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5 responses to “307”

1. 

   Karl Marx

   10. August 1843

   Hegel has accomplished the feat of developing born peers, hereditary property, etc., etc. — this »support of the throne and society« — out of the absolute Idea.

   What is deeper in Hegel lies in the fact that he feels the separation of civil society and the political as a contradiction. But what is false is that he contents himself with the semblance of this resolution and passes it off as the thing itself — whereas the »so-called theories« he despises demand the »separation« of the civil and political estates, and rightly so, for they express a consequence of modern society, inasmuch as here the politico-estates element is nothing other than the factual expression of the real relation between state and civil society — their separation.

   Hegel has not called the matter at issue here by its familiar name. It is the disputed question between the representative and the estates constitution. The representative constitution is a great advance, because it is the open, unfalsified, consistent expression of the modern condition of the state. It is the undisguised contradiction.

   Before we go into the matter itself, let us once more cast a glance at Hegel’s presentation.

   »In the estates element of the legislative power, the private estate attains a political significance.«

   Earlier (§ 301, Remark) it was stated:

   »The peculiar conceptual determination of the estates is therefore to be sought in the fact that in them … the sphere’s own insight and its own will — the sphere that has, in this presentation, been called civil society — comes into existence in relation to the state.«

   If we sum up this determination, it follows: »Civil society is the private estate,« or the private estate is the immediate, essential, concrete estate of civil society. Only within the estates element of the legislative power does it receive »political significance and efficacy.« This is something new that is added to it, a particular function — for precisely its character as private estate expresses its opposition to political significance and efficacy, the privation of political character; it expresses that civil society is, in and for itself, without political significance and efficacy. The private estate is the estate of civil society, or civil society is the private estate. Hegel therefore also consistently excludes the »universal estate« from the »estates element of the legislative power.«

   »The universal estate, devoting itself more particularly to the service of the government, has immediately, in its determination, the universal as the purpose of its essential activity.«

   Civil society, or the private estate, does not have this as its determination; its essential activity does not have the determination of having the universal as its purpose, or its essential activity is no determination of the universal, no universal determination. The private estate is the estate of civil society as against the state. The estate of civil society is no political estate.

   In designating civil society as private estate, Hegel has declared the estate-distinctions of civil society to be non-political distinctions; he has declared civil life and political life to be heterogeneous, even opposed. How, then, does he proceed?

   »This same [civil society], then, can appear in this respect neither as a mere undifferentiated mass, nor as a multitude dissolved into its atoms, but as what it already is — namely, differentiated into the estate grounded on the substantial relation, and that grounded on particular needs and the labor mediating them (§ 201 ff.). Only in this way does the really particular within the state truly connect itself, in this respect, with the universal.« [§ 303.]

   Civil society (the private estate) cannot, indeed, appear in its legislative-estates activity as a »mere undifferentiated mass,« because the »mere undifferentiated mass« exists only in »representation,« in »fantasy,« but not in actuality. Here there are only larger and smaller contingent masses (cities, market towns, etc.). These masses, or this mass, does not merely appear as, but really is, everywhere, »a multitude dissolved into its atoms« — and it is as this atomism that it must appear and come forward in its politico-estates activity. The private estate, civil society, cannot appear here »as what it already is.« For what is it already? Private estate — that is, opposition to and separation from the state. To arrive at »political significance and efficacy,« it must, rather, give itself up as what it already is, as private estate. Only thereby does it first receive its »political significance and efficacy.« This political act is a complete transubstantiation. In it, civil society must utterly renounce itself as civil society, as private estate, and assert a portion of its essence that not only has no community with the real, civil existence of its essence, but stands directly opposed to it.

   In the individual there appears here what is the universal law. Civil society and the state are separated. So, too, are the citizen of the state and the burgher, the member of civil society, separated. He must therefore undertake an essential diremption within himself. As a real citizen he finds himself within a double organization: the bureaucratic — which is an external, formal determination of the state beyond him, of governmental power, which does not touch him or his independent actuality — and the social, the organization of civil society. But within the latter he stands as a private man, outside the state; this does not touch the political state as such. The first is a state organization, to which he always supplies the matter. The second is a civil organization, whose matter is not the state. In the first, the state relates to him as a formal opposition; in the second, he himself relates as a material opposition to the state. In order, then, to conduct himself as a real citizen of the state, to attain political significance and efficacy, he must step out of his civil actuality, abstract from it, withdraw from this entire organization into his individuality; for the only existence he finds for his citizenship of the state is his pure, bare individuality — for the existence of the state as government is complete without him, and his existence in civil society is complete without the state. Only in contradiction with these sole existing communities, only as an individual, can he be a citizen of the state. His existence as citizen of the state is an existence that lies outside his communal existences, and is thus purely individual. The »legislative power,« as »power,« is, after all, only the organization, the communal body that it is supposed to receive. Prior to the »legislative power,« civil society, the private estate, does not exist as a state organization; and in order for it to come into existence as such, its real organization, real civil life, must be posited as not present — for the estates element of the legislative power has precisely the determination of positing the private estate, civil society, as not present. The separation of civil society and the political state necessarily appears as a separation of the political citizen, the citizen of the state, from civil society, from his own real, empirical actuality; for as an idealist of the state he is an entirely different being from his actuality, distinct from it, opposed to it. Civil society here brings about, within itself, the relation of state and civil society which, on the other hand, already exists as bureaucracy. In the estates element, the universal really becomes for itself what it is in itself — namely, opposition to the particular. The citizen must strip off his estate, civil society, the private estate, in order to attain political significance and efficacy; for it is precisely this estate that stands between the individual and the political state.

   If Hegel already opposes the whole of civil society, as private estate, to the political state, it follows of itself that the distinctions within the private estate — the various civil estates — have only a private significance in relation to the state, no political significance. For the various civil estates are merely the realization, the existence, of the principle — of the private estate as the principle of civil society. But if the principle itself must be given up, then it follows all the more that the diremptions within this principle do not exist for the political state.

   »Only in this way,« Hegel concludes the paragraph, »does the really particular within the state truly connect itself, in this respect, with the universal.«

   But Hegel here confuses the state as the whole of the existence of a people with the political state. That particular is not the particular within, but rather »outside the state« — namely, outside the political state. It is not only not »the really particular within the state,« it is also the »unreality of the state.« Hegel wants to develop the thesis that the estates of civil society are the political estates, and in order to prove this he presupposes that the estates of civil society are the »particularization of the political state« — that is, that civil society is political society. The expression »the particular within the state« can here make sense only as: »the particularization of the state.« Hegel chooses the indeterminate expression out of a bad conscience. He himself has not only developed the opposite, he even confirms it in this very paragraph, by designating civil society as »private estate.« Very cautious, too, is the formulation that the particular »connects itself« with the universal. One can »connect« the most heterogeneous things. But what is at issue here is not a gradual transition but a transubstantiation, and it is of no use to refuse to see this chasm, which is leapt over and demonstrated precisely by the leap itself.

   Hegel says in the Remark:

   »This runs counter to another current representation,« etc. We have just shown how this current representation is consistent, necessary — a »necessary representation of the present development of the people« — and how Hegel’s representation, although it too is very current in certain circles, is nonetheless an untruth. Returning to the current representation, Hegel says:

   This atomistic, abstract view already vanishes in the family, etc., etc. »But the state is,« etc. This view is indeed 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 »view« cannot be concrete when the object of the view is »abstract.« The atomism into which civil society plunges in its political act follows necessarily from the fact that the communal being, the communal essence, in which the individual exists — civil society separated from the state — or that the political state is an abstraction from it.

   This atomistic view, although it already vanishes in the family and perhaps (??) in civil society as well, returns in the political state, precisely because the latter is an abstraction from the family and from civil society. The converse holds equally. By giving voice to the strangeness of this appearance, Hegel has not thereby overcome the alienation.

   »The representation,« it continues, »which dissolves again into a multitude of individuals the communal bodies already present in those circles, when these enter into the political — that is, into the standpoint of the highest concrete universality — thereby keeps civil and political life separated from one another and, so to speak, suspends the latter in mid-air, since its basis would then be only the abstract individuality of arbitrary will and opinion, hence the contingent, and not a foundation fixed and justified in and for itself.« [§ 303.]

   That representation does not keep civil and political life separated; it is merely the representation of a separation that really exists.

   That representation does not suspend political life in mid-air; rather, political life is itself the life of the air, the ethereal region of civil society.

   We now turn to consider the estates system and the representative system.

