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2 responses to “297”

1. 

   Eduard Gans (Additions)

   29. May 1833

   In the middle class, to which the state officials belong, resides the consciousness of the state and the most pronounced education. For this reason it also constitutes the fundamental pillar of the state with respect to legality and intelligence. A state in which no middle class is present therefore still stands on no high level. Thus, for example, Russia, which has one mass that is enserfed and another that governs. That this middle class should be formed is a chief interest of the state, but this can occur only within an organization such as the one we have seen, namely through the entitlement of particular circles that are relatively independent, and through a body of officials whose arbitrariness is broken against such entitled bodies. Acting according to universal right, and the habit of so acting, is a consequence of the opposition formed by the circles that are independent for themselves.

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2. 

   Karl Marx

   6. July 1843

   What Hegel says about »governmental power« does not deserve the name of a philosophical development. Most of the paragraphs could stand word for word in the Prussian Landrecht, and yet the actual administration is the most difficult point of the development.

   Since Hegel has already vindicated »police« power and »judicial« power to the sphere of civil society, governmental power is nothing other than administration, which he develops as bureaucracy.

   The bureaucracy first presupposes the »self-administration« of civil society in »corporations.« The only determination that is added is that the election of their administrators, authorities, etc. is a mixed one, proceeding from the citizens and confirmed by the actual governmental power (a »higher confirmation,« as Hegel says).

   Above this sphere, for »upholding the universal interest of the state and legality,« stand »delegates of the governmental power,« the »executive officials of the state,« and the »collegial authorities,« which converge in the »monarch.«

   In »the business of government« a »division of labor« takes place. Individuals must prove their capacity for governmental business, that is, pass examinations. The selection of particular individuals for offices of state falls to the princely power of the state. The division of this business is »given by the nature of the matter.« Official business is the duty, the vocation for life, of state officials. They must therefore be salaried by the state. The guarantee against abuse of the bureaucracy lies partly in its hierarchy and accountability, and, on the other hand, in the rights of communities and corporations; its humanity depends partly on »direct ethical and intellectual formation,« partly on the »size of the state.« The officials form »the main part of the middle estate.« Against it, as »an aristocracy and a rule of masters,« there is protection partly through »the institutions of sovereignty from above,« partly through »those of corporate rights from below.« The »middle estate« is the estate of »education.« Voilà tout |That is all|. Hegel gives us an empirical description of the bureaucracy — partly as it really is, partly according to the opinion it has of its own being. And with that, the difficult chapter of »governmental power« is disposed of.

   Hegel starts out from the separation of »the state« and »civil« society, of »particular interests« and the »universal existing in and for itself,« and indeed the bureaucracy is based on this separation. Hegel starts out from the presupposition of the »corporations,« and indeed the bureaucracy presupposes the corporations, at least the »corporate spirit.« Hegel develops no content of the bureaucracy, but only a few general determinations of its »formal« organization, and indeed the bureaucracy is only the »formalism« of a content that lies outside it.

   The corporations are the materialism of the bureaucracy, and the bureaucracy is the spiritualism of the corporations. The corporation is the bureaucracy of civil society; the bureaucracy is the corporation of the state. In reality, therefore, it stands as »the civil society of the state« opposed to the »state of civil society,« the corporations. Where the »bureaucracy« is a new principle, where the universal interest of the state begins to become, for itself, an »apart,« and thereby a »real,« interest, it fights against the corporations, just as every consequence fights against the existence of its own presuppositions. But as soon as real state life awakens and civil society, out of its own rational impulse, frees itself from the corporations, the bureaucracy seeks to restore them; for as soon as the »state of civil society« falls, the »civil society of the state« falls too. Spiritualism disappears along with the materialism opposed to it. Consequence fights for the existence of its own presuppositions as soon as a new principle fights not against their existence but against the principle of that existence. The very spirit that creates the corporation in society creates the bureaucracy in the state. As soon, then, as the corporate spirit is attacked, the spirit of the bureaucracy is attacked; and whereas it earlier fought the existence of the corporations in order to make room for its own existence, it now seeks forcibly to preserve the existence of the corporations, in order to save the corporate spirit — its own spirit.

