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290

In the business of government, the division of labour (§ 198) likewise makes its appearance. The organization of the administrative bodies accordingly has the formal, but difficult, task that, from below, where civil life is concrete, this life should be governed in a concrete manner, while this business should nevertheless be divided into its abstract branches, which are handled by particular authorities as distinct centres, whose activity converges again, both further down and in the supreme governmental power, into a concrete overview.

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2 responses to “290”

  1. Eduard Gans (Additions) Avatar
    Eduard Gans (Additions)

    The main point on which everything turns in governmental power is the division of business: it has to do with the transition from the universal into the particular and the individual, and its business is to be divided according to the various branches. The difficulty, however, is that these come together again, both upward and downward. For police power and judicial power, for instance, diverge from one another, but they nevertheless meet again in some particular business. The expedient commonly resorted to here consists in appointing state chancellors, prime ministers, ministerial councils, so that the upper direction may be simplified. But through this everything can also proceed once again from above and from the ministerial power, and business can be, as one puts it, centralized. This brings with it the greatest ease, speed, and effectiveness for what is to be done in the general interest of the state. This system of government was introduced by the French Revolution, elaborated by Napoleon, and still exists in France today. France, however, lacks corporations and communes, that is, the circles in which particular and universal interests come together. In the Middle Ages, to be sure, these circles had gained too great an independence, were states within the state, and comported themselves harshly as bodies subsisting for themselves; but even though this need not be the case, one may nevertheless say that the true strength of states lies in the communities. Here government meets with rightful interests that must be respected by it, and inasmuch as the administration can only be of service to such interests, while also having to supervise them, the individual finds protection for the exercise of his rights, and thus his particular interest becomes bound up with the preservation of the whole. For some time now everything has been organized from above, and this organizing has been the chief effort, but the lower part, the mass of the whole, has easily been left more or less unorganized; and yet it is of the highest importance that it become organic, for only in this way is it power, is it force—otherwise it is merely a heap, a multitude of splintered atoms. Rightful power exists only in the organic condition of the particular spheres.

  2. Karl Marx Avatar
    Karl Marx

    The Addition to this to be considered later.

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