than a mere command in general
terms (such as 'Thou shalt not kill'. . . ).
A law must in itself be something determinate, but the more
determinate it is, the more readily are its terms capable of being
carried out as they stand. At the same time, however, to give
to laws such a fully detailed determinacy would give them empirical
features subject inevitably to alteration in the course of their
being actually carried out, and this would contravene their character
as laws. The organic unity of the powers of the state itself
implies that it is one single mind which both firmly establishes
the universal and also brings it into its determinate actuality
and carries it out.

But it is precisely this organic unity which Hegel has failed
to construct. The various powers each have a different principle,
although at the same time they are all equally real. To take
refuge from their real conflict in an imaginary organic unity,
instead of developing the various powers as moments of an organic
unity, is therefore an empty, mystical evasion.

The first unresolved collision was that between the constitution
as a whole and the legislature. The second is that between the
legislature and the executive, i.e., between the law and its execution.

The second determination found in this paragraph [§ 299]
is that the only service the state exacts from individuals is
money.

The reasons Hegel gives for this are:

1. money is the really existent and universal value of both things and services;

2. the services to be exacted can be fixed justly only by means of this reduction;

3. only in this way can the services be fixed in such a way that the particular tasks
and services which an individual may perform conic to be mediated through his own
arbitrary will. Hegel notes in the Remark [to this paragraph]:

ad. 1. In the state it may happen, to begin with,
that the numerous aptitudes, possessions, pursuits, and talents
of its members, together with the infinitely varied richness of
life intrinsic to these - all of which are at the same time linked
with their owner's mentality - are not subject to direct levy
by the state. It lays claim only to a single form of riches,
namely money. (Services requisitioned for the defence of the state
in war arise for the first time in connection with the duty considered
in the next sub-division of this book.) We shall consider
personal duty with regard to the military only later - not because
of the following sub-division, but for other reasons.
In fact, however, money is not one particular type of wealth amongst
others, but the universal form of all types so far as they are
expressed in an external embodiment and so can be taken as 'things'.

In our day, it continues in the Addition, the
state purchases what it requires.

ad 2. Only by being translated into terms of this extreme culmination of externality
(sc. wherein riches are transformed into the externality of existence, in which they can
be grasped as an object) can services exacted by the state be fixed quantitatively and
so justly and equitably.

The Addition reads: By means of money, however, the justice of equality can be achieved
much more efficiently. Otherwise, if assessment depended on concrete ability, a talented
man would be more heavily taxed than an untalented one.

ad 3. In Plato's Republic, the Guardians are left to allot individuals to their
particular classes and impose on them their particular tasks ... Under the feudal
monarchies the services required from vassals were equally indeterminate, but they had
also to serve in their particular capacity, e.g. as judges. The same particular
character pertains to tasks imposed in the East and in Egypt in connection with colossal
architectural undertakings, and so forth. In these circumstances the principle of
subjective freedom is lacking, i.e., the principle that the individual's substantive
activity - which in any case becomes something particular in content in services like
those mentioned - shall be mediated through his particular volition. This is a right
which can be secured only when the demand for service takes the form of a demand for
something of universal value, and it is this right which has brought with it this
conversion of the state's demands into demands for cash.

The Addition reads:

In our day, the state purchases what it requires. This may at first sight seem ail
abstract, heartless, and dead state of affairs, and for the state to be satisfied with
indirect services may also look like decadence in the state. But the principle of the
modern state requires that the whole of an individual's activity shall be mediated
through his Will ... But nowadays respect for subjective freedom is publicly recognised
precisely in the fact that the state lays hold of a man only by that which is capable of
being held.

Do what you want, pay what you must.

The beginning of the Addition reads:

The two sides of the constitution bear respectively on the rights
and the services of individuals. Services are now almost entirely
reduced to money payments, and military service is now almost
the only personal one exacted.

§300. In the legislature as a whole the other powers are the first two moments which are
effective, (i) the monarchy as that to which ultimate decisions belong: (ii) the
executive as the advisory body since it is the moment possessed of [a] a concrete
knowledge and oversight of the whole state in its numerous facets and the actual
principles firmly established within it, and [b] a knowledge in particular of what the
state's power needs. The last moment in the legislature is the Estates.

The monarchy and the executive are ... the legislature. If, however, the legislature is
the whole, then the monarchy and the executive must accordingly be moments of the
legislature. The supervening Estates are the legislature merely, or the legislature in
distinction from the monarchy and the executive.

§ 301. The Estates have the function of bringing public affairs into existence not only
implicitly, but also actually, i.e., of bringing into existence the moment of subjective
formal freedom, the public consciousness as an empirical universal, of which the
thoughts and opinions of the Many are particulars.

The Estates are civil society's deputation to the state, to which
it [i.e., civil society] is opposed as the 'Many'. The Many must
for a moment deal consciously with universal affairs as if they
were their own, as objects of public consciousness, which, according
to Hegel, is nothing other than the empirical universal, of which
the thoughts and opinions of the Many are particulars. (And in
fact, it is no different in modern or constitutional monarchies.)
It is significant that Hegel, who shows such great respect for
the state-mind [dem Staatsgeist] - the ethical spirit,
state-consciousness - absolutely disdains it when it faces him
in actual empirical form.

This is the enigma of mysticism. The same fantastic abstraction
that rediscovers state-consciousness in the degenerate form of
bureaucracy, a hierarchy of knowledge, and that uncritically accepts
this incomplete existence as the actual and full-valued existence
- the same mystical abstraction admits with equanimity that the
actual empirical state-mind, public consciousness, is a mere potpourri
of the 'thoughts and opinions of the Many'. As it imputes to
the bureaucracy an essence which is foreign to it, so it grants
to the actuality of that essence only the inferior form of appearance.
Hegel idealises the bureaucracy and empiricises public consciousness.
He can treat actual public consciousness very much à part
precisely because he has treated the à part consciousness
as the public consciousness. He need concern himself all the
less with the actual existence of the state-mind in that he believes
he has sufficiently realised it in its soi-disant existences.
So long is the state-mind mystically haunted the forecourt it
received many plaudits. Now that we have caught it in persona
it is barely respected.

'The Estates have the function of bringing public affairs into
existence not only implicitly [an sich], but also actually
[für sich].' And indeed it comes into existence
actually as the public consciousness, as 'an empirical universal,
of which the thoughts and opinions of the Many arc particulars'.

The process in which 'public affairs' becomes subject, and thus
gains autonomy, is here presented as a moment of the life-process
of public affairs. Instead of having subjects objectifying themselves
in public affairs Hegel has public affairs becoming the subject.
Subjects do not need public affairs as their true affairs, but
public affairs needs subjects for its formal existence. It is
an affair of public affairs that it exist also as subject.

Here the difference between the 'being-in-itself' [Ansichsein]
and the 'being-for-itself' [Fürsichsein]
of public affairs must be especially considered.

Public affairs already exists 'in-itself' [i.e., implicitly] as
the business of the executive etc. Thus, public affairs exists
without actually being public affairs; nothing less, for
it is not the affair of civil society. It has already found its
essential existence, its being-in-itself. The fact that public
affairs now actually becomes public consciousness, or empirical
universal, is purely formal and, as it were, only a symbolic coming
to actuality. The formal or empirical existence of public affairs
is separated from its substantial existence. The truth of the
matter is that public affairs as being-in-itself is not actually
public, and actual empirical public affairs is only formal.

Hegel separates content and form, being-in-itself and being-for-itself,
and allows the latter the superficial status of formal moment.
The content is complete and exists in many forms which are not
the forms of this content; while, clearly, the form which is supposed
to be the actual form of the content doesn't have the actual content
for its content.

Public affairs is complete without being the actual affairs of
the people. The actual affairs of the people have been established
without the activity of the people. The Estates are the illusory
existence of the affairs of the state as being an affair of the
people. The illusion is that public affairs are public affairs,
or that truly public affairs are the affair of the people. It
has come to the point in our states as well as in the Hegelian
philosophy of right where the tautological sentence, 'The public
affairs are the public affairs', can appear only as an illusion
of practical consciousness. The Estates are the political illusion
of civil society. Subjective freedom appears in Hegel as formal
freedom (it is important, however, that what is free be done freely,
that freedom doesn't prevail as an unconscious natural instinct
of society), precisely because Hegel has not presented objective
freedom as the actualisation, the activity, of subjective freedom.
Because he has given the presumed or actual content of freedom
a mystical bearer, the actual subject of freedom takes on a formal
meaning. The separation of the in-itself and the for-itself,
of substance and subject, is abstract mysticism.

Hegel, in his Remark to § 301 presents the Estates quite rightly as something 'formal' and 'illusory'.

Both the knowledge and the will of the Estates are treated partly as unimportant and
partly as suspect; that is to say, the Estates make no significant contribution.

1. The idea uppermost in men's minds when they speak about the necessity or the
expediency of 'summoning the Estates' is generally something of this sort: (i) The
deputies of the people, or even the people themselves, must know best what is in their
best interest, - .and (ii) their will for its promotion is undoubtedly the most
disinterested. So far as the first of these points is concerned, however, the truth is
that if 'people' means a particular section of the citizens, then it means precisely
that section which does not know what it wills. To know what one wills, and still more
to know what the absolute will, Reason, wills, is the fruit of profound apprehension
(which is found, no doubt, in the bureaus) and insight, precisely the things which are
not popular.

Further along in the paragraph we read the following about the
Estates themselves:

The highest civil servants necessarily have a deeper and more
comprehensive insight into the nature of the state's organisation
and requirements. They arc also more habituated to the business
of government and have greater skill in it, so that even without
the Estates they are able to do what is best, just as they also
continually have to do while the Estates are in session.

And it goes without saying that this is perfectly true in the
organisation described by Hegel.

2. As for the conspicuously good will for the
general welfare which the Estates are supposed to possess, it
has been pointed out already. . . that to regard
the will of the executive as bad, or as less good [than that of
the ruled] is a presupposition characteristic of the rabble or
of the negative outlook generally. This presupposition might
at once be answered on its own ground by the countercharge that
the Estates start from isolated individuals, from a private point
of view, from particular interests, and so are inclined to devote
their activities to these at the expense of the general interests,
while per contra the other moments in the power of the
state explicitly take up the standpoint of the state from the
start and devote themselves to the universal end.

Therefore the knowledge and will of the Estates are partly superfluous
and partly suspect. The people do not know what they want. III
the possession of political knowledge [Staatswssenschaft]
the Estates are not equal to the officials, who have a monopoly
on it. The Estates are superfluous for the execution of public
affairs. The officials can carry out this execution without the
Estates; moreover they must, in spite of the Estates, do what
is best. Thus the Estates, with regard to their content, are
pure superfluity. Their existence, therefore, is a pure formality
in the most literal sense.

Furthermore, the sentiment of the Estates, their will, is suspect,
for they start from the private point of view and private interests.
In truth, private interest is their public affairs, not public
affairs their private interest. But what a way for public affairs
to obtain form as public affairs - i.e., through a will which
doesn't know what it wills, or at least lacks any special knowledge
of t he universal, a will, furthermore, whose actual content is
an opposing interest!

In modern states, as in Hegel's Philosophy of Right, the conscious, true actuality of
public affairs is merely formal, or only what is formal constitutes actual public
affairs.

Hegel is not to be blamed for depicting the nature of the modern state as it is, but
rather for presenting what is as the essence of the state. The claim that the rational
is actual is contradicted precisely by an irrational actuality, which everywhere is the
contrary of what it asserts and asserts the contrary of what it is.

Instead of showing how public affairs exists for-itself, 'subjectively, and thus
actually as such', and that it also has the form of public affairs, Hegel merely shows
that formlessness is its subjectivity; and a form without content must be formless. The
form which public affairs obtains in a state which is not the state of public affairs
can be nothing but a non-form, a self-deceiving, self-contradicting form, a form which
is pure appearance [eine Scheinform] and which will betray itself as this appearance.

Only for the sake of logic does Hegel want the luxury of the Estates. The being-for-
itself of public affairs as empirical universal must have an existence [ein Dasein].
Hegel does not search for an adequate actualisation of the being-for-itself of public
affairs, but contents himself with finding an empirical existent which can be dissolved
into this logical category. This is the Estates. And Hegel himself does not fail to note
how pitiful and full of contradiction this existent is. Yet he still reproaches ordinary
consciousness for being discontent with this satisfaction of logic, for being unwilling
to see actuality dissolved into logic by this arbitrary abstraction, for wanting logic,
rather, to be transformed into concrete objectivity.

I say arbitrary abstraction, for since the executive power wills, knows, and actualises
public affairs, arises from the people, and is an empirical plurality (Hegel himself
tells us that it is not a totality), why should we not be able to characterise the
executive as the 'being-for-itself of public affairs'? Or, again, why not the Estates as
their being-in-itself, since it is only in the executive that [public affairs] receives
illumination, determinacy, execution, and independence?

The true antithesis, however, is this: public affairs must somewhere be represented in
the state as actual, and thus as empirical public affairs; it must appear somewhere in
the crown and robes of the universal, whereby the universal automatically becomes a
fiction, an illusion.

Here it is a question of the opposition of the universal as 'form', in the form of universality, and the universal as 'content'.

In science, for example, an individual can fully perform public affairs, and it is
always individuals who do so. But public affairs become actually public only when they
are no longer the affair of an individual but of society. This changes not only the form
but also the content. In this case, however, it is a question of the state in which the
people itself constitutes the public affairs, a question of the will which has its true
existence as species-will only in the self-conscious will of the people, and, moreover,
a question of the idea of the state.

The modern state, in which public affairs and their pursuit is a monopoly while
monopolies are the actual public affairs, has effected the peculiar device of
appropriating public affairs as a pure form. (in fact, only the form is public affairs.)
With that, the modern state has found the appropriate form for its content, which only
appears to be actual public affairs.

The constitutional state is the state in which the state-interest is only formally the
actual interest of the people, but is nevertheless present as a distinct form alongside
of the actual state. Here the state-interest has again received formal actuality as the
people's interest; but it is to have only this formal actuality. It has become )
formality, the haut gout of the life of the people - a ceremony. The Estates are the
sanctioned, legal lie of constitutional states, the lie that the state is the people's
interest or the people the interest of the state. This lie will betray itself in its
content. The lie has established itself as the legislature precisely because the
legislature has the universal as its content and, being more an affair of knowledge than
of will, is the metaphysical power of the state; whereas had the same lie established
itself as the executive etc., it would have had either immediately to dissolve itself or
be transformed into a truth. The metaphysical power of the state was the most likely
seat for the metaphysical, universal illusion of the state.

[Remark to § 301.] The Estates are a guarantee of the general welfare and public
freedom. A little reflection will show that this guarantee does not lie in their
particular power of insight ... the guarantee lies on the contrary [a] in the additional
(!!) insight of the deputies, insight in the first place into the activity of such
officials as are not immediately under the eye of the higher functionaries of state, and
in particular into the more pressing and more specialised needs and deficiencies which
are directly in their view; [b] in the fact that the anticipation of criticism from the
Many, particularly of public criticism, has the effect of inducing officials to devote
their best attention beforehand to their duties and the schemes under consideration, and
to deal with these only in accordance with the purest motives. This same compulsion is
effective also on the members of the Estates themselves.

As for the general guarantee which is supposed to lie peculiarly in the Estates, each of
the other political institutions shares with the Estates in being a guarantee of public
welfare and rational freedom, and some of these institutions, as for instance the
sovereignty of the monarch, hereditary succession to the throne, the judicial system
etc., guarantee these things far more effectively than the Estates can. Hence the
specific function which the concept assigns to the Estates is to be sought in the fact
that in them the subjective moment in universal freedom - the private judgment and
private will of the sphere called 'civil society' in this book - comes into existence
integrally related to the state. This moment is a determination of the Idea once the
Idea has developed to totality, a moment arising as a result of an inner necessity not
to be confused with external necessities and expediencies. The proof of this follows,
like all the rest of our account of the state, from adopting the philosophical point of
view.

Public, universal freedom is allegedly guaranteed in the other
institutions of the state, while the Estates constitute its alleged
self-guarantee. [But the fact is] that the people rely more heavily
on the Estates, in which the self-assurance of their freedom is
thought to be, than on the institutions which are supposed to
assure their freedom independent of their own participation, institutions
which are supposed to be verifications of their freedom without
being manifestations of it. The coordinating function Hegel assigns
to the Estates, alongside the other institutions, contradicts
the essence of the Estates.

Hegel solves the problem by finding the 'specific function which
the concept assigns to the Estates' in the fact that in them 'the
private judgment and private will ... of civil society... comes
into existence integrally related to the state'. It is the reflection
of civil society on the state. just as the bureaucrats are delegates
of the state to civil society, so the Estates are delegates of
civil society to the state. Consequently, it is always a case
of transactions of two opposing wills.

What is said in the Addition to this paragraph, namely:

The attitude of the executive to the Estates should not be essentially hostile, and a
belief in the necessity of such hostility is a sad mistake.

is a sad truth.

'The executive is not a party standing over against another party.' Just the contrary.

The taxes voted by the Estates, moreover, are not to be regarded as a present given to
the state. On the contrary they are voted in the best interests of the voters
themselves.

Voting for taxes in a constitutional state is, by the very idea of it, necessarily a present.

The real significance of the Estates lies in the fact that it is through them that the
state enters the subjective consciousness of the people and that the people begins to
participate in the state.

This last statement is quite correct. In the Estates the people begins to participate in
the state, just as the state enters the people's subjective consciousness as something
opposed. But how can Hegel possibly pass off this beginning as the full reality!