   The »bureaucracy« is the »state formalism« of civil society. It is the »state consciousness,« the »state will,« the »state power,« as a corporation (the »universal interest« can hold itself against the particular only as a »particular,« so long as the particular holds itself against the universal as a »universal.« The bureaucracy must therefore protect the imaginary universality of the particular interest, the corporate spirit, in order to protect the imaginary particularity of the universal interest, its own spirit. The state must be a corporation, so long as the corporation wants to be a state) — thus a particular, closed society within the state. But the bureaucracy wants the corporation to be only an imaginary power. To be sure, each individual corporation also has this will, for its own particular interest, against the bureaucracy; but it wants the bureaucracy to prevail against the other corporation, against the other particular interest. The bureaucracy, as the completed corporation, therefore carries off the victory over the corporation as the uncompleted bureaucracy. It reduces the latter to a mere semblance, or wants to reduce it to a mere semblance — but it wants this semblance to exist and to believe in its own existence. The corporation is civil society’s attempt to become a state; but the bureaucracy is the state that has really made itself into civil society.

   The »state formalism« that the bureaucracy is, is »the state as formalism,« and it is as such formalism that Hegel has described it. Since this »state formalism« constitutes itself as a real power and becomes for itself its own material content, it goes without saying that the »bureaucracy« is a fabric of practical illusions, or the »illusion of the state.« The bureaucratic spirit is a thoroughly Jesuitical, theological spirit. Bureaucrats are the Jesuits and theologians of the state. The bureaucracy is la république prêtre |the republic of priests|.

   Since the bureaucracy is, in its essence, »the state as formalism,« it is so also in its purpose. The real purpose of the state thus appears to the bureaucracy as a purpose directed against the state. The spirit of the bureaucracy is the »formal spirit of the state.« It therefore makes the »formal spirit of the state,« or the real spiritlessness of the state, into a categorical imperative. The bureaucracy takes itself to be the ultimate final purpose of the state. Since the bureaucracy makes its »formal« purposes into its content, it everywhere comes into conflict with the »real« purposes. It is therefore compelled to pass off the formal for the content and the content for the formal. The purposes of the state are transformed into the purposes of the bureau, or the purposes of the bureau into the purposes of the state. The bureaucracy is a circle from which no one can escape. Its hierarchy is a hierarchy of knowledge. The top entrusts the lower circles with insight into particulars, while the lower circles credit the top with insight into the universal, and thus they deceive one another reciprocally.

   The bureaucracy is the imaginary state alongside the real state — the spiritualism of the state. Every thing therefore has a double meaning, a real one and a bureaucratic one, just as knowledge is double, a real and a bureaucratic knowledge (and so, too, is the will). But the real essence is treated according to its bureaucratic essence, according to its otherworldly, spiritual essence. The bureaucracy holds the being of the state, the spiritual essence of society, in its possession; it is its private property. The universal spirit of the bureaucracy is the secret, the mystery, preserved within itself through the hierarchy and, outwardly, as a closed corporation. The open spirit of the state, and even public-spiritedness, therefore appear to the bureaucracy as a betrayal of its mystery. Authority is therefore the principle of its knowledge, and the deification of authority is its cast of mind. But within itself, this spiritualism turns into a crass materialism — the materialism of passive obedience, of belief in authority, of the mechanism of a fixed, formal conduct, of fixed principles, views, traditions.

   As for the individual bureaucrat, the purpose of the state becomes his private purpose, a hunting after higher posts, a matter of making a career. In the first place, he regards real life as something material, for the spirit of this life has its own, separate existence in the bureaucracy. The bureaucracy must therefore proceed to make life as material as possible. In the second place, it is material for him himself — that is, insofar as it becomes an object of bureaucratic treatment — for his spirit is prescribed to him, his purpose lies outside him, his existence is the existence of the office. The state now exists only as various fixed office-spirits, whose connection is subordination and passive obedience. Real science appears as devoid of content, just as real life appears as dead, for this imaginary knowledge and this imaginary life pass for the essence. The bureaucrat must therefore proceed Jesuitically with the real state, whether this Jesuitism be conscious or unconscious. But it is necessary that, as soon as knowledge becomes his opposite, he too arrives at self-consciousness and becomes deliberate Jesuitism.

   While the bureaucracy is, on the one hand, this crass materialism, its crass spiritualism shows itself in the fact that it wants to make everything, that is, that it turns the will into the causa prima |the principal cause| — because it is merely active existence and receives its content from outside, and can therefore prove its existence only by forming, by restricting, this content. For the bureaucrat, the world is merely an object to be dealt with.