   It is a progress of history that has transformed the political estates into social estates, so that, just as Christians are equal in heaven, unequal on earth, so the individual members of the people are equal in the heaven of their political world, unequal in the earthly existence of society. The actual transformation of the political estates into civil ones took place under absolute monarchy. The bureaucracy asserted the idea of unity against the various states within the state. Nevertheless, even alongside the bureaucracy of absolute governmental power, the social distinction of estates |284| remained a political one — a political distinction within and alongside the bureaucracy of absolute governmental power. Only the French Revolution completed the transformation of the political estates into social ones, or made the estate-distinctions of civil society into merely social distinctions, into distinctions of private life which are without significance in political life. The separation of political life and civil society was thereby completed.

   The estates of civil society were likewise transformed by this: civil society had, through its separation from the political, become something different. Estate in the medieval sense survived only within the bureaucracy itself, where civil and political standing are immediately identical. Opposed to this stands civil society as private estate. The estate-distinction here is no longer a distinction of need and labor as an independent body. The only general, superficial, and formal distinction that remains here is that of town and country. Within society itself, however, the distinction took shape in mobile, unfixed circles, whose principle is arbitrariness. Money and education are the chief criteria. But we are not to develop this here, but rather in the critique of Hegel’s account of civil society. Suffice it to say: the estate of civil society has as its principle neither need — that is, a natural moment — nor politics. It is a division of masses that form themselves fleetingly, whose formation is itself an arbitrary matter and not an organization.

   The characteristic thing is only that proprietylessness and the estate of immediate, concrete labor form less an estate of civil society than the ground on which its circles rest and move. The proper estate, where political and civil standing coincide, is only that of the members of governmental power. The present estate of society already shows its difference from the former estate of civil society in this, that it does not, as formerly, hold the individual as something communal, as a communal being, but rather that it is partly chance, partly the individual’s own labor, etc., whether he keeps to his estate or not — an estate which is itself, in turn, only an external determination of the individual, for it is neither inherent in his labor, nor does it relate to him as an objective communal being organized according to fixed laws and standing in fixed relations to him. Rather, it stands in no real relation whatsoever to his substantial activity, to his real estate [in the older sense]. The physician forms no particular estate within civil society. One merchant belongs to a different estate than another, to a different social standing. For just as civil society has separated itself from the political, so has civil society separated itself within itself into estate and social standing — though various relations also obtain between the two. The principle of the civil estate, or of civil society, is enjoyment and the capacity to enjoy. In his political significance, the member of civil society frees himself from his estate, from his real private standing; it is here alone that he attains significance as a human being, or that his determination as a member of the state, as a social being, appears as his human determination. For all his other determinations within civil society appear to man, to the individual, as inessential, as external determinations which, though necessary to his existence as a whole — that is, a bond with the whole — are a bond which he can, however, just as readily cast off again. (Present-day civil society is the fully realized principle of individualism; individual existence is the ultimate end; activity, labor, content, etc., are mere means.)

   The estates constitution, where it is not a tradition surviving from the Middle Ages, is the attempt — partly within the political sphere itself — to plunge man back into the confinement of his private sphere, to make his particularity into his substantial consciousness, and, by letting the estate-distinction exist politically, to make it once again a social one as well.

   The real man is the private man of the present state constitution.

   The estate has, in general, the significance that distinction, separation, is the subsistence of the individual. The manner of his life, activity, etc., instead of making him a member, a function of society, makes him an exception from society — it is his privilege. That this distinction is not merely an individual one, but consolidates itself as a communal being, an estate, a corporation, not only fails to abolish its exclusive nature, but is rather only its expression. Instead of the particular function being a function of society, it rather turns the particular function into a society unto itself.

   Not only is the estate based on the separation of society as the ruling law — it also separates man from his universal essence; it turns him into an animal that immediately coincides with its determinateness. The Middle Ages is the animal history of humanity, its zoology.

   The modern age, civilization, commits the opposite error. It separates the objective essence of man from him as something merely external, material. It does not take the content of man as his true actuality.

   This is to be developed further in the section »Civil Society.« We come now to

   § 304. »The distinction of the estates already present in the earlier spheres is contained by the politico-estates element, at the same time, in its own significance |In Hegel: determination|.«

   We have already shown that the »distinction of the estates already present in the earlier spheres« has no significance whatsoever for the political sphere, or only the significance of a private, that is, a non-political distinction. Yet according to Hegel it does not have here, either, its »already existing significance« (the significance it has in civil society); rather, the »politico-estates element,« by taking it up, affirms its essence, and, once immersed in the political sphere, it receives a significance »of its own« — one belonging to this element, not to itself.

   So long as the articulation of civil society was still political, and the political state was still civil society, this separation, this doubling of the significance of the estates, did not exist. They did not mean one thing in the civil world and another in the political world. They received no significance in the political world; rather, they meant themselves. The dualism of civil society and the political state, which the estates constitution believes it can resolve by a kind of reminiscence, emerges within it in such a way that the distinction of estates (the being-distinguished of civil society within itself) receives a different significance in the political sphere than in the civil sphere. What appears here is identity, the same subject — but in an essentially different determination, hence in truth a double subject; and this illusory identity (illusory precisely because, while the real subject, man, remains self-identical, does not lose his identity, across the various determinations of his essence, here it is not man who is the subject, but man is identified with a predicate — the estate — and it is simultaneously asserted that, in this determinate determinateness and in another determinateness, he is, as this determinate, exclusive, limited thing, something other than this limited thing) is artificially sustained by reflection: on the one hand, the civil distinction of estates as such is made to receive a determination that is supposed to arise for it only out of the political sphere; on the other hand, conversely, the distinction of estates in the political sphere is made to receive a determination that arises not from the political sphere but from the subject of the civil one. In order to present the one limited subject, the determinate estate (the estate-distinction), as the essential subject |287| of both predicates, or to prove the identity of both predicates, both are mystified and developed in an illusory, indeterminate double form.

   Here the same subject is taken in different significations, but the signification is not self-determination, but rather an allegorical, foisted-upon determination. One could take a different concrete subject for the same signification, or a different signification for the same subject. The signification that the civil distinction of estates receives in the political sphere does not arise from it, but from the political sphere, and it could just as well have a different signification here — which, indeed, was historically the case. Likewise, conversely. This is the uncritical, the mystical way of interpreting an old world-view in the sense of a new one, whereby it becomes nothing but an unhappy hybrid, in which the form belies the content and the content belies the form, and neither does the form become its true content and its real form, nor does the content become its form and its real content. This lack of criticism, this mysticism, is both the riddle of modern constitutions (chiefly the estates constitutions) and the mystery of Hegelian philosophy, above all of the philosophy of right and of religion.

   One frees oneself best from this illusion by taking the signification for what it is, as the proper determination, making it as such into the subject, and then comparing whether the subject that is supposed to belong to it is its real predicate, whether it constitutes its essence and true realization.

   »Its« (the politico-estates element’s) »at-first abstract position — namely, that of the extreme of empirical universality as against the princely or monarchical principle in general, in which lies only the possibility of agreement and thus equally the possibility of hostile opposition — this abstract position becomes a rational relation (a syllogism [Schluss]; cf. the Remark to § 302) only through the coming-into-existence of its mediation.«

   We have already seen that the estates, together with governmental power, form the mean between the monarchical principle and the people, between the will of the state as it exists as an empirical will and as it exists as many empirical wills, between empirical singularity and empirical universality. Hegel had to determine the will of civil society as empirical universality, just as he did the princely will as empirical singularity; but he does not state the opposition with its full sharpness.

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2. 

   Karl Marx

   10. August 1843

   |288| Hegel continues:

   »Just as, on the side of the princely power, governmental power (§ 300) already has this determination, so too, on the side of the estates, a moment of the same must be turned toward this determination, existing essentially as the moment of the mean.«

   But the true oppositions are prince and civil society. And we have already seen that the same significance which governmental power has on the side of the prince, the estates element has on the side of the people. Just as the former emanates in a branching circulation, so the latter condenses itself into a miniature edition — for constitutional monarchy can only come to terms with the people en miniature. The estates element is quite the same abstraction of the political state on the side of civil society as governmental power is on the side of the prince. It thus seems that the mediation has come about completely. Both extremes have relinquished their obduracy, sent forth the fire of their particular essence, and the legislative power — whose elements are equally governmental power and the estates — seems no longer to need to let the mediation come into existence, but already to be itself the mediation that has come into existence. Hegel has also already designated this estates element, together with governmental power, as the mean between people and prince (likewise the estates element as the mean between civil society and government, etc.). The rational relation, the syllogism, thus seems to be complete. The legislative power, the mean, is a mixtum compositum |a hodgepodge| of the two extremes, of the princely principle and civil society, of empirical singularity and empirical universality, of subject and predicate. Hegel conceives the syllogism in general as a mean, as a mixtum compositum. One can say that in his development of the syllogism of reason the whole transcendence and mystical dualism of his system comes to appearance. The mean is the wooden iron, the papered-over opposition between universality and singularity.

