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One response to “303”

1. 

   Karl Marx

   27. July 1843

   Here we have the solution of the riddle. »In the estates element of the legislative power, the private estate attains a political significance.« It goes without saying that the private estate attains this significance according to what it is, according to its articulation within civil society (Hegel has already designated the universal estate as the one devoting itself to government; the universal estate is thus represented, through governmental power, within the legislative power).

   The estates element is the political significance of the private estate, of the unpolitical estate — a contradictio in adjecto |a contradiction in terms|. Or: within the estate described by Hegel, the private estate (and, more generally, the distinction of the private estate as such) has a political significance. The private estate belongs to the essence, to the politics, of this state. It thereby gives it, too, a political significance — that is, a significance other than its real significance.

   In the Remark it is stated:

   »This runs counter to another current conception — that, in being raised to participation in the universal affair within the legislative power, the private estate must appear there in the form of individuals, whether they elect representatives for this function, or whether indeed each one is himself to exercise a vote in it. This atomistic, abstract view already disappears within the family, as within civil society, where the individual comes to appearance only as a member of a universal. The state, however, is essentially an organization of such members as are, for themselves, circles, and within it no moment ought to show itself as an unorganic multitude. The many as individuals — what one likes to understand by ›the people‹ — are indeed a togetherness, but only as the mass, a formless multitude whose movement and action would, precisely for that reason, be merely elemental, irrational, wild, and terrible.«

   »The conception which, wherever the communities already present within those circles enter into the political — that is, into the standpoint of the highest concrete universality — dissolves them again into a multitude of individuals, thereby keeps civil and political life separated from one another and, so to speak, suspends the latter in the air, since its basis would then be only the abstract singularity of arbitrariness and opinion — hence something contingent, not a foundation firm and entitled in and for itself.«

   »Although in the conceptions of so-called theories the estates of civil society in general and the estates in a political sense lie far apart, language has nonetheless still preserved this union, which in any case existed earlier.«

   »The universal estate, devoting itself more particularly to the service of the government.«

   Hegel proceeds from the presupposition that the universal estate stands »in the service of the government.« He assumes universal intelligence to be »belonging to an estate, and permanent.«

   »In the estates element, etc.« The »political significance and efficacy« of the private estate is a particular significance and efficacy of it. The private estate does not transform itself into the political estate; rather, as a private estate, it enters into its political efficacy and significance. It does not have political efficacy and significance as such, without qualification. Its political efficacy and significance is the political efficacy and significance of the private estate as private estate. The private estate can therefore enter the political sphere only according to the estate-distinction of civil society. The estate-distinction of civil society becomes a political distinction.

   Language itself, Hegel says, already expresses the identity of the estates of civil society and the estates in a political sense — a »union« »which in any case existed earlier« — from which, one should conclude, it no longer exists now.

   Hegel finds that »in this respect the really particular within the state truly connects itself with the universal.« The separation of »civil and political life« is thus supposed to be abolished, and their »identity« posited.

   Hegel bases himself on this: »Within those circles« (family and civil society) »communities already exist.« How, then, can one wish, precisely »where they enter into the political — that is, into the standpoint of the highest concrete universality« — to »dissolve them again into a multitude of individuals«?

   It is important to follow this development closely.

   The apex of Hegel’s identity was, as he himself confesses, the Middle Ages. Here the estates of civil society in general and the estates in a political sense were identical. One can express the spirit of the Middle Ages thus: the estates of civil society and the estates in a political sense were identical, because civil society was political society — because the organic principle of civil society was the principle of the state.

   But Hegel starts out from the separation of »civil society« and the »political state« as two fixed oppositions, two really distinct spheres. This separation, to be sure, really exists in the modern state. The identity of the civil and political estates was the expression of the identity of civil and political society. This identity has vanished. Hegel presupposes it as vanished. »The identity of the civil and political estates,« were it to express the truth, could therefore now only be an expression of the separation of civil and political society! Or rather: only the separation of the civil and political estates |in Marx: society| expresses the true relation of modern civil and political society.

   Second: here Hegel is speaking of political estates in a sense wholly different from those political estates of the Middle Ages, of which the identity with the estates of civil society is predicated.

   Their entire existence was political; their existence was the existence of the state. Their legislative activity, their grant of taxes to the Empire, was only a particular outflow of their general political significance and efficacy. Their estate was their state. Their relation to the Empire was only a relation of transaction between these various states and the nationality, for the political state, as distinct from civil society, was nothing other than the representation of nationality. Nationality was the point d’honneur |the point of honor|, the chief political meaning of these various corporations, etc., and it was to this alone that the taxes, etc., were referred. That was the relation of the legislative estates to the Empire.

   Similarly with the estates within the particular principalities. Princedom, sovereignty, was here a particular estate, which had certain privileges but was likewise constrained by the privileges of the other estates. (Among the Greeks, civil society was the slave of the political.) The general legislative efficacy of the estates of civil society was by no means an attaining, by the private estate, of a political significance and efficacy; it was, rather, a mere outflow of their real and general political significance and efficacy.

   Their appearance as a legislative power was merely a complement of their sovereign and governing (executive) power; it was, rather, their coming to the entirely universal affair as a private matter — their coming to sovereignty as a private estate. The estates of civil society in the Middle Ages were, as such estates, simultaneously legislative, because they were no private estates, or because the private estates were political estates. The medieval estates arrived, as a politico-estates element, at no new determination. They did not become politico-estates because they had a share in legislation; rather, they had a share in legislation because they were politico-estates. What, then, does this have in common with Hegel’s private estate, which, as a legislative element, arrives at a political bravura aria, at an ecstatic condition, at an apart, striking, exceptional political significance and efficacy?

   In this development all the contradictions of Hegel’s presentation are found together.

   1. He has presupposed the separation of civil society and the political state (a modern condition) and developed it as a necessary moment of the Idea, as an absolute truth of reason. He has presented the political state, in its modern shape, as the separation of the various powers. He has given the real, acting state the bureaucracy as its body, and placed this, as the knowing spirit, above the materialism of civil society. He has set the universal of the state, existing in and for itself, over against the particular interest and need of civil society. In a word: everywhere he presents the conflict of civil society and the state.

   2. Hegel sets civil society, as private estate, over against the political state.

   3. He designates the estates element of the legislative power as a mere political formalism of civil society. He designates it as a relation of reflection of civil society upon the state, and as a relation of reflection that does not alter the essence of the state. A relation of reflection is also the highest identity between things essentially distinct.

   On the other hand, Hegel wants: 1. that civil society, in its self-constitution as legislative element, should appear neither as a mere, undifferentiated mass, nor as a multitude dissolved into its atoms. He wants no separation of civil and political life.

   2. He forgets that what is at issue is a relation of reflection, and makes the civil estates, as such, into political estates — but again only on the side of the legislative power, so that their very efficacy is itself the proof of the separation.

   He makes the estates element the expression of the separation, but at the same time it is supposed to be the representative of an identity that does not exist. Hegel knows the separation of civil society and the political state, but he wants the unity of the state to be expressed within the state — and this is supposed to be accomplished in such a way that the estates of civil society, precisely as such, at the same time form the estates element of the legislative body. (Cf. XIV, x.)

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