   When Hegel calls governmental power the objective side of the sovereignty inherent in the monarch, that is correct in the same sense in which the Catholic Church was the real existence of the sovereignty, the content and spirit, of the Holy Trinity. In the bureaucracy, the identity of the interest of the state and the particular private purpose is posited in such a way that the interest of the state becomes a particular private purpose set over against the other private purposes.

   The abolition of the bureaucracy can only consist in the universal interest really — and not, as with Hegel, merely in thought, in abstraction — becoming a particular interest, which is possible only through the particular interest really becoming universal. Hegel starts out from an unreal opposition and therefore arrives only at an imaginary identity which, in truth, is itself once again an oppositional one. The bureaucracy is just such an identity.

   Let us now follow his development in detail.

   The only philosophical determination that Hegel gives concerning governmental power is that of the »subsumption« of the singular and the particular under the universal, etc.

   Hegel contents himself with this. On the one side: the category »subsumption« of the particular, etc. This must be realized. Now he takes some empirical existence or other of the Prussian or modern state (just as it is, hide and hair), which, among other things, also realizes this category, although its specific essence is not thereby expressed. Applied mathematics, too, is subsumption, etc. Hegel does not ask: is this the rational, the adequate mode of subsumption? He holds fast only to the one category and contents himself with finding some corresponding existence for it. Hegel gives his logic a political body; he does not give the logic of the political body (§ 287).

   Concerning the relation of the corporations and communities to the government, we learn first that their administration (the filling of their magistracies) requires, »in general, a mixture of common election by these interested parties and of a higher confirmation and determination.« The mixed election of communal and corporate officers would thus be the first relation between civil society and the state, or governmental power — their first identity (§ 288). This identity, according to Hegel himself, is very superficial, a mixtum compositum, a »mixture.« As superficial as this identity is, so sharp is the opposition. »Insofar as these affairs« (namely, of the corporation, community, etc.) »are, on the one hand, the private property and interest of these particular spheres, and to that extent their authority rests in part on the trust of their fellow members and citizenry, while, on the other hand, these circles must be subordinated to the higher interest of the state,« there results the »mixed election« indicated.

   The administration of the corporation thus contains the opposition: private property and interest of the particular spheres, against the higher interest of the state — the opposition between private property and the state.

   It hardly needs remarking that the resolution of this opposition in the mixed election is a mere accommodation, a treaty, an admission of the unresolved dualism — itself a dualism, a »mixture.« The particular interests of the corporation and the communities have, within their own sphere, a dualism that equally forms the character of their administration.

   But the decisive opposition emerges only in the relation between these »common particular interests,« etc., which »lie outside the universal of the state existing in and for itself,« and this »universal of the state existing in and for itself.« At first, again, within this sphere.

   »Upholding the universal interest of the state and legality within these particular rights, and bringing them back to that universal interest, requires oversight by delegates of the governmental power, the executive officials of the state, and the higher deliberative bodies, insofar as these are collegially constituted, which converge in the supreme summits touching upon the monarch.« (§ 289.)

   In passing, we draw attention to the construction of the government colleges, which, for example, are unknown in France. »Insofar« as Hegel cites these authorities as »deliberative,« »insofar,« indeed, it goes without saying that they are »collegially constituted.«

   Hegel lets »the state itself,« »governmental power,« step into civil society, for the »oversight« of »the universal interest of the state and legality, etc.,« by way of »delegates«; and according to him these »governmental delegates,« the »executive officials of the state,« are really the true »representation of the state« — not »for,« but »against,« »civil society.« The opposition between the state and civil society is thus fixed; the state does not reside within, but outside, civil society; it touches it only through its »delegates,« to whom the »oversight of the state« within these spheres is entrusted. Through these »delegates« the opposition is not abolished, but has become a »legal,« »fixed« opposition. »The state« is asserted against civil society, by deputies of civil society’s own essence, as something alien and beyond that essence. The »police,« the »courts,« and the »administration« are not deputies of civil society itself, administering its own universal interest in and through them, but delegates of the state, administering the state against civil society. Hegel explicates this opposition further in the candid remark examined more fully above.

   »The business of government is, of itself […], already of an objective, decided nature.« (§ 291.)

   Does Hegel conclude from this that they therefore all the more readily require no »hierarchy of knowledge,« that they can be executed entirely by »civil society itself«? On the contrary.