   We remark, first of all, concerning this entire development, that the »mediation« which Hegel here wants to bring about is not a demand that he derives from the essence of the legislative power, from its own determination, but rather from consideration of an existence lying outside its essential determination. It is a construction of consideration. The legislative power is developed chiefly, and only, with consideration for a third thing. It is therefore chiefly the construction of its formal existence which claims all |289| attention. The legislative power is constructed very diplomatically. This follows from the false, illusory, principal political position which the legislative power has in the modern state (of which Hegel is the interpreter). It follows of itself that this state is no true state, because in it the determinations of the state — of which the legislative power is one — must be considered not in and for themselves, not theoretically, but practically; not as independent powers, but as powers afflicted with an opposition; not from the nature of the matter, but according to the rules of convention.

   So the estates element ought, properly, to be, »together with governmental power,« the mean between the will of empirical singularity, the prince, and the will of empirical universality, civil society; but in truth, in reality, »its position« is »at first an abstract position — namely, that of the extreme of empirical universality as against the princely or monarchical principle in general — in which lies only the possibility of agreement and thus equally the possibility of hostile opposition,« an, as Hegel rightly remarks, »abstract position.«

   At first it now seems that here neither the »extreme of empirical universality,« nor the »princely or monarchical principle,« the extreme of empirical singularity, stand opposed to one another. For on the side of civil society the estates, like governmental power on the side of the prince, are deputized. Just as the princely principle, in the deputized governmental power, ceases to be the extreme of empirical singularity, and rather, within it, gives up its »groundless« will, condescending to the »finitude« of knowledge and responsibility and thought, so, in the estates element, civil society seems no longer to be empirical universality, but rather a very determinate whole, which possesses in equal measure »the sense and disposition of the state and of the government, as well as of the interests of particular circles and of individuals« (§ 302). Civil society, in its estates-miniature edition, has ceased to be »empirical universality.« It has, rather, sunk down to a committee, to a very determinate number; and just as the prince, in governmental power, gave himself empirical universality, so civil society has, in the estates, given itself empirical singularity or particularity. Both have become a particularity.

   The only opposition still possible here seems to be that between |290| the two representatives of the two state-wills, between the two emanations, between the governmental element and the estates element of the legislative power — an opposition, that is, within the legislative power itself. The »common« mediation also seems quite apt to fall out with itself. In the governmental element of the legislative power, the empirical, inaccessible singularity of the prince has become earthly in a number of limited, graspable, responsible personalities; and in the estates element, civil society has become heavenly in a number of political men. Both sides have lost their ungraspability. Princely power, the inaccessible, exclusive empirical one; civil society, the inaccessible, blurring empirical all — the one its obduracy, the other its fluidity. In the estates element, on the one hand, and in the governmental element of the legislative power, on the other — which together were supposed to mediate civil society and the prince — the opposition thus seems, only now, to have become an opposition fit for combat, but also an irreconcilable contradiction.

   This »mediation« thus stands all the more in need, as Hegel rightly develops, »of its mediation coming into existence.« It is itself, rather, the existence of contradiction than of mediation.

   That this mediation should be effected on the side of the estates element is a claim Hegel seems to make without ground. He says:

   »Just as, on the side of the princely power, governmental power (§ 300) already has this determination, so too, on the side of the estates, a moment of the same must be turned toward this determination, existing essentially as the moment of the mean.«

   But we have already seen that Hegel here arbitrarily and inconsistently sets up prince and estates as opposed extremes. Just as governmental power has this determination on the side of the princely power, so the estates element has it on the side of civil society. They stand not only, together with governmental power, between prince and civil society; they also stand between government in general and the people (§ 302). They do more, on the side of civil society, than governmental power does on the side of princely power, since the latter even stands opposed to the people as an outright opposition. It has thus already fulfilled the full measure of mediation. Why, then, load this donkey with yet more sacks? Why must the estates element form the asses’ bridge everywhere, even between itself and its opponent? Why is it, everywhere, self-sacrifice itself? Is it to cut off its own hand, so that it cannot hold its ground with both hands against its opponent, the governmental element of the legislative power?

   |291| There is, further, the fact that Hegel first let the estates arise out of the corporations, estate-distinctions, etc., so that they should not be a »mere empirical universality« — and that he now, conversely, makes them into a »mere empirical universality,« in order to let the estate-distinction arise out of them! Just as the prince is mediated with civil society through governmental power as its Christ, so society is mediated with the prince through the estates as its priests.

   It now seems, rather, that it must be the role of the extremes themselves — princely power (empirical singularity) and civil society (empirical universality) — to step in, mediating, between »their mediations,« all the more since it belongs »among the most important logical insights, that a determinate moment which, standing in opposition, has the position of an extreme, thereby ceases to be one and is an organic moment in that it is at the same time a mean« (Remark to § 302). Civil society does not seem able to take on this role, since it has, within the »legislative power,« as itself, as extreme, no seat. The other extreme, which as such finds itself in the midst of the legislative power — the princely principle — thus seems to have to form the mediator between the estates and the governmental element. It also seems qualified for this. For on the one hand, the whole of the state, and hence also civil society, is represented in it, and it specifically shares with the estates the »empirical singularity« of will, since empirical universality is real only as empirical singularity. Further, it does not stand opposed to civil society merely as a formula, as state-consciousness, the way governmental power does. It is itself state; it shares the material, natural moment with civil society. On the other hand, the prince is the apex and the representative of governmental power. (Hegel, who inverts everything, makes governmental power the representative, the emanation, of the prince. Because, in regard to the Idea whose existence the prince is supposed to be, he does not have before his eyes the real idea of governmental power, not governmental power as Idea, but the subject of the absolute Idea, which exists bodily in the prince, governmental power becomes a mystical continuation of the soul existing in his body — the princely body.)

   The prince would therefore have to form, within the legislative power, the mean between governmental power and the estates element; but governmental power is, after all, the mean between him and the estates, and the estates the mean between him and civil society. How is he to mediate between things which he himself needs as his mean, in order not to be a one-sided |292| extreme? Here emerges the whole absurdity of these extremes, which play alternately now the role of extreme, now that of mean. They are Janus-heads, showing themselves now from the front, now from behind, having one character in front and another behind. That which was first determined as the mean between two extremes now itself steps forward as an extreme, and one of the two extremes, which was mediated with the other through it, now steps forward again as mean (because, in its distinction from the other extreme) between its extreme and its mean. It is a mutual exchange of compliments. As when a man steps between two people quarreling, and then one of the quarrelers in turn steps between the mediating man and the other quarreler. It is the story of the man and wife who were quarreling, and of the doctor who wanted to step in as mediator between them, whereupon the wife in turn had to mediate the doctor with her husband, and the husband his wife with the doctor. It is like the lion in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, who exclaims: »I am lion, and I am not lion, but Snug.« So here each extreme is now the lion of opposition, now the Snug of mediation. When one extreme cries: »now I am the mean,« the other two must not touch it, but may only strike at the other one, which was just now the extreme. One sees that this is a society which is combative at heart, but too afraid of bruises to actually come to blows, so that the two who want to fight arrange things so that the third, who steps between them, is to receive the beating — but then one of the two in turn steps forward as the third, and so, out of sheer caution, they never come to any decision. This system of mediation also comes about in such a way that the very man who wants to beat his opponent must protect him, on other sides, against being beaten by other opponents, and so, in this double occupation, never gets around to carrying out his own business. It is remarkable that Hegel, who reduces this absurdity of mediation to its abstract, logical, and hence unfalsified, non-negotiable expression, at the same time designates it as the speculative mystery of logic, as the rational relation, as the syllogism of reason. Real extremes cannot be mediated with one another, precisely because they are real extremes. But nor do they need any mediation, for they are of opposed essence. They have nothing in common with one another; they do not require one another; they do not complement one another. The one does not carry, in its own womb, the longing, the need, the anticipation of the other. (But when Hegel treats universality and singularity, the abstract moments of the syllogism, as real oppositions, this is precisely the fundamental dualism of his Logic. Further on this belongs in the critique of the Hegelian Logic.)

   |293| Against this it seems to stand: Les extrêmes se touchent. |Opposites attract| The North Pole and the South Pole attract one another; the female sex and the male likewise attract one another, and it is only through the union of their extreme differences that the human being comes to be.

   On the other hand: every extreme is its own other extreme. Abstract spiritualism is abstract materialism; abstract materialism is the abstract spiritualism of matter.