§ 302. Regarded as a mediating organ, the Estates stand between the government in
general on the one hand and the nation broken up into particulars (people and
associations) on the other. Their function requires them to possess a political and
administrative sense and temper, no less than a sense for the interests of individuals
and particular groups. At the same time the significance of their position is that, in
common with the organised executive, they are a middle term preventing both the extreme
isolation of the power of the crown, which otherwise might seem a mere arbitrary
tyranny, and also the isolation of particular interests of persons, societies, and
Corporations. Further, and more important, they prevent individuals from having the
appearance of a mass or an aggregate and so from acquiring an unorganised opinion and
volition and from crystallising into a powerful bloc in opposition to the organised
state.

On the one hand we have the state and the executive, always taken
as identical, and on the other the nation broken up into particulars
(people and associations). The Estates stand as a mediating organ
between the two. The Estates are the middle term wherein political
and administrative sense and temper meet and are to be united
with the sense and temper of individuals and particular groups.
The identity of these two opposed senses and tempers, in which
identity the state was supposed to actually lie, acquires . a
symbolic appearance in the Estates. The transaction between state
and civil society appears as a particular sphere. The Estates
are the synthesis between state and civil society. But how the
Estates are to begin to unite in themselves two contradictory
tempers is not indicated. The Estates are the established contradiction
of the state and civil society within the state. At the same
time they are the demand for the dissolution of this contradiction.

At the same time the significance of their position is that, in
common with the organised executive they are the middle term etc.

The Estates not only mediate between the people and the executive,
but they also prevent the extreme isolation of the power of the
crown, whereby it would appear as mere arbitrary tyranny, and
also the isolation of the particular interests etc. Furthermore
they prevent individuals from having the appearance of a mass
or an aggregate. This mediating function is what the Estates
have in common with the organised executive power. In a state
in which the position of the Estates prevents individuals from
having the appearance of a mass or an aggregate, and so from acquiring
an unorganised opinion and volition and from crystallising into
a powerful bloc in opposition to the organised state, the organised
state exists outside the mass and the aggregate; or, in other
words, the mass and aggregate belong to the organisation of the
state. But its unorganised opinion and volition is to be prevented
from crystallising into an opinion and volition in opposition
to the state, through which determinate orientation it would become
an organised opinion and volition. At the same time this powerful
bloc is to remain powerful only in such a way that understanding
remains foreign to it, so that the mass is unable to make a move
on its own and can only be moved by the monopolists of the organised
state and be exploited as a powerful bloc. Where it is not a
matter of the particular interests of persons, societies and Corporations
isolating themselves from the state, but rather of the individuals
being prevented from having the appearance of a mass or an aggregate
and from acquiring an unorganised opinion and volition and from
crystallising into a powerful bloc in opposition to the state,
precisely then it becomes evident not that a particular interest
contradicts the state, but rather that the actual organised universal
thought of the mass and aggregate is not the thought of the organised
state and cannot find its realisation in the state. What is it
then that makes the Estates appear to be the mediation against
this extreme? It is merely the isolation of the particular interests
of persons, societies and Corporations; or the fact that their
isolated interests balance their account with the state through
the Estates while, at the same time, the unorganised opinion and
volition of a mass or aggregate employed its volition (its activity)
in creating the Estates and its opinion in judging their activity,
and enjoyed the illusion of its own objectification. The Estates
preserve the state from the unorganised aggregate only through
the disorganisation of this very aggregate.

At the same time, however, the mediation of the Estates is to
prevent the isolation of the particular interests of persons,
societies and Corporations. This they achieve, first, by coming
to an understanding with the interest of the state and, second,
by being themselves the political isolation of these particular
interests, this isolation as political act, in that through them
these isolated interests achieve the rank of the universal.

Finally, the Estates are to mediate against the isolation of the
power of the crown as an extreme (which otherwise might seem a
mere arbitrary tyranny). This is correct in so far as the principle
of the power of the crown (arbitrary will) is limited by means
of the Estates, at least can operate only in fetters, and in so
far as the Estates themselves become a partaker and accessory
of the power of the crown.

In this way, either the power of the crown ceases to be actually
the extreme of the power of the crown (and the power of the crown
exists only as an extreme, a one-sidedness, because it is not an
organic principle) and becomes a mere appearance of power [eine
Scheingewalt], a symbol, or else it loses only the
appearance of arbitrary tyranny. The Estates mediate against
the isolation of particular interests by presenting this isolation
as a political act. They mediate against the isolation of the
power of the crown as an extreme partly by becoming themselves
a part of that power, partly by making the executive power an
extreme.

All the contradictions of modern state-organisations converge
in the Estates. They mediate in every direction because they
are, from every direction, the middle term.

It should be noted that Hegel develops the content of the Estates'
essential political activity, viz., the legislature, less than
he does their position, or political rank.

It should be further noted that, while the Estates, according
to Hegel, stand between the government in general on the one hand
and the nation broken up into particulars (people and associations)
on the other, the significance of their position as developed
above is that, in common with the organised executive, they are
a middle term.

Regarding the first position, the Estates represent the nation
over against the executive, but the nation en miniature. This
is their oppositional position.

Regarding the second, they represent the executive over against
the nation, but the amplified executive. This is their conservative
position. They are themselves a part of the executive over against
the people, but in such a way that they simultaneously have the
significance of representing the people over against the executive.

Above, Hegel called the legislature a 'totality' (§ 300).
In fact, however, the Estates are this totality, the state within
the state; but it is precisely in them that it becomes apparent
that the state is not a totality but a duality. The Estates represent
the state in a society that is no state. The state is a mere
representation [eine blosse Vorstellung].

In the Remark Hegel says:

It is one of the most important discoveries of logic that a specific
moment, which, by standing in an opposition, has the position
of ail extreme, ceases to be such and is a moment in an organic
whole by being at the same time a mean.

(Thus the Estates are at one and the same time (1) the extreme
of the nation over against the executive, but (2) the mean between
nation and executive; or, in other words, the opposition within
the nation itself The opposition between the executive and the
nation is mediated through the opposition between the Estates
and the nation. From the point of view of the executive the Estates
have the position of the nation, but from the point of view of
the nation they have the position of the executive. The nation
in its occurrence as image, fantasy, illusion, representation
- i.e., the imagined nation, or the Estates, which are immediately
situated as a particular power in dissociation from the actual
nation - abolishes [hebt auf] the actual opposition
between the nation and the executive. Here the nation is already
dressed out, exactly as required in this particular organism,
so as to have no determinate character.)

The Remark continues:

In connection with our present topic it is all the more important
to emphasise this aspect of the matter because of the popular,
but most dangerous, prejudice which regards the Estates principally
from the point of view of their opposition to the executive, as
if that were their essential attitude. If the Estates become
an organ in the whole by being taken up into the state, they evince
themselves solely through their mediating function. In this way
their opposition to the executive is reduced to a show. There
may indeed be an appearance of opposition between them, but if
they were opposed, not merely superficially, but actually and
in substance, then the state would be in the throes of destruction.
That the clash is not of this kind is evident in the nature of
the thing, because the Estates have to deal, not with the essential
elements in the organism of the state, but only with rather specialised
and trifling matters, while the passion which even these arouse
spends itself in party cravings in connection with purely subjective
interests such as appointments to higher offices of state.

In the Addition it says: 'The constitution is essentially a system
of mediation.'

§ 303. The universal class, or, more precisely, the
class of civil servants, must, purely in virtue of its character
as universal, have the universal as the end of its essential activity.
In the Estates, as an element in the legislative power, the unofficial
class acquires its political significance and efficacy; it appears,
therefore, in the Estates neither as a mere indiscriminate multitude
nor as an aggregate dispersed into its atoms, but as what it already
is, namely a class subdivided into two, one subclass [the agricultural
class] being based on a tic of substance between its members,
and the other [the business class] on particular needs and the
work whereby these are met . . . It is only
in this way that there is a genuine link between the particular
which is effective in the state and the universal.

Here we have the solution of the riddle. 'In the Estates, as
an element in the legislative power, the unofficial class acquires
its political significance.' acquires It is understood that the
unofficial, or private class [der Privatstand] this significance
in accordance with what it is, with its articulation within civil
society; (Hegel has already designated the universal class as
the class dedicated to the executive; the universal class, therefore,
is represented in the legislature by the executive.)

The Estates are the political significance of the unofficial class,
i.e., of the unpolitical class, which is a contradictio in
adjecto; or to put it another way, in class as described by
Hegel the unofficial class (or, more correctly, unofficial class
difference) has a political significance. The unofficial class
belongs to the essence, to the very political reality [zur
Politik] of this state, which thus gives it also a
political significance, that is, one that differs from its actual
significance.

In the Remark it says:

This runs counter to another prevalent idea, the idea that since
it is in the legislature that the unofficial class rises to the
level of participating in matters of state, it must appear there
in the form of individuals, whether individuals are to choose
representatives for this purpose, or whether every single individual
is to have a vote in the legislature himself. This atomistic and
abstract point of view vanishes at the stage of the family, as
well as that of civil society where the individual is in evidence
only as a member of a general group. The state, however, is essentially
an organisation each of whose members is in itself a group of
this kind, and hence no one of its moments should appear as an
unorganised aggregate. The Many, as units - a congenial interpretation
of 'people', are of course something connected, but they are connected
only as an aggregate, a formless mass whose commotion and activity
could therefore only be elementary, irrational, barbarous, and
frightful.

The circles of association in civil society are already communities. To picture these
communities as once more breaking up into a mere conglomeration of individuals as soon
as they enter the field of politics, i.e., the field of the highest concrete
universality, is eo ipso to hold civil and political life apart from one another and as
it were to hang the latter in the air, because its basis could then only be the abstract
individuality of caprice and opinion, and hence it would be grounded on chance and not
on what is absolutely stable and justified.

So-called 'theories' of this kind involve the idea that the classes
[Stände] of civil society and the Estates [Stände],
which are the 'classes' given a political significance, stand
wide apart from each other. But the German language, by calling
them both Stände has still maintained the unity which
in any case they actually possessed in former times.

'The universal class, or, more precisely, the class of civil servants.
Hegel proceeds from the hypothesis that the universal class is
the class of civil servants. For him, universal intelligence
is attached permanently to a class.

'In the Estates as an element etc.' Here, the political significance
and efficacy of the unofficial class is precisely its particular
significance and efficacy. The unofficial class is not changed
into a political class, but appears as the unofficial class in
its political significance and efficacy. It does not have political
significance and efficacy simply; its political efficacy and significance
are those of the unofficial class as unofficial or private. Accordingly,
the unofficial class can appear in the political sphere only in
keeping with the class difference found in civil society. The
class difference within civil society becomes a political difference.

Even the German language, says Hegel, expresses the identity of
the classes of civil society with the classes given a political
significance; it expresses a unity which in any case they actually
possessed in former times - a unity, one should thus conclude,
which no longer exists.

Hegel finds that, in this way there is a genuine link between
the particular which is effective in the state and the universal.
In this way the separation of civil and political life is to
be abolished and their identity established.

Hegel finds support in the following: 'The circles of association
(family and civil society) are already communities.' How can one
want these to break up into a mere conglomeration of individuals
as soon as they enter the field of politics, i.e., the field of
the highest concrete universality?

It is important to follow this development very carefully.

The peak of Hegelian identity, as Hegel himself admits, was the
Middle Ages. There, the classes of civil society in general and
the Estates, or classes given political significance, were identical.
The spirit of the Middle Ages can be expressed thus: the classes
of civil society and the political classes were identical because
civil society was political society, because the organic principle
of civil society was the principle of the state.

But Hegel proceeds from the separation of civil society and the
political state as two actually different spheres, firmly opposed
to one another. And indeed this separation does actually exist
in the modern state. The identity of the civil and political
classes in the Middle Ages was the expression of the identity
of civil and political society. This identity has disappeared;
and Hegel presupposes it as having disappeared. The identity
of the civil and political classes, if it expressed the truth,
could be now only an expression of the separation of civil and
political society! Or rather, only the separation of the civil
and political classes expresses the true relationship of modern
civil and political society.

Secondly: the political classes Hegel deals with here have a wholly
different meaning than those political classes of the Middle Ages,
which are said to be identical with the classes of civil society.

The whole existence of the medieval classes was political; their
existence was the existence of the state. Their legislative activity,
their grant of taxes for the realm was merely a particular issue
of their universal political significance and efficacy. Their
class was their state. The relationship to the realm was merely
one of transaction between these various states and the nationality,
because the political state in distinction from civil society
was nothing but the representation of nationality. Nationality
was the point d'honneur, the kat exhin political
sense of these various Corporations etc., and taxes etc., pertained
only to them. That was the relationship of the legislative classes
to the realm. The classes were related in a similar way within
the particular principalities. There, the principality, the sovereignty
was a particular class which enjoyed certain privileges but was
equally inconvenienced by the privileges of the other classes.
(With the Greeks, civil society was a slave to political society.)
The universal legislative efficacy of the classes of civil society
was in no way the acquisition of political significance and efficacy
by the unofficial, or private class, but was rather a simple issue
of its actual and universal political significance and efficacy.
The appearance of the private class as legislative power was
simply a complement of its sovereign and governing (executive)
power; or rather it was its appropriation of wholly public affairs
as a private affair, its acquisition, qua private class, of sovereignty.
In the Middle Ages, the classes of civil society were as such
simultaneously legislative because they were not private classes,
or because private classes were political classes. The medieval
classes did not, as political Estates, acquire a new character.
They did not become political classes because they participated
in legislation; rather they participated in legislation because
they were political classes. But what does that have in common
with Hegel's unofficial class which, as a legislative element,
acquires political bravura, an ecstatic condition, a remarkable,
stunning, extraordinary political significance and efficacy?

All the contradictions of the Hegelian presentation are found
together in this development.

1. He has presupposed the separation of civil society and the
political state (which is a modern situation), and developed it
as a necessary moment of the Idea, as an absolute truth of Reason.
He has presented the political state in its modern form of the
separation of the various powers. For its body he has given the
actual acting state the bureaucracy, which he ordains to be the
knowing spirit over and above the materialism of civil society.
He has opposed the state, as the actual universal, to the particular
interest and need of civil society. in short, he presents everywhere
the conflict between civil society and the state.

2. He opposes civil society as unofficial, or private class to
the political state.

3. He calls the Estates, as element of the legislative power,
the pure political formalism of civil society. He calls them
a relationship of civil society to the state which is a reflection
of the former on the latter, a reflection which does not alter
the essence of the state. A relationship of reflection is also
the highest identity between essentially different things.

On the other hand:

1. Hegel wants civil society, in its self-establishment as legislative
clement, to appear neither as a mere indiscriminate multitude
nor as an aggregate dispersed into its atoms. He wants no separation
of civil and political life.

2. He forgets that he is dealing with a relationship of reflection,
and makes the civil classes as such political classes; but again
only with reference to the legislative power, so that their efficacy
itself is proof of the separation.

He makes the Estates the expression of the separation [of civil
and political life]; but at the same time they are supposed to
be the representative of an identity - an identity which does
not exist. Hegel is aware of the separation of civil society
and the political state, but he wants the unity of the state expressed
within the state; and this is to be achieved by having the classes
of civil society, while remaining such, form the Estates as an
element of legislative society. (cf. xiv, x)'

§ 304. The Estates, as an element in political life,
still retain in their own function the class distinctions already
present in the lower spheres of civil life. The position of the
classes is abstract to begin with, i.e., in contrast with the
whole principle of monarchy or the crown, their position is that
of an extreme — empirical universality. This extreme opposition
implies the possibility, though no more, of harmonisation, and
the equally likely possibility of set hostility. This abstract
position changes into a rational relation (into a syllogism, see
Remark to § 302) only if the middle term between the
opposites comes into existence. From the point of view of the crown,
the executive already has this character (see § 300).
So, from the point of view of the classes, one moment in them
must be adapted to the task of existing as in essence the moment
of mediation.

§ 305. The principle of one of the classes of civil
society is in itself capable of adaptation to this political position.
The class in question is the one whose ethical life is natural,
whose basis is family life, and, so far as its livelihood is concerned,
the possession of land. Its particular members attain their position
by birth, just as the monarch does, and, in common with him, they
possess a will which rests on itself al6ne.

§ 306. This class is more particularly fitted for
political position and significance in that its capital is independent
alike of the state's capital, the uncertainty of business, the
quest for profit, and any sort of fluctuation in possessions.
It is likewise independent of favour, whether from the executive
or the mob. It is even fortified against its own wilfulness,
because those members of this class who are called to political
life are not entitled, as other citizens are, either to dispose
of their entire property at will, or to the assurance that it
will pass to their children, whom they love equally, in similarly
equal divisions. Hence their wealth becomes inalienable, entailed,
and burdened by primogeniture.

Addition: This class has a volition of a more
independent character. On the whole, the class of landed-property
owners is divided into an educated section and a section of farmers.
But over against both of these sorts of people there stands the
business class, which is dependent on needs and concentrated on
their satisfaction, and the civil servant class, which is essentially
dependent on the state. The security and stability of the agricultural
class may be still further increased by the institution of primogeniture,
though this institution is desirable only from the point of view
of politics, since it entails a sacrifice for the political end
of giving the eldest son a life of independence. Primogeniture
is grounded on the fact that the state should be able to reckon
not on the bare possibility of political inclinations, but on
something necessary. Now an inclination for politics is of course
not bound up with wealth, but there is a relatively necessary
connection between the two, because a man with independent means
is not hemmed in by external circumstances and so there is nothing
to prevent him from entering politics and working for the state.
Where Political institutions are lacking, however, the foundation
and encouragement of primogeniture is nothing but a chain on the
freedom of private rights, and either political meaning must be
given to it, or else it will in due course disappear.

