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2 responses to “302”

1. 

   Eduard Gans (Additions)

   29. May 1833

   The constitution is essentially a system of mediation. In despotic states, where there are only the prince and the people, the latter, when it acts at all, acts merely as a destructive mass against organization. But entering in organically, the multitude carries through its interests in a lawful and orderly way. If this means is instead lacking, then the utterance of the mass will always be a wild one. In despotic states the despot therefore spares the people, and his rage always strikes only those around him. Likewise the people in such a state pay only few dues, of the kind that are raised in a constitutional state through the people’s own consciousness. In no country are as many taxes paid as precisely in England.

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2. 

   Karl Marx

   23. July 1843

   State and government are always posited as identical, on the one side, with the people — dissolved into particular spheres and individuals — on the other. The estates stand as the mediating organ between the two. The estates are the middle in which »the sense and disposition of the state and the government« are supposed to meet, to be united with »the sense and disposition of the particular circles and individuals.« The identity of these two opposed senses and dispositions — an identity in which the state ought really to consist — receives a symbolic representation 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 supposed to go about uniting two contradictory dispositions within themselves is not stated. The estates are the posited contradiction of the state and civil society within the state. At the same time, they are the demand for the resolution of this contradiction.

   »At the same time, this position has the significance of a mediation shared in common with the organized |in Marx: organic| governmental power, etc.«

   The estates do not merely mediate between people and government. They also prevent »princely power« from being an isolated »extreme,« which would thereby appear as »mere sovereign power and arbitrariness«; likewise they prevent the »isolation« of the »particular« interests, etc., and likewise »the presentation of individuals as a mass and a mob.« This mediation is shared by the estates in common with the organized governmental power. In a state in which the »position« of the »estates« prevents »individuals from arriving at the presentation of a mass or a mob, at a thus unorganic opining and willing, at a merely massed power directed against the organic state,« the »organic state« exists apart from the »mass« and the »mob« — or else the »mass« and the »mob« belong to the organization of the state, and it is only their »unorganic opining and willing« that is not supposed to become an »opining and willing directed against the state,« through which determinate direction it would become »organic« opining and willing. Likewise, this »massed power« is supposed to remain merely »massed,« so that understanding lies outside the mass, and the mass therefore cannot set itself in motion, but can only be set in motion by the monopolists of the »organic state« and exploited as massed power. Where it is not »the particular interests of the communities, corporations, and individuals« that isolate themselves against the state, but rather »individuals arrive at the presentation of a mass and a mob, at a thus unorganic opining and willing, and at a merely massed power directed against the state,« it becomes evident precisely that no »particular interest« contradicts the state, but rather that the »real organic universal thought of the mass and the mob« is not the thought of the »organic state,« which finds no realization within it. By what means, then, do the estates appear as a mediation against this extreme? Only by the fact »that the particular interests of the communities, corporations, and individuals isolate themselves« — or by the fact that their isolated interests settle their account with the state through the estates; and, at the same time, by the fact that the »unorganic opining and willing of the mass and the mob« occupies its will (its activity) in the creation of the estates, and occupies its »opining« in judging the activity of the estates, and has thereby enjoyed the illusion of its own objectification. The »estates« preserve the state from the unorganic mob only by disorganizing this mob.

   At the same time, however, the estates are also supposed to mediate against »the particular interests of the communities, corporations, and individuals« isolating themselves. They mediate against this: (1) by coming to terms with the »interest of the state«; (2) by themselves being the »political isolation« of these particular interests — this isolation as a political act, whereby these isolated interests thereby attain the rank of the »universal.«

   Finally, the estates are supposed to mediate against the »isolation« of princely power as an »extreme« (which would thereby »appear as mere sovereign power and arbitrariness«). This is correct insofar as the principle of princely power (arbitrariness) is thereby bounded — at least can only move about in fetters — and insofar as the estates themselves become participants, accomplices, in princely power.

   Princely power either really ceases thereby to be the extreme of princely power (and princely power exists only as an extreme, as a one-sidedness, because it is no organic principle) — it becomes a semblance-power, a symbol — or it merely loses the appearance of arbitrariness and mere sovereign power. They mediate against the »isolation« of the particular interests by presenting this isolation as a political act. They mediate against the isolation of princely power as an extreme, partly by themselves becoming a part of princely power, partly by making governmental power into an extreme.

   In the »estates« all the contradictions of the modern organizations of the state converge. They are »mediators« in every direction, because in every direction they are »middle things.«

   It is to be noted that Hegel develops less the content of the activity of the estates, the legislative power, than the position of the estates, their political rank.

   It is further to be noted that, whereas according to Hegel the estates stand, in the first place, »between the government in general, on the one hand, and the people dissolved into particular spheres and individuals, on the other,« their position, as developed above, »has the significance of a mediation shared in common with the organized governmental power.«

   As regards the first position, the estates are the people against the government, but the people en miniature. That is their oppositional position.

   As regards the second, they are the government against the people, but the amplified government. That is their conservative position. They are themselves a part of governmental power against the people, but in such a way that they simultaneously have the significance of being the people against the government.

   Hegel above designated »the legislative power as totality« (§ 300); the estates really 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 dualism. The estates represent the state within a society that is no state. The state is a mere representation.

   In the Remark, Hegel says:

   »It belongs to the most important logical insights that a determinate moment, which, standing in opposition, has the position of an extreme, ceases thereby to be such, and is an organic moment, in that it is at the same time a middle.«

   (Thus the estates element is, first, the extreme of the people against the government, but, second, at the same time the middle between people and government — or it is the opposition within the people itself. The opposition of government and people is mediated through the opposition between the estates and the people. The estates have, toward the side of the government, the position of the people, but toward the side of the people, the position of the government. In that the people comes about as representation, as fantasy, illusion, representation — the represented people, or the estates, which, as a particular power, finds itself at once separated from the real people — it thereby abolishes the real opposition between people and government. The people is here already prepared in just the way it must be prepared within the organism under consideration, so as to have no decided character.)

   »With respect to the object under consideration here, it is all the more important to bring out this side, because it belongs among the frequent, but highly dangerous, prejudices to represent the estates chiefly from the point of view of an opposition to the government, as though this were their essential position. Organically — that is, taken up into the totality — the estates element proves itself only through the function of mediation. Thereby the opposition itself is reduced to a mere semblance. Were it, insofar as it has its appearance, not to concern the surface merely, but really to become a substantial opposition, then the state would be caught up in its own downfall. The sign that the conflict is not of this kind results, from the nature of the matter, when its objects concern not the essential elements of the organism of the state, but more specific and more indifferent things, and when the passion that nonetheless attaches itself to this content becomes partisanship over a merely subjective interest — say, over the higher offices of state.«

   In the Addition it is stated:

   »The constitution is essentially a system of mediation.«

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