   As regards the first: the North Pole and the South Pole are both pole; their essence is identical; likewise, the female and male sex are both one genus, one essence, human essence. North and south are opposed determinations of one essence, the difference of one essence at its highest development. They are the differentiated essence. They are what they are only as a differentiated determination, and indeed as this differentiated determination of the essence. True, real extremes would be pole and non-pole, human and inhuman sex. The difference here is a difference of existence; there, a difference of essences, of two essences. As regards the second: here the chief determination lies in the fact that a concept (existence, etc.) is grasped abstractly, so that it has significance not as something independent, but as an abstraction from something else, and only as this abstraction — so that, for example, spirit is only the abstraction from matter. It then follows of itself that, precisely because this form is supposed to constitute its content, it is rather the abstract opposite — the object from which it abstracts, in its abstraction, hence here abstract materialism — that is its real essence. Had the difference within the existence of one essence not been confused, partly with abstraction made independent (that is, of course, not from something else, but properly from itself), and partly with the real opposition of mutually exclusive essences, a threefold error would have been avoided: 1. that, because only the extreme is supposed to be true, every abstraction and one-sidedness takes itself to be true, whereby a principle appears not as a totality in itself, but only as an abstraction from something else; 2. that the resoluteness of real oppositions, their formation into extremes — which is nothing other than both their self-knowledge and their kindling toward the decision of the struggle — is thought of as something possibly to be prevented or as harmful; 3. that one attempts their mediation. For however much both extremes appear, in their existence, as real, and as extremes, it lies in the essence of only the one to be an extreme, and it does not, for the other, have the significance of true actuality. |294| The one overreaches the other. The position is not an equal one. For example, Christianity, or religion in general, and philosophy, are extremes. But in truth religion forms no true opposition to philosophy. For philosophy comprehends religion in its illusory actuality. It is, therefore, for philosophy — insofar as philosophy wants to be an actuality — dissolved within itself. There is no real dualism of essence. More on this later.

   The question arises: how does Hegel come at all to feel the need for a new mediation on the side of the estates element? Or does Hegel share |a word is missing| »the common, but highly dangerous, prejudice of representing the estates chiefly from the point of view of opposition to the government, as though this were their essential position«? (Remark to § 302.)

   The matter is simply this: on the one hand, we have seen that within the »legislative power,« civil society as »estates« element, and princely power as »governmental element,« have only now kindled themselves into a real, immediately practical opposition.

   On the other hand: the legislative power is totality. We find in it 1. the deputation of the princely principle, »governmental power«; 2. the deputation of civil society, the »estates« element; but there is, besides, present in it 3. the one extreme as such, the princely principle, while the other extreme, civil society, as such is not present in it. It is only through this that the »estates« element becomes the extreme opposite the »princely« principle — a role that civil society itself ought properly to play. It is only as »estates« element, as we have seen, that civil society organizes itself into a political existence. The »estates« element is its political existence, its transubstantiation into the political state. The »legislative power« is therefore, as we have seen, only now the properly political state in its totality. Here, then, we have: 1. the princely principle, 2. governmental power, 3. civil society. The »estates« element is »the civil society of the political state,« of the »legislative power.« The extreme which civil society ought to form vis-à-vis the prince is therefore the »estates« element. (Because civil society is the unreality of political existence, the political existence of civil society is its own dissolution, its separation from itself.) Accordingly, it likewise forms an opposition to governmental power.

   Hegel therefore also designates the »estates« element again as the |295| »extreme of empirical universality,« which is properly civil society itself. (Hegel has therefore uselessly let the politico-estates element arise out of the corporations and distinct estates. This would only make sense if the distinct estates as such were now the legislative estates — that is, if the distinction of civil society, the civil determination, were re vera |in reality| the political determination. We would then have not a legislative power of the state as a whole, but the legislative power of the various estates and corporations and classes over the state as a whole. The estates of civil society would receive no political determination, but would rather determine the political state. They would make their particularity into the determining power of the whole. They would be the power of the particular over the universal. Nor would we then have one legislative power, but several legislative powers, negotiating among themselves and with the government. But Hegel has in view the modern significance of the estates element — the realization of citizenship of the state, of being bourgeois. He wants the »universal in and for itself,« the political state, not to be determined by civil society, but, conversely, to determine it. While he thus takes over the form of the medieval-estates element, he gives it the opposite significance — that of being determined by the essence of the political state. The estates as representatives of the corporations, etc., were not »empirical universality,« but »empirical particularity,« the »particularity of the empirical«!) The »legislative power« therefore stands in need, within itself, of mediation — that is, of a papering-over of the opposition — and this mediation must proceed from the »estates element,« because the estates element, within the legislative power, loses the significance of representing civil society and becomes the primary element, itself being the civil society of the legislative power. The »legislative power« is the totality of the political state, and precisely for that reason it is the latter’s contradiction driven to appearance. It is, therefore, just as much its posited dissolution. Wholly different principles collide within it. This appears, indeed, as an opposition between the elements of the princely principle and the principle of the estates element, etc. But in truth it is the antinomy of the political state and civil society, the contradiction of the abstract political state with itself. The legislative power is posited revolt. (Hegel’s chief error consists in his grasping the contradiction of appearance as unity in the |296| essence, in the Idea — although it does indeed have something deeper as its essence, namely an essential contradiction, as, for example, here, where the contradiction of the legislative power within itself is only the contradiction of the political state, and hence also of civil society, with itself.)

   Vulgar criticism falls into an opposite, dogmatic error. Thus, for example, it criticizes the constitution. It draws attention to the opposition of the powers, etc. It finds contradictions everywhere. This is itself still dogmatic criticism, which fights with its object, just as one formerly, say, disposed of the dogma of the Holy Trinity by pointing to the contradiction of one and three. True criticism, by contrast, shows the inner genesis of the Holy Trinity within the human brain. It describes its act of birth. Thus the truly philosophical critique of the present state constitution does not merely point out contradictions as existing; it explains them, it comprehends their genesis, their necessity. It grasps them in their peculiar significance. This comprehending does not consist, however, as Hegel thinks, in recognizing everywhere the determinations of the logical concept, but in grasping the peculiar logic of the peculiar object.)

   Hegel expresses this by saying that in the position of the politico-estates element toward the princely, »there lies only the possibility of agreement and thus equally the possibility of hostile opposition.«

   The possibility of opposition exists wherever different wills come together. Hegel himself says that the »possibility of agreement« is the »possibility of opposition.« He must therefore now form an element which is the »impossibility of opposition« and the »actuality of agreement.« Such an element would then be, for him, freedom of decision and of thought as against the princely will and the government. It would thus no longer belong to the »estates-political« element. It would rather be an element of the princely will and of the government, and would find itself in the very same opposition to the real estates element as the government itself.

   This demand is already considerably toned down by the conclusion of the paragraph:

   »Just as, on the side of the princely power, governmental power (§ 300) already has this determination, so too, on the side of the estates, a moment of the same must be turned toward this determination, existing essentially as the moment of the mean.«

   The moment sent forth on the side of the estates must have the reverse determination from the one governmental power has on the side of the prince, since the princely and the estates element are opposed extremes. |297| Just as the prince democratizes himself in governmental power, so must this »estates« element monarchize itself in its deputation. What Hegel wants, then, is a princely moment on the side of the estates. Just as governmental power contains an estates-moment on the side of the prince, so there is also to be a princely moment on the side of the estates.

   The »actuality of agreement« and the »impossibility of opposition« thus transforms itself into the following demand: [there] »must, on the side of the estates, be a moment of the same turned toward this determination, existing essentially as the moment of the mean«. Turned toward the determination! This determination the estates already have in general, according to § 302. What is needed here should no longer be »determination«, but »determinateness«.

   And what sort of determination is it, anyway, »to exist essentially as the moment of the mean«? To be, according to one’s »essence,« »Buridan’s ass.«

   The matter is simply this:

   The estates are supposed to be »mediation« between prince and government, on the one hand, and people, on the other; but they are not — they are, rather, the organized political opposition of civil society. The »legislative power« stands in need, within itself, of mediation, and specifically, as shown, of a mediation proceeding from the side of the estates. The presupposed moral agreement of the two wills — of which the one is the will of the state as princely will, and the other the will of the state as the will of civil society — does not suffice. The legislative power is, admittedly, the organized, total political state for the first time; but precisely within it there also appears, because it is at his highest development, the unveiled contradiction of the political state with itself. There must, therefore, be posited the semblance of a real identity between the princely and the estates will. The estates element must be posited as princely will, or the princely will must be posited as estates element. The estates element must posit itself as the actuality of a will which is not the will of the estates element. The unity, which is not present in the essence (for otherwise it would have to prove itself through efficacy, and not through the mode of existence, of the estates element), must at least be present as an existence — or, some existence of the legislative power (of the estates element) has the determination of being this unity of what is not united. This moment of the estates element — chamber of peers, upper house, etc. — is the highest synthesis of the political state within the organization under consideration. It is true that what Hegel wants — »the actuality of agreement« and the »impossibility of hostile opposition« — is not thereby attained; rather, matters remain at the |298| »possibility of agreement.« But it is the posited illusion of the unity of the political state with itself (of the princely and the estates will, and further of the principle of the political state and of civil society), of this unity as a material principle — that is, in such a way that not merely two opposed principles unite, but that their unity is of the same nature, is a ground of existence. This moment of the estates element is the romanticism of the political state, the dreams of its essentiality, or of its agreement with itself. It is an allegorical existence.