§ 307. The right of this section of the agriculture
class is thus based in a way on the natural principle of the family.
But this principle is at the same time reversed owing to hard
sacrifices made for political ends, and thereby the activity of
this class is essentially directed to those ends. As a consequence
of this, this class is summoned and entitled to its political
vocation by birth without the hazards of election. It therefore
has the fixed substantive position between the subjective wilfulness
or contingency of both extremes; and while it mirrors in itself.
. . 1 the moment of the monarchical power, it also shares in
other respects the needs and rights of the other extreme [i.e.,
civil society], and hence it becomes a support at once of the
throne and society.

Hegel has accomplished the masterpiece: he has developed peerage
by birthright, wealth by inheritance, etc. etc., this support
of the throne and society, on top of the absolute Idea.

Hegel's keenest insight lies in his sensing the separation of
civil and political society to be a contradiction. But his error
is that he contents himself with the appearance of its dissolution,
and passes it off as the real thing; while the 'so-called theories'
which he despises demand the separation of the civil and political
classes, and rightly, for they express a consequence of modern
society, in that here the political Estates are precisely nothing
but the factual expression of the actual relationship of state
and civil society — their separation.

Hegel has failed to identify the issue in question here. It
is the issue of representative versus Estate constitution. The
representative constitution is a great advance, for it is the
open, genuine, consistent expression of the condition of the modern
state. It is the unconcealed contradiction.

Before we take up this matter itself, let's take another look
at this Hegelian presentation.

In the Estates as an element in the legislative power, the unofficial
class acquires its political significance.

Earlier (in the Remark to § 301) it was said:

Hence the specific function which the concept assigns to the Estates
is to be sought in the fact that in them ... the private judgment
and private will of the sphere called 'civil society' in this
book come into existence integrally related to the state.

The meaning of these two, taken in combination, is as follows:
Civil society is the unofficial class, or, the unofficial class
is the immediate, essential, concrete class of civil society.
Only within the Estates as an element of the legislative power
does it acquire political significance and efficacy. This is
a new endowment, a particular function, for precisely its character
as unofficial class expresses its opposition to political significance
and efficacy, the privation of political character, and the fact
that civil society actually lacks political significance and efficacy.
The unofficial class is the class of civil society, or civil
society is the unofficial class. Thus, in consequence, Hegel
also excludes the universal class from the Estates as an element
of the legislative power:

The universal class, or, more precisely, the class of civil servants,
must purely in virtue of its character as universal, have the
universal as the end of its essential activity.

In virtue of its character, civil society, or the unofficial class,
does not have the universal as the end of its essential activity.
Its essential activity is not a determination of the universal;
it has no universal character. The unofficial class is the class
of civil society as opposed to the [political] class.' The class
of civil society is not a political class.

In declaring civil society to be the unofficial class, Hegel has
declared the class differences of civil society to be non-political
differences and civil and political life to be heterogeneous in
character, even antitheses. How then does he proceed?

[The unofficial class] appears, therefore, in the Estates neither
as a mere indiscriminate multitude nor as an aggregate dispersed
into its atoms, but as what it already is, namely a class subdivided
into two, one sub-class [the agricultural class] being based
on a tie of substance between its members, and the other [the
business class] on particular needs and the work whereby these
are met (see § 201 ff.). It is only in this way that
there is a genuine link between the particular which is effective
in the state and the universal.

To be sure, civil society (the unofficial class), in its legislative
activity in the Estates, cannot appear as a mere indiscriminate
multitude because the mere indiscriminate multitude exists only
in imagination or fantasy, but not in actuality. What actually
exists is only accidental multitudes of various sizes (cities,
villages, etc.). These multitudes, or this aggregate not only
appears but everywhere really is an aggregate
dispersed into its atoms; and when it appears in its political-class
activity it must appear as this atomistic thing.
The unofficial class, civil society, cannot appear here as what
it already is. For what is it already? Unofficial class, i.e.,
opposition to and separation from the state. In order to achieve
political significance and efficacy it must rather renounce itself
as what it already is, as unofficial class. Only through this
does it acquire its political significance and efficacy. This
political act is a complete transubstantiation. In this political
act civil society must completely renounce itself as such, as
unofficial class, and assert a part of its essence which not only
has nothing in common with the actual civil existence of its essence,
but directly opposes it.

What the universal law is appears here in the individual. Civil
society and the state are separated. Consequently the citizen
of the state and the member of civil society are also separated.
The individual must thus undertake an essential schism within
himself As actual citizen he finds himself in a two-fold organisation:
[a] the bureaucratic, which is an external formal
determination of the otherworldly state, of the executive power,
which does not touch him and his independent actuality; [b]
the social, the organisation of civil society, within which he
stands outside the state as a private man, for civil society does
not touch upon the political state as such. The former [the bureaucratic]
is an organisation of the state to which he continually contributes
the material. The latter [the social] is a civil organisation
whose material is not the state. In the former the state relates
to him as formal opposition; in the latter he himself relates
to the state as material opposition. Thus, in order to behave
as actual citizen of the state, to acquire political significance
and efficacy, he must abandon his civil actuality, abstract from
it, and retire from this entire organisation into his individuality.
He must do this because the only existence that he finds for
his state-citizenship is his pure, bare individuality, for the
existence of the state as executive is complete without him, and
his existence in civil society is complete without the state.
Only in opposition to these exclusively existing communities,
only as an individual, can he be a citizen of the state. His
existence as citizen is an existence lying outside the realm of
his communal existences, and is hence purely individual. The
legislature as a power is precisely the organisation, the communal
embodiment, which his political existence is supposed to receive.
Prior to the legislature, civil society, or the unofficial class,
does not exist as political organisation. In order that it come
to existence as such, its actual organisation, actual civil life,
must be established as non-existing, for the Estates as an element
of the legislative power have precisely the character of rendering
the unofficial class, civil society, non-existent. The separation
of civil society and the political state appears necessarily to
be a separation of the political citizen, the citizen of the state,
from civil society, i.e., from his own actual, empirical reality;
for as a state-idealist he is a being who is completely other,
distinct, different from and opposed to his own actuality. Here
civil society effects within itself the relationship of the state
and civil society, a relationship which already exists on the
other side [i.e., within the state] as the bureaucracy. in the
Estates the universal becomes actually, explicitly [für
sich] what it is implicitly [an sich], namely,
opposition to the particular. The citizen must renounce his class,
civil society, the unofficial class, in order to achieve political
significance and efficacy; for it is precisely this class which
stands between the individual and the political state.

If Hegel already contrasts the whole of civil society as unofficial
class to the political state, then it is self-evident that the
distinctions within the unofficial class, i.e., the various civil
classes, have only an unofficial significance with regard to the
state; in other words, they have no political significance. For
the various civil classes are simply the actualisation, the existence,
of the principle, i.e., of the unofficial class as of the principle
of civil society. If, however, the principle must be abandoned,
then it is self-evident that still more the schisms within this
principle are non-existent for the political state.

'It is only in this way', says Hegel in concluding the paragraph,
'that there is a genuine link between the particular which is
effective in the state and the universal.' But here Hegel confuses
the state as the whole of a people's existence with the political
state. That particular is not the particular in, but rather outside
the state, namely, the political state. It is not only not
the particular which is effective in the state, but also the ineffectiveness
[Unwirklichkeit] of the state. What Hegel wants
to establish is that the classes of civil society are political
classes; and in order to prove this he asserts that the classes
of civil society are the particularity of the political state,
that is to say, that civil society is political society. The
expression, 'The particular in the state', can here only mean
the particularity of the state. A bad conscience causes Hegel
to choose the vague expression. Not only has he himself developed
just the opposite, but he even ratifies it in this paragraph by
characterising civil society as the 'unofficial class'. His statement
that the particular is 'linked' to the universal is very cautious.
The most dissimilar things can be linked. But here we are not
dealing with a gradual transition but with a transubstantiation,
and it is useless to ignore deliberately this cleft which has
been jumped over and yet manifested by the very jump.

In the Remark Hegel says: 'This runs counter to another prevalent
idea' etc. We have just shown how this prevalent idea is consequently
and inevitably a necessary idea of the people's present development,
and how Hegel's idea, despite its also being very prevalent in
certain circles, is nevertheless untrue.

Returning to this prevalent idea Hegel says: 'This atomistic and
abstract point of view vanishes at the stage of the family' etc.
etc. 'The state, however, is' etc. This point of view is undeniably
abstract, but it is the abstraction of the political state as
Hegel himself develops it. It is atomistic too, but it is the
atomism of society itself. The point of view cannot be concrete
when the object of the point of view is abstract. The atomism
into which civil society is driven by its political act results
necessarily from the fact that the commonwealth [das Gemeinwesen],
the communal being [das kommunistische Wesen],
within which the individual exists, is [reduced to] civil
society separated from the state, or in other words, that the
political state is an abstraction of civil society.'

This atomistic point of view, although it already vanishes in
the family, and perhaps (??) also in civil society, recurs in
the political state precisely because the political state is an
abstraction of the family and civil society. But the reverse
is also true. By expressing the strangeness [das Befremdliche]
of this occurrence Hegel has not eliminated the estrangement [die
Entfremdung].

The circles of association in civil society, Hegel continues,
are already communities. To picture these communities as once
more breaking up into a mere conglomeration of individuals as
soon as they enter the field of politics, i.e., the field of the
highest concrete universality, is eo ipso to hold civil
and political life apart from one another and as it were to hang
the latter in the air, because its basis could then only be the
abstract individuality of caprice and opinion, and hence it would
be grounded on chance and not on what is absolutely stable and
justified.

This picturing [of these communities as breaking up] does not
hold civil and political life apart; it is simply the picturing
of an actually existing separation.

Nor does this picturing hang political life in the air; rather,
political life is the life in the air, the ethereal region of
civil society.

Now we turn to the representative and the Estate systems.

It is a development of history that has transformed the political
classes into social classes such that, just as the Christians
are equal in heaven yet unequal on earth, so the individual members
of a people are equal in the heaven of their political world yet
unequal in the earthly existence of society. The real transformation
of the political classes into civil classes took place under the
absolute monarchy. The bureaucracy asserted the idea of unity
over against the various states within the state. Nevertheless,
even alongside the bureaucracy of the absolute executive, the
social difference of the classes remained a political difference,
political within and alongside the bureaucracy of the absolute
executive. Only the French Revolution completed the transformation
of the political classes into social classes, in other words,
made the class distinctions of civil society into merely social
distinctions, pertaining to private life but meaningless in political
life. With that, the separation of political life and civil society
was completed.

At the same time the classes of civil society were likewise transformed:
civil society underwent a change by reason of its separation from
political society. Class in the medieval sense remained only
within the bureaucracy itself, where civil and political positions
are immediately identical. Over against this stands civil society
as unofficial class. Here class distinction is no longer one
of need and of labor as an independent body. The sole general,
superficial and formal distinction which remains is that of town
and country. But within civil society itself the distinctions
take shape in changeable, unfixed spheres whose principle is arbitrariness.
Money and education are the prevalent criteria. Yet it's not
here, but in the critique of Hegel's treatment of civil society
that this should be developed. Enough said. Class in civil society
has neither need — and therefore a natural impulse — nor politics
for its principle. It is a division of the masses whose development
is unstable and whose very structure is arbitrary and in no sense
an organisation.

The sole characteristic thing is that the lack of property, and
the class in need of immediate labor, of concrete labor, forms
less a class of civil society than the basis upon which the spheres
of civil society rest and move. The sole class in which political
and civil positions coincide is that of the members of the executive
power. The present social class already manifests a distinction
from the former class of civil society by the fact that it does
not, as was formerly the case, regard the individual as a communal
in individual, as a communal being [ein Gemeinwesen];
rather, it is partly chance, partly labor, etc., of the individual
which determines whether he remains in his class or not, a class
which is, further, only an external determination of this individual;
for he neither inheres in his work nor does the class relate to
him as an objective communal being organised according to firm
laws and related firmly to him. Moreover, he stands in no actual
relation to his substantial activity, to his actual class. The
medical man, for instance, forms no particular class in civil
society. one businessman belongs to a class different than that
of another businessman, i.e., he belongs to another social position.
Just as civil society is separated from political society, so
within itself civil society is separated into class and social
position, even though some relations obtain between the two.
The principle of the civil class, or of civil society, is enjoyment
and the capacity to enjoy. In his political role the member of
civil society rids himself of his class, of his actual private
position; by this alone does he acquire significance as man. in
other words, his character as a member of the state, as a social
being, appears to be his human character. For all of his other
characteristics in civil society appear to be unessential to the
man, the individual; that is, they appear to be external characteristics
which are indeed necessary to his existence within the whole,
i.e., as being a bond with the whole, but a bond that he can just
as well throw off. (Present civil society is the accomplished
principle of individualism: individual existence is the final
end, while activity, labor, content, etc., are merely means.)

The Estate-constitution, when not a tradition of the Middle Ages,
is the attempt, partly within the political sphere itself, to
thrust man back into the limitation of his private sphere, to
make his particularity his substantial consciousness and, by means
of the political character of class difference, also to make him
once more into a social being.

The actual man is the private man of the present-day political
constitution.

In general, the significance of the estate is that it makes difference,
separation, subsistence, things pertaining to the individual as
such.' His manner of life, activity, etc. is his privilege, and
instead of making him a functional member of society, it makes
him an exception from society. The fact that this difference
is not only individual but also established as community, estate,
corporation, not only fails to abolish the exclusiveness of its
nature, but is rather its expression. Instead of the particular
function being a function of society, the particular function
is made into a society for itself.

Not only is the estate based on the separation of society as the
governing principle, but it separates man from his universal nature;
it makes him an animal whose being coincides immediately with
its determinate character. The Middle Ages constitutes the animal
history of mankind, its zoology.

Modern times, civilisation, commits the opposite mistake. It
separates man s objective essence from him, taking it to be merely
external and material. Man's content is not taken to be his true
actuality.

Anything further regarding this is to be developed in the section
on 'Civil Society'.

Now we come to

§ 304. The Estates, as an element in political life, still retain in their own
significance, the class distinctions already present in the lower spheres of civil life.

We have already shown that the class distinctions already present
in the lower spheres of life have no significance for the political
spheres, or if so, then only the significance of private, hence
non-political, distinctions. But according to Hegel here they
do not even have their already present significance (their significance
in civil society). Rather, the Estates as an element in political
life affirms its essence by embodying these distinctions within
itself; and, thus immersed in political life, they receive a significance
of their 'own' which belongs not to them but to this element.

As long as the organisation of civil society remained political,
and the political state and civil society were one, this separation,
this duplication of the estates' significance was not present.
The estates did not signify one thing in the civil world and
something other in the political world. They acquired no [additional]
significance in the political world, but signified only themselves.
The duality of civil society and the political state, which the
Estate-constitution purports to resolve through a reminiscence,
appears within that constitution itself, in that class difference
(the differentiation within civil society) acquires in the political
sphere a significance different than in the civil sphere. There
is apparent identity here: the same subject, but in an essentially
different determination, and thus in fact a double subject. And
this illusory identity (surely an illusory identity because, in
fact, the actual subject, man, remains constantly himself,
does not lose his identity in the various determinations of his
being; but here man is not the subject, rather he is identified
with a predicate — the class — and at the same time it is asserted
that he exists in this definite determination and in another determination,
that he is, as this definite, exempted and restricted thing, something
other than this restricted thing) is artificially maintained through
that reflection [mentioned earlier], by at one time having civil
class distinction as such assume a character which should accrue
to it only in the political sphere, and at another time reversing
things and having the class distinction in the political sphere
acquire a character which issues not from the political sphere
but from the subject of the civil sphere. In order to present
the one limited subject, the definite class (the class distinction),
as the essential subject of both predicates, or in order to prove
the identity of the two predicates, both are mystified and developed
in an illusory and vague dimorphism [Doppelgestalt].

Here the same subject is taken in different meanings, but the
meaning is not a self-determination [of the subject]; rather,
it is an allegorical determination foisted on the subject. One
could use the same meaning for a different concrete subject, or
another meaning for the same subject. The significance that civil
class distinction acquires in the political sphere is not its
own, but proceeds from the political sphere; and even here it
could have a different significance, as was historically the case.
The reverse is also true. This is the uncritical, the mystical
way of interpreting an old world-view in terms of a new one, through
which it becomes nothing but an unhappy hybrid in which the form
betrays the meaning and the meaning the form, and neither does
the form achieve significance, thus becoming actual form, nor
the significance become form, thus becoming actual significance.
This uncritical spirit, this mysticism, is the enigma of the
modern constitution (kat exohin the Estate-constitution)
as well as the mystery of Hegelian philosophy, especially the
Philosophy of Right and the Philosophy of Religion.

The best way to rid oneself of this illusion is to take the significance
as what it is, i.e., as the actual determination, then as such
make it the subject, and consider whether its ostensibly proper
subject is its actual predicate, i.e., whether this ostensibly
proper subject expresses its [the actual determination's] essence
and true actualisation.

The position of the classes (the Estates as an element in political
life), is abstract to begin with, i.e., in contrast with the whole
principle of monarchy or the crown, their position is that of
an extreme — empirical universality. This extreme opposition
implies the possibility, though no more, of harmonisation, and
the equally likely possibility of set hostility. This abstract
position changes into a rational relation (into a syllogism, see
Remark to § 302) only if the middle term between the
opposites comes into existence.

We have already seen that the Estates, in common with the executive
power, form the middle term between the principle of monarchy
and the people, between the will of the state existing as one
and as many empirical Wills, and between empirical singularity
and empirical universality. Just as he had to define the will
of civil society as empirical universality, so Hegel had to define
the sovereign will as empirical singularity; but he does not articulate
the antithesis in all of its sharpness.