   He makes the profound remark that they are to be carried out by »individuals« and that between »them and these individuals there lies no immediate natural connection.« An allusion to the princely power, which is nothing other than the »natural power of arbitrariness« and can therefore be »born.« »Princely power« is nothing but the representative of the moment of nature within the will, the »rule of physical nature within the state.«

   The »executive officials of the state« thus differ essentially from the »prince« in the manner of acquiring their offices.

   »For their determination to this« (namely, to affairs of state) »the objective moment is knowledge« (subjective arbitrariness lacks this moment) »and the demonstration of their capacity — a demonstration that secures for the state what it needs, and, as the sole condition, secures at the same time for every citizen the possibility of devoting himself to the universal estate.«

   This possibility for every citizen of becoming a state official is thus the second affirmative relation between civil society and the state, the second identity. It is of a very superficial and dualistic nature. Every Catholic has the possibility of becoming a priest (that is, of separating himself from the laity, as from the world). Does the priesthood therefore confront the Catholic any the less as a power beyond him? That everyone has the possibility of acquiring the right of another sphere proves only that his own sphere is not the actuality of this right.

   In the true state, what is at issue is not the possibility of every citizen devoting himself to the universal as a particular estate, but the capacity of the universal estate really to be universal — that is, to be the estate of every citizen. But Hegel starts out from the presupposition of the pseudo-universal, the illusorily universal estate, the particular permanent universality.

   The identity he has constructed between civil society and the state is the identity of two hostile armies, in which every soldier has the »possibility,« through »desertion,« of becoming a member of the »enemy« army — and indeed, Hegel thereby correctly describes the present empirical state of affairs.

   The same holds of his construction of the »examinations.« In a rational state, an examination would be needed sooner to become a shoemaker than an executive state official; for shoemaking is a skill without which one can still be a good citizen, a social human being — but the necessary »knowledge of the state« is a condition without which one lives in the state outside the state, cut off from oneself, from the air one breathes. The »examination« is nothing but a Masonic formula, the legal recognition of civic knowledge as a privilege.

   The »connection« of »office of state« and »individual,« this objective bond between the knowledge of civil society and the knowledge of the state, the examination, is nothing other than the bureaucratic baptism of knowledge, the official acknowledgment of the transubstantiation of profane knowledge into sacred knowledge (it goes without saying, in every examination, that the examiner knows everything). We do not hear that Greek or Roman statesmen took examinations. But then, of course, what is a Roman statesman compared to a Prussian government official!

   Alongside the objective bond of the individual with the office of state, alongside the examination, there is found another bond — princely arbitrariness.

   »The subjective side — that this individual, out of the several, of whom, since the objective element here does not lie in genius (as, for example, in art), there is necessarily an indeterminate plurality, among whom preference is nothing absolutely determinable, is chosen and appointed to a post and empowered to conduct public business — this connection of the individual and the office, as two sides always contingent in relation to one another, belongs to the princely power as the deciding and sovereign power of the state.«

   The prince is everywhere the representative of contingency. Alongside the objective moment of the bureaucratic profession of faith (the examination), there must also be added the subjective moment of princely grace, so that faith may bear fruit.

   »The particular affairs of state which the monarchy hands over to the authorities« (the monarchy distributes, hands over the particular activities of the state as business to the authorities, distributes the state among the bureaucrats; it hands this over as the Holy Roman Church hands over holy orders; the monarchy is a system of emanation; the monarchy leases out the functions of state) »form a part of the objective side of the sovereignty inherent in the monarch.« Here Hegel distinguishes, for the first time, the objective side of the sovereignty inherent in the monarch from the subjective side. Earlier he had thrown the two together. The sovereignty inherent in the monarch is here taken in a formally mystical sense, just as theologians find the personal God within nature. Earlier it was still said that the monarch is the subjective side of the sovereignty inherent in the state. (§ 293.)

