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310

The guarantee of the qualities and disposition corresponding to this end — since independent wealth already claims its right in the first part of the Estates — is found, in the case of the second part, which proceeds from the mobile and variable element of civil society, chiefly in the disposition, skill, and knowledge of the institutions and interests of the state and of civil society that are acquired through actual conduct of business, in magisterial or state offices, and are proven in deed, together with the magisterial sense and sense of the state thereby formed and tested.

Subjective opinion of itself readily finds the requirement of such guarantees, when made with regard to the so-called people, superfluous, indeed even perhaps offensive. But the state has the objective, not a subjective opinion and its self-confidence, as what determines it; individuals can be for it only what is objectively recognizable and proven in them, and it has to attend to this all the more in the case of this part of the Estates element, since it has its root in interests and occupations directed toward particularity, where contingency, mutability, and arbitrariness have the right to indulge themselves. The external condition of a certain amount of wealth, taken merely by itself, appears as the one-sided extreme of externality as against the other, equally one-sided extreme, namely the merely subjective confidence and opinion of the electors. The one, like the other, in its abstraction, stands in contrast to the concrete qualities required for deliberating on affairs of state, which are contained in the determinations indicated in § 302. In any case, in the election to magisterial and other offices of the associations and communities, the property qualification already has the sphere in which it is able to exert its effect, especially where a number of these offices are administered without remuneration, and directly with regard to the business of the Estates, where the members receive no salary.

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  1. Karl Marx Avatar
    Karl Marx

    First the first chamber, the chamber of independent private property, was constructed for the prince and the governmental power as a guarantee against the sentiment of the second chamber, as the political existence of empirical |330| universality, and now Hegel again demands a new guarantee, which is supposed to guarantee the sentiment etc. of the second chamber itself.

    At first, trust was the guarantee of the deputies — the guarantee of those who deputed them. Now this trust itself again requires a guarantee of its own competence.

    Hegel would not be averse to making the second chamber into the chamber of pensioned state officials. He demands not only »the sense of the state«, but also an »official«, bureaucratic sense.

    What he really demands here is that the legislative power should be the actual governing power. He expresses this by demanding the bureaucracy twice over — once as the representation of the princes, and again as the representative of the people.

    If, in constitutional states, officials too are admissible as deputies, this is only because one abstracts altogether from estate, from civic quality, and the abstraction of citizenship is what rules.

    Hegel forgets, in doing so, that he had representation proceed from the corporations, and that the governmental power stands directly opposed to them. In this forgetting — which he immediately forgets again in the very next paragraph — he goes so far as to create an essential difference between the deputies of the corporation and the deputies of the estates.

    In the Remark to this paragraph it says:

    »Subjective opinion of itself readily finds the demand for such guarantees, when made with regard to the so-called people, superfluous, indeed even somewhat offensive. But the state has, for its determination, the objective, not a subjective opinion and its self-confidence; individuals can only be, for it, what is objectively recognizable and proven in them, and it has to attend to this all the more in this part of the estates element, since the latter has its root in interests and occupations directed toward the particular, where contingency, changeability, and arbitrariness have their right to roam.«

    Here Hegel’s thoughtless inconsistency and »official« sense become truly repugnant. At the end of the Addition to the earlier paragraph it says:

    »That the deputy accomplish and promote this« (namely, their task described above) »requires, for those who elect them, a guarantee.«

    This guarantee for the electors has surreptitiously developed into a guarantee against the electors, against their »self-confidence«. In the estates element, »empirical universality« was supposed to attain the moment of »subjective formal freedom«. »Public consciousness« was supposed, in it, to attain existence »as the empirical universality of the views and thoughts of the many«. (§ 301.)

    Now these »views and thoughts« are supposed first to give the government proof that they are »its« views and thoughts. Hegel speaks here, foolishly, of the state as a finished existence, although he is only just now busy constructing the state, in the estates element, to completion. He speaks of the state as a concrete subject that »is not troubled by subjective opinion and its self-confidence«, for which individuals must first make themselves »recognizable« and »proven«. All that is missing now is for Hegel to demand that the estates sit an examination before the worthy government. Hegel goes here almost to the point of servility. One sees him thoroughly infected by the wretched arrogance of the Prussian officialdom, which looks down, in genteel bureaucratic narrowness, on the »self-confidence« of »the people’s subjective opinion of itself«. »The state«, here, is for Hegel everywhere identical with »the government«.

    Certainly, in an actual state, »mere trust«, »subjective opinion«, cannot suffice. But in the state constructed by Hegel, the political sentiment of civil society is a mere opinion, precisely because its political existence is an abstraction from its actual existence; precisely because the whole of the state is not the objectification of political sentiment. If Hegel wished to be consistent, he would rather have to do everything in his power to construct the estates element, in accordance with its essential determination (§ 301), as the being-for-itself of universal affairs in the thoughts etc. of the many — hence quite independently of the other presuppositions of the political state.

    Just as Hegel earlier designated it as the view of the rabble to presuppose ill will on the part of the government etc., so, just as much and even more, is it the view of the rabble to presuppose ill will on the part of the people. Hegel then ought not to find it, on the part of the theorists he despises, either »superfluous« or »offensive« when guarantees are demanded — »with regard to the so-called state«, the soi-disant state, the government — that the sentiment of the bureaucracy is the sentiment of the state.

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