Hegel continues:

From the point of view of the crown, the executive already has
this character (see § 300). So, from the point of
view of the classes, one moment in them must be adapted to the
task of existing as in essence the moment of mediation.

The true antitheses, however, are the sovereign and civil society.
And as we have already seen, the Estates have the same significance
from the people's point of view as the executive has from the
point of view of the sovereign. Just as the executive emanates
in an elaborate circular system, so the people condenses into
a miniature edition; for the constitutional monarchy can get along
well only with the people en miniature. The Estates, from
the point of view of civil society, are the very same abstraction
of the political state as is the executive from the sovereign's
point of view. Thus it appears that the mediation has been fully
achieved. Both extremes have left their obstinacy behind, each
has imparted the spirit of its particular essence into a fusion
with that of the other; and the legislature, whose elements are
the executive as well as the Estates, appears not to be that which
must first allow this mediation to come to existence, but to be
itself the already existing mediation. Also, Hegel has already
[§ 302] declared the Estates in common with the executive
to be the middle term between the people and the sovereign (the
same way the Estates are the middle term between civil society
and the executive, etc.). Thus the rational relation, the syllogism,
appears to be complete. The legislature, the middle term, is
a mixtum compositum of both extremes: the sovereign-principle
and civil society, empirical singularity and empirical universality,
subject and predicate. In general, Hegel conceives of the syllogism
as middle term, to be a mixtum compositum. We can say
that in his development of the rational syllogism all of the transcendence
and mystical dualism of his system becomes apparent. The middle
term is the wooden sword, the concealed opposition between universality
and singularity.

To begin with, we notice in regard to this whole development that
the mediation Hegel wants to establish here is not derived from
the essence of the legislature, from its own character, but rather
with regard to an existence lying outside its essential character.
It is a construction of reference. The legislature is chiefly
developed with regard only to a third [party]. Hence, it is primarily
the construction of its formal existence which receives all the
attention. The legislature is constructed very diplomatically.
This results from the false, illusory kat exohin political
position given to the legislature in the modern state (whose interpreter
is Hegel himself). What follows immediately is that this is no
true state, because in it the determinate functions of the state,
one of which is the legislature, must not be regarded in and for
themselves, not theoretically, but rather practically; they must
not be regarded as independent powers, but as powers bound up
with an opposite, and this in accordance with the rules of convention
rather than by the nature of things.

Thus the Estates, in common with the executive, should actually
be the middle term between the will of empirical singularity,
i.e., the sovereign, and the will of empirical universality, i.e.,
civil society. But in fact their position is really 'abstract
to begin with, i.e., in contrast with the whole principle of monarchy
or the crown, their position is that of an extreme empirical universality.
This extreme opposition implies the possibility, though no more,
of harmonisation, and the equally likely possibility of set hostility.
In other words their position, as Hegel quite rightly remarks,
is an abstract position.

It appears at first that neither the extreme of empirical universality
nor the principle of monarchy or the crown, i.e., the extreme
of empirical singularity, are opposed to one another. For from
the point of view of civil society the Estates are delegated just
as the executive is from the point of view of the sovereign. Just
as the principle of the crown ceases,
in the delegated executive power, to be the extreme of empirical
singularity, surrendering its self-determined will and lowering
itself to the finitude of knowledge, responsibility, and thought,
so civil society appears in the Estates to be no longer an empirical
universality, but a very definite whole which has political and
administrative sense and temper, and no less a sense for the interests
of individuals and particular groups (§ 302). Civil
society, in its miniature edition as the Estates, has ceased to
be empirical universality. Rather, it has been reduced to a delegated
committee of very definite number. If the sovereign assumes empirical
universality in the executive power, then civil society assumes
empirical singularity or particularity in the Estates. Both have
become a particular.

The only opposition which remains possible appears to be that
between the two emanations, between the executive- and the Estate-elements
within the legislature. It appears, therefore, to be an opposition
within the legislature itself. And these elements which mediate
'in common' seem quite prone to get into one another's hair.
In the executive element of the legislature the inaccessible empirical
singularity of the sovereign has come down to earth in a number
of limited, tangible, responsible personalities; and in the Estates,
civil society has exalted itself into a number of political men.
Both sides have lost their inaccessibility. The crown — the
inaccessible, exclusive, empirical One — has lost its obstinacy,
while civil society — the inaccessible, vague, empirical All — has
lost its fluidity. In the Estates on the one hand, and the executive
element of the legislature on the other, which together would
mediate between civil society and the sovereign, the opposition
thus appears to have become, first of all, a refereed opposition,
but also an irreconcilable contradiction.

As for this mediation, it is therefore, as Hegel rightly argues,
all the more necessary that the middle term between the opposites
comes into existence; for it is itself much more the existence
of the contradiction than of the mediation.

That this mediation will be effected by the Estates seems to be
maintained by Hegel without any foundation. He says:

From the point of view of the crown, the executive already has
this character (see § 300). So, from the point of
view of the classes, one moment in them must be adapted to the
task of existing as in essence the moment of mediation.

But we have already seen that Hegel arbitrarily and inconsistently
posits the sovereign and the Estates as opposed extremes. As
the executive has this character from the point of view of the
crown, so the Estates have it from the point of view of civil
society. Not only do [the Estates] stand, in common with the
executive, between the sovereign and civil society, but also between
the executive in general and the people (§ 302).
They do more on behalf of civil society than the executive does
on behalf of the crown, which is itself in opposition to the people.
Thus they have accomplished their full measure of mediation.
Why make these asses bear still more? Why should they always
be made the donkey-bridge, even between themselves and their own
adversaries? Why must they always perform the self-sacrifice?
Should they cut off one of their hands when both are needed to
withstand their adversary, the executive element of the legislature?

In addition, Hegel first has the Estates arise from the Corporations,
class distinctions, etc., lest they be a mere empirical universality;
and now he reverses the process, and makes them mere empirical
universality in order to have class distinction arise from them!
just as the sovereign is mediated with civil society through
the executive, so society is mediated with the executive through
the Estates — the executive thus acting as society's Christ, and
the Estates as its priests.

Now it appears all the more that the role of the extremes — the
crown (empirical singularity) and civil society (empirical universality)
- must be that of mediating as the middle term between the opposites;
all the more because 'it is one of the most important discoveries
of logic that a specific moment which, by standing in an opposition,
has the position of an extreme, ceases to be such and is a moment
in an organic whole by being at the same time the mean' (Remark
to § 302). Civil society appears to be unable to play
this role, for civil society as itself, as an extreme, occupies
no seat in the legislature. The other extreme, the sovereign
principle, exists as an extreme within the legislature, and thus
apparently must be the mediator between the Estate- and the executive-elements.
And it appears to have all the qualifications; for, on the one
hand, the whole of the state, and therefore also civil society,
is represented within it,
and, more specifically, it has empirical singularity of will in
common with the Estates, since empirical universality is actual
only as empirical singularity. Furthermore, the sovereign principle
does not merely op pose civil society as a kind of formula, as
state-consciousness, the way the executive does. It is itself
the state; it has the material, natural moment in common with
civil society. On the other hand, it is the head and the representative
of the executive. (Hegel, who inverts everything, makes the executive
the representative, the emanation, of the sovereign. When he
considers the idea whose existence the sovereign is supposed to
be, Hegel has in mind not the actual idea of the executive, the
executive as idea, but rather the subject of the Absolute Idea
which exists corporeally in the sovereign; hence the executive
becomes a mystical continuation of the soul existing in his body
- the sovereign body.)

The sovereign, then, had to be the middle term in the legislature
between the executive and the Estates; but, of course, the executive
is the middle term between him and the Estates, and the Estates
between him and civil society. How is he to mediate between what
he himself needs as a mean lest his own existence become a one-sided
extreme? Now the complete absurdity of these extremes, which
interchangeably play now the part of the extreme and now the part
of the mean, becomes apparent. They are like Janus with two-faced
heads, which now show themselves from the front and now from the
back, with a diverse character at either side. What was first
intended to be the mean between two extremes now itself occurs
as an extreme; and the other of the two extremes, which had just
been mediated by it, now intervenes as an extreme' (because of
its distinction from the other extreme) between its extreme and
its mean. This is a kind of mutual reconciliation society. It
is as if a man stepped between two opponents, only to have one
of them immediately step between the mediator and the other opponent.
It is like the story of the man and wife who quarrelled and the
doctor who wished to mediate between them, whereupon the wife
soon had to step between the doctor and her husband, and then
the husband between his wife and the doctor. It is like the lion
in A Midsummer Night's Dream who exclaims: 'I am the lion,
and I am not the lion, but Snug.' So here each extreme is sometimes
the lion of opposition and sometimes the Snug of mediation. When
the one extreme cries: 'Now I am the mean', then the other two
may not touch it, but rather only swing at the one that was just
the extreme. As one can see, this is a society pugnacious at
heart but too afraid of bruises to ever really fight. The two
who want to fight arrange it so that the third who steps between
them will get the beating, but immediately one of the two appears
as the third, and because of all this caution they never arrive
at a decision. We find this system of mediation in effect also
where the very man who wishes to beat an opponent has at the same
time to protect him from a beating at the hands of other opponents,
and because of this double pursuit never manages to execute his
own business. It is remarkable that Hegel, who reduces this absurdity
of mediation to its abstract logical, and hence pure and irreducible,
expression, calls it at the same time the speculative mystery
of logic, the rational relationship, the rational syllogism.
Actual extremes cannot be mediated with each other precisely because
they are actual extremes. But neither are they in need of mediation,
because they are opposed in essence. They have nothing in common
with one another; they neither need nor complement one another.
The one does not carry in its womb the yearning, the need, the
anticipation of the other. (When Hegel treats universality and
singularity, the abstract moments of the syllogism, as actual
opposites, this is precisely the fundamental dualism of his logic.
Anything further regarding this belongs in the critique of Hegelian
logic.)

This appears to be in opposition to the principle: Les extrêmes
se touchent. The North and South Poles attract each other;
the female and male sexes also attract each other, and only through
the union of their extreme differences does man result.

On the other hand, each extreme is its other extreme. Abstract
spiritualism is abstract materialism; abstract materialism is
the abstract spiritualism of matter.

In regard to the former, both North and South Poles are poles;
their essence is identical. In the same way both female and male
gender are of one species, one nature, i.e., human nature. North
and South Poles are opposed determinations of one essence, the
variation of one essence brought to its highest degree of development.
They are the differentiated essence. They are what they are
only as differentiated determinations; that is, each is this
differentiated determination of the one same essence. Truly
in real extremes would be Pole and non-Pole, human and non-human
gender. Difference here is one of existence, whereas there [i.e.,
in the case of Pole and non-Pole, etc.,] difference is one of
essence, i.e., the difference between two essences.
in regard to the second [i.e. where each extreme is its other
extreme], the chief characteristic lies in the fact that a concept
(existence, etc.) is taken abstractly, and that it does not have
significance as independent but rather as an abstraction from
another, and only as this abstraction. Thus, for example, spirit
is only the abstraction from matter. It is evident that precisely
because this form is to be the content of the concept, its real
essence is rather the abstract opposite, i.e., the object from
which it abstracts taken in its abstraction — in this case, abstract
materialism.

Had the difference within the existence of one essence not been
confused, in part, with the abstraction given independence (an
abstraction not from another, of course, but from itself) and,
in part, with the actual opposition of mutually exclusive essences,
then a three-fold error could have been avoided, namely:

1. that because only the extreme is true, every abstraction and
one-sidedness takes itself to be the truth, whereby a principle
appears to be only an abstraction from another instead of a totality
in itself;

2. that the decisiveness of actual opposites, their formation
into extremes, which is nothing other than their self-knowledge
as well as their inflammation to the decision to fight, is thought
to be something which should be prevented if possible, in other
words, something harmful;

3. that their mediation is attempted. For no matter how firmly
both extremes appear, in their existence, to be actual and to
be extremes, it still lies only in the essence of the one to be
an extreme, and it does not have for the other the meaning of
true actuality.

The one infringes upon the other, but they do not occupy a common
position. For example, Christianity, or religion in general,
and philosophy are extremes. But in fact religion is not a true
opposite to philosophy, for philosophy comprehends religion in
its illusory actuality. Thus, for philosophy — in so far as it
seeks to be an actuality — religion is dissolved in itself. There
is no actual duality of essence. More on this later.

The question arises, why does Hegel need a new mediation on the
side of the Estates at all? Or does he share with [others]
'the popular, but not dangerous prejudice, which regards the Estates
principally from the point of view of their opposition to the
executive, as if that were their essential attitude'? (Remark
to § 302.)

The fact of the matter is simply this: On the one hand we have
seen that it is only in the legislature that civil society as
the element of the Estates, and the power of the crown as the
element of the executive have taken on the spirit of actual, immediately
practical opposition.

On the other hand, the legislature is the totality. In it we
find (1) the deputation of the sovereign principle,
i.e., the executive; (2) the deputation of civil
society, i.e., the Estates; but in addition, (3)
the one extreme as such, i.e., the sovereign principle; while
the other extreme, civil society, does not exist in it as such.
It is only because of this that the Estates become the extreme
to the sovereign principle, when civil society really should be.
As we have seen, only as Estates does civil society organise
itself into a political existence. The Estates are its political
existence, its transubstantiation into the political state. Again
as we have seen, only the legislature is, therefore, the actual
political state in its totality. Here, then, there is (1)
sovereign principle, (2) executive, (3)
civil society. The Estates are the civil society of the political
state, i.e., the legislature. The extreme to the sovereign, which
civil society was supposed to have been, is therefore the Estates.
(Because civil society is the non-actuality of political existence,
the political existence of civil society is its own dissolution,
its separation from itself.) Therefore it also constitutes an
opposition to t executive.

Hegel, therefore, again designates the Estates as the extreme
of empirical universality, which is actually civil society itself.
(Hence he unnecessarily allows the Estates, as an element in political
life, to proceed from the Corporations and different classes.
This procedure would make sense only if the distinct classes
as such were in fact the legislative classes, if, accordingly,
the distinction of civil society — i.e., its civil character -
were re vera the political character. We would then not
have a legislature of the state as a whole, but rather a legislature
of the various estates, Corporations, and classes over the state
as a whole. The estates [or classes] of civil society would receive
no political character, but would rather determine the political
state. They would make their particularity a power determining
the whole. They would be the power of the particular over the
universal. And we would not have one legislature, but several,
which would come to terms among themselves and with the executive.
However, Hegel has in mind the Estates in the modern sense, namely
the actualisation of state citizenship, or of the Bourgeois.
He does not want the actual universal, the political state, to
be determined by civil society, but rather civil society to be
determined by the state. Thus while he accepts the Estates in
their medieval form, he gives them the opposite significance,
namely, that of being determined by the political state. The
Estates as representatives of the Corporations, etc., would not
be empirical universality, but rather empirical particularity,
i.e., the particularity of the empirical!) The legislature, therefore,
needs mediation within itself, that is to say, a concealment of
the opposition. And this mediation must come from the Estates
because in the legislature the Estates lose their significance
of being the representation of civil society and become the primary
element, the very civil society of the legislature. The legislature
is the totality of the political state and, precisely because
of this, the contradiction of the political state brought forcibly
to appearance. Thus it is also its established dissolution.
Entirely different principles collide within it. To be sure, it
appears to be the opposition between the two elements, that of
the sovereign principle and that of the Estates, and so forth.
But in fact it is the antinomy of political state and civil society,
the self-contradiction of the abstract political state. The legislature
is the established revolt. (Hegel's chief mistake consists in
the fact that he conceives of the contradiction in appearance
as being a unity in essence, i.e., in the Idea; whereas it certainly
has something more profound in its essence, namely, an essential
contradiction. For example here, the contradiction in the legislature
itself is nothing other than the contradiction of the political
state, and thus also the self-contradiction of civil society.

Vulgar criticism falls into an opposite dogmatic error. Thus,
for example, it criticises the constitution, drawing attention
to the opposition Of the powers etc. It finds contradictions
everywhere. But criticism that struggles with its opposite remains
dogmatic criticism, as for example in earlier times, when the
dogma of the Blessed Trinity was set aside by appealing to the
contradiction between 1 and 3. True criticism, however, shows
the internal genesis of the Blessed Trinity in the human mind.
it describes the act of its birth. Thus, true philosophical criticism
of the present state constitution not only shows the contradictions
as existing, but clarifies them, grasps their essence and necessity.
It comprehends their own proper significance. However, this
comprehension does not, as Hegel thinks, consist in everywhere
recognising the determinations of the logical concept, but rather
in grasping the proper logic of the proper object.)

As Hegel expresses it, the position of the political Estates relative
to the sovereign implies the possibility, though no more, of harmonisation,
and the equally likely possibility of set hostility.

The possibility of hostility is implied everywhere different volitions
meet. Hegel himself says that the possibility of harmonisation
is the possibility of hostility. Thus, he must now construct
an element which is both the impossibility of hostility and the
actuality of harmonisation. For him, such an element would be
the freedom of decision and thought in face of the sovereign will
and the executive. Thus it would no longer be an element belonging
to the Estates as an element in political life. Rather, it would
be an element of the sovereign will and the executive, and would
stand in the same opposition to the actual Estates as does the
executive itself

This demand is already quite muted by the conclusion of the paragraph:

From the point of view of the crown, the executive already has
this character (see § 300). So, from the point of
view of the classes, one moment in them must be adapted to the
task of existing as in essence the moment of mediation.

The moment which is dispatched from the estates [or classes] must
have a character the reverse of that which the executive has from
the point of view of the sovereign, since the sovereign and the
estates are opposite extremes. Just as the sovereign democratises
himself in the executive, so this estate element must monarchise
itself in its deputation. Thus what Hegel wants is a moment of
sovereignty issuing from the estates. Just as the executive has
an estate-moment on behalf of the sovereign, so there should also
be a sovereign-moment on behalf of the estates.