   In § 294 Hegel develops the salarying of officials out of the Idea. Here, in the salarying of officials — or in the fact that state service simultaneously guarantees the security of empirical existence — the real identity of civil society and the state is posited. The pay of the official is the highest identity that Hegel manages to construct. This presupposes the transformation of the activities of the state into offices, the separation of the state from society. When Hegel says:

   »State service requires […] the sacrifice of the independent and arbitrary satisfaction of subjective purposes« — but every service requires this, »and thereby gives precisely the right to find that satisfaction in the dutiful performance of service, but only in it. Herein lies, from this side, the connection of the universal and the particular interest which constitutes the concept and the inner stability of the state« —

   so, in the first place, this holds of every servant whatsoever; and in the second place, it is true that the salarying of officials constitutes the inner stability of the profound modern monarchies. Only the existence of the officials is guaranteed — in contrast to the member of civil society.

   It cannot now escape Hegel that he has constructed governmental power as an opposition to civil society, and indeed as a ruling extreme. How, then, does he now establish an identical relation?

   According to § 295, »the security of the state and of the governed against the abuse of power on the part of the authorities and their officials« lies partly in their »hierarchy« (as though the hierarchy were not the chief abuse, and as though the few personal sins of officials were at all comparable to their necessary hierarchical sins; the hierarchy punishes the official insofar as he sins against the hierarchy, or commits some sin superfluous to the hierarchy — but it takes him under its protection as soon as the hierarchy sins in him; moreover, the hierarchy convinces itself only with difficulty of the sins of its members) and »in the entitlement of the communities and corporations, whereby the intrusion of subjective arbitrariness into the power entrusted to the officials is on its own checked, and the control that does not reach into individual conduct« (as though this control did not itself proceed from the standpoint of the bureaucratic hierarchy) »is completed from above, and from below.«

   The second guarantee against the arbitrariness of the bureaucracy is thus the privileges of the corporations.

   If we ask Hegel, then, what protects civil society against the bureaucracy, he answers:

   1. The »hierarchy« of the bureaucracy. Control. This means that the opponent himself is bound hand and foot, and that, downward, he is a hammer, upward, an anvil. But where, then, is the protection against the »hierarchy« itself? The lesser evil is indeed abolished by the greater, insofar as it vanishes in comparison with it.

   2. The conflict — the unresolved conflict — between bureaucracy and corporation. The struggle, the possibility of struggle, is the guarantee against succumbing. Later (§ 297) Hegel adds, as a further guarantee, »the institutions of sovereignty from above,« by which, once again, the hierarchy is meant.

   But Hegel adduces two further moments (§ 296).

   Within the official himself — and this is supposed to humanize him, to turn »dispassion, rectitude, and gentleness of conduct« into »custom« — »direct ethical and intellectual formation« is supposed to keep »the spiritual equilibrium« against the mechanism of his knowledge and his »real work.« As though the »mechanism« of his »bureaucratic« knowledge and his »real work« did not itself hold the balance against his »ethical and intellectual formation«! And will not his real spirit and his real work, as substance, triumph over the accident of his other talents? His »office,« after all, is his »substantial« relation and his »bread.« How fine, that Hegel should set »direct ethical and intellectual formation« against the »mechanism of bureaucratic knowledge and labor«! The human being within the official is supposed to secure the official against himself. But what a unity! Spiritual equilibrium. What a dualistic category!

   Hegel further adduces the »size of the state,« which in Russia does not guarantee against the arbitrariness of the »executive officials of the state« — in any case a circumstance that lies »outside« the »essence« of the bureaucracy.

   Hegel has developed »governmental power« as a »servantdom of the state.«

   Here, in the sphere of the »universal of the state itself, existing in and for itself,« we find nothing but unresolved conflicts. The examination and the bread of the officials are the ultimate syntheses.

   Hegel cites the powerlessness of the bureaucracy, its conflict with the corporation, as its final consecration.

   In § 297 an identity is posited, insofar as »the members of the government and the officials of the state form the main part of the middle estate.« Hegel praises this »middle estate« as the »fundamental pillar« of the state »in respect of rectitude and intelligence.« (Addition to the paragraph cited.)

   »That this middle estate be formed is a chief interest of the state, but this can happen only in an organization such as we have seen — namely, through the entitlement of particular circles that are relatively independent, and through a body of officials whose arbitrariness breaks against such entitled parties.«

   Indeed, only in such an organization can the people appear as an estate, the middle estate; but is this an organization that keeps itself going through the equilibrium of privileges? Governmental power is the hardest to develop. It belongs to the whole people to a far higher degree even than the legislative power.

   Hegel later expresses the actual spirit of the bureaucracy (§ 308, Remark) when he characterizes it as »the routine of business« and »the horizon of a restricted sphere.«

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