Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right
Karl Marx, 1843
§ 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 r6gime 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
political representative or mandatory of civil society, at another
time rather 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:
Contents
Concerning Hegel's Transition and Explication
Source: Joseph O'Malley's translation, Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right, Oxford University Press, 1970.