The actuality of harmonisation and the impossibility of hostility
converts into the following demand: 'So, from the point of view
of the classes, one moment in them must be adapted to the task
of existing as in essence the moment of mediation.' Adapted to
the task! According to § 302 the Estates as a whole
have this task. It should not say 'task' but rather 'certainty'.
And what kind of task is this anyway which exists as in essence
the moment of mediation — being in 'essence' Buridan's ass?

The fact of the matter is simply this:

The Estates are supposed to be the mediation between the crown
and the executive on the one hand, and the crown and the people
on the other. But they are not this, but rather the organised
political opposition to civil society. The legislature in itself
is in need of mediation, and indeed a mediation coming from the
Estates, as has been shown. The presupposed moral harmonisation
of the two wills, the will of the state as sovereign will and
the will of the state as the will of civil society, does not suffice.
Indeed only the legislature is the organised, total political
state; yet, precisely in it appears, because it is in its highest
degree of development, the open contradiction of the political
state with itself. Thus, the appearance of a real identity of
the sovereign and Estate wills must be established. Either the
Estates must be established as the sovereign will or the sovereign
will established as the Estates. The Estates must establish themselves
as the actuality of a will which is not the will of the Estates.
The unity which is non-existent in essence (otherwise it would
have to prove itself by the Estates' efficacy and not by their
mode of existing) must at least be present in existence, or else
an existing instance of the legislature (of the Estates) has the
task of being the unity of what is not united. This moment of
the Estates, the Chamber of Peers, the Upper House, etc., is the
highest synthesis of the political state in the organisation just
considered. With that, however, Hegel does not achieve what he
wants, namely, the actuality of harmonisation and the impossibility
of set hostility; rather, the whole thing remains at the point
of the possibility of harmonisation. However, it is the established
illusion of the internal unity of the political state (of the
sovereign will and that of the Estates, and furthermore of the
principle of the political state and that of civil society), the
illusion of this unity as material principle, that is to say,
such that not only two opposed principles unite but that the unity
is that of one nature or existential ground. The Estates, as
this moment, are the romanticism of the political state, the dreams
of its substantiality or internal harmony. They are an allegorical
existence.

Whether this illusion is an effective illusion or a conscious
self-deception depends now on the actual status quo of
the relationship between the Estate and sovereign-elements. As
long as the Estates and the crown in fact harmonise, or get along
together, the illusion in its essential unity is an actual, and
thus effective illusion. But on the other hand, should the truth
of the illusion become manifest, then it becomes a conscious lie
and a ridicule.

§ 305. The principle of one of the classes of civil
society is in itself capable of adaptation to this political position.
The class in question is the one whose ethical life is natural,
whose basis is family life, and, so far as its livelihood is concerned,
the possession of land. Its particular members attain their position
by birth, just as the monarch does, and, in common with him, they
possess a will which rests on itself alone.

We have already demonstrated Hegel's inconsistencies: (1)
conceiving of the Estates in their modern abstraction from civil
society etc., after having them proceed from Corporations; (2)
determining them now once again according to the class distinction
of civil society, after having already determined the political
Estates as such to be the extreme of empirical universality.

To be consistent one would have to examine the political Estates
by themselves as a new element, and then construct out of them
the mediation which was demanded in § 304.

But now we see how Hegel reintroduces civil class distinction
and, at the same time, makes it appear that it is not the actuality
and particular nature of civil class distinction which determines
the highest political sphere, the legislature, but rather the
reverse, that civil class distinction declines to a pure matter
which the political sphere forms and constructs in accordance
with its need, a need which arises out of the political sphere
itself.

The principle of one of the classes of civil society is in itself
capable of adaptation to this political position. The class in
question is one whose ethical life is natural. (The agricultural
class.)

What, then, does this principle capability, or capability in principle
of the agricultural class consist in?

Its basis is family life, and, so far as its livelihood is concerned,
the possession of land. Its particular members attain their position
by birth, just as the monarch does, and, in common with him, they
possess a will which rests on itself alone.

The will which rests on itself alone is related to its livelihood,
i.e., the possession of land, to its position by birth which it
has in common with the monarch, and to family life, as its basis.

Livelihood as possession of land and a will which rests on itself
alone are two quite different things. One should rather say a
will which rests on ground and soil. One should rather speak
of a will resting on the disposition of the state, not of one
resting on itself but in the whole. The possession of land takes
the place of the disposition, or the possession of political spirit.

Furthermore, in regard to family life as basis, the social
ethical life of civil society appears to occupy a higher position
than this natural ethical life. Moreover, family life is the
natural ethical life of the other classes, of the civil as well
as the agricultural class of civil society. But the fact that
'family life' is, in the case of the agricultural class, not only
the principle of the family but also the basis of this class'
social existence in general, seems to disqualify it for the highest
political task; for this class will apply patriarchal laws to
a non-patriarchal sphere, and will think and act in terms of child
or father, master and servant, where the real questions are the
political state and political citizenship.

Regarding the monarch's position by birth, Hegel has not developed
a patriarchal but rather a modern constitutional king. His position
by birth consists in his being the bodily representative of the
state and in being born as king, or in the kingdom being his family
inheritance. But what does this have in common with family life
as the basis of the agricultural class; and what does natural
ethical-life have in common with position by birth as such? The
king has this in common with a horse, namely, just as the horse
is born a horse so the king is born a king.

Had Hegel made the class distinction, which he already accepted,
a political distinction, then the agricultural class as such would
already be an independent part of the Estates; and if it is
as such a moment of mediation with the principality, why would
the construction of a new mediation be necessary? And why separate
it off from the actual moment of the Estates, since this moment
achieves its abstract position vis-a-vis the crown only
because of this separation? After he has developed the political
Estates as a specific element, as a transubstantiation of the
unofficial class into state citizenship, and precisely because
of this has found the mediation to be a necessity, by what right
does Hegel dissolve this organism once more into the distinction
of the unofficial class, and thus into the unofficial class, and
then derive from it the political state's mediation with itself?

In any case, what an anomaly, that the highest synthesis of the
political state is nothing but the synthesis of landed property
and family life!

In a word:

If civil classes as such are political classes, then the mediation
is not needed; and if this mediation is needed, then the civil
class is not political, and thus also not this mediation. The
member of the agricultural class is not as such, but as state
citizen, a part of the political Estates; while in the opposite
case (i.e., where he, as member of the agricultural class, is
state citizen, or as state citizen is member of this class), his
state citizenship is membership in the agricultural class; and
then he is not, as member of this class, a state citizen, but
is as state citizen a member of this class!

Here, then, we find one of Hegel's inconsistencies within his
own way of viewing things; and such an inconsistency is an accommodation.
The political Estates in the modern sense, which is the sense
developed by Hegel, constitute the frilly established separation
of civil society from its unofficial class and its distinctions.
How can Hegel make the unofficial class the solution of the antinomies
which the legislature has within itself? Hegel wants the medieval
system of Estates, but in the modern sense of the legislature;
and he wants the modern legislature, but within the framework
of the medieval system of Estates! This is syncretism at its
worst.

The beginning of § 304 reads:

The Estates, as an element in political life, still retail). in
their own function the class distinctions already present in
the lower spheres of civil life.

But in their own function, the Estates, as an element in political
life, retain this distinction only by annulling it, negating it
within themselves, abstracting themselves from it.

Should the agricultural class — or, as we will hear later, the
empowered agricultural class, aristocratic landed property — become
as such, and as described, the mediation of the total political
state, i.e., of the legislature within itself, then it is certainly
the mediation of the political Estates with the crown, in the
sense of being the dissolution of the political Estates as an
actual political clement. Not the agricultural class, but class,
the unofficial class, the analysis (reduction) of the political
Estates into the unofficial class, constitutes here the re-established
unity of the political state with itself. (The mediation here
is not the agricultural class as such, but rather its separation
from the political Estates in its quality as civil unofficial
class; that is, its unofficial class [reality] gives it a separate
position within the political Estates, whereupon the other section
of the political Estates is also given the position of a particular
unofficial class, and, therefore, it ceases to represent the state
citizenship of civil society.) Here then, the political state
no longer exists as two opposed wills; rather, on the one side
stands the political state (the executive and the sovereign),
and on the other side stands civil society in its distinction
from the political state (the various classes). With that, then,
the political state as a totality is abolished.

The other sense of the duplication of the political Estates within
themselves as a mediation with the crown is, in general, this:
the internal separation of the political Estates, their own inner
opposition, is a re-established unity with the crown. The fundamental
dualism between the crown and the Estates as an element in the
legislature is neutralised by the dualism within the Estates themselves.
With Hegel, however, this neutralisation is effected by the political
Estates separating themselves from their political element.

We will return later to the subject of possession of land as livelihood,
which is supposed to accord with sovereignty of Will, i.e., the
sovereignty of the crown, and to family life as the basis of the
agricultural class, which is supposed to accord with the position
by birth of the crown. What is developed here in § 305
is the principle of the agricultural class which is in itself
capable of adaptation to this political position.

§ 306 deals with the adaption to political position
and significance; it reduces to the following: 'Their wealth becomes
inalienable, entailed, and burdened by primogeniture. Thus, primogeniture
would be the adaption of the agricultural class to politics.

Primogeniture is grounded, so it says in the Addition,
on the fact that the state should be able to reckon not
on the bare possibility of political inclinations, but on something
necessary. Now an inclination for politics is of course not bound
up with wealth, but there is a relatively necessary connection
between the two, because a man with independent means is not hemmed
in by external circumstances and so there is nothing to prevent
him from entering politics and working for the state.

First sentence: The state is not content with
the bare possibility of political inclinations, but should be
able to reckon on something necessary.

Second sentence: An inclination for politics
is of course not bound up with wealth; that is, the inclination
for politics in those of wealth is a bare possibility.

Third sentence: But there is a relatively necessary
connection, namely, a man with independent means etc. finds nothing
to prevent him from working for the state; that is, the means
provide the possibility of political inclinations. But according
to the first sentence, this possibility precisely does not suffice.

In addition, Hegel has failed to show that possession of land
is the sole independent means.

The adaption of its means to independence is the adaption of the
agricultural class to political position and significance. In
other words, independent means is its political position and significance.

This independence is further developed as follows:

Its wealth is independent of the state's capital. 'State's capital'
here apparently means the government treasury. In this respect
the universal class, as essentially dependent on the state, stands
in opposition.

As it says in the Preface:

Apart from anything else philosophy with us is not, as it was
with the Greeks for instance, pursued in private like an art,
but has an existence in the open, in contact with the public,
and especially, or even only, in the service of the state.

Thus, philosophy is also essentially dependent upon the government
treasury.

Its ['the agricultural class'] wealth is independent of the uncertainty
of business, the quest for profit, and any sort of fluctuation
in possessions. From this aspect it is opposed by the business
class as the one which is dependent on needs and concentrated
on their satisfaction.

This wealth is independent of favour, whether from the executive
or the mob.

Finally, it is even fortified against its own wilfulness, because
those members of this class who are called to political life are
not entitled, as other citizens are, either to dispose of their
entire property at will, or to the assurance that it will pass
to their children, whom they love equally, in similarly equal
divisions.

Here the oppositions have taken on an entirely new and materialistic
form such as we would hardly expect to find in the heaven of the
political state.

In sharpest terms, the opposition, as Hegel develops it, is the
opposition of private property and wealth.

The possession of land is private property kat exohin true
private property. Its exact private nature is prominent (1)
as independence from state capital, from favour from the executive,
from property existing as universal property of the political
state, a particular wealth which, alongside of other wealth, is
in accordance with the construction of the political state; (2)
as independence from the need of society or the social wealth,
from favour from the mob. (Equally significant is the fact that
a share in state capital is understood as favour from the executive just
as a share in the social wealth is understood as favour from the
mob.) Neither the wealth of the universal class nor that of the
business class is true private property, because such wealth is
occasioned, in the former case directly, in the latter case indirectly,
by the connection with the universal wealth, or property as social
property; both are a participation in it, and therefore both are
mediated through favour, that is, through the contingency of will.
In opposition to that stands the possession of land as sovereign
private property, which has not yet acquired the form of wealth,
i.e., property established by the social will.

Thus, at its highest point the political constitution is the constitution
of private property. The highest political inclination is the
inclination of private property. Primogeniture is merely the external
appearance of the internal nature of the possession of land. Because it
is inalienable, its social nerves have been severed and- its isolation
from civil society is secured. By not passing on to the children
whom they love equally, it is independent even of the smallest
society, the natural society, the family. By having withdrawn
from the volition and laws of the family it thus safeguards its
rough nature of private property against the transition into family
wealth.

In § 305, Hegel declared the class of landed property
to be capable of adaption to the political position because family
life would be its basis. But he himself has declared love to
be the basis, the principle, the spirit of family life. The class
whose basis is family life thus lacks the basis of family life,
i.e., love, as the actual and thus effective and determining principle.
It is spiritless family life, the illusion of family life. In
its highest form of development, the principle of private property
contradicts the principle of the family. Family life in civil
society becomes family life, the life of love, only in opposition
to the class of natural ethical life, [which is, according to
Hegel] the class of family life. This latter is, rather, the
barbarism of private property against family life.

This, then, would be the sovereign splendour of private property,
of possession of land, about which so many sentimentalities have
recently been uttered and on behalf of which so many multi-colored
crocodile tears have been shed.
It does not help Hegel to say that primogeniture would be merely
a requirement of politics and would have to be understood in its
political position and significance. Neither does it help him
to say: 'The security and stability of the agricultural class
may be still further increased by the institution of primogeniture,
though this institution is desirable only from the point of view
of politics, since it entails a sacrifice for the political end
of giving the eldest son a life of independence. There is a certain
decency of mind in Hegel. He does not want primogeniture in and
for itself, but only in reference to something else, not as something
self-determined but as something determined by another, not as
an end but as a means for justifying and constructing an end.
In fact, primogeniture is a consequence of the exact possession
of land; it is petrified private property, private property (quand
même) in the highest independence and sharpness
of its development. What Hegel presents as the end, the determining
factor, the prima causa, of primogeniture is, instead,
an effect, a consequence of the power of abstract private property
over the political state, while Hegel presents primogeniture as
the power of the political state over private property. He makes
the cause the effect and the effect the cause, the determining
that which has been determined and that which has been determined
the determining.

What then is the content of political adaption, of the political
end: what is the end of this end, what is its substance? Primogeniture,
the superlative of private property, sovereign private property.
What kind of power does the political state exercise over private
property in primogeniture? Does the state isolate it from the
family and society and bring it to its abstract autonomy? What
then is the power of the political state over private property?
Private property's own power, its essence brought to existence.
What remains to the political state in opposition to this essence?
The illusion that it determines when it is rather determined.
indeed, it breaks the will of the family and of society, but merely
in order to give existence to the will of private property lacking
family and society, and to acknowledge this existence as the highest
existence of the political state, as the highest ethical existence.

Let us consider the various elements as they relate here in the
legislature to the total state, the state having achieved actuality,
consistency, and consciousness, i.e., to the actual political
state in connection with the ideal or what ought be, with the
logical character and form of these elements.

(Primogeniture is not, as Hegel says, a chain on the freedom of
private rights; it is rather the freedom of private rights which
has freed itself from all social and ethical chains.) (The highest
political construction is the construction of abstract private
property.)

Before we make this comparison we should first consider more closely
one statement of the paragraph, namely, that because of primogeniture
the wealth of the agricultural class, possession of land, private
property, is even fortified against its own wilfulness, because
those members of this class who are called to political life are
not entitled, as other citizens are, to dispose of their entire
property at will'.

We have already indicated how the social nerves of private property
are severed because of the inalienability of landed property.
Private property (landed property) is fortified against the owner's
own wilfulness by having the sphere of his wilfulness suddenly
changed from a universal human sphere into the specific wilfulness
of private property. In other words, private property has become
the subject of the will, and the will is merely the predicate
of private property. Private property is no longer a determined
object of wilfulness, but rather wilfulness is the determined
predicate of private property. Yet let us compare this with what
Hegel himself says about the sphere of private rights:

§ 65. The reason I can alienate my property is that
it is mine only in so far as I put my will into it ... provided
always that the thing in question is a thing external by nature.

§ 66. Therefore those goods, or rather substantive
characteristics, which constitute my own private personality and
the universal essence of my self-consciousness are inalienable
and my right to them is imprescriptible. Such characteristics
are my personality as such, my universal freedom of will, my ethical
life, my religion.

Therefore in primogeniture landed property, exact private property,
becomes an inalienable good, thus a substantive characteristic
which constitutes the very private personality and universal essence
of self-consciousness of the class of noble entailed estates,
its personality as such, its universal freedom of will, its ethical
life, its religion. Thus it is also consistent to say that where
private property, landed property, is inalienable, universal freedom
of will (to which also belongs free disposition of something alienable,
like landed property) and ethical life (to which also belongs
love as the actual spirit of the family, the spirit which is also
identified with the actual law of the family) are alienable. in
general then, the inalienability of private property is the alienability
of universal freedom of will and ethical life. Here it is no
longer the case that property is in so far as I put my will into
it, but rather my will is in so far as it is in property. Here
my will does not own but is owned. This is precisely the romantic
itch of the nobility of primogeniture, namely, that here private
property, and thus private wilfulness in its most abstract form
- the totally ignorant, unethical, crude will — appears to be
the highest synthesis of the political state, the highest renunciation
of wilfulness, the hardest and most self-sacrificing struggle
with human weakness; for what appears here to be human weakness
is actually the humanising, the humanisation of private property.