   It now depends on the real status quo of the relation between the estates element and the princely element, whether this illusion is an effective illusion or a conscious self-deception. So long as the estates and the princely power actually agree, come to terms with one another, the illusion of their essential unity is a real, and hence effective, illusion. In the opposite case, where it would have to prove its truth in practice, it turns into conscious untruth and becomes ridiculous.

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3. 

   Karl Marx

   10. August 1843

   § 305. »One of the estates of civil society contains the principle that is in itself capable of being constituted for this political relation — namely, the estate of natural ethical life, which has family life, and, with regard to subsistence, landed property, as its basis, and thus, with regard to its particularity, has in common with the princely element a will resting on itself, and the natural determination which the princely element includes within itself.«

   We have already demonstrated Hegel’s inconsistency: 1. in grasping the politico-estates element in its modern abstraction from civil society, etc., after having let it arise out of the corporations; 2. in now determining it again according to the estate-distinction of civil society, after he has already determined the political estates as such as the »extreme of empirical universality.«

   The consequence would now be: to consider the political estates on their own, as a new element, and now to construct out of them the mediation demanded in § 304.

   But let us now see how Hegel draws the civil estate-distinction back in, while at the same time producing the semblance that it is not the actuality and particular essence of the civil estate-distinction that determines the highest political sphere, the legislative power, but that, conversely, it sinks down to a mere material, which the political sphere forms and constructs according to a need arising out of itself.

   »One of the estates of civil society contains the principle that is in itself capable of being constituted for this political relation — namely, the estate of natural ethical life« (the peasant estate).

   |299| Wherein, then, does this capability in principle, or this capability of the principle, of the peasant estate consist? It has —

   »family life, and, with regard to subsistence, landed property, as its basis, and thus, with regard to its particularity, has in common with the princely element a will resting on itself, and the natural determination which the princely element includes within itself.«

   The »will resting on itself« relates to the »subsistence,« the »landed property«; the »natural determination« held in common with the princely element relates to »family life« as basis.

   The subsistence of »landed property« and a »will resting on itself« are two different things. What ought rather to be spoken of is a will resting »on land and soil.« But what ought rather to be spoken of is a will resting »on the disposition of the state« — not a will resting on itself, but one resting on the whole.

   In place of »disposition,« of the »possession of the spirit of the state,« there steps »landed property.«

   As for »family life« as basis, the »social« ethical life of civil society seems to stand higher than this »natural ethical life.« Furthermore, »family life« is the »natural ethical life« of the other estates, or of the burgher estate of civil society, just as much as of the peasant estate. But that »family life,« for the peasant estate, is not merely the principle of the family but the basis of its social existence in general, seems rather to make it unfit for the highest political task, in that it will apply patriarchal laws to a non-patriarchal sphere, and assert child or father, lord or servant, precisely where the political state, where citizenship of the state, is at issue.

   As for the natural determination of the princely element, Hegel has developed not a patriarchal, but a modern constitutional king. His natural determination consists in his being the bodily representative of the state and being born a king — that is, kingship being his family inheritance — but what has that to do with family life as the basis of the peasant estate, what does natural ethical life have in common with the natural determination of birth as such? The king shares with the horse the fact that, just as the horse is born a horse, the king is born a king.

   Had Hegel made the estate-distinction he assumed, as such, into the political one, then the peasant estate as such would already have been an independent part of the estates element, and if, as such, it is a moment of mediation with the principality, what need would there then be of |300| constructing a new mediation? And why separate it out from the properly estates-moment, since the latter, after all, only falls into an »abstract« position toward the princely element through its separation from it? But after Hegel has developed the politico-estates element as a peculiar element, as a transubstantiation of the private estate into citizenship of the state, and has, precisely for that reason, found it in need of mediation, how can Hegel now dissolve this organism again into the distinction of the private estate — that is, into the private estate — and fetch out of it the mediation of the political state with itself?

   What an anomaly altogether, that the highest synthesis of the political state should be nothing other than the synthesis of landed property and family life!

   In a word:

   As soon as the civil estates are, as such, political estates, that mediation is not needed; and as soon as that mediation is needed, the civil estate is not political, and hence neither is that mediation. The peasant is then a part of the politico-estates element not as peasant, but as citizen of the state — whereas, conversely ([where he] is citizen of the state as peasant, or peasant as citizen of the state), his citizenship of the state is peasanthood: he is citizen of the state not as peasant, but peasant as citizen of the state!

   Here, then, is an inconsistency of Hegel’s within his own way of viewing things, and such an inconsistency is accommodation. The politico-estates element, in the modern sense, in the sense developed by Hegel, is the accomplished, posited separation of civil society from its private estate and its distinctions. How can Hegel make the private estate into the solution of the antinomies of the legislative power within itself? Hegel wants the medieval estates system, but in the modern sense of the legislative power, and he wants the modern legislative power, but in the body of the medieval-estates system! It is the worst kind of syncretism.

   The beginning of § 304 reads:

   »The distinction of the estates already present in the earlier spheres is contained by the politico-estates element, at the same time, in its own determination.«

   But in its own determination, the politico-estates element contains this distinction only by annulling it, by nullifying it within itself, by abstracting from it.

   If the peasant estate, or, as we shall further hear, the raised-to-a-higher-power peasant estate, noble landed property, is, as such, made in the manner described into the mediation, within itself, of the total political state, of the legislative power |301| — this is indeed the mediation of the estates-political element with princely power, in the sense that it is the dissolution of the politico-estates element as a real political element. Not the peasant estate, but the estate, the private estate — the analysis (reduction) of the politico-estates element into the private estate — is here the restored unity of the political state with itself; it is not the peasant estate as such that is here the mediation, but its separation from the politico-estates element in its quality as civil private estate; this, that its private estate gives it a separate position within the politico-estates element, so that the other part of the politico-estates element likewise receives the position of a particular private estate, thus ceasing to represent the citizenship of the state of civil society. Here, then, the political state is no longer present as two opposed wills; rather, on the one side stands the political state (government and prince), and on the other civil society in its distinction from the political state (the various estates). Thereby, then, the political state as totality is also abolished.

   The immediate sense of the doubling of the politico-estates element within itself, as a mediation with princely power, is, in general, that the separation of this element within itself, its own opposition within itself, is its restored unity with princely power. The fundamental dualism between the princely and the estates element of the legislative power is neutralized by the dualism of the estates element within itself. In Hegel, however, this neutralization comes about by the politico-estates element separating itself from its own political element.

   As for landed property as subsistence — which is supposed to correspond to the sovereignty of will, to princely sovereignty — and family life as the basis of the peasant estate — which is supposed to correspond to the natural determination of princely power — we shall return to this later. Here, in § 305, the »principle« of the peasant estate is developed, »that is in itself capable of being constituted for this political relation.«

   In § 306 the »constituting« »for the political position and significance« is carried out. It reduces itself to this: »The estate becomes« »an inalienable inheritance, encumbered with primogeniture.« »Primogeniture,« then, would be the political constituting of the peasant estate.

   »The justification of primogeniture,« the Addition states, »lies in the fact that the state should be able to count not on the mere possibility of a disposition, but on something necessary. Now, the disposition is, admittedly, not bound to an estate; but |302| the relatively necessary connection is that whoever possesses an independent estate is not restricted by external circumstances and can thus come forward unhindered and act for the state.«

   First sentence. The mere »possibility of a disposition« does not suffice for the state; it is supposed to count on something »necessary.«

   Second sentence. »The disposition is not bound to an estate« — that is, the disposition of the estate is a »mere possibility.«

   Third sentence. But a »relatively necessary connection« obtains, namely, »that whoever possesses an independent estate, etc., can act for the state« — that is, the estate gives the »possibility« of a disposition toward the state; but precisely »possibility,« according to the first sentence, does not suffice.