Primogeniture is private property which has become a religion
for itself, which has become absorbed in itself, enchanted with
its autonomy and nobility. Just as primogeniture is derived from
direct alienation, so too it is derived from the contract. Hegel
presents the transition from property to contract in the following
manner:

§ 71. Existence as determinate being is in essence
being for another;... One aspect of property is that it is an
existent as an external thing, and in this respect property exists
for other external things and is connected with their necessity
and contingency. But it is also an existent as an embodiment
of will, and from this point of view the 'other' for which it
exists can only be the will of another person. This relation
of will to will is the true and proper ground in which freedom
is existent. — The sphere of contract is made up of this mediation
whereby I hold property not merely by means of a thing and my
subjective will but by means of another person's will as well
and so hold it in virtue of my participation in a common will.

(In primogeniture it has been made a state law to hold property
not in one common will, but merely by means of a thing and my
subjective will.) While Hegel here perceives in private rights
the alienability and dependence of private property on a common
will as its true idealism, in state rights, on the other hand,
he praises the imaginary nobility of independent property as opposed
to the uncertainty of business, the quest for profit, any sort
of fluctuation in possessions, and dependence on the state's capital.
What kind of state is this that cannot even tolerate the idealism
of private rights? And what kind of philosophy of right is this
in which the independence of private property has diverse meanings
in the spheres of private and state rights?

Over against the crude stupidity of independent private property,
the uncertainty of business is elegiac, the quest for profit solemn
(dramatic), fluctuation in possessions a serious fatum (tragic),
dependence on the state's capital ethical. In short, in all of
these qualities the human heart pulses throughout the property,
which is the dependence of man on man. No matter how it may be
constituted it is human toward the slave who believes himself
to be free, because the sphere that limits him is not society
but the soil. The freedom of this will is its emptiness of content
other than that of private property.

To define monstrosities like primogeniture as a determination
of private property by the state is absolutely unavoidable if
one interprets an old world view in terms of a new one, if one
attributes to a thing, as in this case to private property, a
double meaning, one in the court of abstract right and an opposed
one in the heaven of the political state.

Now we come to the comparison mentioned earlier. § 257
says:

The state is the actuality of the ethical Idea. It is ethical
mind qua the substantial will manifest and revealed to
itself. The state exists immediately in custom, mediately
in individual self-consciousness ... while self-consciousness
in virtue of its sentiment towards the state finds in the state,
as its essence and the end and product of its activity, its substantive
freedom.

§ 268 says:

The political sentiment, patriotism pure and simple, is assured
conviction with truth as its basis... and a volition which has
become habitual. In this sense it is simply a product of the
institutions subsisting in the state, since rationality is actually
present in the state, while action in conformity with these institutions
gives rationality its practical proof. This sentiment is, in
general, trust (which may pass over into a greater or lesser degree
of educated insight), or the consciousness that my interest, both
substantive and particular, is contained and preserved in another's
(i.e., in the state's) interest and end, i.e., in the other's
relation to me as an individual. In this way, this very other
is immediately not another in my eyes, and in being conscious
of this fact I am free.

Here, the actuality of the ethical Idea appears as the religion
of private property (because in primogeniture private property
relates to itself in a religious manner, so it happens that in
our modern times religion in general has become a quality inherent
in landed property, and that all of the writings on the nobility
of primogeniture are full of religious unction. Religion is the
highest thought form of this brutality.) The substantial will
manifest and revealed to itself changes into a will dark and broken
on the soil, a will enraptured precisely with the impenetrability
of the element to which it is attached. The assured conviction
with truth as its basis, which is political sentiment, is the
conviction standing on 'its own ground' (in the literal sense).
The political volition which has become habitual no longer remains
simply a product [of the institutions subsisting in the state],
but rather an institution subsisting outside the state. The political
sentiment is no longer trust but rather the reliance, the consciousness
that my interest, both substantive and particular, is independent
of another's (i.e., the state's) interest and end, i.e., in the
other's relation to me as an individual. This is the consciousness
of my freedom from the state.

The maintenance of the state's universal interest etc. was (§ 289) the task of the
executive. In it resided the consciousness of right and the developed intelligence of
the mass of the people (§ 297). It actually makes the Estates superfluous, for even
without the Estates they [i.e., the highest civil servants] are able to do what is best,
just as they also continually have to do while the Estates are in session (Remark to §
301). The universal class, or, more precisely, the class of civil servants, must, purely
in virtue of its character as universal, have the universal as the end of its essential
activity [§ 303].

And how does the universal class, the executive, appear now? As essentially dependent
upon the state, as wealth dependent upon the favour of the executive. The very same
transformation has occurred within civil society, which earlier achieved its ethical
life in the Corporation. It is a wealth dependent upon the uncertainty of business etc.,
upon the favour of the mob.

What then is the quality which ostensibly specifies the owners of entailed estates? And
what, in any case, constitutes the ethical quality of an inalienable wealth?
Incorruptibility. Incorruptibility appears to be the highest political virtue, an
abstract virtue. Yet, incorruptibility in the state as constructed by Hegel is something
so uncommon that it has to be built up into a particular political power; which
precisely proves, that incorruptibility is not the spirit of the political state, not
the rule but the exception, and is constructed as such. The owners of entailed estates
are corrupted by their independent property in order that they be preserved from
corruption. While according to the idea dependence upon the state and the feeling of
this dependence is supposed to be the highest political freedom, here the independent
private person is constructed; because political freedom is the private person's feeling
of being an abstract, dependent person, whereas he feels and should feel independent
only as a citizen. Its capital is independent alike of the state's capital, the
uncertainty of business, etc. In opposition to it stands the business class, which is
dependent on needs and concentrated on their satisfaction, and the civil servant class,
which is essentially dependent upon the state. Here, therefore, independence from the
state and civil society and this actualised abstraction of both, which in reality is the
crudest dependence on the soil, forms in the legislature the mediation and the unity of
both. Independent private wealth, i.e., abstract private wealth and the corresponding
private person, are the highest political construction of the state. Political
independence is constructed as independent private property and the person of this
independent private property. We shall see in the following paragraph what the situation
is re vera regarding this independence and incorruptibility, and the political sentiment
arising from them.

The fact that primogeniture is inherited, or entailed wealth
speaks for itself. More about this later. The fact that it
accrues to the first-born is, as Hegel notes in the Addition,
purely historical.

§ 307. The right of this section of the agricultural
class is thus based in a way on the natural principle of the family.
But this principle is at the same time reversed owing to hard
sacrifices made for political ends, and thereby the activity of
this class is essentially directed to those ends. As a consequence
of this, this class is summoned and entitled to its political
vocation by birth without the hazards of election.

Hegel has failed to develop the way in which the right of this
agricultural class is based on the natural principle of the family,
unless by this he understands that landed property exists as entailed
or inherited wealth. That, however, establishes no right of this
class in the political sense, but only the birthright of the owners
of entailed estates to landed property. 'This', i.e., the natural
principle of the family, is 'at the same time reversed owing to
hard sacrifices made for political ends'. We have certainly seen
how the natural principle of the family is reversed; this, however,
is no hard sacrifice made for political ends, but rather the actualised
abstraction of private property. But with this reversal of the
natural principle of the family the political ends are likewise
reversed, 'thereby (?) the activity of this class is essentially
directed to those ends' — because private property received independence?
- and 'as a consequence of this, this class is summoned and entitled
to its political vocation by birth without the hazards of election'.

Here then participation in the legislature is an innate human
right. Here we have born legislators, i.e., born mediation of
the political state with itself. innate human rights have been
mocked, especially on behalf of the owners of entailed estates.
Isn't it even more humorous that one particular group of men
is entrusted with the right to the highest honour, the legislature?
In Hegel's treatment of the summons to the legislator, to the
representative of state citizenship, there is nothing more ridiculous
than his opposing summons by birth to summons by the hazards of
election. As if election, the conscious product of civil trust,
would not stand in a completely different necessary connection
with the political ends than does the physical accident of birth.
Hegel everywhere falls from his political spiritualism into the
crassest materialism. At the summit of the political state it
is always birth that makes determinate individuals into embodiments
of the highest political tasks. The highest political activities
coincide with individuals by reason of birth, Just like an animal's
position, character, way of life, etc. are immediately inborn.
in its highest functions the state acquires an animal actuality.
Nature takes revenge on Hegel for the disdain he showed it.
If matter is supposed to constitute no longer anything for itself
over against the human will, the human will no longer retains
anything for itself except the matter.

The false identity, the fragmentary and sporadic identity of nature
and spirit, body and soul, appears as incarnation. Since birth
gives man only an individual existence and establishes him merely
as a natural individual, and since the functions of the state
- as for instance the legislature, etc. are social products, i.e.,
births of society and not procreations of the natural individual,
then what is striking and miraculous is precisely the immediate
identity, the sudden coincidence, of the individual's birth with
the individual as individuation of a certain social position,
function, etc. — In this system, nature immediately creates
kings, peers, etc. Just as it creates eyes and noses. What is
striking is to see as immediate product of the physical species
what is only the product of the self-conscious species. I am
man by birth, without the agreement of society; yet only through
universal agreement does this determinate birth become peer or
king. Only the agreement makes the birth of this man the birth
of a king. It is therefore the agreement, not birth, that makes
the king. If birth, in distinction from other determinations,
immediately endows man with a position, then his body makes him
this determined social functionary. His body is his social right.
In this system, the physical dignity of man, or the dignity of
the human body (with further elaboration, meaning: the dignity
of the physical natural element of the state), appears in such
a form that determinate dignities, specifically the highest social
dignities, are the dignities of certain bodies which are determined
and predestined by birth to be such. This is, of course, why
we find in the aristocracy such pride in blood and descent, in
short, in the life history of their body. It is this zoological
point of view which has its corresponding science in heraldry.
The secret of aristocracy is zoology.

Two moments in hereditary primogeniture are to be stressed:

1. That which is permanent is entailed wealth, landed property.
This is the preserving moment in the relation — the substance.
The master of the entailed estate, the owner, is really a mere
accident. Landed property anthropomorphises itself in the various
generations. Landed property always inherits, as it were, the
first born of the house as an attribute linked to it. Every first
born in the line of land owners is the inheritance, the property,
of the inalienable landed property, which is the predestined substance
of his will and activity. The subject is the thing and the predicate
is the man. The will becomes the property of the property.

2. The political quality of the owner of the entailed estate
is the political quality of his inherited wealth, a political
quality inhering in his inherited wealth. Here, therefore, the
political quality appears also as the property of landed property,
as a quality which is ascribed directly to the bare physical earth
(nature).

Regarding the first point, it follows that the owner of the entailed
estate is the serf of the landed property, and that in the serfs
who are subordinated to him there appears only the practical consequence
of the theoretical relationship with landed property in which
he himself stands. The depth of German subjectivity appears everywhere
as the crudity of a mindless objectivity.

Here we must analyse (1) the relation between
private property and inheritance, (2) the relation
between private property, inheritance, and, thereby, the privilege
of certain generations to participate in political sovereignty,
(3) the actual historical relation, or the Germanic
relation.

We have seen that primogeniture is the abstraction of independent
private property. A second consequence follows from this. Independence,
autonomy, in the political state whose construction we have followed
so far, is private property, which at its peak appears as inalienable
landed property. Political independence thus flows not ex
proprio sinu of the political state; it is not a gift of the
political state to its members, nor is it the animating spirit
[of the political state]. Rather, the members of the political
state receive their independence from a being which is not the
being of the political state, from a being of abstract private
right, namely, from abstract private property. Political independence
is an accident of private property and not the substance of the
political state. The political state — and within it the legislature,
as we have seen — is the unveiled mystery of the true value and
essence of the moments of the state. The significance that private
property has in the political state is its essential, its true
significance; the significance that class distinction has in the
political state is the essential significance of class distinction.
In the same way, the essence of the sovereign and of the executive
come to appearance in the legislature. It is here, in the sphere
of the political state, that the individual moments of the state
relate to themselves as to the being of the species, the 'species-being';
because the political state is the sphere of their universal character,
i.e., their religious sphere. The political state is the mirror
of truth for the various moments of the concrete state.

Thus, if independent private property in the political state,
in the legislature, has the significance of political independence,
then it is the political independence of the state. Independent
private property, or actual private property is then not only
the support of the constitution but the constitution itself.
And isn't the support of the constitution nothing other than the
constitution of constitutions, the primary, the actual constitution?

Hegel himself was surprised about the immanent development of science, the derivation of
its entire content from the concept in its simplicity (Remark to § 279), when he was
constructing the hereditary monarch, and made the following remark:

Hence it is the basic moment of personality, abstract at the start in immediate rights,
which has matured itself through its various forms of subjectivity, and now — at the
stage of absolute rights, of the state, of the completely concrete objectivity of the
will — has become the personality of the state, its certainty of itself.

That is, in the political state it comes to appearance that abstract
personality is the highest political personality, the political
basis of the entire state. Likewise, in primogeniture, the right
of this abstract personality, its objectivity, abstract private
property, comes into existence as the highest objectivity of the
state, i.e., as its highest right.

The state is hereditary monarch; abstract personality means nothing
other than that the personality of the state is abstract, or that
it is the state of abstract personality, just as the Romans developed
the rights of the monarch purely within the norms of private rights,
or private rights as the highest norm of state, or political rights.

The Romans are the rationalists, the Germans the mystics of sovereign
private property.

Hegel calls private rights the rights of abstract personality,
or abstract rights. And indeed they have to be developed as the
abstraction, and thus the illusory rights, of abstract personality,
just as the moral doctrine developed by Hegel is the illusory
existence of abstract subjectivity. Hegel develops private rights
and morals as such abstractions, from which it does not follow,
for him, that the state or ethical life of which they are the
presuppositions can be nothing but the society (the social life)
of these illusions; rather, he concludes that they are subalternate
moments of this ethical life. But what are private rights except
the rights of these subjects of the state, and what is morality
except their morality? In other words, the person of private
rights and the subject of morals are the person and the subject
of the state. Hegel has been widely criticised for his development
of morality. He has done nothing but develop the morality of
the modern state and modern private rights. A more complete separation
of morality from the state, its fuller emancipation, was desired.
What did that prove except that the separation of the present-day
state from morals is moral, that morals are non-political and
that the state is not moral? It is rather a great, though from
one aspect (namely, from the aspect that Hegel declares the state,
whose presupposition is such a morality, to be the realistic idea
of ethical life) an unconscious service of Hegel to have assigned
to modern morality its true position.

In the constitution, wherein primogeniture is a guarantee, private
property is the guarantee of the political constitution. In primogeniture,
it appears that this guarantee is a particular kind of private
property. Primogeniture is merely a particular existence of the
universal relationship of private property and the political state.
Primogeniture is the political sense of private property, private
property in its political significance, that is to say, in its
universal significance. Thus the constitution here is the constitution
of private property.

With the Germanic peoples, where we encounter primogeniture in
its classical formation, we also find the constitution of private
property. Private property is a universal category, the universal
bond of the state. Even the universal functions appear as the
private property sometimes of a Corporation, sometimes of an estate.

Trade and business in their particular nuances were the private
property of particular Corporations. Royal offices, jurisdiction,
etc., were the private property of particular estates. The various
provinces were the private property of individual princes etc.
Service for the realm was the private property of the ruler.
The spirit was the private property of the spiritual authority.'
One's loyal activity was the private property of another, just
as one's right was, once again, a particular private property.
Sovereignty, here nationality, was the private property of the
Emperor.

It has often been said that in the Middle Ages every form of right,
of freedom, of social existence, appears as a privilege, an exception
from the rule. The empirical fact that all these privileges appear
in the form of private property could thus not have been overlooked.
What is the universal reason for this coincidence? Private property
is the species-existence of privilege, of right as an exception.

Where the sovereigns, as in France for instance, attacked the
independence of private property, they directed their attention
more to the property of the Corporations than to that of individuals.
But in attacking the private property of the Corporations they
attacked private property as Corporations, i.e., as the social
bond.

In the feudal reign it almost appears that the power of the crown
is the power of private property, and that the mystery of the
nature of the universal power, the power of all spheres of the
state, is deposited in the sovereign.

(The powerfulness of the state is expressed in the sovereign as
the representative of the power of the state. The constitutional
sovereign, therefore, expresses the idea of the constitutional
state in its sharpest abstraction. On the one hand he is the
idea of the state, the sanctified majesty of the state, and precisely
as this person. At the same time he is a pure imagination;
as person and as sovereign he has neither actual power nor actual
function. Here, the separation of the political and the actual,
the formal and the material, the universal and the particular
person, Of man and social man, is expressed in its highest contradiction.)

Private property is a child of Roman intellect and Germanic heart. At this point it will
be valuable to undertake a comparison of these two extreme developments. This will help
solve the political problem as discussed.

The Romans were the first to have formulated the right of private
property, i.e., the abstract right, the private right, the right
of the abstract person. The Roman conception of private right
is private right in its classical formulation. Yet nowhere with
the Romans do we find that the right of private property was mystified
as in the case of the Germans. Nowhere does it become right of
the state.

The right of private property is jus utendi et abutendi, the
right of wilfulness in disposing of a thing. The main interest
of the Romans lay in developing the relationships, and in determining
which ones resulted in abstract relations of private property.
The actual basis of private property, the property, is a factum,
an unexplainable factum, and no right. Only through
legal determinations, which the society attributes to the factual
property, does it receive the quality of rightful property, private
property.

Regarding the connection between the political constitution and
private property with the Romans, it appears that:

1. Man (as slave), as is generally the case with ancient peoples,
is the object of private property.

This is nothing specific.

2. Conquered countries are treated as private property, jus
utendi et abutendi being asserted in their case.

3. In their history itself, there appears the struggle between
the poor and the rich (Patricians and Plebians) etc.

In other respects, private property as a whole, as with the ancient
classical peoples in general, is asserted to be public property,
either as the republic's expenditure — as in good times — or as
luxurious and universal benefaction (baths, etc.) towards the
mob.

Slavery finds its explanation in the rights of war, the rights
of occupation: men are slaves precisely because their political
existence is destroyed.

We especially stress two relationships in distinction from the
Germans.

1. The imperial power was not the power of private property,
but rather the sovereignty of the empirical will as such, which
was far from regarding private property as the bond between itself
and its subjects; on the contrary, it dealt with private property
as it did with all other social goods. The imperial power, therefore,
was nothing other than factually hereditary. The highest formation
of the right of private property, of private right, indeed belongs
to the imperial epoch; however, it is a consequence of the political
dissolution rather than the political dissolution being a consequence
of private property. Furthermore, when private right achieved
full development in Rome, state right was abolished, [or] was
in the process of its dissolution, while in Germany the opposite
was the case.

2. In Rome, state honours are never hereditary; that is to say,
private property is not the dominant category of the state.

3. Contrary to German primogeniture etc., in Rome the wilfulness
of the testator appears to be the derivative of private property.
In this latter antithesis lies the entire difference between
the German and the Roman development of private property.

(In primogeniture it appears that private property is the relationship
to the function of the state which is such that the existence
of the state is something inhering in, or is an accident of, direct
private property, i.e., landed property. At its highest levels
the state appears as private property, whereas private property
should appear as property of the state. Instead of making private
property a civil quality, Hegel makes political citizenship, existence,
and sentiment a quality of private property.)

§ 308. The second section of the Estates comprises
the fluctuating element in civil society. This element can enter
politics only through its deputies; the multiplicity of its members
is an external reason for this, but the essential reason is the
specific character of this element and its activity. Since these
deputies are the deputies of civil society, it follows as a direct
consequence that their appointment is made by the society as a
society. That is to say, in making the appointment, society is not
dispersed into atomic units, collected to perform only a single
and temporary act, and kept together for a moment and no longer.
On the contrary, it makes the appointment as a society, articulated
into associations, communities, and Corporations, which although
constituted already for other purposes, acquire in this way a connection
with politics. The existence of the Estates and their assembly
finds a constitutional guarantee of its own in the fact that this
class is entitled to send deputies at the summons of the crown,
while members of the former class are entitled to present themselves
in person in the Estates (see § 307).

Here we find a new distinction within civil society and the Estates:
the distinction between a fluctuating element and an immutable
element (landed property). This distinction has also been presented
as that of space and time, conservative and progressive, etc.
On this, see Hegel's previous paragraphs. Incidentally, by means
of the Corporations, associations, etc., Hegel has made the fluctuating
element of society also a stable element.

The second distinction consists in the fact that the first element
of the Estates as developed above, the owners of entailed estates,
are, as such, legislators; that legislative power is an attribute
of their empirical, personal existence; that they act not as deputies
but as themselves; whereas in the second element of the Estates
election and selection of deputies take place.

Hegel gives two reasons why this fluctuating element of civil
society can enter the political state, or legislature, only through
deputies. Hegel himself calls the first reason - namely, the
multiplicity of its members - external, thereby relieving us of the
need of giving the same reply.

But the essential reason, he says, is the specific character of
this element and its activity. Political occupation and activity
are alien to its specific character and activity.

Hegel replays his old song about these Estates being deputies
of civil society. Civil society must make the appointments as
a society. Rather, civil society must do this as what it is not,
because it is unpolitical society, and is supposed to perform
here a political act as something essential to it and arising
from it. With that it is 'dispersed into atomic units', and collected
to perform only a single and temporary act, and kept together
for a moment and no longer'. First of all, its political act
is a single and temporary act, and can therefore only appear as
such in being carried out. It is an ecstasy, an act of political
society which causes a stir, and must also appear as such. Secondly,
Hegel was not disturbed by the fact - indeed, he argued its necessity
- that civil society materially (merely as a second society deputised
by it) separates itself from its civil actuality and establishes
itself as what it is not. How can he now formally dispose of
this?

He thinks that society's associations etc., which are constituted
already for other purposes, acquire a connection with politics
because society in its Corporations etc. appoints the deputies.
But either they acquire a significance which is not their significance,
or their connection as such is political, in which case it does
not just 'acquire' the political tinge, as developed above, but
rather in it politics acquires its connection. By designating
only this part of the Estates as that of the deputy, Hegel has
unwittingly stated the nature of the two Chambers (at the point
where they actually have the relationship to one another he indicated).
The Chamber of Deputies and the Chamber of Peers (or whatever
they be called) are not, in the present case, different instances
of the same principle) but derive from two essentially different
principles and social positions. Here the Chamber of Deputies
is the political constitution of civil society in the modern sense,
while the Chamber of Peers is the political constitution of civil
society in the sense proper to the Estates. The Chamber of Peers
and the Chamber of Deputies are opposed here as the Estate- and
the political-representation of civil society. The one is the
existing estate principle of civil society, the other is the actualisation
of civil society's abstract political existence. It is obvious,
therefore, that the latter cannot come into existence again as
the representation of the estates, Corporations, etc., for it
simply does not represent civil society's existence qua estate,
but rather its political existence. It is further obvious, then,
that only the estate element of civil society, i.e., sovereign
landed property or the hereditary nobility, is seated in the former
Chamber, for it is not one estate among others. Rather,
the estate principle of civil society as an actually social, and
thus political, principle now exists only in that one element.
It is the estate. Civil society, then, has in the Chamber
of the estates the representative of its medieval existence, and
in the Chamber of Deputies the representative of its political
(modern) existence. The only advance beyond the Middle Ages consists
in the fact that estate politics has been reduced to a particular
political existence alongside the politics of citizenship. The
empirical political existence Hegel has in mind (England) has,
therefore, a meaning entirely other than the one he imputes to
it.

The French Constitution also constitutes an advance in this regard.
To be sure, it has reduced the Chamber of Peers to a pure nullity;
but within the principle of constitutional kingship as Hegel has
pretended to develop it, this Chamber can by its very nature be
merely an empty vanity, the fiction of a harmony between the sovereign
and civil society, or of the legislature or political state with
itself, and a fiction, moreover, which has the form of a particular
and thereby once more opposed existence.

The French have allowed the peers to retain life tenure in order
to express their independence from both the regime and the people.
But they did away with the medieval expression - hereditariness.
Their advance consists in their no longer allowing the Chamber
of Peers to proceed from actual civil society, but in creating
it in abstraction from civil society. They have the choice of
peers proceed from the existing political state, from the sovereign,
without binding him to any other civil quality. In this constitution
the honour of being a peer actually constitutes a class in civil
society which is purely political, created from the standpoint
of the abstraction of the political state; but it appears to be
more a political decoration than an actual class endowed with
particular rights. During the Restoration the Chamber of Peers
was a reminiscence, while the Chamber of Peers resulting from
the July Revolution is an actual creature of constitutional monarchy.

Since in modern times the idea of the state could appear only
in the abstraction of the merely political state, or in the abstraction
of civil society from itself and its actual condition, it is to
the credit of the French that they have marked and produced this
abstract actuality, and thereby have produced the political principle
itself. The abstraction for which they are blamed is, then, a genuine
consequence and product of a patriotism rediscovered, to be sure,
only in an opposition, but in a necessary opposition. The merit
of the French in this regard, then, is to have established the
Chamber of Peers as the unique product of the political state,
or in general, to have made the political principle in its uniqueness
the determining and effective factor.

Hegel also remarks that in the deputation, as he constructs it,
the existence of the Estates and their assembly finds a constitutional
guarantee of its own in the fact that the Corporations etc. are
entitled to send deputies. Thus, the guarantee of the existence
of the Estates' assembly, their truly primitive existence, becomes
the privilege of the Corporations etc. With this, Hegel reverts
completely to the medieval standpoint and has abandoned entirely
his abstraction of the political state as the sphere of the state
as state, the actually existing universal.

In the modern sense, the existence of the Estates' assembly is
the political existence of civil society, the guarantee of its
political existence. To question the existence of the Estates'
assembly is to question the existence of the state. Whereas patriotism,
the essence of the legislature, finds its guarantee in independent
private property according to Hegel, so the existence of the legislature
finds its guarantee in the privileges of the Corporations.

But the one element in the Estates is much more the political
privilege of civil society, or its privilege of being political.
Therefore, that element can never be the privilege of a particular
civil mode of civil society's existence, and can still less find
its guarantee in that mode, because it is supposed to be, rather,
the universal guarantee.

Thus Hegel is everywhere reduced to giving the political state
a precarious actuality in a relationship of dependence upon another,
rather than describing it as the highest, completely existing
actuality of social existence; he is reduced to having it find
its true existence in the other sphere rather than describing
it as the true existence of the other sphere. The political state
everywhere needs the guarantee of spheres lying outside it. It
is not actualised power, but supported impotence. It is not the
power over these supports, but the power of the support. The
support is the seat of power.

What kind of lofty existent is it whose existence needs a guarantee
outside itself, and which is supposed to be at the same time the
universal existence - and thus the actual guarantee - of this
very guarantee. In general, in his development of the legislature
Hegel everywhere retreats from the philosophical standpoint to
that other standpoint which fails to examine the matter in its
own terms.

If the existence of the Estates requires a guarantee, then they
are not an actual, but merely a fictitious political existence.
In constitutional states, the guarantee for the existence of
the Estates is the law. Thus, their existence is a legal existence,
dependent on the universal nature of the state and not on the
power or impotence of individual Corporations or associations;
their existence is the actuality of the state as an association.
(It is precisely here that the Corporations, etc., the particular
spheres of civil society, should receive their universal existence
for the first time. Again, Hegel anticipates this universal existence
as the privilege and the existence of these particular spheres.)

Political right as the right of Corporations etc. completely contradicts
political right as political, i.e., as the right of the state
and of citizenship, for political right precisely should not be
the right of this existence as a particular existence, not right
as this particular existence.

Before we proceed to the category of election as the political
act by which civil society decides upon its political choice,
let us examine some additional statements from the Remark to this
paragraph.

To hold that every single person should share in deliberating
and deciding on political matters of general concern o the ground
that all individuals are members of the state, that its concerns
are their concerns, and that it is their right that what is done
should be done with their knowledge and volition, is tantamount
to a proposal to put the democratic element without any rational
form into the organism of the state, although it is only in virtue
of the possession of such a form that the state is an organism
at all. This idea comes readily to mind because it does not go
beyond the abstraction of 'being a member of the state'. and it
is superficial thinking which clings to abstractions. [§
308]

First of all, Hegel calls being a member of the state an abstraction,
although according to the idea, [and therefore] the intention
of his own doctrinal development, it is the highest and most concrete
social determination of the legal person, of the member of the
state. To stop at the abstraction of 'being a member of the state'
and to conceive of individuals in terms of this abstraction does
not therefore seem to be just superficial thinking which clings
to abstractions. That the abstraction of 'being a member of the
state' is really an abstraction is not, however, the fault of
this thinking but of Hegel's line of argument and actual modern
conditions, which presuppose the separation of actual life from
political life and make the political quality an abstraction of
actual participation in the state.

According to Hegel, the direct participation of all in deliberating
and deciding on political matters of general concern admits the
democratic element without any rational form into the organism
of the state, although it is only in virtue of the possession
of such a form that the state is an organism at all. That is
to say, the democratic element can be admitted only as a formal
element in a state organism that is merely a formalism of the
state. The democratic element should be, rather, the actual element
that acquires its rational form in the whole organism of the state.
If the democratic element enters the state organism or state
formalism as a particular element, then the rational form of its
existence means a drill, an accommodation, a form, in which it
does not exhibit what is characteristic of its essence. In other
words, it would enter the state organism merely as a formal principle.

We have already pointed out that Hegel develops merely a state
formalism. For him, the actual material principle is the Idea,
the abstract thought-form of the state as a subject, the absolute
Idea which has in it no passive or material moment. In contrast
to the abstraction of this Idea the determinations of the actual,
empirical state formalism appear as content; and hence the actual
content (here actual man, actual society, etc.) appear as formless
inorganic matter.

Hegel had established the essence of the Estates in the fact that
in them empirical universality becomes the subject of the actually
existing universal. Does this mean anything other than that matters
of political concern 'are their concerns, and that it is their
right that what is done should be done with their knowledge and
volition'? And should not the Estates precisely constitute their
actualised right? And is it surprising then that all seek the
actuality of what is theirs by right?

To hold that every single person should share in deliberating
and deciding on political matters of general concern...

In a really rational state one could answer, 'Not every single
person should share in deliberating and deciding on political
matters of general concern', because the individuals share in
deliberating and deciding on matters of general concern as the 'all',
that is to say, within and as members of the society. Not all
individually, but the individuals as all.

Hegel presents himself with the dilemma: either civil society
(the Many, the multitude) shares through deputies in deliberating
and deciding on political matters of general concern or all [as]
I individuals do this. This is no opposition of essence, as Hegel
subsequently tries to present it, but of existence, and indeed
of the most external existence, quantity. Thus, the basis which
Hegel himself designated as external - the multiplicity of members
- remains the best reason against the direct participation of
all. The question of whether civil society should participate
in the legislature either by entering it through deputies or by
the direct participation of all as individuals is itself a question
within the abstraction of the political state or within the abstract
political state; it is an abstract political question.

It is in both cases, as Hegel himself has developed this, the
political significance of 'empirical universality'.

In its proper form the opposition is this: the individuals participate
as all, or the individuals participate as a few, as not all.
In both cases allness remains merely an external plurality or
totality of individuals. Allness is no essential, spiritual,
actual quality of the individual. It is not something through
which he would lose the character of abstract individuality.
Rather, it is merely the sum total of individuality. One individuality,
many individualities, all individualities. The one, the many,
the all - none of these determinations changes the essence of
the subject, individuality.

All as individuals should share in deliberating and deciding on
political matters of general concern; that is to say, then, that
all should share in this not as all but as individuals.

The question appears to contradict itself in two respects.

The political matters of general concern are the concern of the
state, the state as actual concern. Deliberation and decision
is the effectuation of the state as actual concern. It seems
obvious then that all the members of the state have a relationship
to the state as being their actual concern. The very notion of
member of the state implies their being a member of the state,
a part of it, and the state having them as its part. But if they
are an integral part of the state, then it is obvious that their
social existence is already their actual participation in it.
They are not only integral parts of the state, but the state
is their integral part. To be consciously an integral part of
something is to participate consciously in it, to be consciously
integral to it. Without this consciousness the member of the
state would be an animal.

To say 'political matters of general concern' makes it appear
that matters of general concern and the state are something different.
But the state is the matter of general concern, thus really the
matters of general concern.

Participation in political matters of general concern and participation
in the state are, therefore, identical. It is a tautology [to
say] that a member of the state, a part of the state, participates
in the state, and that this participation can appear only as deliberation
or decision, or related forms, and thus that every member of the
state shares in deliberating and deciding (if these functions
are taken to be the functions of actual participation in the state)
the political matters of general concern. If we are talking about
actual members of the state, then this participation cannot be
regarded as a 'should'; otherwise we would be talking about subjects
who should be and want to be members of the state, but actually
are not.

On the other hand, if we are talking about definite concerns,
about single political acts, then it is again obvious that not
all as individuals accomplish them. Otherwise, the individual
would be the true society, and would make society superfluous.
The individual would have to do everything at once, while society
would have him act for others just as it would have others act
for him.

The question whether all as individuals should share in deliberating
and deciding on political matters of general concern is a question
that arises from the separation of the political state and civil
society.

As we have seen, the state exists merely as political state.
The totality of the political state is the legislature. To participate
in the legislature is thus to participate in the political state
and to prove and actualise one's existence as member of the political
state, as member of the state. That all as individuals want to
participate integrally in the legislature is nothing but the will
of all to be actual (active) members of the state, or to give
themselves a political existence, or to prove their existence
as political and to effect it as such. We have further seen that
the Estates are civil society as legislature, that they are its
political existence. The fact, therefore, that civil society
invades the sphere of legislative power en masse, and where
possible totally, that actual civil society wishes to substitute
itself for the fictional civil society of the legislature, is
nothing but the drive of civil society to give itself political
existence, or to make political existence its actual existence.
The drive of civil society to transform itself into political
society, or to make political society into the actual society,
shows itself as the drive for the most fully possible universal
participation in legislative power.

Here, quantity is not without importance. If the augmentation
of the Estates is a physical and intellectual augmentation of
one of the hostile forces - and we have seen that the various
elements of the legislature oppose one another as hostile forces
- then the question of whether all as individuals are members
of the legislature or whether they should enter the legislature
through deputies is the placing in question of the representative
principle within the representative principle, i.e., within that
fundamental conception of the political state which exists in
constitutional monarchy. (1) The notion that
the legislature is the totality of the political state is a notion
of the abstraction of the political state. Because this one act
is the sole political act of civil society, all should participate
and want to participate in it at once. (2) All
as individuals. In the Estates, legislative activity is not regarded
as social, as a function of society, but rather as the act wherein
the individuals first assume an actually and consciously social
function, that is, a political function. Here the legislature
is no derivative, no function of society, but simply its formation.
This formation into a legislative power requires that all members
of civil society regard themselves as individuals, that they actually
face one another as individuals. The abstraction of 'being a
member of the state' is their 'abstract definition', a definition
that is not actualised in the actuality of their life.