   Moreover, Hegel has not shown that landed property is the only »independent estate.«

   The constituting of its estate into independence is the constituting of the peasant estate »for the political position and significance.« Or: »the independence of the estate« is its »political position and significance.«

   This independence is further developed as follows:

   Its »estate« is »independent of the estate of the state.« By the estate of the state is evidently to be understood here the treasury of the government. In this respect, »the universal estate« stands »opposed« to it »as essentially dependent on the state.« Thus it is said in the Preface [to Hegel’s Philosophy of Right], p. 13:

   »In any case,« »philosophy among us is not practiced, as it was, say, among the Greeks, as a private art,« »but it has a public existence, touching the public, chiefly or solely in the service of the state.«

   So philosophy, too, is »essentially« dependent on the government treasury.

   Its estate is independent »of the insecurity of trade, of the craving for gain, and of the mutability of possession in general.« In this respect, the »estate of trade« stands opposed to it »as dependent on, and referred to, need.«

   This estate is thus independent »both of the favor of governmental power and of the favor of the multitude.«

   It is, finally, itself fixed even against its own arbitrary will, in that the members of this estate called to this determination »lack the right of other citizens, partly to dispose freely over the whole of their property, partly to know it passing to their children according to the equality of love.« |303| The oppositions have here taken on a wholly new and very material shape, such as we could scarcely have expected in the heaven of the political state.

   The opposition, as Hegel develops it, is, expressed in its full sharpness, the opposition between private property and estate.

   Landed property is private property par excellence, the properly private property. Its exact private nature emerges: 1. as »independence from the estate of the state,« from »the favor of governmental power,« from property as it exists as »universal property of the political state« — a particular estate, according to the construction of the political state, alongside other estates; 2. as »independence from the need« of society, or from »social estate,« from »the favor of the multitude.« (It is equally characteristic that a share in the state’s estate is grasped as »the favor of governmental power,« just as a share in the social estate is grasped as »the favor of the multitude.«) The estate of the »universal estate« and of the »estate of trade« is not properly private property, because it is conditioned, directly in the one case and indirectly in the other, by its connection with the universal estate, or with property as social property — is a participation in it — and is therefore, on both sides, mediated by »favor,« that is, by the »contingency of will.« Opposed to this stands landed property as sovereign private property, which has not yet attained the form of an estate — that is, of a property posited by the social will.

   The political constitution, at its highest apex, is thus the constitution of private property. The highest political disposition is the disposition of private property. Primogeniture is merely the external appearance of the inner nature of landed property. By being inalienable, its social nerves are cut, and its isolation from civil society is secured. By not passing according to the »equality of love toward the children,« it is even released from, made independent of, the smaller society, the natural society of the family, its will and its laws — thereby preserving the harsh nature of private property even from passing over into family property.

   Hegel had, in § 305, declared the estate of landed property capable of being constituted for the »political relation« because »family life« was its basis. But he himself has declared »love« to be the basis, the principle, the spirit, of family life. In the estate that has family life as its basis, then, the basis of family life is lacking — love as the |304| real, and hence efficacious and determining, principle. It is the spiritless family life, the illusion of family life. At its highest development, the principle of private property contradicts the principle of the family. So it is, in fact, contrary to the estate of natural ethical life, of family life — it is rather only within civil society that family life first becomes the life of the family, the life of love. That other, rather, is the barbarism of private property against family life.

   That, then, would be the sovereign glory of private property, of landed property, over which so many sentimentalities have taken place in recent times, and over which so many gaily-colored crocodile tears have been shed.

   It is of no use for Hegel to say that primogeniture is merely a demand of politics and must be grasped in its political position and significance. It is of no use for him to say: »The security and firmness of this estate can be further increased through the institution of primogeniture, which, however, is desirable only from a political point of view, for it involves the sacrifice, for the political purpose, that the first-born should be able to live independently.« There is in Hegel a certain decency, the propriety of the understanding. He does not want primogeniture in and for itself; he wants to justify and construct it only in relation to something else — not as self-determination, but as the determinateness of something else; not as end, but as means to an end. In truth, primogeniture is a consequence of exact landed property, petrified private property, private property (quand même |even so|) in the highest independence and sharpness of its development; and what Hegel presents as the end, as the determining factor, as the prima causa |principal cause| of primogeniture, is rather an effect of it, a consequence — the power of abstract private property over the political state — whereas Hegel presents primogeniture as the power of the political state over private property. He turns cause into effect and effect into cause, the determining into the determined and the determined into the determining.

   But what is the content of the political constituting, of the political purpose — what is the purpose of this purpose? What is its substance? Primogeniture, the superlative of private property, sovereign private property. What power does the political state exercise over private property in primogeniture? That it isolates it from the family and society, that it brings it to its abstract self-sufficiency. What, then, is the power of the political state over private property? The private property’s own power, its essence brought into existence. What is left to the political state, in opposition |305| to this essence? The illusion that it determines, where it is being determined. It does, indeed, break the will of the family and of society, but only in order to give existence to the will of a private property without family and without 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 here comport themselves, within the legislative power — the total state, the state that has arrived at actuality and consequence, at consciousness, the real political state — [in connection] with the ideal, or ought-to-be, with the logical determination and shape of these elements.

   (Primogeniture is not, as Hegel says, »a fetter laid upon the freedom of private right«; it is, rather, the »freedom of private right that has freed itself from all social and ethical fetters.«) (»The highest political construction is here the construction of abstract private property.«)

   Before we make this comparison, one more, closer look is needed at a determination of the paragraph — namely, that through primogeniture the estate of the peasant estate, landed property, private property itself, is fixed even against its own arbitrary will, in that the members of this estate called to this determination »lack the right of the other citizens to dispose freely over the whole of their property.«

   We have already pointed out how, through the »inalienability« of landed property, the social nerves of private property are cut. Private property (landed property) is fixed against the owner’s own arbitrary will in that the sphere of his arbitrary will has flipped over from a generally human one into the specific arbitrary will of private property — private property having become the subject of the will, the will being merely, henceforth, the predicate of private property. Private property is no longer a determinate object of the will’s arbitrariness; rather, arbitrariness is the determinate predicate of private property. But let us compare what Hegel himself says within the sphere of private right:

   § 65 »I can alienate my property, since it is mine only insofar as I put my will into it […], but only insofar as the thing is, by its nature, an externality.«

   § 66 »Inalienable, therefore, are those goods, or rather substantial determinations — and the right to them imprescriptible — which constitute my ownmost personhood and the universal essence of my self-consciousness, such as my personality in general, my universal freedom of will, ethical life, religion.«

   In primogeniture, then, landed property, exact private property, becomes an inalienable good — that is, a substantial determination constituting the »ownmost |306| personhood, the universal essence of self-consciousness« of the primogeniture-lordly estate: its »personality in general, its universal freedom of will, ethical life, religion.« It is, therefore, consistent that, where private property, landed property, is inalienable, »universal freedom of will« (to which belongs also the free disposal over an externality, such as landed property is) and ethical life (to which belongs love, as the spirit that proves itself the real, indeed the real law, of the family) are, by contrast, alienable. The »inalienability« of private property is, all in one, the »alienability« of universal freedom of will and of ethical life. Property is here no longer property insofar as »I put my will into it«; rather, my will is my will »insofar as it lies in property.« Here my will does not possess — it is possessed. This is precisely the romantic thrill of primogeniture-lordliness, that here private property, that is, private arbitrariness in its most abstract shape, that the wholly narrow-minded, unethical, crude will, appears as the highest synthesis of the political state, as the highest self-externalization of arbitrary will, as the hardest, most self-sacrificing struggle against human weakness — for what appears here as human weakness is the humanization, the making-human, of private property. Primogeniture is private property that has become its own religion, sunk into itself, enraptured by its own independence and glory. Just as primogeniture is withdrawn from direct alienation, so it is also withdrawn from contract. Hegel presents the transition from property to contract as follows:

   § 71. »Existence, as determinate being, is essentially being for another; […] property, on the side that it is an existence as an external thing, is for other externalities and within the connection of this necessity and contingency. But as existence of the will, it is, as being for another, only for the will of another person. This relation of will to will is the peculiar and true ground on which freedom has its existence. This mediation — no longer to have property merely by means of a thing and my subjective will, but equally by means of another will, and hence within a common will — constitutes the sphere of contract.«

   (In primogeniture it is made into a law of the state that property is had not within a common will, but only »by means of a thing and my subjective will.«) Whereas Hegel here, in private right, grasps the alienability and the dependence of private property on a common will as its true idealism, in state right, conversely, the imaginary glory of an independent property is praised, in opposition to the »insecurity of trade, the craving for gain, the mutability of possession, the dependence on the estate of the state.« What |307| a state, that cannot even bear the idealism of private right! What a philosophy of right, in which the independence of private property has a different significance in private right than in the right of the state!

   Against the crude stupidity of independent private property, the insecurity of trade is elegiac, the craving for gain is pathetic (dramatic), the mutability of possession a grave fate (tragic), the dependence on the estate of the state ethical. In short, in all these qualities the human heart beats through property; it is dependence of man upon man. However it may be constituted in and for itself, it is human as against the slave who thinks himself free because the sphere that confines him is not society but the soil; the freedom of this will is its emptiness of any content other than that of private property.

   To define such monstrous births as primogeniture as a determination of private property by the political state is altogether unavoidable when one interprets an old world-view in the sense of a new one, when one gives a thing, such as private property here, a double significance — one in the court of abstract right, the opposite one in the heaven of the political state.

   We come to the comparison indicated above.

   § 257 reads:

   »The state is the actuality of the ethical Idea — ethical spirit as the manifest, self-transparent, substantial will … It has its immediate existence in custom, and its mediated existence in the self-consciousness of the individual … just as the latter has its substantial freedom through the disposition toward it, as its essence, end, and product of its activity.«

   § 268 reads:

   »Political disposition, patriotism in general, as the certainty grounded in truth […] and volition become habitual, is only the result of the institutions subsisting within the state, in which rationality is really present, just as it receives its actuation through action conformable to them. — This disposition is, in general, trust (which can pass over into a more or less cultivated insight) — the consciousness that my substantial and particular interest is preserved and contained in the interest and end of another (here, of the state) in its relation to me as an individual — whereby this other is, immediately, not an other for me at all, and I am, in this consciousness, free.«

   The actuality of the ethical Idea appears here as the religion of private property (because, in primogeniture, private property relates to itself in a religious manner, it comes about that, in our modern times, |308| religion in general has become a quality inherent in landed property, and all writings in praise of primogeniture-lordliness are full of religious unction. Religion is the highest form of thought of this brutality). The »manifest, self-transparent, substantial will« transforms itself into a dark will, broken on the soil, which is precisely intoxicated by the impenetrability of the element to which it clings. »The certainty grounded in truth,« which »political disposition is,« is the certainty standing on »its own ground« (in the literal sense). Political »volition« that has »become habitual« is no longer »merely a result,« etc., but an institution subsisting outside the state. Political disposition is no longer »trust,« but rather »confidence, the consciousness that my substantial and particular interest is independent of the interest and end of another (here, of the state), in its relation to me as an individual.« This is the consciousness of my freedom from the state.

   The »upholding of the universal interest of the state,« etc., was (§ 289) the task of »governmental power.« In it resided »the cultivated intelligence and the legal consciousness of the mass of a people« (§ 297). It »properly makes the estates superfluous,« for it »can do the best without the estates, just as it must also, continually, do the best at the estates assemblies« (Remark to § 301). The »universal estate, more particularly devoted to the service of government, has as its determination, directly, to have the universal as the end of its essential activity« [§ 303].

   And how does the universal estate, governmental power, appear now? »As essentially dependent on the state,« as the »estate, dependent on the favor of governmental power.« The same transformation has occurred with civil society, which formerly attained its ethical life in the corporation. It is now an estate, dependent »on the insecurity of trade,« etc., on »the favor of the multitude.«

   What, then, is the supposedly specific quality of the primogeniture-lord? And wherein, in general, can the ethical quality of an inalienable estate consist? In incorruptibility. Incorruptibility appears as the highest political virtue, an abstract virtue. And yet incorruptibility is, in the state constructed by Hegel, something so apart that it must be constructed as a particular political power — thereby itself betraying the consciousness that it is not the spirit of the political state, not the rule, but the exception, and it is constructed as such an exception. One bribes the primogeniture-lords by means of their independent property, in order to preserve them from being corrupted. Whereas, according to the Idea, dependence |309| on the state, and the feeling of this dependence, ought to be the highest political freedom — since it is the sensation of the private person as an abstract, dependent person, and it is precisely as citizen of the state that this person first feels, and ought to feel, independent — here, instead, the independent private person is constructed. »Its estate is [likewise] independent of the estate of the state, as of the insecurity of trade,« etc. Opposed to it stands »the estate of trade, as dependent on and referred to need, and the universal estate, as essentially dependent on the state.« Here, then, is independence from the state and from civil society; and this realized abstraction from both — which, in reality, is the crudest dependence on the soil — forms, within the legislative power, the mediation and the unity of both. Independent private wealth — that is, abstract private wealth and the private person corresponding to it — is the highest construction of the political state. Political »independence« is constructed as »independent private property« and the »person of this independent private property.« We shall see next how matters stand, re vera |in reality|, with »independence« and »incorruptibility« and the disposition toward the state arising from them.

   That primogeniture is an inheritance goes without saying. More on this later. That it is, as Hegel remarks in the Addition, the first-born, is purely historical.

   § 307. »The right of this part of the substantial estate is, in this way, on the one hand indeed grounded in the natural principle of the family, but this is, at the same time, transformed through hard sacrifices for the political end, whereby this estate is essentially assigned to activity for this end, and is, in consequence thereof, likewise called and entitled to it by birth, without the contingency of an election.«

   To what extent the right of this substantial estate is grounded in the natural principle of the family, Hegel has not shown — unless he means by this that landed property exists as inheritance. This develops no right of this estate in the political sense, but only the right of the primogeniture-lords to landed property by birth. »This« — the natural principle of the family — is »at the same time transformed through hard sacrifices for the political end.« We have, indeed, seen how the »natural principle of the family is transformed« here, but how this is »no hard sacrifice for the political end,« but only the realized abstraction of private property. Rather, through this transformation of the natural principle of the family, the political end is equally transformed, »whereby(?) this estate |310| is essentially assigned to activity for this end« — through the making-independent of private property? — »and is, in consequence thereof, likewise called and entitled to it by birth, without the contingency of an election.«

   Here, then, participation in the legislative power is an innate human right. Here we have born legislators, the born mediation of the political state with itself. People — especially the primogeniture-lords — have greatly mocked the innate rights of man. Is it not more comical that the right to the highest dignity of the legislative power should be entrusted to a particular race of men? Nothing is more ridiculous than that Hegel should set the calling to legislator, to representative of citizenship of the state, by »birth,« in opposition to the calling by »the contingency of an election« — as though election, the conscious product of civil trust, did not stand in a wholly different, necessary connection with the political end than does the physical contingency of birth. Hegel everywhere sinks from his political spiritualism into the crassest materialism. At the summits of the political state it is everywhere birth that makes determinate individuals into incorporations of the highest tasks of the state. The highest activities of the state coincide with individuals through birth, just as an animal’s place, its character, mode of life, etc., is directly innate to it. The state, in its highest functions, acquires an animal actuality. Nature avenges itself on Hegel for the contempt shown it. If matter was no longer supposed to be anything for itself, as against the human will, then here the human will retains nothing for itself but matter.

   The false identity, the fragmentary, occasional identity between nature and spirit, body and soul, appears as incorporation. Since birth gives man only individual existence, and at first posits him only as a natural individual, while the state’s determinations, such as the legislative power, etc., are social products, births of society and not begettings of the natural individual — it is precisely the immediate identity, the unmediated coincidence, between the birth of the individual and the individual as individuation of a determinate social position, function, etc., that is the striking thing, the marvel. Nature, in this system, directly makes kings, it directly makes peers, etc., just as it makes eyes and noses. The striking thing is to see, as the immediate product of the physical species, what is only the product of the self-conscious species. I am a human being through birth, without the agreement of society; but this particular birth first becomes a peer or a king only through universal |311| agreement. It is agreement that first makes the birth of this man into the birth of a king: it is, therefore, agreement, and not birth, that makes the king. If birth, unlike the other determinations, gives man a position directly, then his body makes him this particular social functionary. His body is his social right. In this system, the bodily dignity of man, or the dignity of the human body (which, spelled out further, might read: the dignity of the physical natural element of the state) appears such that particular — indeed the highest — social dignities are the dignities of particular bodies predestined by birth. It is therefore natural, among the nobility, that there should be pride in blood, in descent — in short, in the life-history of their body; it is natural that this zoological way of viewing things should possess, in heraldry, the science corresponding to it. The secret of the nobility is zoology.

   Two moments are to be emphasized in hereditary primogeniture:

   1. What abides is the inheritance, the landed property. It is the persisting element in the relation, the substance. The primogeniture-lord, the owner, is properly only accident. Landed property anthropomorphizes itself across the various generations. Landed property, as it were, always inherits the first-born of the house, as the attribute chained to it. Every first-born in the line of landowners is the inheritance, the property of the inalienable landed property, the predestined substance of his will and of his activity. The subject is the thing, and the predicate is the human being. The will becomes the property of property.

   2. The political quality of the primogeniture-lord is the political quality of his inheritance, a political quality inherent in this inheritance. The political quality thus appears here likewise as a property of landed property, as a quality belonging directly to the purely physical earth (nature).

   As regards the first, it follows that the primogeniture-lord is the serf of landed property, and that in the serfs subject to him there appears only the practical consequence of the theoretical relation in which he himself stands to landed property. The depth of Germanic subjectivity appears everywhere as the crudity of a spiritless objectivity.

   Here is to be set forth the relation: 1. between private property and inheritance; 2. between private property, inheritance, and, through this, the privilege of certain lineages to participate in political sovereignty; 3. the real historical relation, or the Germanic relation.

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4. 

   Karl Marx

   10. August 1843

   |312| We have seen that primogeniture is the abstraction of »independent private property.« A second consequence connects to this. The independence, the self-sufficiency, within the political state whose construction we have so far traced, is private property — which, at its apex, appears as inalienable landed property. Political independence, therefore, does not flow ex proprio sinu |from its own essence| of the political state; it is no gift of the political state to its members; it is not the spirit animating it. Rather, the members of the political state receive their independence from an essence which is not the essence of the political state, from an essence of abstract private right, from abstract private property. Political independence is an accident of private property, not the substance of the political state. The political state, and within it the legislative power, is, as we have seen, the unveiled mystery of the true value and essence of the state’s moments. The significance that private property has in the political state is its essential, its true significance; the significance that the estate-distinction has in the political state is the essential significance of the estate-distinction. Likewise, the essence of princely power and of government comes to appearance in the »legislative power.« Here, in the sphere of the political state, it is that the individual moments of the state relate to themselves as to the essence of the species, as to the »species-being«; because the political state is the sphere of their universal determination, their religious sphere. The political state is the mirror of truth for the various moments of the concrete state.

   If, then, »independent private property,« within the political state, within the legislative power, has the significance of political independence, then it is the political independence of the state. »Independent private property,« or »real private property,« is then not merely the »support of the constitution,« but the »constitution itself.« And is not the support of the constitution, after all, the constitution of constitutions, the primary, the real constitution?

   In constructing the hereditary monarch, Hegel, as it were himself surprised at »the immanent development of a science, the derivation of its entire content from the simple concept« (Remark to § 279), makes the observation:

   »Thus it is the fundamental moment of the personality, at first abstract in immediate right, which has further developed itself through its various forms of subjectivity, and which, here, in absolute right — the state, the completely |313| concrete objectivity of the will — is the personality of the state, its certainty of itself.«

   That is to say, it comes to appearance in the political state 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 to existence as the highest objectivity of the state, as its highest right.

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

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

   Hegel designates private right as the right of abstract personality, or as abstract right. And in truth it must be developed as the abstraction of right, and hence as the illusory right of abstract personality — just as the morality developed by Hegel is the illusory existence of abstract subjectivity. Hegel develops private right and morality as such abstractions; from this it does not follow, for him, that the state, that ethical life, which has them as its presuppositions, can be nothing but the sociality (the social life) of these illusions — rather, the conclusion is drawn, conversely, that they are subordinate moments of this ethical life. But what is private right other than right, and morality other than the morality, of these subjects of the state? Or rather, the person of private right and the subject of morality are the person and the subject of the state. Hegel has often been attacked for his development of morality. He has done nothing but develop the morality of the modern state and of modern private right. People have wanted to separate morality more from the state, to emancipate it further. What has thereby been proved? That the separation of the present-day state from morality is moral, that morality is un-statist and the state immoral. It is, rather, a great — though, in one respect (namely, in the respect that Hegel passes off the state, which has such a morality as its presupposition, as the real Idea of ethical life), unconscious — merit of Hegel’s to have assigned modern morality its true position.

   In the constitution in which primogeniture is a guarantee, private property is the guarantee of the political constitution. In primogeniture this appears in such a way that a particular kind of private property is this guarantee. Primogeniture |314| is merely a particular existence of the general relation between private property and the political state. Primogeniture is the political sense of private property, private property in its political significance — that is, in its universal significance. The constitution is, therefore, here the constitution of private property.

   Wherever we encounter primogeniture in its classical formation, among the Germanic peoples, we also find the constitution of private property. Private property is the universal category, the universal bond of the state. Even the universal functions appear as the private property, now of a corporation, now of an estate.

   Trade and commerce, in their particular nuances, are the private property of particular corporations. Court dignities, jurisdiction, etc., are the private property of particular estates. The various provinces are the private property of individual princes, etc. Service to the country, etc., is the private property of the ruler. The spirit is the private property of the clergy. My dutiful activity is the private property of another, just as my right is, in turn, a particular private property. Sovereignty — here, nationality — is 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, as an exception from the rule. One could not, in doing so, overlook the empirical fact that all these privileges appear in the form of private property. What is the universal ground of this coincidence? Private property is the generic existence of privilege, of right as an exception.

   Where princes, as in France, attacked the independence of private property, they made an attempt on the property of the corporations before they made an attempt on the property of individuals. But in attacking the private property of the corporations, they attacked private property as corporation, as the social bond.

   In feudal lordship it appears directly that princely power is the power of private property, and in princely power is laid down the mystery of what the universal power, what the power of all the state’s spheres, is.

   (In the prince, as the representative of state power, is expressed what the powerful element of the state is. The constitutional prince therefore expresses the idea of the constitutional state in its sharpest abstraction. He is, on the one hand, the Idea of the state, the sanctified majesty of the state, and indeed as this person. At the same time he is a mere imagination; as person and as prince he has neither real power nor real activity. Here is expressed, in its highest contradiction, the separation of the political and the real, of the formal and the material, of the |315| universal and the individual person, of man and social man.)

   Private property is of Roman understanding and Germanic temperament. It will be instructive, at this point, to draw a comparison between these two extreme developments of it. This will help us toward the solution of the political problem under discussion.

   It was properly the Romans who first developed the right of private property, abstract right, private right, the right of the abstract person. Roman private right is private right in its classical formation. But nowhere among the Romans do we find that the right of private property was mystified, as it was among the Germans. Nor does it anywhere become the right of the state.

   The right of private property is the jus utendi et abutendi |the right of use and disposal|, the right of arbitrary will over the thing. The chief interest of the Romans consists in developing and determining the relations that result as the abstract relations of private property. The real ground of private property, possession, is a fact, an inexplicable fact, not a right. Only through the juridical determinations that society gives to factual possession does it acquire the quality of rightful possession, of private property.

   As concerns, among the Romans, the connection between political constitution and private property, the following appears:

   1. Man (as slave), as among the ancient peoples in general, appears as an object of private property.

   This is nothing specific.

   2. Conquered lands are treated as private property; the jus utendi et abutendi is asserted over them.

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

   For the rest, private property, on the whole — as among the ancient classical peoples in general — asserts itself as public property, either, in good times, as expenditure of the republic, or as a luxurious and common largesse (baths, etc.) toward the crowd.

   The manner in which slavery is explained is the right of war, the right of occupation: precisely because their political existence has been annihilated, they are slaves.

   Two relations we chiefly emphasize as distinguishing them from the Germans.

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5. 

   Karl Marx

   10. August 1843

   |316| 1. Imperial power was not the power of private property, but the sovereignty of the empirical will as such, which was far from regarding private property as a bond between itself and its subjects; on the contrary, it dealt with private property just as with all other social goods. Imperial power was therefore also hereditary only in fact, not otherwise. The fullest development of the right of private property, of private law, indeed falls into the imperial period, but this is rather a consequence of political dissolution than that political dissolution would be a consequence of private property. Moreover, when private law in Rome attained its full development, public law was already sublated, caught up in its dissolution — whereas in Germany the relation was the reverse.

   2. State dignities were never hereditary in Rome, i.e. private property is not the ruling category of the state there.

   3. In contrast to the Germanic law of primogeniture etc., in Rome the arbitrariness of testation appears as an emanation of private property. In this latter contrast lies the whole difference between the Roman and the Germanic development of private property.

   (In the law of primogeniture it appears that private property is the relation to the function of the state, in such a way that the existence of the state is an inherence, an accident, of immediate private property, of landed property. At its highest points the state thus appears as private property, whereas here private property was supposed to appear as state property. Instead of making private property into a quality of citizenship, Hegel makes citizenship, the existence of the state, and the sentiment of the state into a quality of private property.)

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