There are two possibilities here: either the separation of the
political state and civil society actually obtains, or civil society
is actual political society. In the first case, it is impossible
that all as individuals participate in the legislature, for the
political state is an existent which is separated from civil society.
On the one hand, civil society would abandon itself as such if
all [its members] were legislators; on the other hand, the political
state which stands over against it can tolerate it only if it
has a form suitable to the standards of the state. In other words,
the participation of civil society in the political state through
deputies is precisely the expression of their separation and merely
dualistic unity.

Given the second case, i.e., that civil society is actual political
society, it is nonsense to make a claim which has resulted precisely
from a notion of the political state as an existent separated
from civil society, from the theological notion of the political
state. In this situation, legislative power altogether loses
the meaning of representative power. Here, the legislature is
a representation in the same sense in which every function is
representative. For example, the shoemaker is my representative
in so far as he fulfils a social need, just as every definite
social activity, because it is a species-activity, represents only
the species; that is to say, it represents a determination of
my own essence the way every man is the representative of the
other. Here, he is representative not by virtue of something
other than himself which he represents, but by virtue of what
he is and does.

Legislative power is sought not for the sake of its content, but
for the sake of its formal political significance. For example,
executive power, in and for itself, has to be the object of popular
desire much more than legislative power, which is the metaphysical
political function. The legislative function is the will, not
in its practical but in its theoretical energy. Here, the will
should not pre-empt the law; rather, the actual law is to be discovered
and formulated.

Out of this divided nature of the legislature - i.e., its nature
as actual lawgiving function and at the same time representative,
abstract-political function - stems a peculiarity which is especially
prevalent in France, the land of political culture.

(We always find two things in the executive: the actual deed and
the state's reason for this deed, as another actual consciousness,
which in its total organisation is the bureaucracy.)

The actual content of legislative power (so long as the prevailing
special interests do not come into significant conflict with the
objectum quaestionis) is treated very much à
part, as a matter of secondary importance.

A question attracts particular attention only when it becomes
political, that is to say, either when it can be tied to a ministerial
question, and thus becomes a question of the power of the legislature
over the executive, or when it is a matter of rights in general,
which are connected with the political formalism. How come this
phenomenon? Because the legislature is at the same time the representation
of civil society's political existence; because in general the
political nature of a question consists in its relationship to
the various powers of the political state; and finally, because
the legislature represents political consciousness, which can
manifest itself as political only in conflict with the executive.
There is the essential demand that every social need, law, etc.,
be investigated and identified politically, that is to say, determined
by the whole of the state in its social sense. But in the abstract
political state this essential demand takes a new turn; specifically,
it is given a formal change of expression in the direction of
another power (content) besides its actual content. This is no
abstraction of the French, but rather the inevitable consequence
of the actual state's existing merely as the political state formalism
examined above. The opposition within the representative power
is the kat exohin political existence of the representative
power. Within this representative constitution, however, the
question under investigation takes a form other than that in which
Hegel considered it. It is not a question of whether civil society
should exercise legislative power through deputies or through
all as individuals. Rather, it is a question of the extension
and greatest possible universalisation of voting, of active as
well as passive suffrage. This is the real point of dispute in
the matter of political reform, in France as well as in England.

Voting is not considered philosophically, that is, not in terms
of its proper nature, if it is considered in relation to the crown
or the executive. The vote is the actual relation of actual civil
society to the civil society of the legislature, to the representative
element. In other words, the vote is the immediate, the direct,
the existing and not simply imagined relation of civil society
to the political state. It therefore goes without saying that
the vote is the chief political interest of actual civil society.
In unrestricted suffrage, both active and passive, civil society
has actually raised itself for the first time to an abstraction
of itself, to political existence as its true universal and essential
existence. But the full achievement of this abstraction is at
once also the transcendence [Aufhebung] of the abstraction.
In actually establishing its political existence as its true
existence civil society has simultaneously established its civil
existence, in distinction from its political existence, as inessential.
And with the one separated, the other, its opposite, falls.
Within the abstract political state the reform of voting advances
the dissolution [Auflösung] of this political
state, but also the dissolution of civil society.

We will encounter the question of the reform of voting later under
another aspect, namely, from the point of view of the interests.
We will also discuss later the other conflicts which arise from
the two-fold character of the legislature (being at one time the delegate,
mandatory of civil society, at another
time on the contrary primarily the political existence of civil society
and a specific existent within the political formalism of the
state).

In the meantime we return to the Remark to § 308.

The rational consideration of a topic, the consciousness of the
Idea, is concrete and to that extent coincides with a genuine
practical sense. The concrete state is the whole, articulated
into its particular groups. The member of a state is a member
of such a group, i.e., of a social class, and it is only as characterised
in this objective way that he comes under consideration when we
are dealing with the state.

We have already said all that is required concerning this.

His (the member of a state's), mere character as universal implies
that he is at one and the same time both a private person and
also a thinking consciousness, a will which wills the universal.
This consciousness and will, however, lose their emptiness and
acquire a content and a living actuality only when they are filled
with particularity, and particularity means determinacy as particular
and a particular class status; or, to put the matter otherwise,
abstract individuality is a generic essence, but has its immanent
universal actuality as the generic essence next higher in the
scale.

Everything Hegel says is correct, with the restriction

1. that he assumes particular class status and determinacy as
particular to be identical,

2. that this determinacy, the species, the generic essence next
higher in the scale must also actually, not only implicitly but
explicitly, be established as the species or specification of
the universal generic essence.

But in the state, which he demonstrates to be the self-conscious
existence of the moral spirit, Hegel tacitly accepts this moral
spirit's being the determining thing only implicitly, that is,
in accordance with the universal Idea. He does not allow society
to become the actually determining thing, because for that an
actual subject is required, and he has only an abstract, imaginary
subject.

§ 309. Since deputies are elected to deliberate and
decide on public affairs, the point about their election
is that it is a choice of individuals on the strength of confidence
felt in them, i.e., a choice of such individuals as have a better
understanding of these affairs than their electors have and such
also as essentially vindicate the universal interest, not the
particular interest of a society or a Corporation in preference
to that interest. Hence their relation to their electors is ,,or
that of agents with a commission or specific instructions. A
further bar to their being so is the fact that their assembly
is meant to be a living body in which all members deliberate in
common and reciprocally instruct and convince each other.

1. The deputies are supposed to be something other than agents
with a commission or specific instructions, for they are supposed
to be such as essentially vindicate the universal interest, not
the particular interest of a society or a Corporation in preference
to that interest. Hegel has constructed the representatives primarily
as representatives of the Corporations etc., in order subsequently
to reintroduce the other political determination, namely, that
they are not to vindicate the particular interest of the Corporation
etc. With that he abolishes his own determination, for he completely
separates [the representatives], in their essential character
as representatives, from their Corporation-existence. In so doing
he also separates the Corporation from itself in its actual content,
for it is supposed to vote not from its own point of view but
from the state's point of view; that is to say, it is supposed
to vote in its non-existence as Corporation. Hegel thus acknowledges
the material actuality of the thing he formally converts into
its opposite, namely, the abstraction of civil society from itself
in its political act; and its political existence is nothing but
this abstraction. Hegel gives as reason that the representatives
are elected precisely to the activity of public affairs; but the
Corporations are not instances of public affairs.

2. The point about their election is supposed to be that it is
a choice of individuals on the strength of confidence felt in
them, i.e., a choice of such individuals as have a better understanding
of these affairs than their electors have; from which, once again,
it is supposed to follow that the relationship which the deputies
have to their electors is not that of agents.

Only by means of a sophism can Hegel declare that these individuals
understand these affairs 'better' and not 'simply'., This conclusion
[namely, that they understand these affairs better] could be drawn
only if the electors had the option of deliberating and deciding
themselves about public affairs or of delegating definite
individuals to discharge these things, i.e., precisely if deputation,
or representation, did not belong essentially to the character
of civil society's legislature. But in the state constructed
by Hegel, deputation, or representation, constitutes precisely
the legislature's specific essence, precisely as realised.

This example is characteristic [of the way] Hegel proposes the
thing half intentionally, and imputes to it in its narrow form
the sense opposed to this narrowness.

Hegel gives the proper reason last. The deputies of civil society
constitute themselves into an assembly, and only this assembly
is the actual political existence and will of civil society.
The separation of the political state from civil society appears
as the separation of the deputies from their mandators. From
itself, society delegates to its political existence only the
elements.

The contradiction appears two-fold:

1. Formal. The delegates of civil society are
a society whose members are connected by the form of instruction
or commission with those who commission them. They are formally
commissioned, but once they are actual they are no longer commissioned.
They are supposed to be delegates, and they are not.

2. Material. [This is] in regard to the interests.
We will come back to this point later. Here, we find the opposite
of the formal contradiction. The delegates are commissioned to
be representatives of public affairs, but they really represent
particular affairs.

What is significant is that Hegel here designates trust as the
substance of election, as the substantial relation between electors
and deputies. Trust is a personal relationship. Concerning this,
it says further in the Addition to § 309:

Representation is grounded on trust, but trusting another is something
different from giving my vote myself in my own personal capacity.
Hence majority voting runs counter to the principle that I should
be personally present in anything which is to be obligatory on
me. We have confidence in a man when we take him to be a man
of discretion who will manage our affairs conscientiously and
to the best of his knowledge, just as if they were his own.

§310. The guarantee that deputies will have the qualifications
and disposition that accord with this end - since independent
means attains its right in the first section of the Estates -
is to be found so far as the second section is concerned - the
section drawn from the fluctuating and changeable element in civil
society - above all in the knowledge of the organisation and interests
of the state and civil society, the temperament, and the skill
which a deputy acquires as a result of the actual transaction
of business in managerial or official positions, and then evinces
in his actions. As a result, he also acquires and develops a
managerial and political sense, tested by his experience, and
this is a further guarantee of his suitability as a deputy.

First, the Upper Chamber, that of independent private property,
was constructed for the sake of the Crown and the executive as
a guarantee against the disposition of the Lower Chamber as the
political existence of empirical universality; and now Hegel further
requires a new guarantee which is supposed to guarantee the disposition
of the Lower Chamber itself.

First, trust, the guarantee of the elector, was the guarantee
of the deputy. Now this trust itself further requires the guarantee
of the deputy's ability.

Hegel would rather have liked to make the Lower Chamber one of
pensioned civil servants. He requires of the deputy not only
political sense but also managerial, bureaucratic sense.

What he really wants here is that the legislature be the real
governing power. He expresses this such that he twice requires
the bureaucracy, once as representation of the Crown, at another
time as representative of the people.

Even if officials are allowed to be deputies in constitutional
states, this is only because there is on the whole an abstraction
from class, from the civil quality, and the abstraction of state
citizenship predominates.

With this Hegel forgets that he allowed representation to proceed
from the Corporations, and that the executive directly opposes
these. In this forgetfulness, which persists likewise in the
following paragraph, he goes so far that he creates an essential
distinction between the deputies of the Corporations and those
of the classes.

In the Remark to this paragraph it says:

Subjective opinion, naturally enough, finds superfluous and even
perhaps offensive the demand for such guarantees, if the demand
is made with reference to what is called the 'people'. The state,
however, is characterised by objectivity, not by a subjective
opinion and its self-confidence. Hence it can recognise in individuals
only their objectively recognisable and tested character, and
it must be all the more careful on this point in connection with
the second section of the Estates, since this section is rooted
in interests and activities directed towards the particular, i.e.,
ill the sphere where chance, mutability, and caprice enjoy their
right of free play.

Here, Hegel's thoughtless inconsistency and managerial sense become
really disgusting. At the close of the Addition to the preceding
paragraph [i.e., § 309] it says:

The electors require a guarantee that their deputy will further
and secure this general interest (the task of the deputies
described earlier).

This guarantee for the electors has underhandedly evolved into
a guarantee against the electors, against their self-confidence.
in the Estates, empirical universality was supposed to come to
the moment of subjective formal freedom. Public consciousness
was supposed to come to existence in that moment as the empirical
universality of the opinions and thoughts of the Many. (§
301.)

Now these opinions and thoughts must give proof beforehand to
the executive that they are its opinions and thoughts.
Unfortunately, Hegel here speaks of the state as a finished existence,
although he is precisely now in the process of finishing the construction
of the state within the Estates. He speaks of the state as a
concrete subject which does not take offence at subjective opinion
and its self-confidence, and for which the individuals have first
made themselves recognisable and tested. The only thing he still
lacks is a requirement that the Estates take an examination in
the presence of the honourable executive. Here, Hegel goes almost
to the point of servility. It is evident that he is thoroughly
infected with the miserable arrogance of the world of Prussian
officialdom which, distinguished in its bureaucratic narrow-mindedness,
looks down on the self-confidence of the subjective opinion of
the people regarding itself. Here, the state is at all times
for Hegel identical with the Executive.

To be sure, in a real state mere trust or subjective opinion cannot
suffice. But in the state which Hegel constructs the political
sentiment of civil society is mere opinion precisely because its
political existence is an abstraction from its actual existence,
precisely because the state as a whole is not the objectification
of the political sentiment. Had Hegel wished to be consistent,
he would have bad to work much harder to construct the Estates
in conformity with their essential definition (§ 3oi) as
the explicit existence of public affairs in the thought etc. of
the Many, and thus nothing less than fully independent of the
other presuppositions of the political state.

Just as Hegel earlier called the presupposing of bad will in the
executive etc. the view of the rabble, so just as much and even
more is it the view of the rabble to presuppose bad will in the
people. Hegel has no right to find it either superfluous or offensive
when, among [the doctrines of] the theorists he scorns, guarantees
are demanded in reference to what is called the state, the soi-disant
state, the executive, when guarantees are demanded that the
sentiment of the bureaucracy be the sentiment of the state.

§ 311. A further point about the election of deputies
is that, since civil society is the electorate, the deputies should
themselves be conversant with and participate in its special needs,
difficulties, and particular interests. Owing to the nature of
civil society, its deputies are the deputies of the various Corporations
(see § 308), and this simple mode of appointment obviates
any confusion due to conceiving the electorate abstractly and
as an agglomeration of atoms. Hence the deputies eo ipso
adopt the point of view of society, and their actual election
is therefore either something wholly superfluous or else reduced
to a trivial play of opinion and caprice.

First of all, Hegel joins the election in its determination as legislature (§§ 309, 310)
to the fact that civil society is the electorate, i. e., he joins the legislature to its
representative character, through a simple 'further'. And just as thoughtlessly he
expresses the enormous contradictions which lie in this 'further'.

* According to § 309 the deputies should essentially vindicate the universal interest, not the particular interest
of a society or a Corporation in preference to that interest.

* According to § 311 the deputies proceed from the Corporations, represent these
particular interests and needs, and avoid confusion due to abstract conceptions - as if
the universal interest were not also such an abstraction, an abstraction precisely from
their Corporation, etc., interests.

* According to § 310 it is required that, as a result of the actual transaction of
business etc., they have acquired and evinced a managerial and political sense. In §311
a Corporation and civil sense is required.

* In the Addition to § 309 it says, representation is grounded on trust. According to §
311 the actual election, this realisation of trust, its manifestation and appearance, is
either something wholly superfluous or else reduced to a trivial play of opinion and
caprice.

That on which representation is grounded, its essence, is thus
either something wholly superfluous, etc. for representation.
Thus in one breath Hegel establishes the absolute contradictions:
Representation is grounded on trust, on the confidence of man
in man, and it is not grounded on trust. This is simply a playing
around with formalities.

The object of the representation is not the particular interest,
but rather man and his state citizenship, i.e., the universal
interest. On the other hand, the particular interest is the matter
of the representation, and the spirit of this interest is the
spirit of the representative.

In the Remark to this paragraph, which we examine now, these contradictions are still
more glaringly carried through. At one time representation is representation of the man,
at another time of the particular interest of particular matter.

It is obviously of advantage that the deputies should include representatives of each
particular main branch of society (e.g. trade, manufactures, &c., &c.) - representatives
who are thoroughly conversant with it and who themselves belong to it. The idea of free
unrestricted election leaves this important consideration entirely at the mercy of
chance. All such branches of society, however, have equal rights of representation.
Deputies are sometimes regarded as 'representatives'; but they are representatives in an
organic, rational sense only if they are representatives not of individuals or a
conglomeration of them, but of one of the essential spheres of society and its large-
scale interests. Hence representation cannot now be taken to mean simply the
substitution of one man for another; the point is rather that the interest itself is
actually present in its representative, while he himself is there to represent the
objective element of his own being.

As for popular suffrage, it may be further remarked that especially
in large states it leads inevitably to electoral indifference,
since the casting of a single vote is of no significance where
there is a multitude of electors. Even if a voting qualification
is highly valued and esteemed by those who are entitled to it,
they still do not enter the poring booth. Thus the result of
an institution of this kind is more likely to be the opposite
of what was intended; election actually falls into the power of
a few, of a caucus, and so of the particular and contingent interest
which is precisely what was to have been neutralised.

Both §§ 312 and 313 are taken care of by our
earlier comments, and are worth no special discussion. So we
simply put them down as is:

§ 312. Each class in the Estates (see §§
305-8) contributes something peculiarly its own to the work
of deliberation. Further, one moment in the class-element has
in the sphere of politics the special function of mediation, mediation
between two existing things. Hence this moment must likewise
acquire a separate existence of its own. For this reason the
assembly of the Estates is divided into two houses.

O jerum!

§ 313. This division, by providing chambers of the
first and second instance, is a surer guarantee for ripeness of
decision and it obviates the accidental character which a snap-division
has and which a numerical majority may acquire. But the principal
advantage of this arrangement is that there is less chance of
the Estates being in direct opposition to the executive; or that,
if the mediating element is at the same time on the side of the
lower house, the weight of the lower house's opinion is all the
stronger, because it appears less partisan and its opposition
appears neutralised.

The manuscript ends. At the top of the following page, Marx wrote: