Matière et Révolution

Humanity will rise again, capitalism never will !

Karob, Robert Paris — 2026-02-13T23:34:00Z

Humanity will rise again, capitalism never will !

Revolutionary workers, women, young people, small farmers, fishermen, artisans, traders and self-employed individuals, humanity, communism, all will rise up together, but capitalism will never rise again ! It has reached insurmountable limits, not only from the point of view of the exploited and oppressed but also from the point of view of its own system.

Yemen, Gaza, Sudan, Mali, Ukraine, Zaire, Rwanda, Afghanistan, Pakistan, the Sahel, Burkina Faso, Syria, Lebanon, the West Bank—nothing but massacres instigated, approved, organized, and armed by the major imperialist powers ! And it's not just wars and civil wars ! There are dictatorships and fascisms spreading everywhere ! Just as revolts and revolutions are spreading everywhere, in Asia, Africa, South America, Europe…

Most countries in the world have experienced revolts and revolutions since 2010, following the capitalist economic collapse of 2007-2008. The COVID-19 pandemic, yet another global horror caused by capitalism, partially stifled the revolt starting in 2019. And the supposedly anti-COVID dictatorial policies did the rest.

While the horrors perpetrated by capitalist states continue to worsen, revolts and revolutions demonstrate the courage, dedication, solidarity, spontaneity, and self-organization of young people, women, and workers in towns and the countryside, and show where the future of humanity will come from : from the revolutionary working people.

This global nature of revolutions and counter-revolutions demonstrates that it is indeed the foundations of the world that are being shaken, and not any particular regime (Mubarak or Ben Ali), region (the Arab world or Africa), government, specific situation (women, youth, the most vulnerable, etc.), erosion of power, or particular political or economic circumstances. This affects rich and poor countries alike, Western and Eastern nations, North and South, East and West, dictatorships and so-called democracies.

This global situation has a fundamentally economic cause (capital saturation relative to the limited capacity for productive investment), and it is the inevitable result of the historic, and also global, collapse of the capitalist system of domination (its mode of production), which has reached its limits and can no longer recover. Indeed, what caused the global collapse of capitalist markets in 2007, and what continues to undermine the capitalist economy, is neither a recession, nor inflation, nor Trump's deglobalization, nor currency collapses, nor stock market bubbles, nor energy problems, nor the bankruptcy of states and central banks—all of these are merely consequences.

We cannot predict what the future will hold (when, at what pace, for what occasional reason, this fall will occur, with what starting point, with what consequence), but we can be certain of one thing : the dying system threatens us all with death, barbarity, mass violence, regardless of our country, our region, our situations, our origins, etc.

What is also certain is that the main cause is not what we are told it is : climate crisis, migration crisis, ecological crisis, demographic crisis, pandemic crisis, crisis of state spending, energy crisis, generational crisis, interethnic crisis, interreligious crisis, intercivilizational crisis, East-West crisis, jihadist and terrorist crisis, Bitcoin crisis, AI crisis, war crisis, crisis of globalization or financialization, robotization crisis, etc. The cause is not even the misery of the poorest and the vast gap between rich and poor, nor is it popular revolt. The cause is economic, and yet it is not even a classic crisis of capitalism.

Capitalism could perfectly well recover from any of the crises we have just mentioned, and even from all of them, but not from the crucial and fundamental problem that has plagued it since the early 2000s : the complete saturation of capital accumulation. The global quantity of capital has increased dramatically over the last few decades, and one might think this is a great success for big capital. However, it is a success that exceeds its capacity… Where to invest all this capital ? A constantly decreasing share of the total available capital is invested in productive investments. Consequently, it becomes vital that states and central banks, as well as private capital holders, invent new and substantial amounts of unproductive investments. By leveraging speculation, public and private debt, Bitcoin, artificial intelligence, and other technologies, it is possible to continually create fictitious investments that actually generate profits. But all these artificial methods for generating profits for capital have a major flaw : they wildly increase the amount of capital that is not directed toward productive investment, and the share of this capital in total capital grows relentlessly, contributing to tightening the noose that is suffocating the capitalist system. For speculation allows a capitalist to become rich, but not the entire system. The wealth of capitalism has always fundamentally stemmed from the exploitation of human labor (surplus value increasing capital through its productive reinvestment), even though capitalists have always maintained the illusion that it is they, Capital and not Labor, who create wealth. Yet this system has never been able to survive without constantly increasing capital. Only brief drops in profits (capitalist crises) were tolerable, and the destruction of capital they caused was offset by the fact that these crises purged capitalism of its weakest elements, allowing it to rebound stronger than ever. In the current situation, such a crisis is no longer tolerable for capitalism because it deems it "systemic," meaning that a simple regulatory crisis would threaten the entire system with death !

We cannot prevent capitalism from collapsing, much to the chagrin of all the fans of reformist "solutions." We can only seize the situation and try to transform every weakness of the system into a weapon of the revolutionary proletariat.

In short, we have no reason to laugh or cry at the end of capitalism. Capitalism itself is the cause of this self-destruction and is announcing its death by tolling the bell with a multitude of increasingly atrocious symptoms. There is no reason to regret the old system of exploitation and oppression, but no reason to rejoice either, because nothing is settled and only the direct intervention of the revolutionary proletariat can allow us to turn the page on the history of humanity.

And the more the propertied classes convince themselves that their future is bleak, the more they manipulate racism, machismo, fascism, all hatreds, all fears, all divisions, all fantasies, all absurdities, all filthy, horrible appetites, all bloodthirsty, decorated brutes, all murderers, all terrorists from around the world. Barbarity does not die with capitalism ; it grows until the triumph of social revolution !

The revolts and revolutions acted in the diametrically opposed direction to this rise of barbarity in both actions and minds. Where people are most bitterly divided by ethnicity, clan, skin color, diverse origins, religion, region, between nationals and migrants, between men and women, between rich and poor, these mass movements have precisely brought to the fore all the oppressed and exploited, all united, often denying the oppressive weight of an entire old past (women at the forefront in Iran as in Tunisia, Algeria, Egypt or Sudan, ethnicities and clans swept away in Lebanon, for example).

But states, these powers of big capital, are more present than ever, say the skeptics regarding the death of capitalism. Yes, but the system cannot rely solely on state aid to survive. Its economic functioning is far more important. The more it relies on the support of states and central banks, the more its decline worsens, because the share of capital not originating from the productive sector grows accordingly, and surplus value is no longer the basis of profit. An individual capitalist doesn't care where the money comes from as long as it constantly fills the coffers, but the entire system cannot ! And capitalism accumulates capital without increasing real wealth. The chasm widens between fictitious wealth and real wealth. To such an extent that this abyss frightens the ruling classes themselves and pushes them down the insane path of marching towards world war, global fascism, dictatorship and massacres endangering all of humanity… All this is preferable in the eyes of the owning classes to the mortal risks of a social revolution that would definitively overthrow the economic and political power of the capitalist class !
For the working people, the socialist revolution will require great efforts, but it will cost us less than the suffering that the ruling classes are preparing for us !

The crisis of capitalism and the prospects for revolutionaries

https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article1135

Has the capitalist system already collapsed on its own, or can it only collapse through revolution ?

https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article5988

Is the current state of capitalism a classic crisis or something else ?

https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article1794

The economist François Chesnais's perspective on the end of capitalism

https://www.marxists.org/francais/chesnais/limites_infranchissables.pdf

A serious crisis, a systemic crisis, or the end of the world for capitalism ?

https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article2431

Capitalism : From Construction to Destruction

https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article5939

Humanity has been dealt a mortal blow, but it is big business that is receiving palliative care.

https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article6106

How we will experience the collapse of capitalism

https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article6960

Theories of capitalist collapse : proponents and detractors

https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article7441

Capitalism in its death throes

https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article4518

Capitalism is dying from having... been too successful at accumulating capital

https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article7478

Acting against its own principles by self-destructing, no one imagines capitalism doing that, and yet…

https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article7556

Crisis or death of capitalism ?

https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article1976

When those in power are reduced to direct violence alone, it means that the capitalist dynamic is dead.

https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article6174

What future for capitalism ? Or when the global bourgeoisie clenches its buttocks…

https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article4084

Why the dynamics of capitalism run up against their own limits : its very success is stifled by the constraints of private ownership of the means of production.

https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article3250

"Classic" crises are no longer possible for the system (too dangerous), yet they used to regulate it.

https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article3771

The Madoff-style financial Ponzi scheme : an illusory survival for a global capitalism on its last legs.

https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article4561

Capitalism : Chronicle of a Death Foretold

https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article4686

Is capitalism dead or alive ? - On what criteria should we base this ?

https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article1975

Decaying, subsidized capitalism, more antisocial and bloody than ever, is even more incompatible with women's freedom…

https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article7743

What if humanity changed... its mode of production ?

https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article8434

Big capital is still afraid... of communism !

https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article7912

What future : mass barbarity…

https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article7694

… or humanity in control of itself ?

https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article8073

Hegel's Philosophy of History - Part III

Robert Paris — 2026-01-09T08:58:26Z

Part III: The Roman World

Napoleon, in a conversation which he once had with Goethe on the nature of Tragedy, expressed the opinion that its modern phase differed from the ancient, through our no longer recognizing a Destiny to which men are absolutely subject, and that Policy occupies the place of the ancient Fate [La politique est fatalité]. This therefore he thought must be used as the modern form of Destiny in Tragedy – the irresistible power of circumstances to which individuality must bend. Such a power is the Roman World, chosen for the very purpose of casting the moral units into bonds, as also of collecting all Deities and all Spirits into the Pantheon of Universal dominion, in order to make out of them an abstract universality of power. The distinction between the Roman and the Persian principle is exactly this – that the former stifles all vitality, while the latter allowed of its existence in the fullest measure. Through its being the aim of the State, that the social units in their moral life should be sacrificed to it, the world is sunk in melancholy: its heart is broken, and it is all over with the Natural side of Spirit, which has sunk into a feeling of unhappiness. Yet only from this feeling could arise the supersensuous, the free Spirit in Christianity.

In the Greek principle we have seen spiritual existence in its exhilaration – its cheerfulness and enjoyment: Spirit had not yet drawn back into abstraction; it was still involved with the Natural element – the idiosyncrasy of individuals; – on which account the virtues of individuals themselves became moral works of art. Abstract universal Personality had not yet appeared, for Spirit must first develop itself to that form of abstract Universality which exercised the severe discipline over humanity now under consideration. Here, in Rome, then, we find that free universality, that abstract Freedom, which on the one hand sets an abstract state, a political constitution and power, over concrete individuality; on the other side creates a personality in opposition to that universality – the inherent freedom of the abstract Ego, which must be distinguished from individual idiosyncrasy. For Personality constitutes the fundamental condition of legal Right: it appears chiefly in the category of Property, but it is indifferent to the concrete characteristics of the living Spirit with which individuality is concerned. These two elements, which constitute Rome – political Universality on the one hand, and the abstract freedom of the individual on the other – appear, in the first instance, in the form of Subjectivity. This Subjectivity – this retreating into one's self which we observed as the corruption of the Greek Spirit – becomes here the ground on which a new side of the World's History arises. In considering the Roman World, we have not to do with a concretely spiritual life, rich in itself; but the world-historical element in it is the abstractum of Universality, and the object which is pursued with soulless and heartless severity, is mere dominion, in order to enforce that abstractum.
In Greece, Democracy was the fundamental condition of political life, as in the East, Despotism; here we have Aristocracy of a rigid order, in a state of opposition to the people. In Greece also the Democracy was rent asunder, but only in the way of factions; in Rome it is principles that keep the entire community in a divided state – they occupy a hostile position towards, and struggle with each other: first the Aristocracy with the Kings, then the Plebs with the Aristocracy, till Democracy gets the upper hand ; then first arise factions in which originated that later aristocracy of commanding individuals which subjugated the world. It is this dualism that, properly speaking, marks Rome's inmost being.

Erudition has regarded the Roman History from various points of view, and has adopted very different and opposing opinions: this is especially the case with the more ancient part of the history, which has been taken up by three different classes of literati – Historians, Philologists, and Jurists. The Historians hold to the grand features, and show respect for the history as such; so that we may after all see our way best under their guidance, since they allow the validity of the records in the case of leading events. It is otherwise with the Philologists, by whom generally received traditions are less regarded, and who devote more attention to small details which can be combined in various ways. These combinations gain a footing first as historical hypotheses, but soon after as established facts. To the same degree as the Philologists in their department, have the Jurists in that of Roman law, instituted the minutest examination and involved their inferences with hypothesis. The result is that the most ancient part of Roman History has been declared to be nothing but fable; so that this department of inquiry is brought entirely within the province of learned criticism, which always finds the most to do where the least is to be got for the labor. While on the one side the poetry and the myths of the Greeks are said to contain profound historical truths, and are thus transmuted into history, the Romans on the contrary have myths and poetical views affiliated upon them; and epopees are affirmed to be at the basis of what has been hitherto taken for prosaic and historical.

With these preliminary remarks we proceed to describe the Locality.

The Roman World has its centre in Italy; which is extremely similar to Greece, and, like it, forms a peninsula, only not so deeply indented. Within this country, the city of Rome itself formed the centre of the centre. Napoleon in his Memoirs takes up the question, which city – if Italy were independent and formed a totality – would be best adapted for its capital. Rome, Venice, and Milan may put forward claims to the honor; but it is immediately evident that none of these cities would supply a centre. Northern Italy constitutes a basin of the river Po, and is quite distinct from the body of the peninsula; Venice is connected only with Higher Italy, not with the south; Rome, on the other hand, would, perhaps, be naturally a centre for Middle and Lower Italy, but only artificially and violently for those lands which were subjected to it in Higher Italy. The Roman State rests geographically, as well as historically, on the clement of force. The locality of Italy, then, presents no natural unity – as the valley of the Nile; the unity was similar to that which Macedonia by its sovereignty gave to Greece; though Italy wanted that permeation by one spirit, which Greece possessed through equality of culture; for it was inhabited by very various races. Niebuhr has prefaced his Roman history by a profoundly erudite treatise on the peoples of Italy; but from which no connection between them and the Roman History is visible. In fact, Niebuhr's History can only be regarded as a criticism of Roman History, for it consists of a series of treatises which by no means possess the unity of history.

We observed subjective inwardness as the general principle of the Roman World. The course of Roman History, therefore, involves the expansion of undeveloped subjectivity – inward conviction of existence – to the visibility of the real world. The principle of subjective inwardness receives positive application in the first place only from without – through the particular volition of the sovereignty, the government, etc. The development consists in the purification of inwardness to abstract personality, which gives itself reality in the existence of private property; the mutually repellent social units can then be held together only by despotic power. The general course of the Roman World may be defined as this; the transition from the inner sanctum of subjectivity to its direct opposite. The development is here not of the same kind as that in Greece – the unfolding and expanding of its own substance on the part of the principle; but it is the transition to its opposite, which latter does not appear as an element of corruption, but is demanded and posited by the principle itself. – As to the particular sections of the Roman History, the common division is that into the Monarchy, the Republic, and the Empire – as if in these forms different principles made their appearance; but the same principle – that of the Roman Spirit – underlies their development. In our division, we must rather keep in view the course of History generally. 1 he annals of every Worldhistorical people were divided above into three periods, and this statement must prove itself true in this case also. The first period comprehends the rudiments of Rome, in which the elements which are essentially opposed, still repose in calm unity; until the contrarieties have acquired strength, and the unity of the State becomes a powerful one, through that antithetical condition having been produced and maintained within it. In this vigorous condition the State directs its forces outwards – i.e., in the second period – and makes its debut on the theatre of general history; this is the noblest Period of Rome – the Punic Wars and the contact with the antecedent World-Historical people. A wider stage is opened, towards the East; the history at the epoch of this contact has been treated by the noble Polybius. The Roman Empire now acquired that world-conquering extension which paved the way for its fall. Internal distraction supervened, while the antithesis was developing itself to self-contradiction and utter incompatibility; it closes with Despotism, which marks the third period. The Roman power appears here in its pomp and splendor; but it is at the same time profoundly ruptured within itself, and the Christian Religion, which begins with the imperial dominion, receives a great extension. The third period comprises the contact of Rome with the North and the German peoples, whose turn is now come to play their part in History.

Section I: Rome to the Time of the Second Punic War.

Chapter I. – The Elements of the Roman Spirit

Before we come to the Roman History, we have to consider the Elements of the Roman Spirit in general, and mention and investigate the origin of Rome with a reference to them. Rome arose outside recognised countries, viz., in an angle where three different districts met – those of the Latins, Sabines and Etruscans; it was not formed from some ancient stem, connected by natural patriarchal bonds, whose origin might be traced up to remote times (as seems to have been the case with the Persians, who, however, even then ruled a large empire); but Rome was from the very beginning, of artificial and violent, not spontaneous growth. It is related that the descendants of the Trojans, led by Æneas to Italy, founded Rome; for the connection with Asia was a much cherished tradition, and there are in Italy, France, and Germany itself (Xanten) many towns which refer their origin, or their names, to the fugitive Trojans. Livy speaks of the ancient tribes of Rome, the Ramnenses, Titienses, and Luceres. Now if we look upon these as distinct nations, and assert that they were really the elements from which Rome was formed – a view which in recent times has very often striven to obtain currency – we directly subvert the historical tradition. All historians agree that at an early period, shepherds, under the leadership of chieftains, roved about on the hills of Rome; that the first Roman community constituted itself as a predatory state; and that it was with difficulty that the scattered inhabitants of the vicinity were thus united. The details of these circumstances are also given Those predatory shepherds received every contribution to their community that chose to join them (Livy calls it a colluvies). The rabble of all the three districts between which Rome lay, was collected in the new city. The historians state that this point was very well chosen on a hill close to the river, and particularly adapted to make it an asylum for all delinquents. It is equally historical that in the newly formed state there were no women, and that the neighboring states would enter into no connubia with it: both circumstances characterize it as predatory union, with which the other states wished to have no connection. They also refused the invitation to their religious festivals; and only the Sabines – a simple agricultural people, among whom, as Livy says, prevailed a tristis atque tetrica superstitio – partly from superstition, partly from fear, presented themselves at them. The seizure of the Sabine women is also a universally received historical fact. This circumstance itself involves a very characteristic feature, viz., that Religion is used as a means for furthering the purposes of the infant State. Another method of extension was the conveying to Rome of the inhabitants of neighboring and conquered towns. At a later date there was also a voluntary migration of foreigners to Rome; as in the case of the so celebrated family of the Claudii, bringing their whole clientela. The Corinthian Demaratus, belonging to a family of consideration, had settled in Etruria; but as being an exile and a foreigner, he was little respected there, and his son, Lucumo, could no longer endure this degradation. He betook himself to Rome, says Livy, because a new people and a repentin a atque ex virtute nobilitas were to be found there. Lucumo attained, we are told, such a degree of respect, that he afterwards became king.

It is this peculiarity in the founding of the State which must be regarded as the essential basis of the idiosyncrasy of Rome. For it directly involves the severest discipline, and self-sacrifice to the grand object of the union. A State which had first to form itself, and which is based on force, must be held together by force. It is not a moral, liberal connection, but a compulsory condition of subordination, that results from such an origin. The Roman virtus is valor; not, however, the merely personal, but that which is essentially connected with a union of associates ; which union is regarded as the supreme interest, and may be combined with lawless violence of all kinds. While the Romans formed a union of this kind, they were not, indeed, like the Lacedaemonians, engaged in an internal contest with a conquered and subjugated people; but there arose a distinction and a struggle between Patricians and Plebeians. This distinction was mythically adumbrated in the hostile brothers, Romulus and Remus. Remus was buried on the Aventine mount; this is consecrated to the evil genii, and to it are directed the Secessions of the Plebs. The question comes, then, how this distinction originated? It has been already said, that Rome was formed by robber-herdsmen, and the concourse of rabble of all sorts. At a later date, the inhabitants of captured and destroyed towns were also conveyed thither. The weaker, the poorer, the later additions of population are naturally underrated by, and in a condition of dependence upon those who originally founded the state, and those who were distinguished by valor, and also by wealth. It is not necessary, therefore, to take refuge in a hypothesis which has recently been a favorite one – that the Patricians formed a particular race.

The dependence of the Plebeians on the Patricians is often represented as a perfectly legal relation – indeed, even a sacred one; since the Patricians had the sacra in their hands, while the plebs would have been godless, as it were, without them. The Plebeians left to the Patricians their hypocritical stuff (ad decipiendam plebem, Cic.) and cared nothing for their sacra and auguries; but in disjoining political rights from these ritual observances, and making good their claim to those rights, they were no more guilty of a presumptuous sacrilege than the Protestants, when they emancipated the political power of the State, and asserted the freedom of conscience. The light in which, as previously stated, we must regard the relation of the Patricians and Plebeians is, that those who were poor, and consequently helpless, were compelled to attach themselves to the richer and more respectable, and to seek for their patrocinium: in this relation of protection on the part of the more wealthy, the protected are called clientes. But we find very soon a fresh distinction between the plebs and the clientes. In the contentions between the Patricians and the Plebeians, the clientes held to their patroni, though belonging to the plebs as decidedly as any class. That this relation of the clientes had not the stamp of right and law is evident from the fact, that with the introduction and knowledge of the laws among all classes, the cliental relation gradually vanished; for as soon as individuals found protection in the law, the temporary necessity for it could not but cease.

In the first predatory period of the state, every citizen was necessarily a soldier, for the state was based on war; this burden was oppressive, since every citizen was obliged to maintain himself in the field. This circumstance, therefore, gave rise to the contracting of enormous debts – the Patricians becoming the creditors of the Plebeians. With the introduction of laws, this arbitrary relation necessarily ceased; but only gradually, for the Patricians were far from being immediately inclined to release the plebs from the cliental relation; they rather strove to render it permanent. The laws of the Twelve Tables still contained much that was undefined; very much was still left to the arbitrary will of the judge – the Patricians alone being judges; the antithesis, therefore, between Patricians and Plebeians, continues till a much later period. Only by degrees do the Plebeians scale all the heights of official station, and attain those privileges which formerly belonged to the Patricians alone.

In the life of the Greeks, although it did not any more than that of the Romans originate in the patriarchal relation, Family love and the Family tie appeared at its very commencement, and the peaceful aim of their social existence had for its necessary condition the extirpation of freebooters both by sea and land. The founders of Rome, on the contrary – Romulus and Remus – are, according to the tradition, themselves freebooters – represented as from their earliest days thrust out from the Family, and as having grown up in a state of isolation from family affection. In like manner, the first Romans are said to have got their wives, not by free courtship and reciprocated inclination, but by force. This commencement of the Roman life in savage rudeness excluding the sensibilities of natural morality, brings with it one characteristic element – harshness in respect to the family relation; a selfish harshness, which constituted the fundamental condition of Roman manners and laws, as we observe them in the sequel. We thus find family relations among the Romans not as a beautiful, free relation of love and feeling; the place of confidence is usurped by the principle of severity, dependence, and subordination. Marriage, in its strict and formal shape, bore quite the aspect of a mere contract; the wife was part of the husband's property (in manum conventio), and the marriage ceremony was based on a cocmtio, in a form such as might have been adopted on the occasion of any other purchase. The husband acquired a power over his wife, such as he had over his daughter; nor less over her property; so that everything which she gained, she gained for her husband. During the good times of the republic, the celebration of marriages included a religious ceremony – confarreatio – but which was omitted at a later period. The husband obtained not less power than by the coemtio, when he married according to the form called usiis, that is, when the wife remained in the house of her husband without having been absent a trinoctium in a year. If the husband had not married in one of the forms of the in manum conventio, the wife remained either in the power of her father, or under the guardianship of her agnates, and was free as regarded her husband. The Roman matron, therefore, obtained honor and dignity only through independence of her husband, instead of acquiring her honor through her husband and by marriage. If a husband who had married under the freer condition – that is, when the union was not consecrated by the confarreatio – wished to separate from his wife, he dismissed her without further ceremony. The relation of sons was perfectly similar: they were, on the one hand, about as dependent on the paternal power as the wife on the matrimonial; they could not possess property – it made no difference whether they filled a high office in the State or not (though the peculia castrensia, and adventitia were differently regarded) ; but on the other hand, when they were emancipated, they had no connection with their father and their family. An evidence of the degree in which the position of children was regarded as analogous to that of slaves, is presented in the imaginaria servitus (mancipium), through which emancipated children had to pass. In reference to inheritance, morality would seem to demand that children should share equally. Among the Romans, on the contrary, testamentary caprice manifests itself in its harshest form. Thus perverted and demoralized, do we here see the fundamental relations of ethics. The immoral active severity of the Romans in this private side of character, necessarily finds its counterpart in the passive severity of their political union. For the severity which the Roman experienced from the State he was compensated by a severity, identical in nature, which he was allowed to indulge towards his family – a servant on the one side, a despot on the other. This constitutes the Roman greatness, whose peculiar characteristic was stern inflexibility in the union of individuals with the State, and with its law and mandate. In order to obtain a nearer view of this Spirit, we must not merely keep in view the actions of Roman heroes, confronting the enemy as soldiers or generals, or appearing as ambassadors – since in these cases they belong, with their whole mind and thought, only to the state and its mandate, without hesitation or yielding – but pay particular attention also to the conduct of the plebs in times of revolt against the patricians. How often in insurrection and in anarchical disorder was the plebs brought back into a state of tranquillity by a mere form, and cheated of the fulfilment of its demands, righteous or unrighteous! How often was a Dictator, e.g., chosen by the senate, when there was neither war nor danger from an enemy, in order to get the plebeians into the army, and to bind them to strict obedience by the military oath! It took Licinius ten years to carry laws favorable to the plebs; the latter allowed itself to be kept back by the mere formality of the veto on the part of other tribunes, and still more patiently did it wait for the long-delayed execution of these laws. It may be asked: By what were such a disposition and character produced? Produced it cannot be, but it is essentially latent in the origination of the State from that primal robber-community, as also in the idiosyncrasy of the people who composed it, and lastly, in that phase of the World-Spirit which was just ready for development. The elements of the Roman people were Etruscan, Latin and Sabine; these must have contained an inborn natural adaptation to produce the Roman Spirit. Of the spirit, the character, and the life of the ancient Italian peoples we know very little – thanks to the non-intelligent character of Roman historiography! – and that little, for the most part, from the Greek writers on Roman history. But of the general character of the Romans we may say that, in contrast with that primeval wild poetry and transmutation of the finite, which we observe in the East – in contrast with the beautiful, harmonious poetry and well-balanced freedom of Spirit among the Greeks – here, among the Romans the prose of life makes its appearance – the self-consciousness of finiteness – the abstraction of the Understanding and a rigorous principle of personality, which even in the Family does not expand itself to natural morality, but remains the unfeeling non-spiritual unit, and recognizes the uniting bond of the several social units only in abstract universality.

This extreme prose of the Spirit we find in Etruscan art, which though technically perfect and so far true to nature, has nothing of Greek Ideality and Beauty: we also observe it in the development of Roman Law and in the Roman religion. To the constrained, non-spiritual, and unfeeling intelligence of the Roman world we owe the origin and the development of positive law. For we saw above, how in the East, relations in their very nature belonging to the sphere of outward or inward morality, were made legal mandates; even among the Greeks, morality was at the same time juristic right, and on that very account the constitution was entirely dependent on morals and disposition, and had not yet a fixity of principle within it, to counterbalance the mutability of men's inner life and individual subjectivity. The Romans then completed this important separation, and discovered a principle of right, which is external – i.e. one not dependent on disposition and sentiment. While they have thus bestowed upon us a valuable gift, in point of form, we can use and enjoy it without becoming victims to that sterile Understanding – without regarding it as the ne plus ultra of Wisdom and Reason. They were its victims, living beneath its sway; but they thereby secured for others Freedom of Spirit – viz., that inward Freedom which has consequently become emancipated from the sphere of the Limited and the External. Spirit, Soul, Disposition, Religion have now no longer to fear being involved with that abstract juristical Understanding. Art too has its external side; when in Art the mechanical side has been brought to perfection, Free Art can arise and display itself. But those must be pitied who knew of nothing but that mechanical side, and desired nothing further; as also those who, when Art has arisen, still regard the Mechanical as the highest. We see the Romans thus bound up in that abstract understanding which pertains to finiteness. This is their highest characteristic, consequently also their highest consciousness, in Religion. In fact, constraint was the religion of the Romans; among the Greeks, on the contrary, it was the cheerfulness of free fantasy. We are accustomed to regard Greek and Roman religion as the same, and use the names Jupiter, Minerva, etc. as Roman deities, often without distinguishing them from those of Greeks. This is admissible inasmuch as the Greek divinities were more or less introduced among the Romans; but as the Egyptian religion is by no means to be regarded as identical with the Greek, merely because Herodotus and the Greeks form to themselves an idea of the Egyptian divinities under the names “Latona,” “Pallas,” etc., so neither must the Roman be confounded with the Greek. We have said that in the Greek religion the thrill of awe suggested by Nature was fully developed to something Spiritual – to a free conception, a spiritual form of fancy – that the Greek Spirit did not remain in the condition of inward fear, but proceeded to make the relation borne to man by Nature, a relation of freedom and cheerfulness. The Romans, on the contrary, remained satisfied with a dull, stupid subjectivity; consequently, the external was only an Object – something alien, something hidden. The Roman spirit which thus remained involved in subjectivity, came into a relation of constraint and dependence, to which the origin of the word “re-ligio” (lig-are) points. The Roman had always to do with something secret; in everything he believed in and sought for something concealed; and while in the Greek religion everything is open and clear, present to sense and contemplation – not pertaining to a future world, but something friendly, and of this world – among the Romans everything exhibits itself as mysterious, duplicate: they saw in the object first itself, and then that which lies concealed in it: their history is pervaded by this duplicate mode of viewing phenomena. The city of Rome had besides its proper name another secret one, known only to a few. It is believed by some to have been “Valentia,” the Latin translation of “Roma”; others think it was “Amor” (“Roma” read backwards). Romulus, the founder of the State, had also another, a sacred name – “Quirinus” – by which title he was worshipped: the Romans too were also called Quirites. (This name is connected with the term “curia”: in tracing its etymology the name of the Sabine town “Cures,” has been had recourse to.) Among the Romans the religious thrill of awe remained undeveloped; it was shut up to the mere subjective certainty of its own existence. Consciousness has therefore given itself no spiritual objectivity – has not elevated itself to the theoretical contemplation of the eternally divine nature, and to freedom in that contemplation; it has gained no religious substantiality for itself from Spirit. The bare subjectivity of conscience is characteristic of the Roman in all that he does and undertakes – in his covenants, political relations, obligations, family relations, etc.; and all these relations receive thereby not merely a legal sanction, but as it were a solemnity analogous to that of an oath. The infinite number of ceremonies at the comitia, on assuming offices, etc., are expressions and declarations that concern this firm bond. Everywhere the sacra play a very important part. Transactions, naturally the most alien to constraint, became a sacrum, and were petrified, as it were, into that. To this category belongs, e.g., in strict marriages, the confarreatio, and the auguries and auspices generally. The knowledge of these sacra is utterly uninteresting and wearisome, affording fresh material for learned research as to whether they are of Etruscan, Sabine, or other origin. On their account the Roman people have been regarded as extremely pious, both in positive and negative observances; though it is ridiculous to hear recent writers speak with unction and respect of these sacra. The Patricians were especially fond of them; they have therefore been elevated in the judgment of some, to the dignity of sacerdotal families, and regarded as the sacred gentes – the possessors and conservators of Roman religion: the plebeians then become the godless element. On this head what is pertinent has already been said. The ancient kings were at the same time also reges sacrorum. After the royal dignity had been done away with, there still remained a Rex Sacrorum; but he, like all the other priests, was subject to the Pontifex Maximus, who presided over all the “sacra,” and gave them such a rigidity and fixity as enabled the patricians to maintain their religious power so long.

But the essential point in pious feeling is the subject matter with which it occupies itself – though it is often asserted, on the contrary, in modern times, that if pious feelings exist, it is a matter of indifference what object occupies them. It has been already remarked of the Romans, that their religious subjectivity did not expand into a free spiritual and moral comprehensiveness of being. It can be said that their piety did not develop itself into religion; for it remained essentially formal, and this formalism took its real side from another quarter. From the very definition given, it follows that it can only be of a finite, unhallowed order, since it arose outside the secret sanctum of religion. The chief characteristic of Roman Religion is therefore a hard and dry contemplation of certain voluntary aims, which they regard as existing absolutely in their divinities, and whose accomplishment they desire of them as embodying absolute power, These purposes constitute that for the sake of which they worship the gods, and by which, in a constrained, limited way, they are bound to their deities. The Roman religion is therefore the entirely prosaic one of narrow aspirations, expediency, profit. The divinities peculiar to them are entirely prosaic; they are conditions [of mind or body], sensations, or useful arts, to which their dry fancy, having elevated them to independent power, gave objectivity; they are partly abstractions, which could only become frigid allegories – partly conditions of being which appear as bringing advantage or injury, and which were presented as objects of worship in their original bare and limited form. We can but briefly notice a few examples. The Romans worshipped “Pax,” “Tranquillitas,” “Vacuna” (Repose), “Angeronia” (Sorrow and Grief), as divinities; they consecrated altars to the Plague, to Hunger, to Mildew (Robigo), to Fever, and to the Dea Cloacina. Juno appears among the Romans not merely as “Lucina,” the obstetric goddess, but also as “Juno Ossipagina,” the divinity who forms the bones of the child, and as “Juno Unxia,” who anoints the hinges of the doors at marriages (a matter which was also reckoned among the “sacra”). How little have these prosaic conceptions in common with the beauty of the spiritual powers and deities of the Greeks! On the other hand, Jupiter as “Jupiter Capitolinus” represents the generic essence of the Roman Empire, which is also personified in the divinities “Roma” and “Fortuna Publica.”

It was the Romans especially who introduced the practice of not merely supplicating the gods in time of need, and celebrating “lectisternia,” but of also making solemn promises and vows to them. For help in difficulty they sent even into foreign countries, and imported foreign divinities and rites. The introduction of the gods and most of the Roman temples thus arose from necessity – from a vow of some kind, and an obligatory, not disinterested acknowledgment of favors. The Greeks on the contrary erected and instituted their beautiful temples, and statues, and rites, from love to beauty and divinity for their own sake.

Only one side of the Roman religion exhibits something attractive, and that is the festivals, which bear a relation to country life, and whose observance was transmitted from the earliest times. The idea of the Saturnian time is partly their basis – the conception of a state of things antecedent to and beyond the limits of civil society and political combination; but their import is partly taken from Nature generally – the Sun, the course of the year, the seasons, months, etc., (with astronomical intimations) – partly from the particular aspects of the course of Nature, as bearing upon pastoral and agricultural life. There were festivals of sowing and harvesting and of the seasons; the principal was that of the Saturnalia, etc. In this aspect there appears much that is naive and ingenuous in the tradition. Yet this series of rites, on the whole, presents a very limited and prosaic appearance; deeper views of the great powers of nature and their generic processes are not deducible from them; for they are entirely directed to external vulgar advantage, and the merriment they occasioned, degenerated into a buffoonery unrelieved by intellect. While among the Greeks their tragic art developed itself from similar rudiments, it is on the other hand remarkable that among the Romans the scurrilous dances and songs connected with the rural festivals were kept up till the latest periods without any advance from this naive but rude form to anything really artistic.

It has already been said that the Romans adopted the Greek Gods, (the mythology of the Roman poets is entirely derived from the Greeks); but the worship of these beautiful gods of the imagination appears to have been among them of a very cold and superficial order. Their talk of Jupiter, Juno, Minerva sounds like a mere theatrical mention of them. The Greeks made their Pantheon the embodiment of a rich intellectual material, and adorned it with bright fancies; it was to them an object calling forth continual invention and exciting thoughtful reflection; and an extensive, nay inexhaustible, treasure has thus been created for sentiment, feeling and thought in their mythology. The Spirit of the Romans did not indulge and delight itself in that play of a thoughtful fancy; the Greek mythology appears lifeless and exotic in their hands. Among the Roman poets – especially Virgil – the introduction of the gods is the product of a frigid Understanding and of imitation. The gods are used in these poems as machinery, and in a merely superficial way; regarded much in the same way as in our didactic treatises on the belleslettres, where among other directions we find one relating to the use of such/machinery in epics – in order to produce astonishment.

The Romans were as essentially different from the Greeks in respect to their public games. In these the Romans were, properly speaking, only spectators. The mimetic and theatrical representation, the dancing, foot-racing and wrestling, they left to manumitted slaves, gladiators, or criminals condemned to death. Nero's deepest degradation was his appearing on a public stage as a singer, lyrist and combatant. As the Romans were only spectators, these diversions were something foreign to them; they did not enter into them with their whole souls. With increasing luxury the taste for the baiting of beasts and men became particularly keen. Hundreds of bears, lions, tigers, elephants, crocodiles, and ostriches, were produced, and slaughtered for mere amusement. A body consisting of hundreds, nay thousands of gladiators, when entering the amphitheatre at a certain festival to engage in a sham sea-fight, addressed the Emperor with the words: “Those who are devoted to death salute thee,” to excite some compassion. In vain! the whole were devoted to mutual slaughter. In place of human sufferings in the depths of the soul and spirit, occasioned by the contradictions of life, and which find their solution in Destiny, the Romans instituted a cruel reality of corporeal sufferings: blood in streams, the rattle in the throat which signals death, and the expiring gasp were the scenes that delighted them. – This cold negativity of naked murder exhibits at the same time that murder of all spiritual objective aim which had taken place in the soul. I need only mention, in addition, the auguries, auspices, and Sibylline books, to remind you how fettered the Romans were by superstitions of all kinds, and how they pursued exclusively their own aims in all the observances in question. The entrails of beasts, flashes of lightning, the flight of birds, the Sibylline dicta determined the administration and projects of the State. All this was in the hands of the patricians, who consciously made use of it as a mere outward [non-spiritual, secular] means of constraint to further their own ends and oppress the people.

The distinct elements of Roman religion are, according to what has been said, subjective religiosity and a ritualism having for its object purely superficial external aims. Secular aims are left entirely free, instead of being limited by religion – in fact they are rather justified by it. The Romans are invariably pious, whatever may be the substantial character of their actions. But as the sacred principle here is nothing but an empty form, it is exactly of such a kind that it can be an instrument in the power of the devotee; it is taken possession of by the individual, who seeks his private objects and interests; whereas the truly Divine possesses on the contrary a concrete power in itself. But where there is only a powerless form, the individual – the Will, possessing an independent concreteness able to make that form its own, and render it subservient to its views – stands above it. This happened in Rome on the part of the patricians. The possession of sovereignty by the patricians is thereby made firm, sacred, incommunicable, peculiar: the administration of government, and political privileges, receive the character of hallowed private property. There does not exist therefore a substantial national unity – not that beautiful and moral necessity of united life in the Polis; but every “gens” is itself firm, stern, having its own Penates and sacra; each has it own political character, which it always preserves: strict, aristocratic severity distinguished the Claudii; benevolence towards the people, the Valerii; nobleness of spirit, the Cornelii. Separation and limitation were extended even to marriage, for the connubia of patricians with plebeians were deemed profane. But in that very subjectivity of religion we find also the principle of arbitrariness: and while on the one hand we have arbitrary choice invoking religion to bolster up private possession, we have on the other hand the revolt of arbitrary choice against religion. For the same order of things can, on the one side, be regarded as privileged by its religious form, and on the other side wear the aspect of being merely a matter of choice – of arbitrary volition on the part of man. When the time was come for it to be degraded to the rank of a mere form, it was necessarily known and treated as a form – trodden under foot – represented as formalism. – The inequality which enters into the domain of sacred things forms the transition from religion to the bare reality of political life. The consecrated inequality of will and of private property constitutes the fundamental condition of the change. The Roman principle admits of aristocracy alone as the constitution proper to it, but which directly manifests itself only in an antithetical form – internal inequality. Only from necessity and the pressure of adverse circumstances is this contradiction momentarily smoothed over; for it involves a duplicate power, the sternness and malevolent isolation of whose components can only be mastered and bound together by a still greater sternness, into a unity maintained by force.

Chapter II. – The History of Rome to the Second Punic War

In the first period, several successive stages display their characteristic varieties. The Roman State here exhibits its first phase of growth, under Kings; then it receives a republican constitution, at whose head stand Consuls. The struggle between patricians and plebeians begins; and after this has been set at rest by the concession of the plebeian demands, there ensues a state of contentment in the internal affairs of Rome, and it acquires strength to combat victoriously with the nation that preceded it on the stage of general history. As regards the accounts of the first Roman kings, every datum has met with flat contradiction as the result of criticism; but it is going too far to deny them all credibility. Seven kings in all, are mentioned by tradition; and even the “Higher Criticism” is obliged to recognize the last links in the series as perfectly historical. Romulus is called the founder of this union of freebooters; he organized it into a military state. Although the traditions respecting him appear fabulous, they only contain what is in accordance with the Roman Spirit as above described. To the second king, Numa, is ascribed the introduction of the religious ceremonies. This trait is very remarkable from its implying that religion was introduced later than political union, while among other peoples religious traditions make their appearance in the remotest periods and before all civil institutions. The king was at the same time a priest (rex is referred by etymologists to rexein – to sacrifice. As is the case with states generally, the Political was at first united with the Sacerdotal, and a theocratical state of things prevailed. The King stood here at the head of those who enjoyed privileges in virtue of the sacra.

The separation of the distinguished and powerful citizens as senators and patricians took place as early as the first kings. Romulus is said to have appointed 100 patres, respecting which however the Higher Criticism is sceptical. In religion, arbitrary ceremonies – the sacra – became fixed marks of distinction, and peculiarities of the gentes and orders. The internal organization of the State was gradually realized. Livy says that as Numa established all divine matters, so Servius Tullius introduced the different Classes, and the Census, according to which the share of each citizen in the administration of public affairs was determined. The patricians were discontented with this scheme, especially because Servius Tullius abolished a part of the debts owed by the plebeians, and gave public lands to the poorer citizens, which made them possessors of landed property. He divided the people into six classes, of which the first together with the knights formed ninety-eight centuries, the inferior classes proportionately fewer. Thus, as they voted by centuries, the class first in rank had also the greatest weight in the State. It appears that previously the patricians had the power exclusively in their hands, but that after Servius's division they had merely a preponderance; which explains their discontent with his institutions. With Servius the history becomes more distinct; and under him and his predecessor, the elder Tarquinius, traces of prosperity are exhibited. Niebuhr is surprised that according to Dionysius and Livy, the most ancient constitution was democratic, inasmuch as the vote of every citizen had equal weight in the assembly of the people. But Livy only says that Servius abolished the suffragium viritim. Now in the comitia curiata – the cliental relation, which absorbed the plebs, extending to all – the patricians alone had a vote, and populus denoted at that time only the patricians. Dionysius therefore does not contradict himself, when he says that the constitution according to the laws of Romulus was strictly aristocratic. Almost all the Kings were foreigners – a circumstance very characteristic of the origin of Rome. Numa, who succeeded the founder of Rome, was according to the tradition, one of the Sabines – a people which under the reign of Romulus, led by Tatius, is said to have settled on one of the Roman hills. At a later date however the Sabine country appears as a region entirely separated from the Roman State. Numa was followed by Tullus Hostilius, and the very name of this king points to his foreign origin. Ancus Martius, the fourth king, was the grandson of Numa. Tarquinius Priscus sprang from a Corinthian family, as we had occasion to observe above. Servius Tullius was from Corniculum, a conquered Latin town; Tarquinius Superbus was descended from the elder Tarquinius. Under this last king Rome reached a high degree of prosperity: even at so early a period as this, a commercial treaty is said to have been concluded with the Carthaginians; and to be disposed to reject this as mythical would imply forgetfulness of the connection which Rome had, even at that time, with the Etrurians and other bordering peoples whose prosperity depended on trade and maritime pursuits. The Romans were probably even then acquainted with the art of writing, and already possessed that clearsighted comprehension which was their remarkable characteristic, and which led to that perspicuous historical composition for which they are famous. In the growth of the inner life of the state, the power of the Patricians had been much reduced; and the kings often courted the support of the people – as we see was frequently the case in the mediaeval history of Europe – in order to steal a march upon the Patricians. We have already observed this in Servius Tullius. The last king, Tarquinius Superbus, consulted the senate but little in state affairs; he also neglected to supply the place of its deceased members, and acted in every respect as if he aimed at its utter dissolution. Then ensued a state of political excitement which only needed an occasion to break out into open revolt. An insult to the honor of a matron – the invasion of that sanctum sanctorum – by the son of the king, supplied such an occasion. The kings were banished in the year 244 of the City and 510 of the Christian Era (that is, if the building of Rome is to be dated 753 B.C.) and the royal dignity abolished forever. The Kings were expelled by the patricians, not by the plebeians ; if therefore the patricians are to be regarded as possessed of “divine right” as being a sacred race, it is worthy of note that we find them here contravening such legitimation; for the King was their High Priest. We observe on this occasion with what dignity the sanctity of marriage was invested in the eyes of the Romans. The principle of subjectivity and piety (pudor) was with them the religious and guarded element; and its violation becomes the occasion of the expulsion of the Kings, and later on of the Decemvirs too. We find monogamy therefore also looked upon by the Romans as an understood thing. It was not introduced by an express law; we have nothing but an incidental testimony in the Institutes, where it is said that marriages under certain conditions of relationship are not allowable, because a man may not have two wives. It is not until the reign of Diocletian that we find a law expressly determining that no one belonging to the Roman empire may have two wives, “since according to a pretorian edict also, infamy attaches to such a condition” (cum etiam in edicto praetoris hujusmodi viri infamia notati sunt). Monogamy therefore is regarded as naturally valid, and is based on the principle of subjectivity. – Lastly, we must also observe that royalty was not abrogated here as in Greece by suicidal destruction on the part of the royal races, but was exterminated in hate. The King, himself the chief priest, had been guilty of the grossest profanation; the principle of subjectivity revolted against the deed, and the patricians, thereby elevated to a sense of independence, threw off the yoke of royalty. Possessed by the same feeling, the plebs at a later date rose against the patricians, and the Latins and the Allies against the Romans; until the equality of the social units was restored through the whole Roman dominion (a multitude of slaves, too, being emancipated) and they were held together by simple Despotism. Livy remarks that Brutus hit upon the right epoch for the expulsion of the kings, for that if it had taken place earlier, the state would have suffered dissolution. What would have happened, he asks, if this homeless crowd had been liberated earlier, when living together had not yet produced a mutual conciliation of dispositions? – The constitution now became in name republican. If we look at the matter more closely it is evident (Livy ii. 1) that no other essential change took place than the transference of the power which was previously permanent in the King, to two annual Consuls. These two, equal in power, managed military and judicial as well as administrative business; for praetors, as supreme judges, do not appear till a later date. At first all authority remained in the hands of the consuls; and at the beginning of the republic, externally and internally, the state was in evil plight. In the Roman history a period occurs as troubled as that in the Greek which followed the extinction of the dynasties. The Romans had first to sustain a severe conflict with their expelled King, who had sought and found help from the Etrurians. In the war against Porsena the Romans lost all their conquests, and even their independence : they were compelled to lay down their arms and to give hostages; according to an expression of Tacitus (Hist. 3, 72) it seems as if Porsena had even taken Rome. Soon after the expulsion of the Kings we have the contest between the patricians and plebeians; for the abolition of royalty had taken place exclusively to the advantage of the aristocracy, to which the royal power was transferred, while the plebs lost the protection which the Kings had afforded it. All magisterial and juridical power, and all property in land was at this time in the hands of the patricians; while the people, continually dragged out to war, could not employ themselves in peaceful occupations: handicrafts could not flourish, and the only acquisition the plebeians could make was their share in the booty. The patricians had their territory and soil cultivated by slaves, and assigned some of their land to their clients, who on condition of paying taxes and contributions – as tenant cultivators, therefore – had the usufruct of it. This relation, on account of the form in which the dues were paid by the Clientes, was very similar to vassalage: they were obliged to give contributions towards the marriage of the daughters of the Patronus, to ransom him or his sons when in captivity, to assist them in obtaining magisterial offices, and to make up the losses sustained in suits at law. The administration of justice was likewise in the hands of the patricians, and that without the limitations of definite and written laws; a desideratum which at a later period the Decemvirs were created to supply. All the power of government belonged moreover to the patricians, for they were in possession of all offices – first of the consulship, afterwards of the military tribuneship and censorship (instituted A.U.C. 311) – by which the actual administration of government as likewise the oversight of it, was left to them alone. Lastly, it was the patricians who constituted the Senate. The question as to how that body was recruited appears very important. But in this matter no systematic plan was followed. Romulus is said to have founded the senate, consisting then of one hundred members; the succeeding kings increased this number, and Tarquinius Priscus fixed it at three hundred. Junius Brutus restored the senate, which had very much fallen away, de novo. In after times it would appear that the censors and sometimes the dictators filled up the vacant places in the senate. In the second Punic War, A.U.C. 538, a dictator was chosen, who nominated one hundred and seventyseven new senators: he selected those who had been invested with curule dignities, the plebeian Ædiles, Tribunes of the People and Quaestors, citizens who had gained spolia opima or the corona civica. Under Caesar the number of the senators was raised to eight hundred; Augustus reduced it to six hundred. It has been regarded as great negligence on the part of the Roman historians, that they give us so little information respecting the composition and redintegration of the senate. But this point which appears to us to be invested with infinite importance, was not of so much moment to the Romans at large; they did not attach so much weight to formal arrangements, for their principal concern was, how the government was conducted. How in fact can we suppose the constitutional rights of the ancient Romans to have been so well defined, and that at a time which is even regarded as mythical, and its traditionary history as epical? The people were in some such oppressed condition as, e.g. the Irish were a few years ago in the British Isles, while they remained at the same time entirely excluded from the government. Often they revolted and made a secession from the city. Sometimes they also refused military service; yet it always remains a very striking fact that the senate could so long resist superior numbers irritated by oppression and practised in war; for the main struggle lasted for more than a hundred years. In the fact that the people could so long be kept in check is manifested its respect for legal order and the sacra. But of necessity the plebeians at last secured their righteous demands, and their debts were often remitted. The severity of the patricians their creditors, the debts due to whom they had to discharge by slave-work, drove the plebs to revolts. At first it demanded and received only what it had already enjoyed under the kings – landed property and protection against the powerful. It received assignments of land, and Tribunes of the People – functionaries that is to say, who had the power to put a veto on every decree of the senate. When this office commenced, the number of tribunes was limited to two: later there were ten of them; which however was rather injurious to the plebs, since all that the senate had to do was to gain over one of the tribunes, in order to thwart the purpose of all the rest by his single opposition. The plebs obtained at the same time the provocatio ad populum: that is, in every case of magisterial oppression, the condemned person might appeal to the decision of the people – a privilege of infinite importance to the plebs, and which especially irritated the patricians. At the repeated desire of the people the Decemviri were nominated – the Tribunate of the People being suspended – to supply the desideratum of a determinate legislation; they perverted, as is well known, their unlimited power to tyranny; and were driven from power on an occasion entailing similar disgrace to that which led to the punishment of the Kings. The dependence of the clientela was in the meantime weakened; after the decemviral epoch the clientes are less and less prominent and are merged in the plebs, which adopts resolutions (plebiscita); the senate by itself could only issue senatus consulta, and the tribunes, as well as the senate, could now impede the comitia and elections. By degrees the plebeians effected their admissibility to all dignities and offices; but at first a plebeian consul, aedile, censor, etc., was not equal to the patrician one, on account of the sacra which the latter kept in his hands; and a long time intervened after this concession before a plebeian actually became a consul. It was the tribunus plebis, Licinius, who established the whole cycle of these political arrangements – in the second half of the fourth century, A.U.C. 387. It was he also who chiefly commenced the agitation for the lex agraria, respecting which so much has been written and debated among the learned of the day. The agitators for this law excited during every period very great commotions in Rome. The plebeians were practically excluded from almost all the landed property, and the object of the Agrarian Laws was to provide lands for them – partly in the neighborhood of Rome, partly in the conquered districts, to which colonies were to be then led out. In the time of the Republic we frequently see military leaders assigning lands to the people; but in every case they were accused of striving after royalty, because it was the kings who had exalted the plebs. The Agrarian Law required that no citizen should possess more than five hundred jugera: the patricians were consequently obliged to surrender a large part of their property. Niebuhr in particular has undertaken extensive researches respecting the agrarian laws, and has conceived himself to have made great and important discoveries: he says, viz. that an infringement of the sacred right of property was never thought of, but that the state had only assigned a portion of the public lands for the use of the plebs, having always had the right of disposing of them as its own property. I only remark in passing that Hegewisch had made this discovery before Niebuhr, and that Niebuhr derived the particular data on which his assertion rests from Appian and Plutarch; that is from Greek authors, respecting whom he himself allows that we should have recourse to them only in an extreme case. How often does Livy, as well as Cicero and others, speak of the Agrarian laws, while nothing definite can be inferred from their statements! – This is another proof of the inaccuracy of the Roman historians. The whole affair ends in nothing but a useless question of jurisprudence. The land which the patricians had taken into possession or in which colonies settled, was originally public land; but it also certainly belonged to those in possession, and our information is not at all promoted by the assertion that it always remained public land. This discovery of Niebuhr's turns upon a very immaterial distinction, existing perhaps in his ideas, but not in reality. – The Licinian law was indeed carried, but soon transgressed and utterly disregarded. Licinius Stolo himself, who had first “agitated” for the law, was punished because he possessed a larger property in land than was allowed, and the patricians opposed the execution of the law with the greatest obstinacy. We must here call especial attention to the distinction which exists between the Roman, the Greek, and our own circumstances. Our civil society rests on other principles, and in it such measures are not necessary. Spartans and Athenians, who had not arrived at such an abstract idea of the State as was so tenaciously held by the Romans, did not trouble themselves with abstract rights, but simply desired that the citizens should have the means of subsistence; and they required of the state that it should take care that such should be the case. This is the chief point in the first period of Roman History – that the plebs attained the right of being eligible to the higher political offices, and that by a share which they too managed to obtain in the land and soil, the means of subsistence were assured to the citizens.

By this union of the patriciate and the plebs, Rome first attained true internal consistency ; and only after this had been realized could the Roman power develop itself externally. A period of satisfied absorption in the common interest ensues, and the citizens are weary of internal struggles. When after civil discords nations direct their energies outward, they appear in their greatest strength; for the previous excitement continues, and no longer having its object within, seeks for it without. This direction given to the Roman energies was able for a moment to conceal the defect of that union; equilibrium was restored, but without an essential centre of unity and support. The contradiction that existed could not but break out again fearfully at a later period; but previously to this time the greatness of Rome had to display itself in war and the conquest of the world. The power, the wealth, the glory derived from these wars, as also the difficulties to which they led, kept the Romans together as regards the internal affairs of the state. Their courage and discipline secured their victory. As compared with the Greek or Macedonian, the Roman art of war has special peculiarities. The strength of the phalanx lay in its mass and in its massive character. The Roman legions also present a close array, but they had at the same time an articulated organization: they united the two extremes of massiveness on the one hand, and of dispersion into light troops on the other hand: they held firmly together, while at the same time they were capable of ready expansion. Archers and slingers preceded the main body of the Roman army when they attacked the enemy – afterwards leaving the decision to the sword.

It would be a wearisome task to pursue the wars of the Romans in Italy; partly because they are in themselves unimportant – even the often empty rhetoric of the generals in Livy cannot very much increase the interest – partly on account of the unintelligent character of the Roman annalists, in whose pages we see the Romans carrying on war only with “enemies” without learning anything further of their individuality – e.g., the Etruscans, the Samnites, the Ligurians, with whom they carried on wars during many hundred years. – It is singular in regard to these transactions that the Romans, who have the justification conceded by World- History on their side, should also claim for themselves the minor justification in respect to manifestoes and treaties on occasion of minor infringements of them, and maintain it as it were after the fashion of advocates. But in political complications of this kind, either party may take offence at the conduct of the other, if it pleases, and deems it expedient to be offended. – The Romans had long and severe contests to maintain with the Samnites, the Etruscans, the Gauls, the Marsi, the Umbrians and the Bruttii, before they could make themselves masters of the whole of Italy. Their dominion was extended thence in a southerly direction; they gained a secure footing in Sicily, where the Carthaginians had long carried on war; then they extended their power towards the west: from Sardinia and Corsica they went to Spain. They thus soon came into frequent contact with the Carthaginians, and were obliged to form a naval power in opposition to them. This transition was easier in ancient times than it would perhaps be now, when long practice and superior knowledge are required for maritime service. The mode of warfare at sea was not very different from that on land. We have thus reached the end of the first epoch of Roman History, in which the Romans by their retail military transactions had become capitalists in a strength proper to themselves, and with which they were to appear on the theatre of the world. The Roman dominion was, on the whole, not yet very greatly extended: only a few colonies had settled on the other side of the Po, and on the south a considerable power confronted that of Rome. It was the Second Punic War, therefore, that gave the impulse to its terrible collision with the most powerful states of the time; through it the Romans came into contact with Macedonia, Asia, Syria, and subsequently also with Egypt. Italy and Rome remained the centre of their great far-stretching empire, but this centre was, as already remarked, not the less an artificial, forced, and compulsory one. This grand period of the contact of Rome with other states, and of the manifold complications thence arising, has been depicted by the noble Achaean, Polybius, whose fate it was to observe the fall of his country through the disgraceful passions of the Greeks and the baseness and inexorable persistency of the Romans.

Section II: Rome from the Second Punic War to the Emperors

The second period, according to our division, begins with the Second Punic War, that epoch which decided and stamped a character upon Roman dominion. In the first Punic War the Romans had shown that they had become a match for the mighty Carthage, which possessed a great part of the coast of Africa and southern Spain, and had gained a firm footing in Sicily and Sardinia. The second Punic War laid the might of Carthage prostrate in the dust. The proper element of that state was the sea; but it had no original territory, formed no nation, had no national army; its hosts were composed of the troops of subjugated and allied peoples. In spite of this, the great Hannibal with such a host, formed from the most diverse nations, brought Rome near to destruction. Without any support he maintained his position in Italy for sixteen years against Roman patience and perseverance; during which time however the Scipios conquered Spain and entered into alliances with the princes of Africa. Hannibal was at last compelled to hasten to the assistance of his hard-pressed country; he lost the battle of Zatna in the year 552 A.U.C. and after six and thirty years revisited his paternal city, to which he was now obliged to offer pacific counsels. The second Punic War thus eventually established the undisputed power of Rome over Carthage; it occasioned the hostile collision of the Romans with the king of Macedonia, who was conquered five years later. Now Antiochus, the king of Syria, is involved in the melee. He opposed a huge power to the Romans, was beaten at Thermopylae and Magnesia, and was compelled to surrender to the Romans Asia Minor as far as the Taurus. After the conquest of Macedonia both that country and Greece were declared free by the Romans – a declaration whose meaning we have already investigated, in treating of the preceding Historical nation. It was not till this time that the Third Punic War commenced, for Carthage had once more raised its head and excited the jealousy of the Romans. After long resistance it was taken and laid in ashes. Nor could the Achaean league now long maintain itself in the face of Roman ambition: the Romans were eager for war, destroyed Corinth in the same year as Carthage, and made Greece a province. The fall of Carthage and the subjugation of Greece were the central points from which the Romans gave its vast extent to their sovereignty.

Rome seemed now to have attained perfect security; no external power confronted it: she was the mistress of the Mediterranean – that is of the media terra of all civilization. In this period of victory, its morally great and fortunate personages, especially the Scipios, attract our attention. They were morally fortunate – although the greatest of the Scipios met with an end outwardly unfortunate – because they devoted their energies to their country during a period when it enjoyed a sound and unimpaired condition. But after the feeling of patriotism – the dominant instinct of Rome – had been satisfied, destruction immediately invades the state regarded en masse; the grandeur of individual character becomes stronger in intensity, and more vigorous in the use of means, on account of contrasting circumstances. We see the internal contradiction of Rome now beginning to manifest itself in another form; and the epoch which concludes the second period is also the second mediation of that contradiction. We observed that contradiction previously in the struggle of the patricians against the plebeians: now it assumes the form of private interest, contravening patriotic sentiment; and respect for the state no longer holds these opposites in the necessary equipoise. Rather, we observe now side by side with wars for conquest, plunder and glory, the fearful spectacle of civil discords in Rome, and intestine wars. There does not follow, as among the Greeks after the Median wars, a period of brilliant splendor in culture, art and science, in which Spirit enjoys inwardly and ideally that which it had previously achieved in the world of action. If inward satisfaction was to follow the period of that external Prosperity in war, the principle of Roman life must be more concrete, But if there were such a concrete life to evolve as an object of consciousness from the depths of their souls by imagination and thought, what would it have been! Their chief spectacles were triumphs, the treasures gained in war, and captives from all nations, unsparingly subjected to the yoke of abstract sovereignty. The concrete element, which the Romans actually find within themselves, is only this unspiritual unity, and any definite thought or feeling of a non-abstract kind, can lie only in the idiosyncrasy of individuals. The tension of virtue is now relaxed, because the danger is past. At the time of the first Punic War, necessity united the hearts of all for the saving of Rome. In the following wars too, with Macedonia, Syria, and the Gauls in Upper Italy, the existence of the entire state was still concerned. But after the danger from Carthage and Macedon was over, the subsequent wars were more and more the mere consequences of victories, and nothing else was needed than to gather in their fruits. The armies were used for particular expeditions, suggested by policy, or for the advantages of individuals – for acquiring wealth, glory, sovereignty in the abstract. The relation to other nations was purely that of force. The national individuality of peoples did not, as early as the time of the Romans, excite respect, as is the case in modern times. The various peoples were not yet recognized as legitimated; the various states had not yet acknowledged each other as real essential existences. Equal right to existence entails a union of states, such as exists in modern Europe, or a condition like that of Greece, in which the states had an equal right to existence under the protection of the Delphic god. The Romans do not enter into such a relation to the other nations, for their god is only the Jupiter Capitolinus; neither do they respect the sacra of the other nations (any more than the plebeians those of the patricians) ; but as conquerors in the strict sense of the term, they plunder the Palladia of the nations. Rome kept standing armies in the conquered provinces, and proconsuls and propraetors were sent into them as viceroys. The Equites collected the taxes and tributes, which they farmed under the State. A net of such fiscal farmers (publicani) was thus drawn over the whole Roman world. – Cato used to say, after every deliberation of the senate: “Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam:” and Cato was a thorough Roman. The Roman principle thereby exhibits itself as the cold abstraction of sovereignty and power, as the pure egotism of the will in opposition to others, involving no moral element of determination, but appearing in a concrete form only in the shape of individual interests. Increase in the number of provinces issued in the aggrandizement of individuals within Rome itself, and the corruption thence arising. From Asia, luxury and debauchery were brought to Rome. Riches flowed in after the fashion of spoils in war, and were not the fruit of industry and honest activity; in the same way as the marine had arisen, not from the necessities of commerce, but with a warlike object. The Roman state, drawing its resources from rapine, came to be rent in sunder by quarrels about dividing the spoil. For the first occasion of the breaking out of contention within it was the legacy of Attalus, King of Pergamus, who had bequeathed his treasures to the Roman State. Tiberius Gracchus came forward with the proposal to divide it among the Roman citizens; he likewise renewed the Licinian Agrarian laws, which had been entirely set aside during the predominance of individuals in the state. His chief object was to procure property for the free citizens, and to people Italy with citizens instead of slaves. This noble Roman, however, was vanquished by the grasping nobles, for the Roman constitution was no longer in a condition to be saved by the constitution itself. Caius Gracchus, the brother of Tiberius, prosecuted the same noble aim as his brother, and shared the same fate. Ruin now broke in unchecked, and as there existed no generally recognized and absolutely essential object to which the country's energy could be devoted, individualities and physical force were in the ascendant. The enormous corruption of Rome displays itself in the war with Jugurtha, who had gained the senate by bribery, and so indulged himself in the most atrocious deeds of violence and crime. Rome was pervaded by the excitement of the struggle against the Cimbri and Teutones, who assumed a menacing position towards the State. With great exertions the latter were utterly routed in Provence, near Aix; the others in Lombardy at the Adige by Marius the conqueror of Jugurtha. Then the Italian allies, whose demand of Roman citizenship had been refused, raised a revolt; and while the Romans had to sustain a struggle against a vast power in Italy, they received the news that, at the command of Mithridates, 80,000 Romans had been put to death in Asia Minor. Mithridates was King of Pontus, governed Colchis and the lands of the Black Sea, as far as the Tauric peninsula, and could summon to his standard in his war with Rome the populations of the Caucasus, of Armenia, Mesopotamia, and a part of Syria, through his son-in-law Tigranes. Sulla, who had already led the Roman hosts in the Social War, conquered him. Athens, which had hitherto been spared, was beleaguered and taken, but “for the sake of their fathers” – as Sulla expressed himself – not destroyed. He then returned to Rome, reduced the popular faction, headed by Marius and Cinna, became master of the city, and commenced systematic massacres of Roman citizens of consideration. Forty senators and six hundred knights were sacrificed to his ambition and lust of power.

Mithridates was indeed defeated, but not overcome, and was able to begin the war anew. At the same time, Sertorius, a banished Roman, arose in revolt in Spain, carried on a contest there for eight years, and perished only through treachery. The war against Mithridates was terminated by Pompey; the King of Pontus killed himself when his resources were exhausted. The Servile War in Italy is a contemporaneous event. A great number of gladiators and mountaineers had formed a union under Spartacus, but were vanquished by Crassus. To this confusion was added the universal prevalence of piracy, which Pompey rapidly reduced by a large armament.

We thus see the most terrible and dangerous powers arising against Rome; yet the military force of this state is victorious over all. Great individuals now appear on the stage as during the times of the fall of Greece. The biographies of Plutarch are here also of the deepest interest. It was from the disruption of the state, which had no longer any consistency or firmness in itself, that these colossal individualities arose, instinctively impelled to restore that political unity which was no longer to be found in men's dispositions. It was their misfortune that they could not maintain a pure morality, for their course of action contravened things as they are, and was a series of transgressions. Even the noblest – the Gracchi – were not merely the victims of injustice and violence from without, but were themselves involved in the corruption and wrong that universally prevailed. But that which these individuals purpose and accomplish has on its side the higher sanction of the World-Spirit, and must eventually triumph. The idea of an organization for the vast empire being altogether absent, the senate could not assert the authority of government. The sovereignty was made dependent on the people – that people which was now a mere mob, and was obliged to be supported by corn from the Roman provinces. We should refer to Cicero to see how all affairs of state were decided in riotous fashion, and with arms in hand, by the wealth and power of the grandees on the one side, and by a troop of rabble on the other. The Roman citizens attached themselves to individuals who flattered them, and who then became prominent in factions, in order to make themselves masters of Rome. Thus we see in Pompey and Caesar the two foci of Rome's splendor coming into hostile opposition: on the one side, Pompey with the Senate, and therefore apparently the defender of the Republic – on the other, Caesar with his legions and a superiority of genius. This contest between the two most powerful individualities could not be decided at Rome in the Forum. Caesar made himself master in succession, of Italy, Spain, and Greece, utterly routed his enemy at Pharsalia, forty-eight years before Christ, made himself sure of Asia, and so returned victor to Rome. In this way the world-wide sovereignty of Rome became the property of a single possessor. This important change must not be regarded as a thing of chance; it was necessary – postulated by the circumstances. The democratic constitution could no longer be really maintained in Rome, but only kept up in appearance. Cicero, who had procured himself great respect through his high oratorical talent, and whose learning acquired him considerable influence, always attributes the corrupt state of the republic to individuals and their passions. Plato, whom Cicero professedly followed, had the full consciousness that the Athenian state, as it presented itself to him, could not maintain its existence, and therefore sketched the plan of a perfect constitution accordant with his views. Cicero, on the contrary, does not consider it impossible to preserve the Roman Republic, and only desiderates some temporary assistance for it in its adversity. The nature of the State, and of the Roman State in particular, transcends his comprehension. Cato, too, says of Caesar: “His virtues be execrated, for they have ruined my country!” But it was not the mere accident of Caesar's existence that destroyed the Republic – it was Necessity. All the tendencies of the Roman principle were to sovereignty and military force: it contained in it no spiritual centre which it could make the object, occupation, and enjoyment of its Spirit. The aim of patriotism – that of preserving the State – ceases when the lust of personal dominion becomes the impelling passion. The citizens were alienated from the state, for they found in it no objective satisfaction; and the interests of individuals did not take the same direction as among the Greeks, who could set against the incipient corruption of the practical world, the noblest works of art in painting, sculpture and poetry, and especially a highly cultivated philosophy. Their works of art were only what they had collected from every part of Greece, and therefore not productions of their own; their riches were not the fruit of industry, as was the case in Athens, but the result of plunder. Elegance – Culture – was foreign to the Romans per se; they sought to obtain it from the Greeks, and for this purpose a vast number of Greek slaves were brought to Rome. Delos was the centre of this slave trade, and it is said that sometimes on a single day, ten thousand slaves were purchased there. To the Romans, Greek slaves were their poets, their authors, the superintendents of their manufactories, the instructors of their children.

The Republic could not longer exist in Rome. We see, especially from Cicero's writings, how all public affairs were decided by the private authority of the more eminent citizens – by their power, their wealth; and what tumultuary proceedings marked all political transactions. In the republic, therefore, there was no longer any security; that could be looked for only in a single will. Caesar, who may be adduced as a paragon of Roman adaptation of means to ends – who formed his resolves with the most unerring perspicuity, and executed them with the greatest vigor and practical skill, without any superfluous excitement of mind – Caesar, judged by the great scope of history, did the Right; since he furnished a mediating element, and that kind of political bond which men's condition required. Caesar effected two objects: he calmed the internal strife, and at the same time originated a new one outside the limits of the empire. For the conquest of the world had reached hitherto only to the circle of the Alps, but Caesar opened a new scene of achievement: he founded the theatre which was on the point of becoming the centre of History. He then achieved universal sovereignty by a struggle which was decided not in Rome itself, but by his conquest of the whole Roman World.

His position was indeed hostile to the republic, but, properly speaking, only to its shadow; for all that remained of that republic was entirely powerless. Pompey, and all those who were on the side of the senate, exalted their dignitas auctoritas – their individual rule – as the power of the republic; and the mediocrity which needed protection took refuge under this title. Caesar put an end to the empty formalism of this title, made himself master, and held together the Roman world by force, in opposition to isolated factions. Spite of this we see the noblest men of Rome supposing Caesar's rule to be a merely adventitious thing, and the entire position of affairs to be dependent on his individuality. So thought Cicero, so Brutus and Cassius. They believed that if this one individual were out of the way, the Republic would be ipso facto restored. Possessed by this remarkable hallucination, Brutus, a man of highly noble character, and Cassius, endowed with greater practical energy than Cicero, assassinated the man whose virtues they appreciated. But it became immediately manifest that only a single will could guide the Roman State, and now the Romans were compelled to adopt that opinion; since in all periods of the world a political revolution is sanctioned in men's opinions, when it repeats itself. Thus Napoleon was twice defeated, and the Bourbons twice expelled. By repetition that which at first appeared merely a matter of chance and contingency becomes a real and ratified existence.

Section III:

Chapter I. Rome Under the Emperors.

During this period the Romans come into contact with the people destined to succeed them as a World-Historical nation; and we have to consider that period in two essential aspects, the secular and the spiritual. In the secular aspect two leading phases must be specially regarded: first, the position of the Ruler; and secondly, the conversion of mere individuals into persons – the world of legal relations.

The first thing to be remarked respecting the imperial rule is that the Roman government was so abstracted from interest, that the great transition to that rule hardly changed anything in the constitution. The popular assemblies alone were unsuited to the new state of things, and disappeared. The emperor was princeps senatus, Censor, Consul, Tribune: he united all their nominally continuing offices in himself; and the military power – here the most essentially important – was exclusively in his hands. The constitution was an utterly unsubstantial form, from which all vitality, consequently all might and power, had departed; and the only means of maintaining its existence were the legions which the Emperor constantly kept in the vicinity of Rome. Public business was indeed brought before the senate, and the Emperor appeared simply as one of its members; but the senate was obliged to obey, and whoever ventured to gainsay his will was punished with death, and his property confiscated. Those therefore who had certain death in anticipation, killed themselves, that if they could do nothing more, they might at least preserve their property to their family. Tiberius was the most odious to the Romans on account of his power of dissimulation: he knew very well how to make good use of the baseness of the senate, in extirpating those among them whom he feared. The power of the Emperor rested, as we have said, on the army, and the Pretorian bodyguard which surrounded him. But the legions, and especially the Pretorians, soon became conscious of their importance, and arrogated to themselves the disposal of the imperial throne. At first they continued to show some respect for the family of Caesar Augustus, but subsequently the legions chose their own generals; such, viz., as had gained their good will and favor, partly by courage and intelligence, partly also by bribes, and indulgence in the administration of military discipline.

The Emperors conducted themselves in the enjoyment of their power with perfect simplicity, and did not surround themselves with pomp and splendor in Oriental fashion. We find in them traits of simplicity which astonish us. Thus, e.g., Augustus writes a letter to Horace, in which he reproaches him for having failed to address any poem to him, and asks him whether he thinks that that would disgrace him with posterity. Sometimes the Senate made an attempt to regain its consequence by nominating the Emperor: but their nominees were either unable to maintain their ground, or could do so only by bribing the Pretorians. The choice of the senators and the constitution of the senate was moreover left entirely to the caprice of the Emperor. The political institutions were united in the person a the Emperor; no moral bond any longer existed; the will of the Emperor was supreme, and before him there was absolute equality. The freedmen who surrounded the Emperor were often the mightiest in the empire; for caprice recognizes no distinction. In the person of the Emperor isolated subjectivity has gained a perfectly unlimited realization. Spirit has renounced its proper nature, inasmuch as Limitation of being and of volition has been constituted an unlimited absolute existence. This arbitrary choice, moreover, has only one limit, the limit of all that is human – death; and even death became a theatrical display. Nero, e.g., died a death, which may furnish an example for the noblest hero, as for the most resigned of sufferers. Individual subjectivity thus entirely emancipated from control, has no inward life, no prospective nor retrospective emotions, no repentance, nor hope, nor fear – not even thought; for all these involve fixed conditions and aims, while here every condition is purely contingent. The springs of action are none other than desire, lust, passion, fancy – in short, caprice absolutely unfettered. It finds so little limitation in the will of others, that the relation of will to will may be called that of absolute sovereignty to absolute slavery. In the whole known world, no will is imagined that is not subject to the will of the Emperor. But under the sovereignty of that One, everything is in a condition of order; for as it actually is [as the Emperor has willed it], it is in due order, and government consists in bringing all into harmony with the sovereign One. The concrete element in the character of the Emperors is therefore of itself of no interest, because the concrete is not of essential importance. Thus there were Emperors of noble character and noble nature, and who highly distinguished themselves by mental and moral culture. Titus, Trajan, the Antonines, are known as such characters, rigorously strict in self-government; yet even these produced no change in the state. The proposition was never made during their time, to give the Roman Empire an organization of free social relationship: they were only a kind of happy chance, which passes over without a trace, and leaves the condition of things as it was. For these persons find themselves here in a position in which they cannot be said to act, since no object confronts them in opposition; they have only to will – well or ill – and it is so. The praiseworthy emperors Vespasian and Titus were succeeded by that coarsest and most loathsome tyrant, Domitian: yet the Roman historian tells us that the Roman world enjoyed tranquillizing repose under him. Those single points of light, therefore, effected no change; the whole empire was subject to the pressure of taxation and plunder; Italy was depopulated; the most fertile lands remained untilled: and this state of things lay as a fate on the Roman world.

The second point which we have particularly to remark, is the position taken by individuals as persons. Individuals were perfectly equal (slavery made only a trifling distinction), and without any political right. As early as the termination of the Social War, the inhabitants of the whole of Italy were put on an equal footing with Roman citizens; and under Caracalla all distinction between the subjects of the entire Roman empire was abolished. Private Right developed and perfected this equality. The right of property had been previously limited by distinctions of various kinds, which were now abrogated. We observed the Romans proceeding from the principle of abstract Subjectivity, which now realizes itself as Personality in the recognition of Private Right. Private Right, viz., is this, that the social unit as such enjoys consideration in the state, in the reality which he gives to himself – viz., in property. The living political body – that Roman feeling which animated it as its soul – is now brought back to the isolation of a lifeless Private Right. As, when the physical body suffers dissolution, each point gains a life of its own, but which is only the miserable life of worms; so the political organism is here dissolved into atoms – viz., private persons. Such a condition is Roman life at this epoch: on the one side, Fate and the abstract universality of sovereignty; on the other, the individual abstraction. “Person,” which involves the recognition of the independent dignity of the social unit – not on the ground of the display of the life which he possesses – in his complete individuality – but as the abstract individuum. It is the pride of the social units to enjoy absolute importance as private persons; for the Ego is thus enabled to assert unbounded claims; but the substantial interest thus comprehended – the meum – is only of a superficial kind, and the development of private right, which this high principle introduced, involved the decay of political life. – The Emperor domineered only, and could not be said to rule; for the equitable and moral medium between the sovereign and the subjects was wanting – the bond of a constitution and organization of the state, in which a gradation of circles of social life, enjoying independent recognition, exists in communities and provinces, which, devoting their energies to the general interest, exert an influence on the general government. There are indeed Curiae in the towns, but they are either destitute of weight, or used only as means for oppressing individuals, and for systematic plunder. That, therefore, which was abidingly present to the minds of men was not their country, or such a moral unity as that supplies: the whole state of things urged them to yield themselves to fate, and to strive for a perfect indifference to life – an indifference which they sought either in freedom of thought or in directly sensuous enjoyment. Thus man was either at war with existence, or entirely given up to mere sensuous existence. He either recognized his destiny in the task of acquiring the means of enjoyment through the favor of the Emperor, or through violence, testamentary frauds, and cunning; or he sought repose in philosophy, which alone was still able to supply something firm and independent: for the systems of that time – Stoicism, Epicureanism, and Scepticism – although within their common sphere opposed to each other, had the same general purport, viz., rendering the soul absolutely indifferent to everything which the real world had to offer. These philosophies were therefore widely extended among the cultivated: they produced in man a selfreliant immobility as the result of Thought, i.e., of the activity which produces the Universal. But the inward reconciliation by means of philosophy was itself only an abstract one – in the pure principle of personality; for Thought, which, as perfectly refined, made itself its own object, and thus harmonized itself, was entirely destitute of a real object, and the immobility of Scepticism made aimlessness itself the object of the Will. This philosophy knew nothing but the negativity of all that assumed to be real, and was the counsel of despair to a world which no longer possessed anything stable. It could not satisfy the living Spirit, which longed after a higher reconciliation.

Victor Serge in english

Robert Paris — 2025-09-06T05:36:25Z

Victor Serge in english

Men in prison

https://www.google.fr/books/edition/Men_in_Prison/m7VHEAAAQBAJ?hl=fr&gbpv=1&dq=inauthor:%22Victor+Serge%22&printsec=frontcover

The Case of Comrad Tulaev

https://www.google.fr/books/edition/The_Case_of_Comrade_Tulayev/djOYVT_TFfgC?hl=fr&gbpv=1&dq=inauthor:%22Victor+Serge%22&printsec=frontcover

Notebooks 1936-1947

https://www.google.fr/books/edition/Notebooks_1936_1947/YcBWDwAAQBAJ?hl=fr&gbpv=1&dq=inauthor:%22Victor+Serge%22&printsec=frontcover

Writings of Victor Serge

https://www.marxists.org/archive/serge/index.htm

Marx/Engels and India

Robert Paris — 2025-02-27T05:40:37Z

Marx/Engels and India

Leon Trotsky - Marxism and Our Era - 1939

Robert Paris — 2025-01-14T04:30:39Z

Leon Trotsky - Marxism and Our Era - 1939

This book compactly sets forth the fundamentals of Marx's economic teaching in Marx's own words. After all, no one has yet been able to expound the labor theory of value better than Marx himself.The abridgment of the first volume of Capital – the foundation of Marx's entire economic system – was made by Mr. Otto Rühle with great care and with profound understanding of his task. First to be eliminated were obsolete examples and illustrations, then quotations from writings which today are only of historic interest, polemics with writers now forgotten, and finally numerous documents – Acts of Parliament, reports of factory inspectors, and the like – which, whatever their importance for understanding a given epoch, have no place in a concise exposition that pursues theoretical rather than historical objectives. At the same time, Mr. Rühle did everything to preserve continuity in the development of the scientific analysis as well as unity of exposition. Logical deductions and dialectical transitions of thought have not, we trust, been infringed at any point. It stands to reason that this extract calls for attentive and thoughtful perusal. To aid the reader, Mr. Otto Rühle has supplied the text with succinct marginal titles.

Certain of Marx's argumentations, especially in the first, the most difficult chapter, may seem to the uninitiated reader far too discursory, hair-splitting, or “metaphysical.” As a matter of fact, this impression arises in consequence of the want of habit to approach overly habitual phenomena scientifically. The commodity has become such an all-pervasive, customary and familiar part of our daily existence that we, lulled to sleep, do not even attempt to consider why men relinquish important objects, needed to sustain life, in exchange for tiny discs of gold or silver that are of no earthly use whatever. The matter is not limited to the commodity. One and all of the categories (the basic concepts) of market economy seem to be accepted without analysis, as self-evident, as if they were the natural basis of human relations. Yet, while the realities of the economic process are human labor, raw materials, tools, machines, division of labor, the necessity to distribute finished products among the participants of the labor process, and the like, such categories as “commodity,” “money,” “wages,” “capital,” “profit,” “tax,” and the like are only semi-mystical reflections in men's heads of the various aspects of a process of economy which they do not understand and which is not under their control. To decipher them, a thoroughgoing scientific analysis is indispensable.

In the United States, where a man who owns a million is referred to as being “worth” a million, market concepts have sunk in deeper than anywhere else. Until quite recently Americans gave very little thought to the nature of economic relations. In the land of the most powerful economic system economic theory continued to be exceedingly barren. Only the present deep-going crisis of American economy has bluntly confronted public opinion with the fundamental problems of capitalist society. In any event, whoever has not overcome the habit of uncritically accepting the ready-made ideological reflections of economic development, whoever has not reasoned out, in the footsteps of Marx, the essential nature of the commodity as the basic cell of the capitalist organism, will prove to be forever incapable of scientifically comprehending the most important and the most acute manifestations of our epoch.
Marx's Method

Having established science as cognition of the objective recurrences of nature, man has tried stubbornly and persistently to exclude himself from science, reserving for himself special privileges in the shape of alleged intercourse with supersensory forces (religion), or with eternal moral precepts (idealism). Marx deprived man of these odious privileges definitely and forever, looking upon him as a natural link in the evolutionary process of material nature ; upon human society as the organization of production and distribution ; upon capitalism as a stage in the development of human society.

It was not Marx's aim to discover the “eternal laws” of economy. He denied the existence of such laws. The history of the development of human society is the history of the succession of various systems of economy, each operating in accordance with its own laws. The transition from one system to another was always determined by the growth of the productive forces, i.e., of technique and the organization of labor. Up to a certain point, social changes are quantitative in character and do not alter the foundations of society, i.e., the prevalent forms of property. But a point is reached when the matured productive forces can no longer contain themselves within the old forms of property ; then follows a radical change in the social order, accompanied by shocks. The primitive commune was either superseded or supplemented by slavery ; slavery was succeeded by serfdom with its feudal superstructure ; the commercial development of cities brought Europe in the sixteenth century to the capitalist order, which thereupon passed through several stages. In his Capital, Marx does not study economy in general, but capitalist economy, which has its own specific laws. Only in passing does he refer to the other economic systems, to elucidate the characteristics of capitalism.

The self-sufficient economy of the primitive peasant family has no need of a “political economy,” for it is dominated on the one hand by the forces of nature and on the other by the forces of tradition. The self-contained natural economy of the Greeks or the Romans, founded on slave labor, was ruled by the will of the slave-owner, whose “plan” in turn was directly determined by the laws of nature and routine. The same might also be said about the medieval estate with its peasant serfs. In all these instances economic relations were clear and transparent in their primitive crudity. But the case of contemporary society is altogether different. It destroyed the old self-contained connections and the inherited modes of labor. The new economic relations have linked cities and villages, provinces and nations. Division of labor has encompassed the planet. Having shattered tradition and routine, these bonds have not developed according to a definite plan, but rather apart from the consciousness and foresight of people, and it would seem as if behind their backs. The interdependence of various people, groups, classes, and nations, which follows from the division of labor, is not directed or managed by anyone. People work for each other without knowing each other, without inquiring about one another's needs, in the hope, and even with the assurance, that their relations will somehow regulate themselves. And by and large they do, or rather, were wont to.

It is utterly impossible to seek the causes for the recurrences in capitalist society in the subjective consciousness – in the intentions or plans – of its members. The objective recurrences of capitalism took form before science began to think about them seriously. To this day the preponderant majority of people know nothing about the laws that govern capitalist economy. The whole strength of Marx's method was in his approach to economic phenomena, not from the subjective point of view of certain persons, but from the objective point of view of the development of society as a whole, just as an experimental natural scientist approaches a beehive or an ant-hill.

For economic science the decisive significance is what and how people act, not what they themselves think about their actions. At the base of society is not religion and morality, but nature and labor. Marx's method is materialistic, because it proceeds from existence to consciousness, not the other way around. Marx's method is dialectical, because it regards both nature and society as they evolve, and evolution itself as the constant struggle of conflicting forces.
Marxism and Official Science

Marx had his predecessors. Classical political economy – Adam Smith, David Ricardo – reached its full bloom before capitalism had grown old, before it began to fear the morrow. Marx paid to both great classicists the perfect tribute of profound gratitude. Nevertheless the basic error of classical economics was its view of capitalism as humanity's normal existence for all time instead of merely as one historical stage in the development of society. Marx began with a criticism of that political economy, exposed its errors, as well as the contradictions of capitalism itself, and demonstrated the inevitability of its collapse. As Rosa Luxemburg has very aptly observed, Marx's economic teaching is a child of classical economics, a child whose birth cost its mother her life.

Science does not develop in the hermetically sealed study of the scholar, but in flesh-and-blood society. All the interests and passions that rend society asunder exert their influence on the development of science – especially of political economy, the science of wealth and poverty. The struggle of workers against capitalists forced the theoreticians of the bourgeoisie to turn their backs upon a scientific analysis of the system of exploitation and to busy themselves with a bare description of economic facts, a study of the economic past and, what is immeasurably worse, a downright falsification of reality for the purpose of justifying the capitalist regime. The economic doctrine which is nowadays taught in official institutions of learning and preached in the bourgeois press offers no dearth of important factual material, yet it is utterly incapable of encompassing the economic process as a whole and discovering its laws and perspectives, nor has it any desire to do so. Official political economy is dead. Real knowledge of capitalist society can be obtained only through Marx's Capital.
The Law of Labor Value

In contemporary society man's cardinal tie is exchange. Any product of labor that enters into the process of exchange becomes a commodity. Marx began his investigation with the commodity and deduced from that fundamental cell of capitalist society those social relations that have objectively shaped themselves on the basis of exchange, independently of man's will. Only by pursuing this course is it possible to solve the fundamental puzzle – how in capitalist society, in which each man thinks for himself and no one thinks for all, are created the relative proportions of the various branches of economy indispensable to life.

The worker sells his labor power, the farmer takes his produce to the market, the money lender or banker grants loans, the storekeeper offers an assortment of merchandise, the industrialist builds a plant, the speculator buys and sells stocks and bonds – each having his own considerations, his own private plan, his own concern about wages or profit. Nevertheless, out of this chaos of individual strivings and actions emerges a certain economic whole, which, true, is not harmonious, but contradictory, yet does give society the possibility not merely to exist but even to develop. This means that, after all, chaos is not chaos at all, that in some way it is regulated automatically, if not consciously. To understand the mechanism whereby various aspects of economy are brought into a state of relative balance, is to discover the objective laws of capitalism.

Clearly, the laws which govern the various spheres of capitalist economy – wages, price, land rent, profit, interest, credit, the stock exchange – are numerous and complex. But in the final reckoning they come down to the single law that Marx discovered and explored to the end ; that is, the law of labor value, which is indeed the basic regulator of capitalist economy. The essence of this law is simple. Society has at its disposal a certain reserve of living labor power. Applied to nature, that power produces products necessary for the satisfaction of human needs. In consequence of the division of labor among independent producers, the products assume the form of commodities. Commodities are exchanged for each other in a given ratio, at first directly, and eventually through the medium of gold or money. The basic property of commodities, which in a certain relationship makes them equal to each other, is the human labor expended upon them – abstract labor, labor in general – the basis and the measure of value. Division of labor among millions of scattered producers does not lead to the disintegration of society, because commodities are exchanged according to the socially necessary labor time expended upon them. By accepting and rejecting commodities, the market, as the arena of exchange, decides whether they do or do not contain within themselves socially necessary labor, thereby determines the ratios of the various kinds of commodities necessary for society, and consequently also the distribution of labor power according to the various trades.

The actual processes of the market are immeasurably more complex than has been here set forth in but a few lines. Thus, while resting on the value of labor, prices deviate considerably from it, moving both above and below it. The causes of these deviations are fully explained in the third volume of Marx's Capital, which describes “the process of capitalist production considered as a whole." Nevertheless, great as may be the divergencies between the prices and the values of commodities in individual instances, the sum of all prices is equal to the sum of all values, for in the final reckoning only the values that have been created by human labor are at the disposal of society, and prices cannot break through this limitation, including even the monopoly prices of trusts ; where labor has created no new value, there even Rockefeller can get nothing.
Inequality and Exploitation

But if commodities are exchanged for each other according to the quantity of labor invested in them, how does inequality come out of equality ? Marx solved this puzzle by exposing the peculiar nature of one of the commodities, which lies at the basis of all other commodities : namely, labor power. The owner of means of production, the capitalist, buys labor power. Like all other commodities, it is evaluated according to the quantity of labor invested in it, i.e., of those means of consumption which are necessary for the survival and the reproduction of the worker. But the consumption of that commodity – labor power – consists of work, i.e., the creation of new values. The quantity of these values is greater than those which the worker himself receives and which he expends for his subsistence. The capitalist buys labor power in order to exploit it. It is this exploitation which is the source of inequality.

That part of the product which goes to cover the worker's own subsistence Marx calls necessary-product ; that part which the worker produces above this, is surplus-product. Surplus-product must have been produced by the slave, or the slave-owner would not have kept any slaves. Surplus-product must have been produced by the serf, or serfdom would have been of no use to the landed gentry. Surplus-product, only to a considerably greater extent, is likewise produced by the wage worker, or the capitalist would have no need to buy labor power. The class struggle is nothing else than the struggle for surplus-product. He who owns surplus-product is master of the situation – owns wealth, owns the state, has the key to the church, to the courts, to the sciences and to the arts.
Competition and Monopoly

Relations among capitalists, who exploit the workers, are determined by competition, which for long endures as the mainspring of capitalist progress. Large enterprises enjoy technical, financial, organizational, economic and, last but not least, political advantages over small enterprises. The greater amount of capital, being able to exploit a greater number of workers, inevitably emerges victorious out of a contest. Such is the unalterable basis of the concentration and centralization process of capital.

While stimulating the progressive development of technology, competition gradually consumes, not only the intermediary layers, but itself as well. Over the corpses and the semi-corpses of small and middling capitalists, emerges an ever-decreasing number of ever more powerful capitalist overlords. Thus, out of honest, democratic, progressive competition grows irrevocably harmful, parasitic, reactionary monopoly. Its sway began to assert itself in the eighties of the past century, assuming definite shape at the turn of the present century. Now the victory of monopoly is openly acknowledged by the most official representatives of bourgeois society. Competition as restraining influence, complains the former Attorney-General of the United States, Mr. Homer S. Cummings, is being gradually displaced and, in large fields, remains only “as a shadowy reminder of conditions that once existed.” Yet when in the course of his prognosis Marx had first deduced monopoly from the inherent tendencies of capitalism, the bourgeois world had looked upon competition as an eternal law of nature.

The elimination of competition by monopoly marks the beginning of the decay of capitalist society. Competition was the creative mainspring of capitalism and the historical justification of the capitalist. By the same token the elimination of competition marks the transformation of stockholders into social parasites. Competition had to have certain liberties, a liberal atmosphere, a regime of democracy, of commercial cosmopolitanism. Monopoly needs as authoritative a government as possible, tariff walls, “its own” sources of raw materials and arenas of marketing (colonies). The last word in the decay of monopolistic capital is fascism.
Concentration of Wealth and the Growth of Class Contradictions

Capitalists and their advocates try in every way to hide the real extent of the concentration of wealth from the eyes of the people as well as from the eyes of the tax collector. In defiance of the obvious, the bourgeois press is still attempting to maintain the illusion of a “democratic” distribution of capitalist investment. The New York Times, in refutation of the Marxists, points out that there are from three to five million separate employers of labor in the United States. Joint-stock companies, it is true, represent greater concentration of capital than three to five million separate employers, yet the United States does have “half a million corporations.” This sort of trifling with lump sums and average figures is resorted to, not in order to disclose, but in order to hide things as they are.

From the beginning of the war until 1923 the number of plants and factories in the United States fell from an index figure of 100 to 98.7, while the mass of industrial production rose from 100 to 156.3. During the years of sensational prosperity (1923-1929), when it seemed that “everybody” was getting rich, the number of establishments fell from 100 to 93.8, while production rose from 100 to 113. Yet the concentration of business establishments, bound by their ponderous material bodies, is far behind the concentration of their souls, i.e., ownership. In 1929 the United States did actually have more than 300,000 non-financial corporations, as the New York Times correctly observes. It is only necessary to add that 200 of these, i.e., 0.07 percent of the entire number, directly controlled 49.2 percent of the assets of all the corporations ; four years later that ratio had already risen to 56 percent, while during the years of Roosevelt's administration it has undoubtedly risen still higher. Inside these 200 leading corporations the actual domination belongs to a small minority. A Senate committee found out in February 1937, that for the past twenty years the decisions of twelve of the very largest corporations have been tantamount to directives for the greater part of American industry. The number of chairmen of the board of these corporations is about the same as the number of members in the cabinet of the President of the United States, the executive branch of the republic's government. But these chairmen of the board are immeasurably more powerful than the cabinet members.

The same processes may be observed in the banking and insurance systems. Five of the largest insurance companies in the United States have absorbed not only the other companies but even many banks. The total number of banks is reduced, chiefly in the form of so-called “mergers,” essentially by being absorbed. The extent of the turnover grows rapidly. Above the banks rises the oligarchy of super-banks. Bank capital merges with industrial capital into financial super-capital. Supposing that the concentration of industry and banks were to proceed at the same rate as during the last quarter of a century – as a matter of fact, the tempo of concentration is on the increase – in the course of the impending quarter century the monopolists will have taken into their hands the entire economy of the country, with nothing left over.

We use the statistics of the United States here only because they are more exact and more striking. Essentially the process of concentration is international in character. Throughout the various stages of capitalism, through phases of conjunctural cycles, through all the political regimes, through peaceful periods as well as through periods of armed conflicts, the process of the concentration of all the great fortunes into an ever-decreasing number of hands has gone on and will continue without end. During the years of the Great War, when the nations were bleeding to death, when the very bodies politic of the bourgeoisie lay crushed under the weight of national debts, when fiscal systems rolled into the abyss, dragging the middle classes after them, the monopolists were coining unprecedented profits out of the blood and muck. The most powerful companies of the United States increased their assets during the years of the war two, three, four and more times and swelled their dividends to 300, 400, 900 and more percent.

In 1840, eight years before the publication by Marx and Engels of the Manifesto of the Communist Party, the famous French writer Alexis de Tocqueville wrote in his book Democracy in America : “Great wealth tends to disappear, the number of small fortunes to increase.” That thought has been reiterated innumerable times, at first with reference to the United States, later with reference to those other young democracies, Australia and New Zealand. Of course, de Tocqueville's view was already erroneous in his own day. Still, real concentration of wealth began only after the American Civil War, on the eve of which de Tocqueville died. At the beginning of the present century two percent of the population of the United States already owned more than half of the entire wealth of the country ; in 1929 the same two percent owned three-fifths of the national wealth. At the same time 36,000 wealthy families had as great an income as 11,000,000 middling and poor families. During the crisis of 1929-1933 monopolistic enterprises had no need to appeal to public charity ; on the contrary, they rose higher than ever above the general decline of national economy. During the ensuing rickety industrial revival on the yeast-cakes of the New Deal the monopolists again skimmed a lot of heavy cream. The number of the unemployed decreased at best from 20,000,000 to 10,000,000 ; at the same time the upper crust of capitalist society – no more than 6,000 adults – reaped fantastic dividends ; this is what Solicitor General Robert H. Jackson proved with figures in hand during his tenure as Anti-Trust Assistant Attorney-General of the United States.

Ferdinand Lundberg who, for all his scholarly conscientiousness, is a rather conservative economist, wrote in his book, which created quite a stir : “The United States is owned and dominated today by a hierarchy of sixty of the richest families, buttressed by no more than ninety families of lesser wealth.” To these might be added a third tier of perhaps three hundred and fifty other families, with incomes in excess of a hundred thousand dollars a year. The predominant position there belongs to the first group of sixty families, who dominate not only the market but all the levers of government. They are the real government, “the government of money in a democracy of the dollar.”

Thus, the abstract concept, “monopolistic capital,” is filled in for us with flesh and blood. What it means is that a handful of families, bound by ties of kinship and common interest into an exclusive capitalist oligarchy, dispose of the economic and political fortunes of a great nation. One must perforce admit that the Marxist law of concentration has worked out famously !
Has Marx's Teaching Become Obsolete ?

Questions of competition, concentration of wealth, and monopoly naturally lead to the question whether in our day Marx's economic theory is merely of historic interest – as, for example, Adam Smith's theory – or whether it continues to be of actual significance. The criterion for replying to that question is simple : if the theory correctly estimates the course of development and foresees the future better than other theories, it remains the most advanced theory of our time, be it even scores of years old.

The famous German economist, Werner Sombart, who was a near-Marxist at the beginning of his career but later revised all the more revolutionary aspects of Marx's teaching, especially those most unpalatable for the bourgeoisie, in 1928, toward the end of his career, countered Marx's Capital with his own Capitalism, which has been translated into many languages and which is probably the best known exposition of bourgeois economic apologetics in recent times. After paying the tribute of platonic appreciation to the tenets of Capital's author, Sombart writes at the same time, “Karl Marx prophesied : firstly, the increasing misery of wage laborers ; secondly, general ‘concentration,' with the disappearance of the class of artisans and peasants ; thirdly, the catastrophic collapse of capitalism. Nothing of the kind has come to pass.”

Against Marx's erroneous prognosis Sombart counterpoises his own “strictly scientific” prognosis. “Capitalism will continue,” according to him, “to transform itself internally in the same direction in which it has already begun to transform itself, at the time of its apogee : as it grows older, it will become more and more calm, sedate, reasonable.” Let us try to verify, if only along the most basic lines, which of the two is right : Marx, with his prognosis of catastrophe, or Sombart, who in the name of all bourgeois economy, promises that matters will be adjusted “calmly, sedately, reasonably.” The reader will agree that the question is worthy of attention.
“The Theory of Increasing Misery”

"Accumulation of wealth at one pole,” wrote Marx sixty years before Sombart, “is therefore, at the same time accumulation of misery, agony of toil, slavery, ignorance, brutality, moral degradation, at the opposite pole, i.e., on the side of the class that produces its product in the form of capital.” That thesis of Marx's, under the name “The Theory of Increasing Misery,” has been subjected to constant attacks by democratic and social-democratic reformers, especially during the period 1896-1914, when capitalism developed rapidly and yielded certain concessions to the workers, especially to their upper stratum. After the World War, when the bourgeoisie, frightened by its own crimes and by the October Revolution, took to the road of advertised social reforms, the value of which was simultaneously nullified by inflation and unemployment, the progressive transformation of capitalist society seemed to the reformers and to the bourgeois professors fully guaranteed. “The purchasing power of wage labor,” Sombart assured us in 1928, “has increased in direct ratio to the expansion of capitalist production.”

As a matter of fact, the economic contradiction between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie was aggravated during the most prosperous periods of capitalist development, when the rise in the standard of living of certain strata of toilers, which at times was rather extensive, hid from superficial eyes the decrease of the proletariat's share in the national income. Thus, just before falling into prostration, the industrial production of the United States increased by 50 percent between 1920 and 1930, while the sum paid out in wages rose only by 30 percent, which meant, Sombart's assurances notwithstanding, a tremendous decrease of labor's share in the national income. In 1930 began an ominous growth of unemployment, and in 1933 more or less systematic aid to the unemployed, who received in the form of relief hardly more than one-half of what they had lost in the form of wages. The illusion of the uninterrupted “progress” of all classes has vanished without a trace. The relative decline of the masses' standard of living has been superseded by an absolute decline. Workers begin by economizing on skimpy entertainment, then on their clothes and finally on their food. Articles and products of average quality are superseded by shoddy ones, and the shoddy by the worst. Trade unions begin to look like the man who tries to hang on while going down on a rapidly descending escalator.

With six percent of the world's population, the United States holds forty percent of the world's wealth. Still, one-third of the nation, as Roosevelt himself admits, is undernourished, inadequately clothed, and lives under subhuman conditions. What is there to say, then, for the far less privileged countries ? The history of the capitalist world since the last war has irrefutably borne out the so-called “theory of increasing misery.” The increase in the social polarity of society is today acknowledged not only by every competent statistician, but even by statesmen who remember the rudimentary rules of arithmetic.

The fascist regime, which merely gives the most extreme expression to the traits of decline and reaction inherent in any imperialist capitalism, became indispensable when the degeneration of capitalism eliminated the possibility of maintaining illusions about an increase in the proletariat's standard of living. Fascist dictatorship means the open acknowledgment of the tendency to impoverishment, which the wealthier imperialist democracies are still trying to disguise. Mussolini and Hitler persecute Marxism with such hatred precisely because their own regime is the most horrible confirmation of the Marxist prognosis. The civilized world was indignant or pretended to be indignant when Göring, in the tone of the executioner and buffoon peculiar to him, declared that guns were more important than butter, or when Cagliostro-Casanova-Mussolini advised the workers of Italy to learn to pull in tighter the belts on their black shirts. But does not substantially the same take place in the imperialist democracies ? Butter everywhere is used to grease guns. The workers of France, England, and the United States have learned to tighten their belts even without having black shirts. In the richest country of the world millions of workers have turned into paupers living at the expense of federal, state, municipal or private charity.
The Reserve Army and the New Sub-Class of the Unemployed

The industrial reserve army makes up an indispensable component part of the social mechanics of capitalism, as much as a supply of machines and raw materials in factory warehouses or of finished products in stores. Neither the general expansion of production nor the adaptation of capital to the periodic ebb and flow of the industrial cycle would be possible without a reserve of labor-power. From the general tendency of capitalist development – the increase of constant capital (machines and raw materials) at the expense of variable capital (labor-power) – Marx drew the conclusion : “The greater the social wealth ... the greater is the relative surplus-population, or the industrial reserve army ... the greater is the mass of a constant surplus-population ... the greater is officially recognized pauperism. This is the absolute general law of capitalist accumulation.”

This thesis – indissolubly bound up with the “theory of increasing misery” and for scores of years denounced as “exaggerated,” “tendentious,” and “demagogic” – has now become the irreproachable theoretical image of things as they are. The present army of unemployed can no longer be regarded as a “reserve army,” because its basic mass can no longer have any hope of returning to employment ; on the contrary, it is bound to be swelled by a constant flow of additional unemployed. Decaying capitalism has brought up a whole generation of young people who have never had a job and have no hope of getting one. This new sub-class between the proletariat and the semi-proletariat is forced to live at the expense of society. It has been estimated that in the course of nine years (1930-1938) unemployment has taken out of the economy of the United States more than 43,000,000 labor man-years. Considering that in 1929, at the height of prosperity, there were two million unemployed in the United States and that during those nine years the number of potential workers has increased by five million, the number of lost man-years must be incomparably higher. A social regime ravaged by such a plague is sick unto death. The proper diagnosis of this illness was made more than seventy years ago, when the disease itself was a mere germ.
The Decline of the Middle Classes

Figures which demonstrate the concentration of capital indicate therewith that the specific gravity of the petty-bourgeoisie in production and its share of the national income have been constantly declining, while small holdings have either been completely swallowed up by the large or reduced in grade and robbed of their independence, becoming a mere badge of unendurable toil and desperate want. At the same time, it is true, the development of capitalism has considerably stimulated an increase in the army of technicians, managers, servicemen, clerks, attorneys, physicians – in a word, of the so-called “new middle classes.” But this stratum, the growth of which was already no mystery even to Marx, has little in common with the old petty-bourgeoisie, who in the ownership of its own means of production had a tangible guarantee of economic independence. The “new middle class” is more directly dependent on capital than are the workers. Indeed, the middle class is in large measure their taskmaster. Moreover, among it has been noticed considerable overproduction, with its aftermath of social degradation.

“Reliable statistical information,” states a person as remote from Marxism as the already-quoted former Attorney-General Homer S. Cummings, “shows that very many industrial units have completely disappeared and that what took place was a progressive elimination of the small business man as a factor in American life.” But, objects Sombart along with many of his forerunners and successors, “general concentration, with the disappearance of the class of artisans and peasants,” notwithstanding Marx, has not yet taken place. It is hard to say which carries more weight in such an argument : light-mindedness or bad faith. Like every theoretician, Marx began by isolating the fundamental tendencies in their pure form ; otherwise, it would have been altogether impossible to understand the destiny of capitalist society. Marx himself was, however, perfectly capable of viewing the phenomena of life in the light of concrete analysis, as a product of the combination of diverse historical factors. Surely, Newton's laws are not invalidated by the fact that the rate of speed in the fall of bodies varies under different conditions or that the orbits of planets are subjected to disturbances.

In order to understand the so-called “tenacity” of the petty-bourgeoisie, it is well to bear in mind that the two tendencies, the ruination of the intermediate layers and the transformation of these ruined ones into proletarians, develop neither at an even pace nor to the same extent. It follows from the increasing preponderance of the machine over labor-power that the further the process of ruination of the middle classes proceeds, the more it outstrips the process of their proletarianization ; indeed, at a certain juncture the latter must cease altogether and even back up.

Just as the operation of the laws of physiology yields different results in a growing organism from those in a dying one, so the laws of Marxist economy assert themselves differently in a developing and decaying capitalism. This difference is shown with especial clarity in the mutual relations of town and country. The rural population of the United States, decreasing with regard to the total population, continued to increase in absolute figures until 1910, when it amounted to more than 32,000,000. During the subsequent twenty years, notwithstanding the rapid increase in the country's total population, it fell to 30.4 million, i.e., by 1.6 million. But in 1935 it rose again to 32.8 million, swelling in comparison with 1930 by 2.4 million. This turn of the wheel, astonishing at first glance, does not in the least refute either the tendency of the urban population to increase at the expense of the rural population, or the tendency of the middle classes to become atomized, while at the same time it demonstrates most pointedly the decay of the capitalist system as a whole. The increase in the rural population during the period of the acute crisis of 1930-1935 is simply explained by the fact that almost two million of the urban population, or, speaking more to the point, two million of the starving unemployed, moved into the country – to plots of land abandoned by farmers or to the farms of their kith and kin, so as to apply their labor-power, rejected by society, to productive natural economy and in order to drag out a semi-starved existence instead of starving altogether.

Hence, it is not a question of the stability of small farmers, artisans and storekeepers, but rather of the abject helplessness of their situation. Far from being a guarantee of the future, the petty-bourgeoisie is an unfortunate and tragic relic of the past. Unable to stamp it out altogether, capitalism has managed to reduce it to the utmost degree of degradation and distress. The farmer is denied, not only the rent due him for his plot of land and the profit on his invested capital, but even a goodly portion of his wages. Similarly, the little fellows in town drag out their existence between economic life and death. The middle class is not proletarianized only because it is being pauperized. In that it is just as hard to make a case in favor of capitalism as it is to make one against Marx.
Industrial Crises

The end of the past and the beginning of the present century were marked by such a tempestuous development of capitalism that cyclical crises seemed to be no more than “accidental” annoyances. During the years of almost universal capitalist optimism, Marx's critics assured us that the national and international development of trusts, syndicates and cartels introduced planned control of the market and presaged the final triumph over crises. According to Sombart, crises had already been “abolished” before the war by the mechanics of capitalism itself, so that “the problem of crises leaves us today virtually indifferent.” Now, a mere ten years later, these words sound like hollow mockery, while only in our own day does Marx's older prognosis loom in the full measure of its tragic cogency. In an organism with poisoned blood every incidental illness tends to become chronic in character ; even so, in the rotting organism of monopolistic capitalism, crises assume a particularly malignant form.

It is remarkable that the capitalist press, which half-way tries to deny the very existence of monopolies, resorts to these same monopolies in order half-way to deny capitalistic anarchy. “If sixty families were to control the economic life of the United States,” the New York Times observes ironically, “it would show that American capitalism, so far from being ‘planless' is organized with great neatness.” This argument misses the mark. Capitalism has been unable to develop a single one of its trends to the ultimate end. Just as the concentration of wealth does not abolish the middle class, so monopoly does not abolish competition, but only bears down on it and mangles it. No less than the “plan” of each of the sixty families, the sundry combinations of these plans are not in the least interested in coordinating the various branches of economy, but rather in increasing the profits of a given monopolistic clique at the expense of other cliques and at the expense of the entire nation. The intersection of such plans in the final reckoning only deepens the anarchy in the national economy. Monopolistic dictatorship and chaos are not mutually exclusive ; rather they supplement and nourish each other.

The crisis of 1929 broke out in the United States one year after Sombart had proclaimed the utter indifference of his “science” to the very problem of crises. From the heights of unprecedented prosperity the economy of the United States was catapulted into the abyss of monstrous prostration. No one in Marx's day could have conceived convulsions of such magnitude ! The national income of the United States had risen for the first time in 1920 to sixty-nine billion dollars, only to drop the very next year to fifty billion dollars, i.e., by 27 percent. In consequence of the prosperity of the next few years, the national income rose again, in 1929, to its highest point of eighty-one billion dollars, only to drop in 1932 to forty billion dollars, i.e., by more than half ! During the nine years, 1930-1938, were lost approximately forty-three million man-years of labor and 133 billion dollars of national income, assuming the norms of labor and income of 1929, when there were “only” two million unemployed. If all this is not anarchy, what can possibly be the meaning of the word ?
The “Theory of Collapse”

The minds and hearts of middle-class intellectuals and trade-union bureaucrats were almost completely enthralled by the achievements of capitalism between the time of Marx's death and the outbreak of the World War. The idea of gradual progress (“evolution”) seemed to have been made secure for all time, while the idea of revolution was regarded as a mere relic of barbarism. Marx's prognosis about the mounting concentration of capital, about the aggravation of class contradictions, about the deepening of crises, and about the catastrophic collapse of capitalism was not amended by partly correcting it and making it more precise, but was countered with the qualitatively contrary prognosis about the more balanced distribution of the national income, about the softening of class contradictions and about the gradual reformation of capitalist society. Jean Jaurès, the most gifted of the Social-Democrats of that classic epoch, hoped gradually to fill political democracy with social content. In that lay the essence of reformism. Such was the alternative prognosis. What is left of it ?

The life of monopolistic capitalism in our time is a chain of crises. Each crisis is a catastrophe. The need of salvation from these partial catastrophes by means of tariff walls, inflation, increase of government spending and debts lays the ground for additional, deeper and more widespread crises. The struggle for markets, for raw materials, for colonies makes military catastrophes unavoidable. All in all, they prepare revolutionary catastrophes. Truly, it is not easy to agree with Sombart that aging capitalism becomes increasingly “calm, sedate and reasonable.” It would be more apt to say that it is losing its last vestiges of reason. In any event, there is no doubt that the “theory of collapse” has triumphed over the theory of peaceful development.
The Decay of Capitalism

However expensive the control of the market has been to society, mankind up to a certain stage, approximately until the World War, grew, developed and enriched itself through partial and general crises. The private ownership of the means of production continued to be in that epoch a comparatively progressive factor. But now the blind control by the law of value refuses to render further service. Human progress is stuck in a blind alley. Notwithstanding the latest triumphs of technical thought, the material productive forces are no longer growing. The clearest and most faultless symptom of the decline is the world stagnation of the building industry, in consequence of the stoppage of new investments in the basic branches of economy. Capitalists are simply no longer able to believe in the future of their own system. Construction stimulated by the government means an increase in taxation and a contraction of the “untrammeled” national income, especially since the main part of the new government construction is directly designed for military purposes.

The marasmus has acquired a particularly malignant and degrading character in the most ancient sphere of human activity, the one most closely connected with the basic vital needs of man – in agriculture. No longer satisfied with the obstacles which private ownership in its most reactionary form, that of small land holdings, places before the development of agriculture, capitalist governments see themselves not infrequently called upon to limit production artificially with the aid of statutory and administrative measures which would have frightened artisans in the guilds at the time of their decline. It will be recorded in history that the government of the most powerful capitalist country granted premiums to farmers for cutting down on their planting, i.e., for artificially diminishing the already falling national income. The results are self-evident : despite grandiose productive possibilities, secured by experience and science, agrarian economy does not emerge from a putrescent crisis, while the number of the hungry, the preponderant majority of mankind, continues to increase faster than the population of our planet. Conservatives consider it sensible politics to defend a social order which has descended to such destructive madness and they condemn the socialist fight against such madness as destructive utopianism.
Fascism and the New Deal

Two methods for saving historically doomed capitalism are today vying with each other in the world arena – Fascism and the New Deal, in all their manifestations. Fascism bases its program on the demolition of labor organizations, on the destruction of social reforms and on the complete annihilation of democratic rights, in order to forestall a resurrection of the proletariat's class struggle. The fascist state officially legalizes the degradation of workers and the pauperization of the middle classes, in the name of saving the “nation” and the “race” – presumptuous names under which decaying capitalism figures.

The policy of the New Deal, which tries to save the imperialist democracy by way of sops to the labor and farmer aristocracy, is in its broad compass accessible only to the very wealthy nations, and so in that sense it is American policy par excellence. The government has attempted to shift a part of the costs of that policy to the shoulders of the monopolists, exhorting them to raise wages and shorten the working day and thus increase the purchasing power of the population and extend production. Léon Blum attempted to translate this sermon into elementary school French. In vain ! The French capitalist, like the American, does not produce for the sake of production but for profit. He is always ready to limit production, even to destroy manufactured products, if thereby his own share of the national income will be increased.

The New Deal program is all the more contradictory in that, while preaching sermons to the magnates of capital about the advantages of abundance over scarcity, the government dispenses premiums for cutting down on production. Is greater confusion possible ? The government confutes its critics with the challenge : can you do better ? What all this means is that on the basis of capitalism the situation is hopeless.

Beginning with 1933, i.e., in the course of the last six years in America, the federal government, the states and the municipalities have handed out to the unemployed nearly fifteen billion dollars in relief, a sum quite insufficient in itself and representing merely the smaller part of lost wages, but at the same time, considering the declining national income, a colossal sum. During 1938, which was a year of comparative economic revival, the national debt of the United States increased by two billion dollars and surpassed the thirty-eight billion dollar mark, or twelve billion dollars more than the highest point at the end of the World War. Early in 1939 it passed the 40 billion dollar mark. And then what ? The mounting national debt is of course a burden on posterity. But the New Deal itself was possible only because of the tremendous wealth accumulated by past generations. Only a very rich nation could indulge itself in so extravagant a policy. But even such a nation cannot indefinitely go on living at the expense of past generations. The New Deal policy with its fictitious achievements and its very real increase in the national debt, leads unavoidably to ferocious capitalist reaction and a devastating explosion of imperialism. In other words, it is directed into the same channels as the policy of fascism.
Anomaly or Norm ?

Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes considers it “one of the strangest anomalies in all history” that America, democratic in form, is aristocratic in substance : “America, the land of majority rule but controlled at least until 1933 (!) by monopolies that in their turn are controlled by a negligible number of their stockholders.” The diagnosis is correct, with the exception of the intimation that with the advent of Roosevelt the rule of the monopolies either ceased or weakened. Yet what Ickes calls “one of the strangest anomalies in all history,” is, as a matter of fact, the unquestionable norm of capitalism. The domination of the weak by the strong, of the many by the few, of the toilers by the exploiters is a basic law of bourgeois democracy. What distinguishes the United States from other countries is merely the greater scope and the greater nakedness of the contradictions of its capitalism. The absence of a feudal past, rich natural resources, an energetic and enterprising people, in a word, all the prerequisites that augured an uninterrupted development of democracy, have actually brought about a fantastic concentration of wealth.

Promising this time to wage the fight against monopolies to victory, Ickes recklessly harks back to Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson as the predecessors of Franklin D. Roosevelt. “Practically all or our greatest historical figures,” said he on December 30, 1937, “are famous because of their persistent and courageous fight to prevent and control the over-concentration of wealth and power in a few hands.” But it follows from his own words that the fruit of this “persistent and courageous fight” has been the complete domination of democracy by the plutocracy.

For some inexplicable reason Ickes thinks that this time victory is assured, provided the people understand that the fight is “not between the New Deal and the average enlightened businessman, but between the New Deal and the Bourbons of the sixty families who have brought the rest of the businessmen in the United States under the terror of their domination.” This authoritative spokesman does not explain just how the “Bourbons” managed to subjugate all the enlightened businessmen, notwithstanding democracy and the efforts of the “greatest historical figures.” The Rockefellers, the Morgans, the Mellons, the Vanderbilts, the Guggenheims, the Fords and Co. did not invade the United States from the outside, as Cortez invaded Mexico ; they grew organically out of the “people,” or more precisely, out of the class of “enlightened industrialists and businessmen” and became, in line with Marx's prognosis, the natural apogee of capitalism. Since a young and strong democracy in its hey-day was unable to check the concentration of wealth when the process was only at its inception, is it possible to believe even for a minute that a decaying democracy is capable of weakening class antagonisms that have attained their utmost limit ? Anyway, the experience of the New Deal has produced no ground for such optimism. Refuting the charges of big business against the government, Robert H. Jackson, a person high in the councils of the administration, proved with figures that during Roosevelt's tenure the profits of the magnates of capital reached heights they themselves had ceased to dream about during the last period of Hoover's presidency, from which it follows, in any event, that Roosevelt's fight against the monopolies has been crowned with no greater success than the struggle of all his predecessors.

Although they feel called upon to defend the foundations of capitalism, the reformers in the very nature of things prove themselves powerless to harness its laws with economic police measures. What else can they do then but moralize ? Mr. Ickes, like the other cabinet members and publicists of the New Deal, winds up by appealing to the monopolists not to forget decency and the principles of democracy. Just how is this better than prayers for rain ? Surely, Marx's view of the owner of the means of production is far more scientific. “As a capitalist,” we read in Capital, “he is merely personified capital. His soul is the soul of capital. But capital has only one single aim in life, … to create surplus value.” If the capitalist's behavior were determined by the qualities of his individual soul or of the lyrical effusions of the Secretary of the Interior, neither average prices nor average wages would be possible, nor bookkeeping, nor the capitalist economy as a whole. Yet bookkeeping continues to flourish and is a strong argument in favor of the materialistic conception of history.
Judicial Quackery

"Unless we destroy monopoly,” said the former United States Attorney General Homer S. Cummings in November, 1937, “monopoly will find ways to destroy most of our reforms and, in the end, lower the standards of our common life.” Citing startling figures to prove that “the trend to an undue concentration of wealth and economic control was unmistakable,” Cummings was at the same time forced to admit that the legislative and judicial fight against the trusts has so far led nowhere. “Criminal intent,” he complained, “is difficult to establish” when it is a matter of “economic results.” That's just the point ! Worse than that : the judicial struggle against trusts has brought about “confusion worse confounded.” This happy pleonasm rather aptly expresses the helplessness of democratic justice in its fight against the Marxist law of value. There are no grounds for hope that Homer Cummings' successor, Mr. Frank Murphy, will be more fortunate in solving these tasks, the very posing of which testifies to the hopeless quackery in the sphere of economic thought.
To Bring Back Yesterday

One cannot but agree with Professor Lewis W. Douglas, the former Director of the Budget in the Roosevelt Administration, when he condemns the government for “attacking monopoly in one field while fostering monopoly in many others.” Yet in the nature of the thing it cannot be otherwise. According to Marx, the government is the executive committee of the ruling class. Today monopolists are the strongest section of the ruling class. No government is in any position to fight against monopoly in general, i.e., against the class by whose will it rules. While attacking one form of monopoly, it is obliged to seek an ally in other forms of monopoly. In union with banks and light industry it can deliver occasional blows against the trusts of heavy industry, which, by the way, do not stop earning fantastic profits because of that.

Lewis Douglas does not counterpose science to the official quackery, but merely another kind of quackery. He sees the source of monopoly not in capitalism but in protectionism and, accordingly, discovers the salvation of society not in the abolition of private ownership of the means of production but in the lowering of customs tariffs. “Unless the freedom of markets is restored,” he predicts, it is “doubtful that the freedom of all institutions – enterprises, speech, education, religion – can survive.” In other words, without restoring the freedom of international trade, democracy, wherever and to the extent that it still survives, must yield either to a revolutionary or to a fascist dictatorship. But freedom of international trade is inconceivable without freedom of internal trade, i.e., without competition. And freedom of competition is inconceivable under the sway of monopoly. Unfortunately, Mr. Douglas, quite like Mr. Ickes, like Mr. Jackson, like Mr. Cummings, and like Mr. Roosevelt himself, has not gone to the trouble to initiate us into his own prescription against monopolistic capitalism and thereby – against either a revolution or a totalitarian regime.

Freedom of trade, like freedom of competition, like the prosperity of the petty-bourgeoisie, belongs to the irrevocable past. To bring back yesterday, is now the sole prescription of the democratic reformers of capitalism ; to bring back more “freedom" to small and middle-sized industrialists and businessmen, to change the money and credit system in their favor, to free the market from being bossed by the trusts, to eliminate professional speculators from the stock exchange, to restore freedom of international trade, and so forth ad infinitum. The reformers even dream of limiting the use of machines and placing a proscription on technology, which disturbs the social balance and causes a lot of worry. A propos of that, a leading American scientist remarked with a bitter sneer that apparently security could be achieved only by returning to the happy amoeba or, failing this, to the contented swine.
Robert Millikan and Marxism

Yet unfortunately, this very scientist, Dr. Robert A. Millikan, a leading American physicist, likewise looks backward rather than forward. Speaking in defense of science on December 7, 1937, he observed : “United States statistics show that the percentage of the population 'gainfully employed' has steadily increased during the last fifty years, when science has been most rapidly applied.” This defense of capitalism under the guise of defending science cannot be called a happy one. It is precisely during the last half century that “was broken the link of times” and the interrelation of economics and technology altered sharply. The period referred to by Millikan includes the beginning of capitalist decline as well as the highest point of capitalist prosperity. To hush up the beginning of that decline, which is world-wide, is to serve as an apologist for capitalism. Rejecting socialism in an off-hand manner with the aid of arguments that would scarcely do honor even to Henry Ford, Dr. Millikan tells us that no system of distribution can satisfy the needs of man without raising the range of production. Undoubtedly ! But it is a pity that the famous physicist did not explain to the millions of American unemployed just how they were to participate in raising the national income. Abstract preachment about the saving grace of individual initiative and high productivity of labor will certainly not provide the unemployed with jobs, nor will it fill the budgetary deficit, nor will it lead the nation's business out of its blind alley.

What distinguishes Marx is the universality of his genius, his ability to understand phenomena and processes of various fields in their inherent connection. Without being a specialist in natural sciences, he was one of the first to appreciate the significance of the great discoveries in that field ; for example, the theory of Darwinism. Marx was assured that preeminence not so much by virtue of his intellect as by virtue of his method. Bourgeois-minded scientists may think that they are above socialism ; yet Robert Millikan's case is but one more confirmation that in the sphere of sociology they continue to be hopeless quacks. They should learn scientific thinking from Marx.
Productive Possibilities and Private Ownership

In his message to Congress at the beginning of 1937 President Roosevelt expressed his desire to raise the national income to ninety or one hundred billion dollars, without, however, indicating just how. In itself this program is exceedingly modest. In 1929, when there were approximately two million unemployed, the national income reached eighty-one billion dollars. Setting in motion the present productive forces would not only suffice to realize Roosevelt's program but even to surpass it considerably. Machines, raw materials, workers, everything is available, not to mention the population's need for the products. If, notwithstanding that, the plan is unrealizable – and unrealizable it is – the only reason is the irreconcilable antagonism that has developed between capitalist ownership and society's need for expanding production. The famous government-sponsored National Survey of Potential Production Capacity came to the conclusion that the cost of production and services used in 1929 amounted to nearly ninety-four billion dollars, calculated on the basis of retail prices. Yet if all the actual productive possibilities were utilized, that figure would have risen to 135 billion dollars, which would have averaged $4,370.00 a year per family, sufficient to secure a decent and comfortable living. It must be added that the calculations of the National Survey are based on the present productive organization of the United States, as it came about in consequence of capitalism's anarchic history. If the equipment itself were re-equipped on the basis of a unified socialist plan, the productive calculations could be considerably surpassed and a high comfortable standard of living, on the basis of an extremely short labor day, assured to all the people.

Therefore, to save society, it is not necessary either to check the development of technology, to shut down factories, to award premiums to farmers for sabotaging agriculture, to turn a third of the workers into paupers, or to call upon maniacs to be dictators. Not one of these measures, which are a shocking mockery of the interests of society, is necessary. What is indispensable and urgent is to separate the means of production from their present parasitic owners and to organize society in accordance with a rational plan. Then it would at once be possible really to cure society of its ills. All those able to work would find a job. The work-day would gradually decrease. The wants of all members of society would secure increasing satisfaction. The words “poverty,” “crisis,” “exploitation,” would drop out of circulation. Mankind would at last cross the threshold into true humanity.
The Inevitability of Socialism

“Along with the constantly diminishing number of the magnates of capital ...” says Marx, “grows the mass of misery, oppression, slavery, degradation, exploitation ; but with this too grows the revolt of the working class, a class always increasing in numbers, and disciplined, united, organized by the very mechanism of the process of capitalist production itself. ... Centralization of the means of production and socialization of labor at last reach a point where they become incompatible with their capitalist integument. This integument is burst asunder. The knell of capitalist private property sounds. The expropriators are expropriated.” That is the socialist revolution. To Marx, the problem of reconstituting society did not arise from some prescription, motivated by his personal predilections ; it followed, as an iron-clad historical necessity – on the one hand, from the productive forces grown to powerful maturity ; on the other, from the impossibility further to organize these forces according to the will of the law of value.

The lucubrations of certain intellectuals on the theme that, regardless of Marx's teaching, socialism is not inevitable but merely possible, are devoid of any content whatsoever. Obviously, Marx did not imply that socialism would come about without man's volition and action : any such idea is simply an absurdity. Marx foretold that out of the economic collapse in which the development of capitalism must inevitably culminate – and this collapse is before our very eyes – there can be no other way out except socialization of the means of production. The productive forces need a new organizer and a new master, and, since being determines consciousness, Marx had no doubt that the working class, at the cost of errors and defeats, will come to understand the actual situation and, sooner or later, will draw the necessary practical conclusions.

That socialization of the capitalist-created means of production is of tremendous economic benefit is today demonstrable not only in theory but also by the experiment of the USSR, notwithstanding the limitations of that experiment. True, capitalistic reactionaries, not without artifice, use Stalin's regime as a scarecrow against the ideas of socialism. As a matter of fact, Marx never said that socialism could be achieved in a single country, and moreover, a backward country. The continuing privations of the masses in the USSR, the omnipotence of the privileged caste, which has lifted itself above the nation and its misery, finally, the savage tyranny of the bureaucrats are not consequences of the socialist method of economy but of the isolation and backwardness of the USSR caught in the ring of capitalist encirclement. The wonder is that under such exceptionally unfavorable conditions the planned economy has managed to demonstrate its inestimable benefits.

All the saviors of capitalism, the democratic as well as the fascist kind, attempt to limit, or at least to camouflage, the power of the magnates of capital, in order to forestall “the expropriation of the expropriators.” They all recognize, and many of them openly admit, that the failure of their reformist attempts must inevitably lead to socialist revolution. They have all managed to demonstrate that their methods of saving capitalism are but reactionary and helpless quackery. Marx's prognosis about the inevitability of socialism is thus fully confirmed by proof of the negative.
The Inevitability of Socialist Revolution

The program of “Technocracy,” which flourished in the period of the great crisis of 1929-1932, was founded on the correct premise that economy can be rationalized only through the union of technology at the height of science and government at the service of society. Such a union is possible, however, only if technology and government are liberated from the slavery of private ownership. That is where the great revolutionary task begins. In order to liberate technology from the cabal of private interests and place the government at the service of society, it is necessary to “expropriate the expropriators.” Only a powerful class, interested in its own liberation and opposed to the monopolistic expropriators, is capable of consummating this task. Only in unison with a proletarian government can the qualified stratum of technicians build a truly scientific and a truly national, i.e., a socialist economy.

It would be best, of course, to achieve this purpose in a peaceful, gradual, democratic way. But the social order that has outlived itself never yields its place to its successor without resistance. If in its day the young forceful democracy proved incapable of forestalling the seizure of wealth and power by the plutocracy, is it possible to expect that a senile and devastated democracy will prove capable of transforming a social order based on the untrammeled rule of sixty families ? Theory and history teach that a succession of social regimes presupposes the highest form of the class struggle, i.e., revolution. Even slavery could not be abolished in the United States without a civil war. “Force is the midwife of every old society pregnant with a new one.” No one has yet been able to refute Marx on this basic tenet in the sociology of class society. Only a socialist revolution can clear the road to socialism.
Marxism in the United States

The North American republic has gone further than others in the sphere of technology and the organization of production. Not only Americans but all of mankind will build on that foundation. However, the various phases of the social process in one and the same nation have varying rhythms, depending on special historical conditions. While the United States enjoys tremendous superiority in technology, its economic thought is extremely backward in both the right and left wings. John L. Lewis has about the same views as Franklin D. Roosevelt. Considering the nature of his office, Lewis' social function is incomparably more conservative, not to say reactionary, than Roosevelt's. In certain American circles there is a tendency to repudiate this or that radical theory without the slightest scientific criticism, by simply dismissing it as “un-American.” But where can you find the differentiating criterion of that ? Christianity was imported into the United States along with logarithms, Shakespeare's poetry, notions on the rights of man and the citizen, and certain other not unimportant products of human thought. Today Marxism stands in the same category.

Secretary of Agriculture Henry A. Wallace imputed to the author of these lines, “a dogmatic narrowness which is bitterly un-American” and counterposed to Russian dogmatism the opportunist spirit of Jefferson, who knew how to get along with his opponents. Apparently, it has never occurred to Mr. Wallace that a policy of compromise is not a function of some immaterial national spirit, but a product of material conditions. A nation rapidly growing rich has sufficient reserves for conciliation between hostile classes and parties. When, on the other hand, social contradictions are sharpened, the ground for compromise disappears. America was free of “dogmatic narrowness” only because it had a plethora of virgin areas, inexhaustible resources of natural wealth and, it would seem, limitless opportunities for enrichment. True, even under these conditions the spirit of compromise did not prevent the Civil War when the hour for it struck. Anyway, the material conditions which made up the basis of “Americanism,” are today increasingly relegated to the past. Hence the profound crisis of traditional American ideology.

Empirical thinking, limited to the solution of immediate tasks from time to time, seemed adequate enough in labor as well as in bourgeois circles as long as Marx's laws of value did everybody's thinking. But today that very law produces opposite effects. Instead of urging economy forward, it is undermining its foundations. Conciliatory eclectic thinking, with its philosophic apogee, pragmatism, becomes utterly inadequate, while an unfavorable or disdainful attitude toward Marxism as a “dogma” – is increasingly untenable, reactionary and downright ridiculous. On the contrary, it is the traditional ideas of “Americanism” that have become lifeless, petrified “dogma” giving rise to nothing but errors and confusion. At the same time, the economic teaching of Marx has acquired peculiar viability and relevance for the United States. Although Capital rests on international material, preponderantly English, in its theoretical foundation it is an analysis of pure capitalism, capitalism in general, capitalism as such. Undoubtedly, the capitalism grown on the virgin, unhistorical soil of America comes closest to that ideal type of capitalism.

With Mr. Wallace's permission, America developed economically not in accordance with the principles of Jefferson, but in accordance with the laws of Marx. There is as little offence to national self-esteem in acknowledging this as in recognizing that America turns around the sun in accordance with the laws of Newton. The more Marx is ignored in the United States, the more compelling becomes his teaching now. Capital offers a faultless diagnosis of the malady and an irreplaceable prognosis. In that sense the teaching of Marx is far more permeated with new “Americanism” than the ideas of Hoover and Roosevelt, of Green and Lewis.

True, there is a widespread original literature in the United States devoted to the crisis of American economy. In so far as conscientious economists offer an objective picture of the destructive trends of American capitalism, their investigations, regardless of their theoretical premises, which are usually lacking anyway, look like direct illustrations of Marx's theory. The conservative tradition makes itself known, however, when these authors stubbornly restrain themselves from definitive conclusions, limiting themselves to gloomy predictions or such edifying banalities as “the country must understand,” “public opinion must certainly consider,” and the like. These books look like a knife without a blade or like a compass without its needle.

The United States had Marxists in the past, it is true, but they were a strange type of Marxist, or rather, three strange types. In the first place, there were the émigrés cast out of Europe, who did what they could but could not find any response ; in the second place, isolated American groups, like the De Leonists, who in the course of events, and because of their own mistakes, turned themselves into sects ; in the third place, dilettantes attracted by the October Revolution and sympathetic to Marxism as an exotic teaching that had little to do with the United States. Their day is over. Now dawns the new epoch of an independent class movement of the proletariat and at the same time of – genuine Marxism. In this, too, America will in a few jumps catch up with Europe and outdistance it. Advanced technology and an advanced social structure will pave their own way in the sphere of doctrine. The best theoreticians of Marxism will appear on American soil. Marx will become the mentor of the advanced American workers. To them this abridged exposition of the first volume will become only an initial step toward the complete Marx.

[26 February 1939, Coyoacan]
Capitalism's Ideal Mirror

At the time the first volume of Capital was published world domination by the British bourgeoisie was as yet unchallenged. The abstract laws of commodity economy naturally found their fullest embodiment – i.e., the one least dependent on past influences – in the country where capitalism had achieved its highest development. While relying in his analysis mainly on England, Marx had not only England in view, but the entire capitalist world. He used the England of his day as capitalism's best contemporaneous mirror.

Now only memories are left of British hegemony. The advantages of capitalist primogeniture have turned into disadvantages. England's technical and economic structure has become outworn. The country continues to depend for its world position on the colonial empire, a heritage of the past, rather than on an active economic potential. That explains, incidentally, Chamberlain's Christian charity toward the international gangsterism of the fascists, which has so astonished everybody. The English bourgeoisie cannot help realizing that its economic decline has become thoroughly incompatible with its position in the world and that a new war threatens to bring about the downfall of the British Empire. Essentially similar is the economic basis of France's “pacifism.”

Germany on the contrary, has utilized in its rapid capitalistic ascent the advantages of historic belatedness, by arming itself with the most advanced technology in Europe. Having a narrow national base and paucity of natural resources, Germany's dynamic capitalism of necessity became transformed into the most explosive factor in the so-called balance of world powers. Hitler's epileptic ideology is only a reflected image of the epilepsy of German capitalism.

In addition to numerous invaluable advantages of a historical character, the development of the United States enjoyed the preeminence of an immeasurably larger territory and incomparably greater natural wealth than Germany's. Having considerably outstripped Great Britain, the North American republic became at the beginning of this century the chief stronghold of the world bourgeoisie. There all possibilities inherent in capitalism have found their highest expression. Nowhere else on our planet can the bourgeoisie in any way exceed its achievements in the dollar republic, which has become for the twentieth century the most perfect mirror of capitalism.

For the same reasons that Marx preferred to base his exposition on English statistics, English parliamentary reports, English "Blue Books," and the like, we have resorted in our modest introduction to evidence chiefly from the economic and political life of the United States. It would not be difficult, needless to say, to cite analogous facts and figures from the life of any other capitalist country. But that would not add anything essential. The conclusions would remain the same, only the examples would be less striking.

The economic policy of the Popular Front in France, was, as one of its financiers aptly put it, an adaptation of the New Deal “for Lilliputians.” It is perfectly obvious that in a theoretical analysis it is immeasurably more convenient to deal with Cyclopean rather than Lilliputian magnitudes. It is the very immensity of Roosevelt's experiment which shows that only a miracle can save the world-wide capitalist system. But it so happens that the development of capitalist production put a stop to the production of miracles. Incantations and prayers abound, miracles never come. However, it is clear that if the miracle of capitalism's rejuvenation could happen anywhere at all, it would be nowhere else but in the United States. Yet this rejuvenation was not achieved. What the Cyclops failed to attain, the Lilliputians are even less able to accomplish. To lay the foundation for that simple conclusion, is the sense of our excursion into the realm of American economy.
Mother Countries and Colonies

"The country that is more developed industrially,” Marx wrote in the preface to the first edition of his Capital, “only shows to the less developed the image of its own future.” Under no circumstances, however, can this thought be taken literally. The growth of productive forces and the deepening of social contradictions are undoubtedly the lot of every country that has set out on the road of bourgeois development. However, the unevenness of tempos and levels, which goes through all of mankind's development and basically has its natural as well as its historical reasons, not only became especially acute under capitalism, but gave rise to the complex relations of dependence, exploitation, and oppression between countries of different economic types.

Only a minority of countries has fully gone through that systematic and logical development from handicraft through domestic manufacture to the factory, which Marx subjected to such detailed analysis. Commercial, industrial and financial capital invaded backward countries from the outside, partly destroying the primitive forms of native economy and partly subjecting them to the world-wide industrial and banking system of the West. Under the whip of imperialism the colonies and semi-colonies found themselves compelled to disregard the intervening stages, at the same time artificially hanging on at one level or another. India's development did not duplicate England's development ; it was a supplement to it. However, in order to understand the combined type of development of backward and dependent countries like India, it is always necessary to bear in mind the classical schema Marx derived from England's development. In any case, the labor theory of value guides equally the calculations of speculators in London's City and the money changing transactions in the most remote corners of Hyderabad, except that in the latter case it assumes simpler and less fraudulent forms.

Unevenness of development brought tremendous benefits to the advanced countries, which although in varying degrees, continued to develop at the expense of the backward ones, by exploiting them, by converting them into their colonies, or, at least, by making it impossible for them to get in among the capitalist aristocracy. The fortunes of Spain, Holland, England, and France were obtained not only from the surplus labor of their own proletariat, not only by the ruination of their own petty bourgeoisie, but also through the systematic pillage of their overseas possessions. The exploitation of classes was supplemented, and its potency increased, by the exploitation of nations.

The bourgeoisie of the mother countries was enabled to secure a privileged position for its own proletariat, especially the upper layers, by paying for it with some of the super-profits garnered in the colonies. Without that, any sort of stable democratic regime would have been utterly impossible. In its expanded manifestation bourgeois democracy became, and continues to remain, a form of government accessible only to the most aristocratic and the most exploitative nations. Ancient democracy was based on slavery, imperialist democracy – on the plundering of colonies.

The United States, which formally has almost no colonies, is nevertheless the most privileged of all the nations of history. Active immigrants from Europe took possession of an exceedingly rich continent, exterminated the native population, seized the best part of Mexico and bagged the lion's share of the world's wealth. The deposits of fat thus accumulated continue to be useful even now, in the epoch of decline, for greasing the gears and wheels of democracy.

Recent historical experience, as well as theoretical analysis, attests that the rate of a democracy's development and its stability are in inverse proportion to the tension of class contradictions. In the less privileged capitalist countries (Russia, on the one hand ; Germany, Italy and the like, on the other), which were unable to engender a numerous and stable labor aristocracy, democracy was never developed to any extent and succumbed to dictatorship with comparative ease. However, the continuing progressive paralysis of capitalism is preparing the same fate for the democracies of the most privileged and the richest nations ; the only difference is in dates. The uncontrollable deterioration in the living conditions of the workers makes it less and less possible for the bourgeoisie to grant the masses the right of participation in political life, even within the limited framework of bourgeois parliamentarism. Any other explanation of the manifest process of democracy's dislodgement by fascism is an idealistic falsification of reality, either deception or self-deception.

While destroying democracy in the old mother countries of capital, imperialism at the same time hinders the rise of democracy in the backward countries. The fact that in the new epoch not a single one of the colonies or semi-colonies has consummated its democratic revolution – above all in the field of agrarian relations – is entirely due to imperialism, which has become the chief brake on economic and political progress. Plundering the natural wealth of the backward countries and deliberately restraining their independent industrial development, the monopolistic magnates and their governments simultaneously grant financial, political and military support to the most reactionary, parasitic, and semi-feudal groups of native exploiters. Artificially preserved agrarian barbarism is today the most sinister plague of contemporary world economy. The fight of the colonial peoples for their liberation, passing over the intervening stages, transforms itself of necessity into a fight against imperialism, and thus aligns itself with the struggle of the proletariat in the mother countries. Colonial uprisings and wars in their turn rock the foundations of the capitalist world more than ever and render the miracle of its regeneration less than ever possible.
Planned World Economy

Capitalism achieved the twin historical merit of having placed technique on a high level and having bound all parts of the world with economic ties. Thus it pledged the material prerequisites for the systematic utilization of all of our planet's resources. However, capitalism is in no position to fulfill this urgent task. The nidus of its expansion continues to consist of circumscribed nation-states with their customs houses and armies. Yet the productive forces have long outgrown the boundaries of the nation-state, thereby transforming what was once a progressive historical factor into an unendurable restraint. Imperialist wars are nothing else than the detonations of productive forces against the state borders, which have come to be too confining for them. The program of so-called autarchy has nothing to do with going back to a self-sufficient circumscribed economy. It only means that the national base is being made ready for a new war.

After the Versailles Treaty was signed it was generally believed that the terrestrial globe had been pretty well subdivided. But more recent events have served to remind us that our planet continues to contain lands that have not yet been either plundered or sufficiently plundered. Italy has enslaved Abyssinia. Japan is trying to possess China. Tired of waiting for the return of its former colonies, Germany transformed Czechoslovakia into a colony. Italy broke into Albania. The fate of the Balkan Peninsula is in question. The United States is alarmed by the encroachments of “outsiders” in Latin America. The struggle for colonies continues to be part and parcel of the policy of imperialistic capitalism. No matter how thoroughly the world is divided, the process never ends, but only again and again places on the order of the day the question of a new re-division of the world in line with altered relations between imperialistic forces. Such is the actual reason today for rearmaments, diplomatic convulsions and military alignments.

All attempts to represent the impending war as a clash between the ideas of democracy and fascism belong to the realm either of charlatanism or stupidity. Political forms change, capitalist appetites remain. If a fascist regime were to be established tomorrow on either side of the English Channel – and hardly anyone will dare to deny such a possibility – the Paris and London dictators would be just as little able to give up their colonial possessions as Mussolini and Hitler their colonial claims. The furious and hopeless struggle for a new division of the world follows irresistibly from the mortal crisis of the capitalist system.

Partial reforms and patchwork will do no good. Historical development has come to one of those decisive stages when only the direct intervention of the masses is able to sweep away the reactionary obstructions and lay the foundations of a new regime. Abolition of private ownership in the means of production is the first prerequisite to planned economy, i.e., the introduction of reason into the sphere of human relations, first on a national and eventually on a world scale. Once it begins, the socialist revolution will spread from country to country with immeasurably greater force than fascism spreads today. By the example and with the aid of the advanced nations, the backward nations will also be carried away into the main stream of socialism. The thoroughly rotted customs toll-gates will fall. The contradictions which rend Europe and the entire world asunder will find their natural and peaceful solution within the framework of a Socialist United States in Europe as well as in other parts of the world. Liberated humanity will draw itself up to its full height.

Coyoacan, D.F., Mexico.

18 April 1939

Karl Marx, Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right

Robert Paris — 2024-12-24T04:27:05Z

Karl Marx - Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right

Introduction

For Germany, the criticism of religion has been essentially completed, and the criticism of religion is the prerequisite of all criticism.

The profane existence of error is compromised as soon as its heavenly oratio pro aris et focis [“speech for the altars and hearths,” i.e., for God and country] has been refuted. Man, who has found only the reflection of himself in the fantastic reality of heaven, where he sought a superman, will no longer feel disposed to find the mere appearance of himself, the non-man [Unmensch], where he seeks and must seek his true reality.

The foundation of irreligious criticism is: Man makes religion, religion does not make man. Religion is, indeed, the self-consciousness and self-esteem of man who has either not yet won through to himself, or has already lost himself again. But man is no abstract being squatting outside the world. Man is the world of man – state, society. This state and this society produce religion, which is an inverted consciousness of the world, because they are an inverted world. Religion is the general theory of this world, its encyclopaedic compendium, its logic in popular form, its spiritual point d'honneur, its enthusiasm, its moral sanction, its solemn complement, and its universal basis of consolation and justification. It is the fantastic realization of the human essence since the human essence has not acquired any true reality. The struggle against religion is, therefore, indirectly the struggle against that world whose spiritual aroma is religion.

Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.

The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo.

Criticism has plucked the imaginary flowers on the chain not in order that man shall continue to bear that chain without fantasy or consolation, but so that he shall throw off the chain and pluck the living flower. The criticism of religion disillusions man, so that he will think, act, and fashion his reality like a man who has discarded his illusions and regained his senses, so that he will move around himself as his own true Sun. Religion is only the illusory Sun which revolves around man as long as he does not revolve around himself.

It is, therefore, the task of history, once the other-world of truth has vanished, to establish the truth of this world. It is the immediate task of philosophy, which is in the service of history, to unmask self-estrangement in its unholy forms once the holy form of human self-estrangement has been unmasked. Thus, the criticism of Heaven turns into the criticism of Earth, the criticism of religion into the criticism of law, and the criticism of theology into the criticism of politics.

The following exposition [a full-scale critical study of Hegel's Philosophy of Right was supposed to follow this introduction] – a contribution to this undertaking – concerns itself not directly with the original but with a copy, with the German philosophy of the state and of law. The only reason for this is that it is concerned with Germany.

If we were to begin with the German status quo itself, the result – even if we were to do it in the only appropriate way, i.e., negatively – would still be an anachronism. Even the negation of our present political situation is a dusty fact in the historical junk room of modern nations. If I negate powdered pigtails, I am still left with unpowdered pigtails. If I negate the situation in Germany in 1843, then according to the French calendar I have barely reached 1789, much less the vital centre of our present age.

Indeed, German history prides itself on having travelled a road which no other nation in the whole of history has ever travelled before, or ever will again. We have shared the restorations of modern nations without ever having shared their revolutions. We have been restored, firstly, because other nations dared to make revolutions, and, secondly, because other nations suffered counter-revolutions; on the one hand, because our masters were afraid, and, on the other, because they were not afraid. With our shepherds to the fore, we only once kept company with freedom, on the day of its internment.

One school of thought that legitimizes the infamy of today with the infamy of yesterday, a school that stigmatizes every cry of the serf against the knout as mere rebelliousness once the knout has aged a little and acquired a hereditary significance and a history, a school to which history shows nothing but its a posteriori, as did the God of Israel to his servant Moses, the historical school of law – this school would have invented German history were it not itself an invention of that history. A Shylock, but a cringing Shylock, that swears by its bond, its historical bond, its Christian-Germanic bond, for every pound of flesh cut from the heart of the people.

Good-natured enthusiasts, Germanomaniacs by extraction and free-thinkers by reflexion, on the contrary, seek our history of freedom beyond our history in the ancient Teutonic forests. But, what difference is there between the history of our freedom and the history of the boar's freedom if it can be found only in the forests? Besides, it is common knowledge that the forest echoes back what you shout into it. So peace to the ancient Teutonic forests!

War on the German state of affairs! By all means! They are below the level of history, they are beneath any criticism, but they are still an object of criticism like the criminal who is below the level of humanity but still an object for the executioner. In the struggle against that state of affairs, criticism is no passion of the head, it is the head of passion. It is not a lancet, it is a weapon. Its object is its enemy, which it wants not to refute but to exterminate. For the spirit of that state of affairs is refuted. In itself, it is no object worthy of thought, it is an existence which is as despicable as it is despised. Criticism does not need to make things clear to itself as regards this object, for it has already settled accounts with it. It no longer assumes the quality of an end-in-itself, but only of a means. Its essential pathos is indignation, its essential work is denunciation.

It is a case of describing the dull reciprocal pressure of all social spheres one on another, a general inactive ill-humor, a limitedness which recognizes itself as much as it mistakes itself, within the frame of government system which, living on the preservation of all wretchedness, is itself nothing but wretchedness in office.

What a sight! This infinitely proceeding division of society into the most manifold races opposed to one another by petty antipathies, uneasy consciences, and brutal mediocrity, and which, precisely because of their reciprocal ambiguous and distrustful attitude, are all, without exception although with various formalities, treated by their rulers as conceded existences. And they must recognize and acknowledge as a concession of heaven the very fact that they are mastered, ruled, possessed! And, on the other side, are the rulers themselves, whose greatness is in inverse proportion to their number!

Criticism dealing with this content is criticism in a hand-to-hand fight, and in such a fight the point is not whether the opponent is a noble, equal, interesting opponent, the point is to strike him. The point is not to let the Germans have a minute for self-deception and resignation. The actual pressure must be made more pressing by adding to it consciousness of pressure, the shame must be made more shameful by publicizing it. Every sphere of German society must be shown as the partie honteuse of German society: these petrified relations must be forced to dance by singing their own tune to them! The people must be taught to be terrified at itself in order to give it courage. This will be fulfilling an imperative need of the German nation, and the needs of the nations are in themselves the ultimate reason for their satisfaction.

This struggle against the limited content of the German status quo cannot be without interest even for the modern nations, for the German status quo is the open completion of the ancien régime and the ancien régime is the concealed deficiency of the modern state. The struggle against the German political present is the struggle against the past of the modern nations, and they are still burdened with reminders of that past. It is instructive for them to see the ancien régime, which has been through its tragedy with them, playing its comedy as a German revenant. Tragic indeed was the pre-existing power of the world, and freedom, on the other hand, was a personal notion; in short, as long as it believed and had to believe in its own justification. As long as the ancien régime, as an existing world order, struggled against a world that was only coming into being, there was on its side a historical error, not a personal one. That is why its downfall was tragic.

On the other hand, the present German regime, an anachronism, a flagrant contradiction of generally recognized axioms, the nothingness of the ancien régime exhibited to the world, only imagines that it believes in itself and demands that the world should imagine the same thing. If it believed in its own essence, would it try to hide that essence under the semblance of an alien essence and seek refuge in hypocrisy and sophism? The modern ancien régime is rather only the comedian of a world order whose true heroes are dead. History is thorough and goes through many phases when carrying an old form to the grave. The last phases of a world-historical form is its comedy. The gods of Greece, already tragically wounded to death in Aeschylus's tragedy Prometheus Bound, had to re-die a comic death in Lucian's Dialogues. Why this course of history? So that humanity should part with its past cheerfully. This cheerful historical destiny is what we vindicate for the political authorities of Germany.

Meanwhile, once modern politico-social reality itself is subjected to criticism, once criticism rises to truly human problems, it finds itself outside the German status quo, or else it would reach out for its object below its object. An example. The relation of industry, of the world of wealth generally, to the political world is one of the major problems of modern times. In what form is this problem beginning to engage the attention of the Germans? In the form of protective duties, of the prohibitive system, of national economy. Germanomania has passed out of man into matter, and thus one morning our cotton barons and iron heroes saw themselves turned into patriots. People are, therefore, beginning in Germany to acknowledge the sovereignty of monopoly on the inside through lending it sovereignty on the outside. People are, therefore, now about to begin, in Germany, what people in France and England are about to end. The old corrupt condition against which these countries are revolting in theory, and which they only bear as one bears chains, is greeted in Germany as the dawn of a beautiful future which still hardly dares to pass from crafty theory to the most ruthless practice. Whereas the problem in France and England is: Political economy, or the rule of society over wealth; in Germany, it is: National economy, or the mastery of private property over nationality. In France and England, then, it is a case of abolishing monopoly that has proceeded to its last consequences; in Germany, it is a case of proceeding to the last consequences of monopoly. There it is a case of solution, here as yet a case of collision. This is an adequate example of the German form of modern problems, an example of how our history, like a clumsy recruit, still has to do extra drill on things that are old and hackneyed in history.

If, therefore, the whole German development did not exceed the German political development, a German could at the most have the share in the problems-of-the-present that a Russian has. But, when the separate individual is not bound by the limitations of the nation, the nation as a whole is still less liberated by the liberation of one individual. The fact that Greece had a Scythian among its philosophers did not help the Scythians to make a single step towards Greek culture. [An allusion to Anacharsis.]

Luckily, we Germans are not Scythians.

As the ancient peoples went through their pre-history in imagination, in mythology, so we Germans have gone through our post-history in thought, in philosophy. We are philosophical contemporaries of the present without being its historical contemporaries. German philosophy is the ideal prolongation of German history. If therefore, instead of the oeuvres incompletes of our real history, we criticize the oeuvres posthumes of our ideal history, philosophy, our criticism is in the midst of the questions of which the present says: that is the question. What, in progressive nations, is a practical break with modern state conditions, is, in Germany, where even those conditions do not yet exist, at first a critical break with the philosophical reflexion of those conditions.

German philosophy of right and state is the only German history which is al pari [“on a level”] with the official modern present. The German nation must therefore join this, its dream-history, to its present conditions and subject to criticism not only these existing conditions, but at the same time their abstract continuation. Its future cannot be limited either to the immediate negation of its real conditions of state and right, or to the immediate implementation of its ideal state and right conditions, for it has the immediate negation of its real conditions in its ideal conditions, and it has almost outlived the immediate implementation of its ideal conditions in the contemplation of neighboring nations. Hence, it is with good reason that the practical political party in Germany demands the negation of philosophy.

It is wrong, not in its demand but in stopping at the demand, which it neither seriously implements nor can implement. It believes that it implements that negation by turning its back to philosophy and its head away from it and muttering a few trite and angry phrases about it. Owing to the limitation of its outlook, it does not include philosophy in the circle of German reality or it even fancies it is beneath German practice and the theories that serve it. You demand that real life embryos be made the starting-point, but you forget that the real life embryo of the German nation has grown so far only inside its cranium. In a word – You cannot abolish [aufheben] philosophy without making it a reality.

The same mistake, but with the factors reversed, was made by the theoretical party originating from philosophy.

In the present struggle it saw only the critical struggle of philosophy against the German world; it did not give a thought to the fact that philosophy up to the present itself belongs to this world and is its completion, although an ideal one. Critical towards its counterpart, it was uncritical towards itself when, proceeding from the premises of philosophy, it either stopped at the results given by philosophy or passed off demands and results from somewhere else as immediate demands and results of philosophy – although these, provided they are justified, can be obtained only by the negation of philosophy up to the present, of philosophy as such. We reserve ourselves the right to a more detailed description of this section: It thought it could make philosophy a reality without abolishing [aufzuheben] it.

The criticism of the German philosophy of state and right, which attained its most consistent, richest, and last formulation through Hegel, is both a critical analysis of the modern state and of the reality connected with it, and the resolute negation of the whole manner of the German consciousness in politics and right as practiced hereto, the most distinguished, most universal expression of which, raised to the level of science, is the speculative philosophy of right itself. If the speculative philosophy of right, that abstract extravagant thinking on the modern state, the reality of which remains a thing of the beyond, if only beyond the Rhine, was possible only in Germany, inversely the German thought-image of the modern state which makes abstraction of real man was possible only because and insofar as the modern state itself makes abstraction of real man, or satisfies the whole of man only in imagination. In politics, the Germans thought what other nations did. Germany was their theoretical conscience. The abstraction and presumption of its thought was always in step with the one-sidedness and lowliness of its reality. If, therefore, the status quo of German statehood expresses the completion of the ancien régime, the completion of the thorn in the flesh of the modern state, the status quo of German state science expresses the incompletion of the modern state, the defectiveness of its flesh itself.

Already as the resolute opponent of the previous form of German political consciousness the criticism of speculative philosophy of right strays, not into itself, but into problems which there is only one means of solving – practice.

It is asked: can Germany attain a practice à la hauteur des principes – i.e., a revolution which will raise it not only to the official level of modern nations, but to the height of humanity which will be the near future of those nations?

The weapon of criticism cannot, of course, replace criticism of the weapon, material force must be overthrown by material force; but theory also becomes a material force as soon as it has gripped the masses. Theory is capable of gripping the masses as soon as it demonstrates ad hominem, and it demonstrates ad hominem as soon as it becomes radical. To be radical is to grasp the root of the matter. But, for man, the root is man himself. The evident proof of the radicalism of German theory, and hence of its practical energy, is that is proceeds from a resolute positive abolition of religion. The criticism of religion ends with the teaching that man is the highest essence for man – hence, with the categoric imperative to overthrow all relations in which man is a debased, enslaved, abandoned, despicable essence, relations which cannot be better described than by the cry of a Frenchman when it was planned to introduce a tax on dogs: Poor dogs! They want to treat you as human beings!

Even historically, theoretical emancipation has specific practical significance for Germany. For Germany's revolutionary past is theoretical, it is the Reformation. As the revolution then began in the brain of the monk, so now it begins in the brain of the philosopher.

Luther, we grant, overcame bondage out of devotion by replacing it by bondage out of conviction. He shattered faith in authority because he restored the authority of faith. He turned priests into laymen because he turned laymen into priests. He freed man from outer religiosity because he made religiosity the inner man. He freed the body from chains because he enchained the heart.

But, if Protestantism was not the true solution of the problem, it was at least the true setting of it. It was no longer a case of the layman's struggle against the priest outside himself but of his struggle against his own priest inside himself, his priestly nature. And if the Protestant transformation of the German layman into priests emancipated the lay popes, the princes, with the whole of their priestly clique, the privileged and philistines, the philosophical transformation of priestly Germans into men will emancipate the people. But, secularization will not stop at the confiscation of church estates set in motion mainly by hypocritical Prussia any more than emancipation stops at princes. The Peasant War, the most radical fact of German history, came to grief because of theology. Today, when theology itself has come to grief, the most unfree fact of German history, our status quo, will be shattered against philosophy. On the eve of the Reformation, official Germany was the most unconditional slave of Rome. On the eve of its revolution, it is the unconditional slave of less than Rome, of Prussia and Austria, of country junkers and philistines.

Meanwhile, a major difficulty seems to stand in the way of a radical German revolution.

For revolutions require a passive element, a material basis. Theory is fulfilled in a people only insofar as it is the fulfilment of the needs of that people. But will the monstrous discrepancy between the demands of German thought and the answers of German reality find a corresponding discrepancy between civil society and the state, and between civil society and itself? Will the theoretical needs be immediate practical needs? It is not enough for thought to strive for realization, reality must itself strive towards thought.

But Germany did not rise to the intermediary stage of political emancipation at the same time as the modern nations. It has not yet reached in practice the stages which it has surpassed in theory. How can it do a somersault, not only over its own limitations, but at the same time over the limitations of the modern nations, over limitations which it must in reality feel and strive for as for emancipation from its real limitations? Only a revolution of radical needs can be a radical revolution and it seems that precisely the preconditions and ground for such needs are lacking.

If Germany has accompanied the development of the modern nations only with the abstract activity of thought without taking an effective share in the real struggle of that development, it has, on the other hand, shared the sufferings of that development, without sharing in its enjoyment, or its partial satisfaction. To the abstract activity on the one hand corresponds the abstract suffering on the other. That is why Germany will one day find itself on the level of European decadence before ever having been on the level of European emancipation. It will be comparable to a fetish worshipper pining away with the diseases of Christianity.

If we now consider the German governments, we find that because of the circumstances of the time, because of Germany's condition, because of the standpoint of German education, and, finally, under the impulse of its own fortunate instinct, they are driven to combine the civilized shortcomings of the modern state world, the advantages of which we do not enjoy, with the barbaric deficiencies of the ancien régime, which we enjoy in full; hence, Germany must share more and more, if not in the reasonableness, at least in the unreasonableness of those state formations which are beyond the bounds of its status quo. Is there in the world, for example, a country which shares so naively in all the illusions of constitutional statehood without sharing in its realities as so-called constitutional Germany? And was it not perforce the notion of a German government to combine the tortures of censorship with the tortures of the French September laws [1835 anti-press laws] which provide for freedom of the press? As you could find the gods of all nations in the Roman Pantheon, so you will find in the Germans' Holy Roman Empire all the sins of all state forms. That this eclecticism will reach a so far unprecedented height is guaranteed in particular by the political-aesthetic gourmanderie of a German king [Frederick William IV] who intended to play all the roles of monarchy, whether feudal or democratic, if not in the person of the people, at least in his own person, and if not for the people, at least for himself. Germany, as the deficiency of the political present constituted a world of its own, will not be able to throw down the specific German limitations without throwing down the general limitation of the political present.

It is not the radical revolution, not the general human emancipation which is a utopian dream for Germany, but rather the partial, the merely political revolution, the revolution which leaves the pillars of the house standing. On what is a partial, a merely political revolution based? On part of civil society emancipating itself and attaining general domination; on a definite class, proceeding from its particular situation; undertaking the general emancipation of society. This class emancipates the whole of society, but only provided the whole of society is in the same situation as this class – e.g., possesses money and education or can acquire them at will.

No class of civil society can play this role without arousing a moment of enthusiasm in itself and in the masses, a moment in which it fraternizes and merges with society in general, becomes confused with it and is perceived and acknowledged as its general representative, a moment in which its claims and rights are truly the claims and rights of society itself, a moment in which it is truly the social head and the social heart. Only in the name of the general rights of society can a particular class vindicate for itself general domination. For the storming of this emancipatory position, and hence for the political exploitation of all sections of society in the interests of its own section, revolutionary energy and spiritual self-feeling alone are not sufficient. For the revolution of a nation, and the emancipation of a particular class of civil society to coincide, for one estate to be acknowledged as the estate of the whole society, all the defects of society must conversely be concentrated in another class, a particular estate must be the estate of the general stumbling-block, the incorporation of the general limitation, a particular social sphere must be recognized as the notorious crime of the whole of society, so that liberation from that sphere appears as general self-liberation. For one estate to be par excellence the estate of liberation, another estate must conversely be the obvious estate of oppression. The negative general significance of the French nobility and the French clergy determined the positive general significance of the nearest neighboring and opposed class of the bourgeoisie.

But no particular class in Germany has the constituency, the penetration, the courage, or the ruthlessness that could mark it out as the negative representative of society. No more has any estate the breadth of soul that identifies itself, even for a moment, with the soul of the nation, the geniality that inspires material might to political violence, or that revolutionary daring which flings at the adversary the defiant words: I am nothing but I must be everything. The main stem of German morals and honesty, of the classes as well as of individuals, is rather that modest egoism which asserts its limitedness and allows it to be asserted against itself. The relation of the various sections of German society is therefore not dramatic but epic. Each of them begins to be aware of itself and begins to camp beside the others with all its particular claims not as soon as it is oppressed, but as soon as the circumstances of the time, without the section's own participation, creates a social substratum on which it can in turn exert pressure. Even the moral self-feeling of the German middle class rests only on the consciousness that it is the common representative of the philistine mediocrity of all the other classes. It is therefore not only the German kings who accede to the throne mal à propos, it is every section of civil society which goes through a defeat before it celebrates victory and develops its own limitations before it overcomes the limitations facing it, asserts its narrow-hearted essence before it has been able to assert its magnanimous essence; thus the very opportunity of a great role has passed away before it is to hand, and every class, once it begins the struggle against the class opposed to it, is involved in the struggle against the class below it. Hence, the higher nobility is struggling against the monarchy, the bureaucrat against the nobility, and the bourgeois against them all, while the proletariat is already beginning to find itself struggling against the bourgeoisie. The middle class hardly dares to grasp the thought of emancipation from its own standpoint when the development of the social conditions and the progress of political theory already declare that standpoint antiquated or at least problematic.

In France, it is enough for somebody to be something for him to want to be everything; in Germany, nobody can be anything if he is not prepared to renounce everything. In France, partial emancipation is the basis of universal emancipation; in Germany, universal emancipation is the conditio sine qua non of any partial emancipation. In France, it is the reality of gradual liberation that must give birth to complete freedom, in Germany, the impossibility of gradual liberation. In France, every class of the nation is a political idealist and becomes aware of itself at first not as a particular class but as a representative of social requirements generally. The role of emancipator therefore passes in dramatic motion to the various classes of the French nation one after the other until it finally comes to the class which implements social freedom no longer with the provision of certain conditions lying outside man and yet created by human society, but rather organizes all conditions of human existence on the premises of social freedom. On the contrary, in Germany, where practical life is as spiritless as spiritual life is unpractical, no class in civil society has any need or capacity for general emancipation until it is forced by its immediate condition, by material necessity, by its very chains.

Where, then, is the positive possibility of a German emancipation?

Answer: In the formulation of a class with radical chains, a class of civil society which is not a class of civil society, an estate which is the dissolution of all estates, a sphere which has a universal character by its universal suffering and claims no particular right because no particular wrong, but wrong generally, is perpetuated against it; which can invoke no historical, but only human, title; which does not stand in any one-sided antithesis to the consequences but in all-round antithesis to the premises of German statehood; a sphere, finally, which cannot emancipate itself without emancipating itself from all other spheres of society and thereby emancipating all other spheres of society, which, in a word, is the complete loss of man and hence can win itself only through the complete re-winning of man. This dissolution of society as a particular estate is the proletariat.

The proletariat is beginning to appear in Germany as a result of the rising industrial movement. For, it is not the naturally arising poor but the artificially impoverished, not the human masses mechanically oppressed by the gravity of society, but the masses resulting from the drastic dissolution of society, mainly of the middle estate, that form the proletariat, although, as is easily understood, the naturally arising poor and the Christian-Germanic serfs gradually join its ranks.

By heralding the dissolution of the hereto existing world order, the proletariat merely proclaims the secret of its own existence, for it is the factual dissolution of that world order. By demanding the negation of private property, the proletariat merely raises to the rank of a principle of society what society has raised to the rank of its principle, what is already incorporated in it as the negative result of society without its own participation. The proletarian then finds himself possessing the same right in regard to the world which is coming into being as the German king in regard to the world which has come into being when he calls the people his people, as he calls the horse his horse. By declaring the people his private property, the king merely proclaims that the owner of property is king.

As philosophy finds its material weapon in the proletariat, so the proletariat finds its spiritual weapon in philosophy. And once the lightning of thought has squarely struck this ingenuous soil of the people, the emancipation of the Germans into men will be accomplished.

Let us sum up the result:

The only liberation of Germany which is practically possible is liberation from the point of view of that theory which declares man to be the supreme being for man. Germany can emancipate itself from the Middle Ages only if it emancipates itself at the same time from the partial victories over the Middle Ages. In Germany, no form of bondage can be broken without breaking all forms of bondage. Germany, which is renowned for its thoroughness, cannot make a revolution unless it is a thorough one. The emancipation of the German is the emancipation of man. The head of this emancipation is philosophy, its heart the proletariat. Philosophy cannot realize itself without the transcendence [Aufhebung] of the proletariat, and the proletariat cannot transcend itself without the realization [Verwirklichung] of philosophy.

When all the inner conditions are met, the day of the German resurrection will be heralded by the crowing of the cock of Gaul.

Introduction (1844)

Part 1: The State §§ 261 - 271

a. Private Right vis-à-vis the State

b. The State as Manifestation of Idea or product of man

c. The Political Sentiment

d. Analysis

Part 2. The Constitution §§ 272 - 286

a. The Crown

b. Subjects and Predicates

c. Democracy

d. Résumé of Hegel's development of the Crown

Part 3. The Executive §§ 287 - 297

a. The Bureaucracy

b. Separation of the state and civil society

c. Executive 'subsuming' the individual and particular under the universal

Part 4: The Legislature §§ 298 - 303

a. The Legislature

b. The Estates

c. Hegel presents what is as the essence of the state.

d. In Middle Ages the classes of civil society and the political classes were identical.

Part 5: The Estates §§ 304 - 307

a. Hegel deduces birthright from the Absolute Idea

b. Hegel's Mediations

c. Real extremes would be Pole and non-Pole

d. The Agricultural Class

e. “The state is the actuality of the ethical Idea”

f. The Romans and Private Property

Part 6: Civil Society and the Estates §§ 308 - 313

a. Civil Society and the Estates

b. Individuals conceived as Abstractions

c. Hegel does not allow society to become the actually determining thing

Part 1: The State §§ 261 - 271

(Marx's commentary on § 257 - 60 have been lost)

§ 261. In contrast with the spheres of private rights and private welfare (the family and civil society), the state is from one point of view an external necessity and their higher authority; its nature is such that their laws and interests are subordinate to it and dependent on it. On the other hand, however, it is the end immanent within them, and its strength lies in the unity of its own universal end and aim with the particular interest of individuals, in the fact that individuals have duties to the state in proportion as they have rights against it (see § 155).

The foregoing paragraph advises us that concrete freedom consists in the identity (as it is supposed to be, two-sided) of the system of particular interest (the family and civil society) with the system of general interest (the state). The relation of these spheres must now be determined more precisely.

From one point of view the state is contrasted with the spheres of family and civil society as an external necessity, an authority, relative to which the laws and interests of family and civil society are subordinate and dependent. That the state, in contrast with the family and civil society, is an external necessity was implied partly in the category of ‘transition' (Übergangs) and partly in the conscious relationship of the family and civil society to the state. Further, subordination under the state corresponds perfectly with the relation of external necessity. But what Hegel understands by ‘dependence' is shown by the following sentence from the Remark to this paragraph:

a. Private Right vis-à-vis the State

§ 261.... It was Montesquieu above all who, in his famous work L'Esprit des Lois, kept in sight and tried to work out in detail both the thought of the dependence of laws in particular, laws concerning the rights of persons - on the specific character of the state, and also the philosophic notion of always treating the part in its relation to the whole.

Thus Hegel is speaking here of internal dependence, or the essential determination of private rights, etc., by the state. At the same time, however, he subsumes this dependence under the relationship of external necessity and opposes it, as another aspect, to that relationship wherein family and civil society relate to the state as to their immanent end.

‘External necessity' can only be understood to mean that the laws and interests of the family and civil society must give way in case of collision with the laws and interests of the state, that they are subordinate to it, that their existence is dependent on it, or again that its will and its law appear to their will and their laws as a necessity!

But Hegel is not speaking here about empirical collisions; he is speaking about the relationship of the ‘spheres of private rights and private welfare, of the family and civil society,' to the state; it is a question of the essential relationship of these spheres themselves. Not only their interests but also their laws and their essential determinations are dependent on the state and subordinate to it. It is related to their laws and interests as higher authority, while their interest and law are related to it as its ‘subordinates'. They exist in their dependence on it. Precisely because subordination and dependence are external relations, limiting and contrary to an autonomous being, the relationship of family and civil society to the state is that of external necessity, a necessity which relates by opposition to the inner being of the thing. The very fact that the laws concerning the private rights of persons depend on the specific character of the state and are modified according to it is thereby subsumed under the relationship of external necessity', precisely because civil society and family in their true, that is in their independent and complete development, are presupposed by the state as particular spheres. ‘Subordination' and ‘dependence' are the expressions for an external, artificial, apparent identity, for the logical expression of which Hegel quite rightly uses the phrase ‘external necessity'. With the notions of ‘subordination' and ‘dependence' Hegel has further developed the one aspect of the divided identity, namely that of the alienation within the unity.

On the other hand, however, it is the end immanent within them, and its strength lies in the unity of its own universal end and aim with the particular interest of individuals, in the fact that individuals have duties to the state in proportion as they have rights against it.

Here Hegel sets up an unresolved antinomy: on the one hand external necessity, on the other hand immanent end. The unity of the universal end and aim of the state and the particular interest of individuals must consist in this, that the duties of individuals to the state and their rights against it are identical (thus, for example, the duty to respect property coincides with the right to property).

This identity is explained in this way in the Remark [to § 261]:

Duty is primarily a relation to something which from my point of view is substantive, absolutely universal. A right, on the other hand, is simply the embodiment of this substance and thus is the particular aspect of it and enshrines my particular freedom. Hence at abstract levels, right and duty appear parcelled out on different sides or in different persons. In the state, as something ethical, as the interpenetration of the substantive and the particular, my obligation to what is substantive is at the same time the embodiment of my particular freedom. This means that in the state duty and right are united in one and the same relation.

§ 262. The actual Idea is mind, which, sundering itself into the two ideal spheres of its concept, family and civil society, enters upon its finite phase, but it does so only in order to rise above its ideality and become explicit as infinite actual mind. It is therefore to these ideal spheres that the actual Idea assigns the material of this its finite actuality, viz., human beings as a mass, in such a way that the function assigned to any given individual is visibly mediated by circumstances, his caprice and his personal choice of his station in life.

Let us translate this into prose as follows:

The manner and means of the state's mediation with the family and civil society are ‘circumstance, caprice, and personal choice of station in life'. Accordingly, the rationality of the state [Staatsvernunft] has nothing to do with the division of the material of the state into family and civil society.

The state results from them in an unconscious and arbitrary way. Family and civil society appear as the dark natural ground from which the light of the state emerges. By material of the state is meant the business of the state, i.e., family and civil society, in so far as they constitute components of the state and, as such, participate in the state.

This development is peculiar in two respects.

1. Family and civil society are conceived of as spheres of the concept of the state, specifically as spheres of its finiteness, as its finite phase. It is the state which sunders itself into the two, which presupposes them, and indeed does this ‘only in order to rise above its ideality and become explicit as infinite actual mind'. ‘It sunders itself in order to...' It ‘therefore assigns to these ideal spheres the material of its finite actuality in such a way that the function assigned to any given individual is visibly mediated, etc'. The so-called ‘actual idea' (mind as infinite and actual) is described as though it acted according to a determined principle and toward a determined end. It sunders itself into finite spheres, and does this ‘in order to return to itself, to be for itself'; moreover it does this precisely in such a way that it is just as it actually is.

In this passage the logical, pantheistic mysticism appears very clearly.

The actual situation is that the assignment of the material of the state to the individual is mediated by circumstances, caprice, and personal choice of his station in life. This fact, this actual situation is expressed by speculative philosophy [der Spekulation] as appearance, as phenomenon. These circumstances, this caprice, this personal choice of vocation, this actual mediation are merely the appearance of a mediation which the actual Idea undertakes with itself and which goes on behind the scenes. Actuality is not expressed as itself but as another reality. Ordinary empirical existence does not have its own mind [Geist] but rather an alien mind as its law, while on the other hand the actual Idea does not have an actuality which is developed out of itself, but rather has ordinary empirical existence as its existence [Dasein].

The Idea is given the status of a subject, and the actual relationship of family and civil society to the state is conceived to be its inner imaginary activity. Family and civil society are the presuppositions of the state; they are the really active things; but in speculative philosophy it is reversed. But if the Idea is made subject, then the real subjects - civil society, family, circumstances, caprice, etc. - become unreal, and take on the different meaning of objective moments of the Idea.

2. The circumstance, caprice, and personal choice of station in life, through which the material of the state is assigned to the individual, are not said directly to be things which are real, necessary, and justified in and for themselves; qua circumstances, caprice, and personal choice they are not declared to be rational. Yet on the other hand they again are, but only so as to be presented for the phenomena of a mediation, to be left as they are while at the same time acquiring the meaning of a determination of the idea, a result and product of the Idea. The difference lies not in the content, but in the way of considering it, or in the manner of speaking. There is a two-fold history, one esoteric and one exoteric. The content lies in the exoteric part. The interest of the esoteric is always to recover the history of the logical Concept in the state. But the real development proceeds on the exoteric side.

Reasonably, Hegel's sentences mean only the following:

The family and civil society are elements of the state. The material of the state is divided amongst them through circumstances, caprice, and personal choice of vocation. The citizens of the state are members of families and of civil society.

‘The actual Idea is mind which, sundering itself into the two ideal spheres of its concept, family and civil society, enters upon its finite phase' - thus the division of the state into the family and civil society is ideal, i.e., necessary, belonging to the essence of the state. Family and civil society are actual components of the state, actual spiritual existences of will; they are the modes of existence of the state; family and civil society make themselves into the state. They are the active force. According to Hegel they are, on the contrary, made by the actual Idea. It is not their own life's course which unites them into the state, but rather the life's course of the Idea, which has distinguished them from itself; and they are precisely the finiteness of this idea; they owe their existence to a mind [Geist] other than their own; they are determinations established by a third party, not self-determinations; for that very reason they are also determined as finiteness, as the proper finiteness of the ‘actual idea'. The purpose of their existence is not this existence itself, but rather the Idea separates these presuppositions off from itself in order to rise above its ideality and become explicit as infinite actual mind. This is to say that the political state cannot exist without the natural basis of the family and the artificial basis of civil society; they are its conditio sine qua non; but the conditions are established as the conditioned, the determining as the determined, the producing as the product of its product. The actual idea reduces itself into the finiteness of the family and civil society only in order to enjoy and to bring forth its infinity through their transcendence [Aufhebung]. It therefore assigns (in order to attain its end) to these ideal spheres the material of this its finite actuality (of this? of what? these spheres are really its finite actuality, its material) to human beings as a mass (the material of the state here is human beings, the mass, the state is composed of them, and this, its composition is expressed here as an action of the Idea, as a parcelling out which it undertakes with its own material. The fact is that the state issues from the mass of men existing as members of families and of civil society; but speculative philosophy expresses this fact as an achievement of the Idea, not the idea of the mass, but rather as the deed of an Idea-Subject which is differentiated from the fact itself) in such a way that the function assigned to the individual (earlier the discussion was only of the assignment of individuals to the spheres of family and civil society) is visibly mediated by circumstances, caprice, etc. Thus empirical actuality is admitted just as it is and is also said to be rational; but not rational because of its own reason, but because the empirical fact in its empirical existence has a significance which is other than it itself. The fact, which is the starting point, is not conceived to be such but rather to be the mystical result. The actual becomes phenomenon, but the Idea has no other content than this phenomenon. Moreover, the idea has no other than the logical aim, namely, ‘to become explicit as infinite actual mind'. The entire mystery of the Philosophy of Right and of Hegelian philosophy in general is contained in these paragraphs.

§ 263. In these spheres in which its moments, particularity and individuality, have their immediate and reflected reality, mind is present as their objective universality glimmering in them as the power of reason in necessity (see § 184), i.e., as the institutions considered above.

§ 264. Mind is the nature of human beings en masse and their nature is therefore twofold: (i) at one extreme, explicit individuality of consciousness and will, and (ii) at the other extreme, universality which knows and wills what is substantive. Hence they attain their right in both these respects only in so far as both their private personality and its substantive basis are actualised. Now in the family and civil society they acquire their right in the first of these respects directly and in the second indirectly, in that (i) they find their substantive self-consciousness in social institutions which are the universal implicit in their particular interests, and (ii) the Corporation supplies them with an occupation and an activity directed on a universal end.

§ 265. These institutions are the components of the constitution (i.e., of rationality developed and actualised) in the sphere of particularity. They are, therefore, the firm foundation not only of the state but also of the citizen's trust in it and sentiment towards it. They are the pillars of public freedom since in them particular freedom is realised and rational, and therefore there is implicitly present even in them the union of freedom and necessity.

§ 266. But mind is objective and actual to itself not merely as this (which?), necessity .... but also as the ideality and the heart of this necessity. Only in this way is this substantive universality aware of itself as its own object and end, with the result that the necessity appears to itself in the shape of freedom as well.

Thus the transition of the family and civil society into the political state is this: the mind of those spheres, which is the mind of the state in its implicit moment, is now also related to itself as such, and is actual to itself as their inner reality. Accordingly, the transition is not derived from the specific essence of the family, etc., and the specific essence of the state, but rather from the universal relation of necessity and freedom. Exactly the same transition is effected in the Logic from the sphere of Essence to the sphere of Concept, and in the Philosophy of Nature from Inorganic Nature to Life. It is always the same categories offered as the animating principle now of one sphere, now of another, and the only thing of importance is to discover, for the particular concrete determinations, the corresponding abstract ones.

§ 267. This necessity in ideality is the inner self-development of the Idea. As the substance of the individual subject, it is his political sentiment [patriotism] in distinction therefrom, as the substance of the objective world, it is the organism of the state, i.e., it is the strictly political state and its constitution.

Here the subject is ‘the necessity in ideality', the ‘Idea within itself" and the predicate is political sentiment and the political constitution. Said in common language, political sentiment is the subjective, and the political constitution the objective substance of the state. The logical development from the family and civil society to the state is thus pure appearance, for what is not clarified is the way in which familial and civil sentiment, the institution of the family and those of society, as such, stand related to the political sentiment and political institutions and cohere with them.

The transition involved in mind existing ‘not merely as necessity and realm of appearance' but as actual for itself and particular as ‘the ideality of this necessity' and the soul of this realm is no transition whatever, because the soul of the family exists for itself as love, etc. [see §§ 161 ff.] The pure ideality of an actual sphere, however, could exist only as knowledge [Wissenschaft].

The important thing is that Hegel at all times makes the Idea the subject and makes the proper and actual subject, like ‘political sentiment', the predicate. But the development proceeds at all times on the side of the predicate.

§ 268. contains a nice exposition concerning political sentiment, or patriotism, which has nothing to do with the logical development except that Hegel defines it as ‘simply a product of the institutions subsisting in the state since rationality is actually present in the state', while on the other hand these institutions are equally an objectification of the political sentiment. Cf. the Remark to this paragraph.

§ 269. The patriotic sentiment acquires its specifically determined content from the various members of the organism of the state. This organism is the development of the Idea to its differences and their objective actuality. Hence these different members are the various powers of the state with their functions and spheres of action, by means of which. the universal continually engenders itself, and engenders itself in a necessary way because their specific character is fixed by the nature of the concept. Throughout this process the universal maintains its identity, since it is itself the presupposition of its own production. This organism is the constitution of the state.

The constitution of the state is the organism of the state, or the organism of the state is the constitution of the state. To say that the different parts of an organism stand in a necessary relation which arises out of the nature of the organism is pure tautology. To say that when the political constitution is determined as an organism the different parts of the constitution, the different powers, are related as organic determinations and have a rational relationship to one another is likewise tautology. It is a great advance to consider the political state as an organism, and hence no longer to consider the diversity of powers as [in]organic, but rather as living and rational differences. But how does Hegel present this discovery?

1. ‘This organism is the development of the Idea to its differences and their objective actuality.' It is not said that this organism of the state is its development to differences and their objective actuality. The proper conception is that the development of the state or of the political constitution to differences and their actuality is an organic development. The actual differences, or the different parts of the political constitution are the presupposition, the subject. The predicate is their determination as organic. Instead of that, the Idea is made subject, and the differences and their actuality are conceived to be its development and its result, while on the other hand the Idea must be developed out of the actual difference. What is organic is precisely the idea of the differences, their ideal determination.

2. But here the Idea is spoken of as a subject which is developed to its differences. From this reversal of subject and predicate comes the appearance that an idea other than the organism is under discussion. The point of departure is the abstract Idea whose development in the state is the political constitution. Thus it is a question not of the political idea, but rather of the abstract Idea in the political element. When Hegel says, ‘this organism (namely, the state, or the constitution of the state) is the development of the Idea to its differences, etc.', he tells us absolutely nothing about the specific idea of the political constitution. The same thing can be said with equal truth about the animal organism as about the political organism. By what means then is the animal organism distinguished from the political? No difference results from this general determination; and an explanation which does not give the differentia specifica is no explanation. The sole interest here is that of recovering the Idea simply, the logical Idea in each element, be it that of the state or of nature; and the real subjects, as in this case the political constitution, become their mere names. Consequently, there is only the appearance of a real understanding, while in fact these determinate things are and remain uncomprehended because they are not understood in their specific essence.

‘Hence these different members are the various powers of the state with their functions and spheres of action.' By reason of this small word ‘hence' [‘so'] this statement assumes the appearance of a consequence, a deduction and development. Rather, one must ask ‘How is it' [‘Wie so?'] that when the empirical fact is that the various members of the organism of the state are the various powers (and) their functions and spheres of action, the philosophical predicate is that they are members of an organism [?] Here we draw attention to a stylistic peculiarity of Hegel, one which recurs often and is a product of mysticism. The entire paragraph reads:
The patriotic sentiment acquires its specifically determined content from the various members of the organism of the state. This organism is the development of the Idea to its differences and their objective actuality. Hence these different members are the various powers of the state with their functions and spheres of action, by means of which the universal continually engenders itself, and engenders itself in a necessary way because their specific character is fixed by the nature of the concept. Throughout this process the universal maintains its identity, since it is itself the presupposition of its own production. This organism is the constitution of the state.

1. The patriotic sentiment acquires its specifically determined content from the various members of the organism of the state ... These different members are the various powers of the state with their functions and spheres of action.
2. The patriotic sentiment acquires its specifically determined content from the various members of the organism of the state. This organism is the development of the Idea to its differences and their objective actuality ... by means of which the universal continually engenders itself, and engenders itself in a necessary way because their specific character is fixed by the nature of the concept. Throughout this process the universal maintains its identity, since it is itself the presupposition of its own production. This organism is the constitution of the state.

As can be seen, Hegel links the two subjects, namely, the ‘various members of the organism' and the ‘organism', to further determinations. In the third sentence the various members are defined as the various powers. By inserting the word ‘hence' it is made to appear as if these various powers were deduced from the interposed statement concerning the organism as the development of the Idea.

He then goes on to discuss the various powers. The statement that the universal continually engenders itself while maintaining its identity throughout the process, is nothing new, having been implied in the definition of the various powers as members of the organism, as organic members; or rather, this definition of the various powers is nothing but a paraphrase of the statement about the organism being ‘the development of the Idea to its differences, etc.'

These two sentences are identical:

1. This organism is ‘the development of the idea to its differences and their objective actuality' or to differences by means of which the universal (the universal here is the same as the idea) continually engenders itself, and engenders itself in a necessary way because their specific character is fixed by the nature of the concept; and

2. ‘Throughout this process the universal maintains its identity, since it is itself the presupposition of its own production.' The second is merely a more concise explication of ‘the development of the Idea to its differences'. Thereby, Hegel has advanced not a single step beyond the universal concept of the Idea or at most of the organism in general (for strictly speaking it is a question only of this specific idea). Why then is he entitled to conclude that ‘this organism is the constitution of the state'? Why not ‘this organism is the solar system'? The reason is that he later defined the various members of the state as the various powers. Now the statement that ‘the various members of the state are the various powers' is an empirical truth and cannot be presented as a philosophical discovery, nor has it in any way emerged as a result of an earlier development. But by defining the organism as the development of the idea, by speaking of the differences of the Idea, then by interpolating the concrete data of the various powers the development assumes the appearance of having arrived at a determinate content. Following the statement that the patriotic sentiment acquires its specifically determined content from the various members of the organism of the state' Hegel was not justified in continuing with the expression, ‘This organism. . .,' but rather with ‘the organism is the development of the idea, etc.' At least what he says applies to every organism, and there is no predicate which justifies the subject, ‘this organism'. What Hegel really wants to achieve is the determination of the organism as the constitution of the state. But there is no bridge by which one can pass from the universal idea of the organism to the particular idea of the organism of the state or the constitution of the state, nor will there ever be. The opening statement speaks of the various members of the organism of the state which are later defined as the various powers. Thus the only thing said is that the various powers of the organism of the state, or the state organism of the various powers, is the political constitution of the state. Accordingly, the bridge to the political constitution does not go from the organism of the Idea and its differences, etc., but from the presupposed concept of the various powers or the organism of the state.

In truth, Hegel has done nothing but resolve the constitution of the state into the universal, abstract idea of the organism; but in appearance and in his own opinion he has developed the determinate reality out of the universal Idea. He has made the subject of the idea into a product and predicate of the Idea. He does not develop his thought out of what is objective [aus dem Gegenstand], but what is objective in accordance with a ready-made thought which has its origin in the abstract sphere of logic. It is not a question of developing the determinate idea of the political constitution, but of giving the political constitution a relation to the abstract Idea, of classifying it as a member of its (the idea's) life history. This is an obvious mystification.

Another determination is that the specific character of the various powers is fixed by the nature of the concept, and for that reason the universal engenders them in a necessary way. Therefore the various powers do not have their specific character by reason of their own nature, but by reason of an alien one. And just as the necessity is not derived from their own nature still less is it critically demonstrated. On the contrary, their realisation is predestined by the nature of the concept, sealed in the holy register of the Santa Casa (the Logic). The soul of objects, in this case that of the state, is complete and predestined before its body, which ‘ is, properly speaking, mere appearance. The ‘concept' is the Son within the ‘Idea', within God the Father, the agens, the determining, differentiating principle. Here ‘Idea' and ‘Concept' are abstractions rendered independent.

§ 270. (1) The abstract actuality or the substantiality of the state consists iii the fact that its end is the universal interest as such and the conservation therein of particular interests since the universal interest is the substance of these. (2) But this substantiality of the state is also its necessity, since its substantiality is divided into the distinct spheres of its activity which correspond to the moments of its concept, and these spheres, owing to this substantiality, are thus actually fixed determinate characteristics of the state, i.e., its powers. (3) But this very substantiality of the state is mind knowing and willing itself after passing through the forming process of education. The state, therefore, knows what it wills and knows it in its universality, i.e., as something thought. Hence it works and acts by reference to consciously adopted ends, known principles, and laws which are not merely implicit but are actually present to consciousness; and further, it acts with precise knowledge of existing conditions and circumstances, inasmuch as its actions have a bearing on these.

(We will look at the Remark to this paragraph, which treats the relationship of state and church, later.)

The employment of these logical categories deserves altogether special attention.

(1) The abstract actuality or the substantiality of the state consists in the fact that its end is the universal interest as such and the conservation therein of particular interests since the universal interest is the substance of these.

That the universal interest as such and as the subsistence of particular interests is the end of the state is precisely the abstractly defined actuality and subsistence of the state. The state is not actual without this end. This is the essential object of its will, but at the same time it is merely a very general definition of this object. This end qua Being is the principle of subsistence for the state.

(2) But this (abstract actuality or) substantiality of the state is its necessity, since its substantiality is divided into the distinct spheres of its activity which correspond to the moments of its concept, and these spheres, owing to their substantiality, are thus actually fixed' determinate characteristics of the state, i.e., its powers.

This abstract actuality or substantiality is its (the state's) necessity, since its actuality is divided into distinct spheres of activity, spheres whose distinction is rationally determined and which are, for that reason, fixed determinate characteristics. The abstract actuality of the state, its substantiality, is necessity inasmuch as the genuine end of the state and the genuine subsistence of the whole is realised only in the subsistence of the distinct spheres of the state's activity.

Obviously the first definition of the state's actuality was abstract; it cannot be regarded as a simple actuality; it must be regarded as activity, and as a differentiated activity.

The abstract actuality or the substantiality of the state ... is... its necessity, since its substantiality is divided into the distinct spheres of its activity which correspond to the moments of its concept, and these spheres, owing to this substantiality, are thus actually fixed determinate characteristics of the state, i.e., its powers.

The condition of substantiality is the condition of necessity; i.e., the substance appears to be divided into independent but essentially determined actualities or activities. These abstractions can be applied to any actual thing. In so far as the state is first considered according to the model of the abstract it will subsequently have to be considered according to the model of concrete actuality, necessity, and realised difference.

(3) But this very substantiality of the state is mind knowing and willing itself after passing through the forming process of education. The state, therefore, knows what it wills and knows it in its universality, i.e., as something thought. Hence it works and acts by reference to consciously adopted ends, known principles, and laws which are not merely implicit but are actually present to consciousness; and further, it acts with Precise knowledge of existing conditions and circumstances, inasmuch as its actions have a bearing on these.

Now let's translate this entire paragraph into common language as follows:

1. The self-knowing and self-willing mind is the substance of the state; (the educated self-assured mind is the subject and the foundation, the autonomy of the state).

2. The universal interest, and within it the conservation of the particular interests, is the universal end and content of this mind, the existing substance of the state, the nature qua state of the self-knowing and willing mind.

3. The self-knowing and willing mind, the self-assured, educated mind attains the actualisation of this abstract content only as a differentiated activity, as the existence of various powers, as an organically structured power.

Certain things should be noted concerning Hegel's presentation.

1. Abstract actuality, necessity (or substantial difference), substantiality, thus the categories of abstract logic, are made subjects. Indeed, abstract actuality and necessity are called ‘its', the state's, actuality and necessity; however (1) ‘it' - i.e., abstract actuality or substantiality - is the state's necessity; (2) abstract actuality or substantiality is what is divided into the distinct spheres of its activity which correspond to the moments of its concept. The moments of its concept are, ‘owing to this substantiality ... thus actually fixed determinations, powers. (3) Substantiality is no longer taken to be an abstract characteristic of the state, as its substantiality; rather, as such it is made subject, and then in conclusion it is said, ‘but this very substantiality of the state is mind knowing and willing itself after passing through the forming process of education'.

2. Also it is not said in conclusion that the educated, etc., mind is substantiality, but on the contrary that substantiality is the educated, etc., mind. Thus mind becomes the predicate of its predicate.

3. Substantiality, after having been defined (1) as the universal end of the state, then (2) as the various powers, is defined (3) as the educated, self-knowing and willing, actual mind. The real point of departure, the self-knowing and willing mind, without which the end of the state and the powers of the state would be illusions devoid of principle or support, inessential and even impossible existents, appears to be only the final predicate of substantiality, which had itself previously been defined as the universal end and as the various powers of the state. Had the actual mind been taken as the starting point, with the universal end its content, then the various powers would be its modes of self-actualisation, its real or material existence, whose determinate character would have had to develop out of the nature of its end. But because the point of departure is the Idea, or Substance as subject and real being, the actual subject appears to be only the final predicate of the abstract predicate.
The end of the state and the powers of the state are mystified in that they take the appearance of modes of existence of the substance, drawn out of and divorced from their real existence, the self-knowing and willing mind, the educated mind.

4. The concrete content, the actual determination appears to be formal, and the wholly abstract formal determination appears to be the concrete content. What is essential to determinate political realities is not that they can be considered as such but rather that they can be considered, in their most abstract configuration, as logical-metaphysical determinations. Hegel's true interest is not the philosophy of right but logic. The philosophical task is not the embodiment of thought in determinate political realities, but the evaporation of these realities in abstract thought. The philosophical moment is not the logic of fact but the fact of logic. Logic is not used to prove the nature of the state, but the state is used to prove the logic.

There are three concrete determinations:

1. the universal interest and the conservation therein of the particular interests as the end of the state;

2. the various powers as the actualisation of this end of the state;

3. the educated, self-assured, willing and acting mind as the subject of this end and its actualisation.

These concrete determinations are considered to be extrinsic, to be hors d'oeuvres. Their importance to philosophy is that in them the state takes on the following logical significance:

1. abstract actuality or substantiality;

2. the condition of substantiality passes over into the condition of necessity or substantial actuality;

3. substantial actuality is in fact concept, or subjectivity.

With the exclusion of these concrete determinations, which can just as well be exchanged for those of another sphere such as physics which has other concrete determinations, and which are accordingly unessential, we have before us a chapter of the Logic.

The substance must be ‘divided into the distinct spheres of its activity which correspond to the moments of its concept, and these spheres, owing to this substantiality, are thus actually fixed determinate characteristics of the state'. The gist of this sentence belongs to logic and is ready-made prior to the philosophy of right. That these moments of the concept are, in the present instance, distinct spheres of its (the state's) activity and the fixed determinate characteristics of the state, or powers of the state, is a parenthesis belonging to the philosophy of right, to the order of political fact. In this way the entire philosophy of right is only a parenthesis to logic. It goes without saying that the parenthesis is only an hors d'oeuvre of the real development. Cf. for example the Addition to § 270.:

Necessity consists in this, that the whole is sundered into the differences of the concept and that this divided whole yields a fixed and permanent determinacy, though one which is not fossilised but perpetually recreates itself in its dissolution. Cf also the Logic.

§ 271. The constitution of the state is, in the first place, the organisation of the state and the self-related process of its organic life, a process whereby it differentiates its moments within itself and develops them to self-subsistence.

Secondly, the state is an individual, unique and exclusive, and therefore related to others. Thus it turns its differentiating activity outward and accordingly establishes within itself the ideality of its subsisting inward differentiations.

Addition: The inner side of the state as such is the civil power while its outward tendency is the military power, although this has a fixed place inside the state itself

Part 2. The Constitution §§ 272 - 286

§ 272. The constitution is rational in so far as the state inwardly differentiates and determines its activity in accordance with the nature of the concept. The result of this is that each of these powers is in itself the totality of the constitution, because each contains the other moments and has them effective in itself, and because the moments, being expressions of the differentiation of the concept, simply abide in their ideality and constitute nothing but a single individual whole.

Thus the constitution is rational in so far as its moments can be reduced to abstract logical moments. The state has to differentiate and determine its activity not in accordance with its specific nature, but in accordance with the nature of the Concept, which is the mystified mobile of abstract thought. The reason of the constitution is thus abstract logic and not the concept of the state. In place of the concept of the constitution we get the constitution of the Concept. Thought is not conformed to the nature of the state, but the state to a ready made system of thought.

§ 273. The state as a political entity is thus (how 'thus'?) cleft into three substantive divisions:

(a) the power to determine and establish the universal - the Legislature;
(b) the power to subsume single cases and the spheres of particularity
(c) the power of subjectivity, as the will with the power of ultimate decision the Crown. In the crown, the different powers are bound into an individual unity which is thus at once the apex and basis of the whole, i.e., of constitutional monarchy.

We will return to this division after examining the particulars of its explanation.

§ 274. Mind is actual only as that which it knows itself to be, and the state, as the mind of a nation, is both the law permeating all relationships within the state and also, at the same time the manners and consciousness of its citizens. It follows, therefore, that the constitution of any given nation depends in general on the character and development of its self-consciousness. In its self-consciousness its subjective freedom is rooted and so, therefore, is the actuality of its constitution ... Hence every nation has the constitution appropriate to it and suitable for it.

The only thing that follows from Hegel's reasoning is that a state n which the character and development of self-consciousness and the constitution contradict one another is no real state. That the constitution which was the product of a bygone self-consciousness can become an oppressive fetter for an advanced self-consciousness, etc., etc., are certainly trivialities. However, what would follow is only the demand for a constitution having within itself the characteristic and principle of advancing in step with consciousness, with actual man, which is possible only when man has become the principle of the constitution. Here Hegel is a sophist.

(a) The Crown
§ 275. The power of the crown contains in itself the three moments of the whole (see 5 :272) viz. [a] the universality of the constitution and the laws; [b] counsel, which refers the particular to the universal; and [c] the moment of ultimate decision, as the self-determination to which everything else reverts and from which everything else derives the beginning of its actuality. This absolute self-determination constitutes the distinctive principle of the power of the crown as such, and with this principle our exposition is to begin.

All the first part of this paragraph says is that both the universality of the constitution and the laws and counsel, or the reference of the particular to the universal, are the crown. The crown does not stand outside the universality of the constitution and the laws once the crown is understood to be the crown of the (constitutional) monarch.

What Hegel really wants, however, is nothing other than that the universality of the constitution and the laws is the crown, the sovereignty of the state. So it is wrong to make the crown the subject and, inasmuch as the power of the sovereign can also be understood by the crown, to make it appear as if the sovereign, were the master and subject of this moment. Let us first turn to what Hegel declares to be the distinctive principle of the power of the crown as such, and we find that it is 'the moment of ultimate decision, as the self-determination to which everything else reverts and from which everything else derives the beginning of its actuality', in other words this 'absolute self-determination'.

Here Hegel is really saying that the actual, i.e., individual will is the power of the crown. § 12 says it this way:

When ... the will gives itself the form of individuality..., this constitutes the resolution of the will, and it is only in so far as it resolves that the will is an actual will at all.

In so far as this moment of ultimate decision or absolute self-determination is divorced from the universality of content [i.e., the constitution and laws,] and the particularity of counsel it is actual will as arbitrary choice [Willkür]. In other words: arbitrary choice's the power of the crown, or the power of the crown is arbitrary choice.

§ 276. The fundamental characteristic of the state as a political entity is the substantial unity, i.e., the ideality, of its moments. [a] In this unity, the particular powers and their activities are dissolved and yet retained. They are retained, however, only in the sense that their authority is no independent one but only one of the order and breadth determined by the Idea of the whole; from its might they originate, and they are its flexible limbs while it is their single self.

Addition: Much the same thing as this ideality of the moments in the state occurs with life in the physical organism.

It is evident that Hegel speaks only of the idea of the particular powers and their activities. They are to have authority only of the order and breadth determined by the idea of the whole; they are to originate from its might. That it should be so lies in the idea of the organism. But it would have to be shown how this is to be achieved. For in the state conscious reason must prevail; [and] substantial, bare internal and therefore bare external necessity, the accidental entangling of the powers and activities cannot be presented as something rational.

§ 277. [b] The particular activities and agencies of the state are its essential moments and therefore are proper to it. The individual functionaries and agents are attached to their office not on the strength of their immediate personality, but only on the strength of their universal and objective qualities. Hence it is in an external and contingent way that these offices are linked with particular persons, and therefore the functions and powers of the state cannot be private property.

It is self-evident that if particular activities and agencies are designated as activities and agencies of the state, as state functions and state powers, then they are not private but state property. That is a tautology.

The activities and agencies of the state are attached to individuals (the state is only active through individuals), but not to the individual as physical but political; they are attached to the political quality of the individual. Hence it is ridiculous to say, as Hegel does, that 'it is in an external and contingent way that these offices are linked with particular persons'. On the contrary, they are linked with them by a vinculum substantiale, by reason of an essential quality of particular persons. These offices are the natural action of this essential quality. Hence the absurdity of Hegel's conceiving the activities and agencies of the state in the abstract, and particular individuality in opposition to it. He forgets that particular individuality is a human individual, and that the activities and agencies of the state are human activities. He forgets that the nature of the particular person is not his beard, his blood, his abstract Physis, but rather his social quality, and that the activities of the state, etc., are nothing but the modes of existence and operation of the social qualities of men. Thus it is evident that individuals, in so far as they are the bearers of the state's activities and powers, are to be considered according to their social and not their private quality.

§ 278. These two points [a] and [b] constitute the sovereignty of the state. That is to say, sovereignty depends on the fact that the particular functions and powers of the state are not self-subsistent or firmly grounded either on their own account or in the particular will of the individual functionaries, but have their roots ultimately in the unity of the state as their single self.

Remark to § 278.: Despotism means any state of affairs where law has disappeared and where the particular will as such, whether of a monarch or a mob ... counts as law, or rather takes the place of law; while it is precisely in legal, constitutional government that sovereignty is to be found as the moment of ideality - the ideality of the particular spheres and functions. That is to say, sovereignty brings it about that each of these spheres is not something independent, self-subsistent in its aims and modes of working, something immersed solely in itself, but that instead, even in these aims and modes of working, each is determined by and dependent on the aim of the whole (the aim which has been denominated in general terms by the rather vague expression 'welfare of the state').
This ideality manifests itself in a twofold way:
(i) In times of peace, the particular spheres and functions pursue the path of satisfying their particular aims and minding their own business, and it is in part only by way of the unconscious necessity of the thing that their self-seeking is turned into a contribution to reciprocal support and to the support of the whole ... In part, however, it is by the direct influence of higher authority that they are not only continually brought back to the aims of the whole and restricted accordingly .... but are also constrained to perform direct services for the support of the whole.
(ii) In a situation of exigency, however, whether in home or foreign affairs, the organism of which these particular spheres are members fuses into the single concept of sovereignty. The sovereign is entrusted with the salvation of the state at the sacrifice of these particular authorities whose powers are valid at other times, and it is then that that ideality comes into its proper actuality.

Thus this ideality is not developed into a comprehended, rational system. In times of peace it appears either as merely an external constraint effected by the ruling power on private life through direct influence of higher authority, or a blind uncomprehended result of self-seeking. This ideality has its proper actuality only in the state's situation of war or exigency, such that here its essence is expressed as the actual, existent state's situation of war and exigency, while its 'peaceful' situation is precisely the war and exigency of self-seeking.

Accordingly, sovereignty, the ideality of the state, exists merely as internal necessity, as idea. And Hegel is satisfied with that because it is a question merely of the idea. Sovereignty thus exists on the one hand only as unconscious, blind substance. We will become equally well acquainted with its other actuality.

§ 279. Sovereignty, at first simply the universal thought of this ideality, comes into existence only as subjectivity sure of itself, as the will's abstract and to that extent ungrounded self-determination in which finality of decision is rooted. This is the strictly individual aspect of the state, and in virtue of this alone is the state one. The truth of subjectivity, however, is attained only in a subject, and the truth of personality only in a person; and in a constitution which has become mature as a realisation of rationality, each of the three moments of the concept has its explicitly actual and separate formation. Hence this absolutely decisive moment of the whole is not individuality in general, but a single individual, the monarch.

1. Sovereignty, at first simply the universal thought of this ideality, comes into existence only as subjectivity sure of itself.. The truth of subjectivity is attained only in a subject, and the truth of personality only in a person. In a constitution which has become mature as a realisation of rationality, each of the three moments of the concept has ... explicitly actual and separate formation.

2. Sovereignty comes into existence only ... as the will's abstract and to that extent ungrounded self-determination in which finality of decision is rooted. This is the strictly individual aspect of the state, and in virtue of this alone is the state one ... (and in a constitution which has become mature as a realisation of rationality, each of the three moments of the concept has its explicitly actual and separate formation). Hence this absolutely decisive moment of the whole is not individuality in general, but a single individual, the monarch.

The first sentence says only that the universal thought of this ideality, whose sorry existence we have just seen, would have to be the self-conscious work of subjects and, as such, exist for and in them.

Had Hegel started with the real subjects as the bases of the state it would not have been necessary for him to let the state become subjectified in a mystical way. 'However, the truth of subjectivity', says Hegel, 'is attained only in a subject, and the truth of personality only in a person.' This too is a mystification. Subjectivity is a characteristic of subjects and personality a characteristic of the person. Instead of considering them to be predicates of their subjects, Hegel makes the predicates independent and then lets them be subsequently and mysteriously converted into their subjects.

The existence of the predicate is the subject; thus the subject is the existence of subjectivity, etc. Hegel makes the predicates, the object independent, but independent as separated from their real independence, their subject. Subsequently, and because of this, the real subject appears to be the result; whereas one has to start from the real subject and examine its objectification. The mystical substance becomes the real subject and the real subject appears to be something else, namely a moment of the mystical substance. Precisely because Hegel starts from the predicates of universal determination instead of from the real Ens (hypokimenou, subject), and because there must be a bearer of this determination, the mystical idea becomes this bearer. This is the dualism: Hegel does not consider the universal to be the actual essence of the actual, finite thing, i.e. of the existing determinate thing, nor the real Ens to be the true subject of the infinite.

Accordingly, sovereignty, the essence of the state, is here first conceived to be an independent being; it is objectified. Then, of course, this object must again become subject. However the subject then appears to be a self-incarnation of sovereignty, which is nothing but the objectified spirit of the state's subjects.

This basic defect of the development aside, let us consider the first sentence of the paragraph. As it stands it says nothing more than that sovereignty, the ideality of the state as person, as subject, exists evidently as many persons, many subjects, since no single person absorbs in himself the sphere of personality, nor any single subject the sphere of subjectivity. What kind of ideality of the state would it have to be which, instead of being the actual self-consciousness of the citizens and the communal soul of the state, were one person, one subject [?] Nor has Hegel developed any more with this sentence. But consider now the second sentence which is joined with this one. What is important to Hegel is representing the monarch as the actual, 'God-man', the actual incarnation of the Idea.

§ 279. Sovereignty ... comes into existence only ... as the will's abstract and to that extent ungrounded self-determination in which finality of decision is rooted. This is the strictly individual aspect of the state, and in virtue of this alone is the state one... In a constitution which has become mature as a realisation of rationality, each of the three moments of the concept has its explicitly actual and separate formation. Hence this absolutely decisive moment of the whole is not individuality in general, but a single individual, the monarch.

We previously called attention to this sentence. The moment of deciding, of arbitrary yet determinate decision is the sovereign power of will in general. The idea of sovereign power, as Hegel develops it, is nothing other than the idea of the arbitrary, of the will's decision.

But even while conceiving of sovereignty as the ideality of the state, the actual determination of the part through the idea of the whole, Hegel now makes it 'the will's abstract and to that extent ungrounded self-determination in which finality of decision is rooted. This is the strictly individual aspect of the state'. Before, the discussion was about subjectivity, now it's about individuality. The state as sovereign must be one, one individual, it must possess individuality. The state is one not stay in this individuality; individuality is only the natural moment of its oneness, the state's determination as nature [Naturbestimmung]. 'Hence this absolutely decisive moment of the whole is not individuality in general, but a single individual, the monarch.' How so? Because 'each of the three moments of the concept has its explicitly actual and separate formation'. One moment of the concept is oneness, or unity; alone this is not yet one individual. And what kind of constitution would it have to be in which universality, particularity, and unity each had its explicitly actual and separate formation? Because it is altogether a question of no abstraction but of the state, of society, Hegel's classification can be accepted. What follows from that? The citizen as determining the universal is lawgiver, and as the one deciding, as actually willing, is sovereign. Is that supposed to mean that the individuality of the state's will is one individual, a particular individual distinct from all others? Universality too, legislation, has an explicitly actual and separate formation. Could one conclude from that that legislation is these particular individuals[?]
The Common Man:

2. The monarch has the sovereign power, or sovereignty.
3. Sovereignty does what it wills.

Hegel:

2. The sovereignty of the state is the monarch.
3. Sovereignty is 'the will's abstract and to that extent ungrounded self-determination in which finality of decision is rooted'.

Hegel makes all the attributes of the contemporary European constitutional monarch into absolute self-determinations of the will. He does not say the will of the monarch is the final decision, but rather the final decision of the will is the monarch. The first statement is empirical, the second twists the empirical fact into a metaphysical axiom. Hegel joins together the two subjects, sovereignty as subjectivity sure of itself and sovereignty as ungrounded self-determination of the will, as the individual Will, in order to construct out of that the Idea as 'one individual'.

It is evident that self-assured subjectivity also must actually will, must will as unity, as an individual. But who ever doubted that the state acts through individuals? If Hegel wanted to develop the idea that the state must have one individual as representative of its individual oneness, then he did not establish the monarch as this individual. The only positive result of this paragraph is that in the state the monarch is the moment of individual will, of ungrounded self-determination, of caprice or arbitrariness.

Hegel's Remark to this paragraph is so peculiar that we must examine it closely:

Remark to § 279. The immanent development of a science, the derivation of its entire content from the concept in its simplicity ... exhibits this peculiarity, that one and the same concept - the will in this instance - which begins by being abstract (because it is at the beginning), maintains its identity even while it consolidates its specific determinations, and that too solely by its own activity, and in this way gains a concrete content. Hence it is the basic moment of personality, abstract at the start in immediate rights, which has matured itself through its various forms of subjectivity, and now - at the stage of absolute rights, of the state, of the completely concrete objectivity of the will - has become the personality of the state, its certainty of itself. This last reabsorbs all particularity into its single self, cuts short the weighing of pros and cons between which it lets itself oscillate perpetually now this way and now that, and by saying 'I will', makes its decision and so inaugurates all activity and actuality.

To begin with it is not a peculiarity of science that the fundamental concept of the thing always reappears.

But also no advance has then taken place. Abstract personality was the subject of abstract right; there has been no progress, because as personality of the state it remains abstract personality. Hegel should not have been surprised at the real person - and persons make the state - reappearing everywhere as his essence. He should have been surprised at the reverse, and yet still more at the person as personality of the state reappearing in the same impoverished abstraction as does the person of private right.

Hegel here defines the monarch as the personality of the state, its certainty of itself. The monarch is personified sovereignty, sovereignty become man, incarnate state - [or political - ] consciousness, whereby all other persons are thus excluded from this sovereignty, from personality, and from state - [or political - ] consciousness. At the same time however Hegel can give this 'Souverainété - Personne' no more content than 'I will', the moment of arbitrariness in the will. The state-reason and state-consciousness is a unique empirical person to the exclusion of all others, but this personified Reason has no content except the abstract on, 'I will'. L'Etat c'est moi.

Further, however, personality like subjectivity in general, as infinitely self-related, has its truth (to be precise, its most elementary, immediate truth) only in a person, in a subject existing 'for' himself, and what exists 'for' itself is just simply a unit.

It is obvious that personality and subjectivity, being only predicates of the person and the subject, exist only as person and subject; and indeed that the person is one. But Hegel needed to go further, for clearly the one has truth only as many one's. The predicate, the essence, never exhausts the spheres of its existence in a single one but in many one's.

Instead of this Hegel concludes: 'The personality of the state is actual only as one person, the monarch.'

Thus, because subjectivity is actual only as subject, and the subject actual only as one, the personality of the state is actual only as one person. A beautiful conclusion. Hegel could just as well conclude that because the individual man is one the human species is only a single man.

Personality expresses the concept as such; but at the same time the person enshrines the actuality of the concept, and only when the concept is determined as a person is it the Idea or truth.

To be sure, personality is merely an abstraction without the person, but only in its species-existence as persons is person the actual idea of personality.

A so-called 'artificial [moralische] person', be it a society, a community, or a family, however inherently concrete it may be, contains personality only abstractly, as one moment of itself In an 'artificial person', personality has not yet achieved its true mode of existence. The state, however, is precisely this totality in which the moments of the concept have attained the actuality correspondent to their degree of truth.

A great confusion prevails here. The artificial person, society, etc., is called abstract, precisely those species-forms [Gattutigsgestaltungen] in which the actual person brings his actual content to existence, objectifies himself, and leaves behind the abstraction of 'person quand même'. Instead of recognising this actualisation of the person as the most concrete thing, the state is to have the priority in order that the moments of the concept, individuality, attain a mystical existence. Rationality does not consist in the reason of the actual person achieving actuality, but in the moments of the abstract concept achieving it.

The concept of the monarch is therefore of all concepts the hardest for ratiocination, i.e., for the method of reflection employed by the Understanding. This method refuses to move beyond isolated categories and hence here again knows only raisonnenient, finite points of view, and deductive argumentation. Consequently it exhibits the dignity of the monarch as something deduced, not only in its form but in its essence. The truth is, however, that to be something not deduced but purely self-originating is precisely the concept of monarchy. Akin then to this reasoning (to be sure!) is the idea of treating the monarch's right as grounded in the authority of God, since it is in its divinity that its unconditional character is contained. [Remark to § 279]

In a certain sense every inevitable existent is purely self-originating; in this respect the monarch's louse as well as the monarch. Hegel, in saying that, has not said something special about the monarch. But should something specifically distinct from all other objects of science and of the philosophy of right be said about the monarch, then this would be real foolishness, correct only in so far as the 'one Person-idea' is something derived only from the imagination and not the intellect.

We may speak of the 'sovereignty of the people' in the sense that any people whatever is self-subsistent vis-a-vis other peoples, and constitutes a state of its own, etc. [Remark to § 279]

That is a triviality. If the sovereign is the actual sovereignty of the state then the sovereign could necessarily be considered vis-a-vis others as a self-subsistent state, even without the people. But he is sovereign in so far as he represents the unity of the people, and thus he is himself merely a representative, a symbol of the sovereignty of the people. The sovereignty of the people is not due to him but on the contrary he is due to it.

We may also speak of sovereignty in home affairs residing in the people, provided that we are speaking generally about the whole state and meaning only what was shown above (see §§ 277-8), namely that it is to the state that sovereignty belongs.

As though the people [das Volk] were not the real state. The state is an abstraction; the people alone is the concrete. And it is noteworthy that Hegel, who without hesitation ascribes living qualities to the abstraction, ascribes a living quality like that of sovereignty to the concrete [ - i.e. to the people - ] only with hesitation and conditions.

The usual sense, however, in which men have recently begun to speak of the sovereignty of the people is that it is something opposed to the sovereignty existent in the monarch. So opposed to the sovereignty of the monarch, the sovereignty of the people is one of the confused notions based on the wild idea of the 'people'.

The confused notions and the wild idea are only here on Hegel's pages. Certainly if sovereignty exists in the monarch then it is foolishness to speak of an opposed sovereignty in the people, for it lies in the concept of sovereignty that it can have no double and absolutely opposed existence. But:

1. the question is exactly: Is not the sovereignty existent in the monarch an 1 illusion? Sovereignty of the monarch or sovereignty of the people, that is the question;

2. a sovereignty of the people in opposition to that existent in the monarch can also be spoken of. But then it is not a question of one and the same sovereignty taking form on two sides but rather of two completely opposed concepts of sovereignty, one such that it can come to existence in a monarch, the other such that it can come to existence only in a people. This is like asking, is God the sovereign or is man? One of the two is a fiction [eine Unwarheit] even though an existing fiction.

Taken without its monarch and the articulation of the whole which is the indispensable and direct concomitant of monarchy, the people is a formless mass and no longer a state. It lacks every one of those determinate characteristics - sovereignty, government, judges, magistrates, class-divisions [Stände], etc., - which are to be found only in a whole which is inwardly organised. By the very emergence into a people's life of moments of this kind which have a bearing on an organisation, on political life, a people ceases to be that indeterminate abstraction which, when represented in a quite general way, is called the 'people'.

This whole thing is a tautology. If a people has a monarch and an articulation which is its indispensable and direct concomitant, i.e., if it is articulated as a monarchy, then extracted from this articulation it is certainly a formless mass and a quite general notion.

If by 'sovereignty of the people' is understood a republican form of government, or to speak more specifically ... a democratic form, then... 1 such a notion cannot be further discussed in face of the Idea of the state in its full development.

That is certainly correct if one has only such a notion and no developed idea of democracy.

Democracy is the truth of monarchy, monarchy is not the truth of democracy. Monarchy is necessarily democracy in contradiction with itself, whereas the monarchial moment is no contradiction within democracy. Monarchy cannot, while democracy can be understood in terms of itself In democracy none of the moments obtains a significance other than what befits it. Each is really only a moment of the whole Demos. In monarchy one part determines the character of the whole; the entire constitution must be modified according to the immutable head. Democracy is the generic constitution; monarchy is a species, and indeed a poor one. Democracy is content and form; monarchy should be only form, but it adulterates the content.

In monarchy the whole, the people, is subsumed under one of its modes of existence,. the political constitution; in democracy the constitution itself appears only as one determination, and indeed as the self-determination of the people. In monarchy we have the people of the constitution, in democracy the constitution of the people. Democracy is the resolved mystery of all constitutions. Here the constitution not only in itself, according to essence, but according to existence and actuality is returned to its real ground, actual man, the actual people, and established as its own work. The constitution appears as what it is, the free product of men. One could say that this also applies in a certain respect to constitutional monarchy; only the specific difference of democracy is that here the constitution is in general only one moment of the people's existence, that is to say the political constitution does not form the state for itself.

Hegel proceeds from the state and makes man into the subjectified state; democracy starts with man and makes the state objectified man. just as it is not religion that creates man but man who creates religion, so it is not the constitution that creates the people but the people which creates the constitution. In a certain respect democracy is to all other forms of the state what Christianity is to all other religions. Christianity is the religion kat exohin, the essence of religion, deified man under the form of a particular religion. In the same way democracy is the essence of every political constitution, socialised man under the form of a particular constitution of the state. It stands related to other constitutions as the genus to its species; only here the genus itself appears as an existent, and therefore opposed as a particular species to those existents which do not conform to the essence. Democracy relates to all other forms of the state as their Old Testament. Man does not exist because of the law but rather the law exists for the good of man. Democracy is human existence, while in the other political forms man has only legal existence. That is the fundamental difference of democracy.

All remaining forms of the state are certain, determined, particular forms of the state. In democracy the formal principle is simultaneously the material principle. For that reason it is the first true unity of the universal and the particular. In monarchy for example, or in the republic as merely a particular form of the state, political man has his particular and separate existence beside the unpolitical, private man. Property, contract, marriage, civil society appear here (just as Hegel quite rightly develops them for abstract forms of the state, except that he means to develop the Idea of the state) as particular modes of existence alongside the political state; that is, they appear as the content to which the political state relates as organising form, or really only as the determining, limiting intelligence which says now 'yes' now 'no' without any content of its own. In democracy the political state, as placed alongside this content and differentiated from it, is itself merely a particular content, like a particular form of existence of the people. In monarchy, for example, this particular entity, the political constitution, has the meaning of the universal which governs and determines all the particulars. In democracy the state as particular is only particular, and as universal it is the real universal, i.e., it is nothing definite in distinction from the other content. The modern French have conceived it thus: In true democracy the political state disappears [der politische Staat untergehe]. This is correct inasmuch as qua political state, qua constitution it is no longer equivalent to the whole.

In all states distinct from democracy the state, the law, the constitution is dominant without really governing, that is, materially permeating the content of the remaining non-political spheres. In democracy the constitution, the law, the state, so far as it is political constitution, is itself only a self-determination of the people, and a determinate content of the people.

Furthermore it is evident that all forms of the state have democracy for their truth, and for that reason are false to the extent that they are not democracy.

In the ancient state the political state shaped the content of the state, with the other spheres being excluded; the modern state is an accommodation between the political and the non-political state.

In democracy the abstract state has ceased to be the governing moment. The struggle between monarchy and republic is itself still a struggle within the abstract form of the state. The political republic [ - that is, the republic merely as political constitution - ] is democracy within the abstract form of the state. Hence the abstract state-form of democracy is the republic; but here [in true democracy] it ceases to be mere political constitution.

Property, etc., in brief the entire content of law and the state is, with small modification, the same in North America as in Prussia. There, accordingly, the republic is a mere state form just as the monarchy is here. The content of the state lies outside these constitutions. Hence Hegel is right when he says that the political state is the constitution, i.e., that the material state is not political. Merely an external identity, a mutual determination, obtains here. It was most difficult to form the political state, the constitution, out of the various moments of the life of the people. It was developed as the universal reason in opposition to the other spheres i.e., as something opposed to them. The historical task then consisted in their revindication. But the particular spheres, in doing that, are not conscious of the fact that their private essence declines in relation to the opposite essence of the constitution, or political state, and that its opposite existence is nothing but the affirmation of their own alienation. The political constitution was until now the religious sphere, the religion of popular life, the heaven of its universality in opposition to the earthly existence of its actuality. The political sphere was the sole sphere of the state within the state, the sole sphere in which the content, like the form, was species-content, the true universal, but at the same time in such a way that, because this sphere opposed the others, its content also became formal and particular. Political life in the modern sense is the Scholasticism of popular life. Monarchy is the fullest expression of this alienation. The republic is the negation of this alienation within its own sphere. It is obvious that the political constitution as such is perfected for the first time when the private spheres have attained independent existence. Where commerce and property in land are not free, not yet autonomous, there is also not yet the political constitution. The Middle Ages was the democracy of nonfreedom.

The abstraction of the state as such belongs only to modern times because the abstraction of private life belongs only to modern times. The abstraction of the political state is a modern product.

In the Middle Ages there was serf, feudal property, trade corporation, corporation of scholars, etc., that is, in the Middle Ages property, trade, society, man was political; the material content of the state was fixed by reason of its form; every private sphere had a political character or was a political sphere, or again, politics was also the character of the private spheres. In the Middle Ages the political constitution was the constitution of private property, but only because the constitution of private property was a political one. In the Middle Ages popular life and state [i.e., political] life were identical. Man was the actual principle of the state, but he was unfree man. It was therefore the democracy of unfreedom, accomplished alienation. The abstract, reflected opposition [between popular life and state-, or political-life] belong only to modern times. The Middle Ages was the real dualism; modern times is the abstract dualism.

At the stage at which constitutions are divided, as above mentioned, into democracy, aristocracy, and monarchy, the point of view taken is that of a still substantial unity, abiding in itself, without having yet embarked on its infinite differentiation and the plumbing of its own depths. At that stage, the moment of the filial, self-determining decision of the will does not come on the scene explicitly in its owl) proper actuality as an organic moment immanent in the state. [Remark to § 279]

In immediate monarchy, democracy, aristocracy there is yet no political constitution in distinction from the actual material state or from the remaining content of popular life. The political state does not yet appear as the form of the material state. Either, as in Greece, the res publica was the real private concern, the real content of the citizens and the private man was slave, that is, the political state as political was the true and sole content of the citizen's life and will; or, as in Asiatic despotism, the political state was nothing but the private will of a single individual, and the political state, like the material state, was slave. What distinguishes the modern state from these states in which a substantial unity between people and state obtained is not that the various moments of the constitution are formed into particular actuality, as Hegel would have it, but rather that the constitution itself has been formed into a particular actuality alongside the real life of the people, the political state has become the constitution of the rest of the state.

§ 280. This ultimate self in which the will of the state is concentrated is, when thus taken in abstraction, a single self and therefore is immediate individuality. Hence its natural character is implied in its very conception. The monarch, therefore, is essentially characterised as this individual, in abstraction from all his other characteristics, and this individual is raised to the dignity of monarchy in an immediate, natural fashion, i.e., through his birth in the course of nature.

We have already heard that subjectivity is subject and that the subject is necessarily an empirical individual, a one. Now we are told that the concept of naturality, of corporeality, is implied in the concept of immediate individuality. Hegel has proven nothing but what is self-evident, namely, that subjectivity exists only as a corporeal individual, and what is obvious, namely, that natural birth appertains to the corporeal individual.

Hegel thinks he has proven that the subjectivity of the state, sovereignty, the monarch, is 'essentially characterised as this individual, in abstraction from all his other characteristics, and this individual is raised to the dignity of monarch in an immediate, natural fashion, i.e., through his birth in the course of nature'. Sovereignty, monarchial dignity, would thus be born. The body of the monarch determines his dignity. Thus at the highest point of the state bare Physis rather than reason would be the determining factor. Birth would determine the quality of the monarch as it determines the quality of cattle.

Hegel has demonstrated that the monarch must be born, which no one questions, but not that birth makes one a monarch.

That man becomes monarch by birth can as little be made into a metaphysical truth as can the Immaculate Conception of Mary. The latter notion, a fact of consciousness, just as well as the empirical fact of the birth of man to the monarchy, can be understood as rooted in human illusion and conditions.

In the Remark, which we examine more closely, Hegel takes pleasure in having demonstrated the irrational to be absolutely rational.

This transition of the concept of pure self-determination into the immediacy of' being and so into the realm of nature is of a purely speculative character, and apprehension of it therefore belongs to logic.

Indeed it is purely speculative. But what is purely speculative is not the transition from pure self-determination, from an abstraction, to pure naturality (to the contingency of birth), to the other extreme, car les extrêmes se touchent. What is speculative is that this is called a 'transition of the concept', and that absolute contradiction is presented as identity, and ultimate inconsistency presented as consistency.

This can be considered as Hegel's positive acknowledgment: with the hereditary monarch in the place of self-determining reason, abstract natural determinacy appears not as what it is, not as natural determinacy, but as the highest determination of the state; this is the positive point at which the monarchy can no longer preserve the appearance of being the organisation of the rational will.

Moreover, this transition is on the whole the same (?) as that familiar to us in the nature of willing in general, and there the process is to translate something from subjectivity (i.e., some purpose held before the mind) into existence. ... But the proper form of the Idea and of the transition here under consideration is the immediate conversion of the pure self-determination of the will (i.e., of the simple concept itself) into a single and natural existent without the mediation of a particular content (like a purpose in the case of action). [Remark to § 280]

Hegel says that the conversion of the sovereignty of the state (of a self-determination of the will) into the body of the born monarch (into existence) is on the whole the transition of the content in general, which the will makes in order to actualise an end which is thought of, that is, to translate it into an existent. But Hegel says 'on the whole'. And the proper difference which he specifies [ - namely, immediate conversion of the pure self-determination of the will into a single and natural existent without the mediation of a particular content - ] is so proper that it eliminates all analogy and puts magic in the place of the 'nature of willing in general'.

First of all, the conversion of the purpose held before the mind into the existent is here immediate, magical. Second, the subject here is the pure self-determination of the will, the simple concept itself; it is the essence of will which, as a mystical subject, decides. It is no real, individual, conscious will; it is the abstraction of the will which changes into a natural existent; it is the pure Idea which embodies itself as one individual.

Third, since the actualisation of the volition in a natural existent takes place immediately, i.e., without a medium - which the will requires as a rule in order to objectify itself - then even a particular, determinate end is lacking; no mediation of a particular content, like a purpose in the case of action, takes place, which is evident because no actin g subject is present, and the abstraction, the pure idea of will, in order to act must act mystically. Now an end which is not particular is no end, and an act without an end is an endless, senseless act. Thus this whole parallel with the teleological act of the will shows itself finally to be a mystification, an empty action of the Idea. In fact, the medium here is the absolute will and the word of the philosopher; the particular end is the end of the philosophising subject, namely, constructing the hereditary monarch out of the pure Idea; and the actualisation of the end is Hegel's simple affirmation.

In the so-called 'ontological' proof of the existence of God, we have the same conversion of the absolute concept into existence (the same mystification),' which conversion has constituted the depth of the Idea in the modern world, although recently (and rightly), it has been declared inconceivable.

But since the idea of the monarch is regarded as being quite familiar to ordinary (i.e., understanding), consciousness, the Understanding clings here all the more tenaciously to its separation and the conclusions which its astute ratiocination deduces therefrom. As a result, it denies that the moment of ultimate decision in the state is linked implicitly and actually (i.e. in the rational concept) with the immediate birthright of the monarch. [Remark to § 280]

It is denied that ultimate decision is a birthright, and Hegel asserts that the monarch is the ultimate decision through birth. But who has ever doubted that the ultimate decision in the state is joined to a real bodily individual and is linked with the immediate birthright?

§ 281. Both moments in their undivided unity - (a) the will's ultimate ungrounded self, and (b) therefore its similarly ungrounded objective existence (existence being the category which is at home in nature) - constitute the Idea of something against which caprice is powerless, the 'majesty' of the monarch. In this unity lies the actual unity of the state, and it is only through this, its inward and outward immediacy, that the unity of the state is saved from the risk of being drawn down into the sphere of particularity and its caprices, ends and opinions, and saved too from the war of factions round the throne and from the enfeeblement and overthrow of the power of the state.

The two moments are [a] the contingency of the will, caprice, and [b] the contingency of nature, birth; thus, His Majesty: Contingency. Contingency is thus the actual unity of the state.

The way in which, according to Hegel, an inward and outward immediacy [of the state] is to be saved from collision, [due to caprice, factions,] etc., is incredible, since collision is precisely what it makes possible.

What Hegel asserts of the elective monarch applies even more to the hereditary monarchy:

In an elective monarchy ... the nature of the relation between king and people implies that the ultimate decision is left with the particular will, and hence the constitution becomes a Compact of Election, i.e., a surrender of the power of the state at the discretion of the particular will. The result of this is that the particular offices of state turn into private property, etc. [Remark to § 281]

§ 282. The right to pardon criminals arises from the sovereignty of the monarch, since it is this alone which is empowered to actualise mind's power of making undone what has been done and wiping out a crime by forgiving and forgetting it.

The right to pardon is the right to exercise clemency, the ultimate expression of contingent and arbitrary choice. Significantly this is what Hegel makes the essential attribute of the monarch. In the Addition to this very paragraph he defines the source of pardon as 'self-determined [or .groundless] decision' [die grundlose Entscheidung].

§ 283. The second moment in the power of the crown is the moment of particularity, or the moment of a determinate content and its subsumption under the universal. When this acquires a special objective existence, it becomes the supreme council and the individuals who compose it. They bring before the monarch for his decision the content of current affairs of state or the legal provision required to meet existing needs, together with their objective aspects, i.e., the grounds on which decision is to be based, the relative laws, circumstances, etc. The individuals who discharge these duties are in direct contact with the person of the monarch and therefore the choice and dismissal alike of these individuals rest with his unrestricted caprice.

§ 284. It is only for the objective side of decision, i.e., for knowledge of the problem and the attendant circumstances, and for the legal and other reasons which determine its solution, that men are answerable; in other words, it is these alone which are capable of objective proof. It is for this reason that these may fall within the province of a council which is distinct from the personal will of the monarch as such. Hence it is only councils or their individual members that are made answerable. The personal majesty of the monarch, on the other hand, as the final subjectivity of decision, is above all answerability for acts of government.

Here Hegel describes in a wholly empirical way the ministerial power as it is usually defined in constitutional states. The only thing philosophy does with this empirical fact is to make it the existence and the predicate of the moment of particularity in the power of the crown.

(The ministers represent the rational objective side of the sovereign will. Hence also the honor of being answerable falls to them, while the monarch is compensated with the imaginary coin of 'Majesty'.) Thus the speculative moment is quite poor. But then the development is based particularly on wholly empirical grounds, and indeed very abstract and bad empirical grounds.

Thus, for example, the choice of ministers is placed in the unrestricted caprice of the monarch because they are in direct contact with the person of the monarch, i.e., because they are ministers. In the same way the unrestricted choice of the monarch's personal servants can be developed out of the absolute Idea.

The basis for the answerability of the ministers is certainly better: 'It is only for the objective side of decision, i.e., for knowledge of the problem and the attendant circumstances, and for the legal and other reasons which determine its solution, that men are answerable: in other words, it is these alone which are capable of objective proof' Evidently 'the final subjectivity of decision', pure subjectivity, pure caprice, is not objective, hence also capable of no objective proof nor therefore of responsibility, once an individual is the blessed, sanctioned existence of caprice. Hegel's proof is conclusive if the constitutional provisions are taken as the point of departure; but these provisions themselves are not proven simply by analysing them, and this is all Hegel has done.

The whole uncritical character of Hegel's philosophy of right is rooted in this confusion.

§ 285. The third moment in the power of the crown concerns the absolute universality which subsists subjectively in the conscience of the monarch and objectively in the whole of the constitution and the laws. Hence the power of the crown presupposes the other moments in the state just as it is presupposed by each of them.

§ 286. The objective guarantee of the power of the crown, of the hereditary right of succession to the throne, and so forth, consists in the fact that just as monarchy has its own actuality in distinction from that of the other rationally determined moments in the state, so these others explicitly possess the rights and duties appropriate to their own character. In the rational organism of the state, each member, by maintaining itself in its own position, eo ipso maintains the others in theirs.

Hegel does not see that with this third moment, the 'absolute universality', he obliterates the first two, or vice versa. 'The power of the crown presupposes the other moments in the state just as it is presupposed by each of them.' If this supposition is taken as real and not mystical, then the crown is established not through birth but through the other moments, and accordingly is not hereditary but fluid, i.e., determined by the state and assigned by turns to individuals of the state in accordance with the organisation of the other moments. In a rational organism the head cannot be iron and the body flesh. In order to preserve themselves the members must be equally of one flesh and blood. But the hereditary monarch is not equal, he is of other stuff. Here the prosaic character of the rationalistic will of the other members of the state faces the magic of nature. Moreover, members can mutually maintain themselves only in so far as the whole organism is fluid and each of them is taken up [aufgehoben] in this fluidity, in so far as no one of them, as in this case the head of the state, is unmoved and inalterable. Thus by means of this determination Hegel abolishes sovereignty by birth.

A second point has to do with the question of irresponsibility. if the prince violates the whole of the constitution, and the laws, his irresponsibility ceases because his constitutional existence ceases. But precisely these laws and this constitution make him irresponsible. Thus they contradict themselves, and this one stipulation abolishes law and constitution. The constitution of constitutional monarchy is irresponsibility.

Hegel, however, is content with saying that just as monarchy has its own actuality in distinction from that of the other rationally determined moments in the state, so these others explicitly possess the rights and duties appropriate to their own character. Therefore he must call the constitution of the Middle Ages an organisation. Thus Hegel has only a mass of particular spheres united in a relation of external necessity, and indeed an individual monarch belongs only to this situation. In a state wherein each determination exists explicitly, the sovereignty of the state must also be established as a particular individual.

Résumé of Hegel's development of the Crown
or the Idea of State Sovereignty

The Remark to § 279 says:

We may speak of the sovereignty of the people in the sense that any people whatever is self-subsistent vis-a-vis other peoples, and constitutes a state of its own, like the British people for instance. But the peoples of England, Scotland, or Ireland, or the peoples of Venice, Genoa, Ceylon, etc. are not sovereign peoples at all now that they have ceased to have rulers or supreme governments of their own.

Thus here sovereignty of the people is nationality, and the sovereignty of the prince is nationality; or in other words the principle of principality is nationality, which explicitly and exclusively forms the sovereignty of a people. A people whose sovereignty consists only in nationality has a monarch. The different nationality of peoples cannot be better established and expressed than by means of different monarchs. The cleft between one .absolute individual and another is the cleft between these nationalities.

The Greeks (and Romans) were national because and in so far as they were the sovereign people. The Germans are sovereign because and in so far as they are national. (Vid. p. xxxiv.)

(ad xii) A so-called 'artificial person', the same Remark says further, be it a society, a community, or a family, however inherently concrete it may be, contains personality only abstractly, as one moment of itself In an artificial person', personality has not achieved its true mode of existence. The state, however, is precisely this totality in which the moments of the concept have attained the actuality correspondent to their degree of truth.

This artificial person, society, family, etc., has personality within it only abstractly; against that, in the monarch, the person has the state in him.

In fact, the abstract person brings his personality to its real existence only in the artificial person, society, family, etc. But Hegel conceives of society, family, etc., the artificial person in general, not as the realisation of the actual, empirical person but as the real person which, however, has the moment of personality in it only abstractly. Whence also comes his notion that it is not actual persons who come to be a state but the state which must first come to be an actual person. Instead of the state being brought forth, therefore, as the ultimate reality of the person, as the ultimate social reality of man, a single empirical man, an empirical person, is brought forth as the ultimate actuality of the state. This inversion of subject into object and object into subject is a consequence of Hegel's wanting to write the biography of the abstract Substance, of the Idea, with human activity, etc., having consequently to appear as the activity and result of something other than man; it is a consequence of Hegel's wanting to allow the essence of man to act for itself as an imaginary individual instead of acting in its actual, human existence, and it necessarily has as its result that an empirical existent is taken in an uncritical manner to be the real truth of the Idea, because it is not a question of bringing empirical existence to its truth but of bringing the truth to empirical existence, and thereupon the obvious is developed as a real moment of the idea. (More later concerning this inevitable change of the empirical into speculation and of speculation into the empirical.)

In this way the impression of something mystical and profound is also created. That man has been born is quite vulgar, so too that this existence established through physical birth comes to be social man, etc., and citizen; man becomes everything that he becomes through his birth. But it is very profound and striking that the idea of the state is directly born, that it has brought itself forth into empirical existence in the birth of the sovereign. In this way no content is gained, only the form of the old content altered. It has received a philosophical form, a philosophical certification.

Another consequence of this mystical speculation is that a particular empirical existent, a single empirical existent in distinction from the others is conceived to be the existence of the Idea. It makes once again a deep mystical impression to see a particular empirical existent established by the Idea, and hence to encounter at all levels an incarnation of God.

If the modes of man's social existence, as found for example in the development of family, civil society, state, etc., are regarded as the actualisation and objectification of man's essence, then family, civil society, etc., appear as qualities inhering in subjects. Man then remains what is essential within these realities, while these then appear as his actualised universality, and hence also as something common to all men. But if, on the contrary, family, civil society, state, etc., are determinations of the idea, of Substance as subject, then they must receive an empirical actuality, and the mass of men in which the idea of civil society is developed takes on the identity of citizen of civil society, and that in which the idea of the state is developed takes on that of citizen of the state. In this case the sole concern is with allegory, i.e., with ascribing to any empirical existent the meaning of actualised Idea; and thus it is evident that these receptacles have fulfilled their destiny once they have become a determinate incarnation of a life-moment of the Idea. Consequently the universal appears everywhere as a determinate particular thing, while the individual nowhere arrives at his true universality.

At the most profound and speculative level it therefore appears necessary when the most abstract determinations which in no way really ripen to true social actuality, the natural bases of the state like birth (in the case of the prince) or private property (as in primogeniture), appear to be the highest, immediate Idea-become-man.

It is evident that the true method is turned upside down. What is most simple is made most complex and vice versa. What should be the point of departure becomes the mystical result, and what should be the rational result becomes the mystical point of departure.

If however the prince is the abstract person who has the state in him, then this can only mean that the essence of the state is the abstract private person. It utters its secret only when at the peak of its development. He is the lone private person in whom the relation of the private person in general to the state is actualised.

The prince's hereditary character results from his concept. He is to be the person who is specified from the entire race of men, who is distinguished from all other persons. But then what is the ultimate fixed difference of one person from all others? The body. And the highest function of the body is sexual activity. Hence the highest constitutional act of the king is his sexual activity, because through this he makes a king and carries on his body. The body of his son is the reproduction of his own body, the creation of a royal body.

Part 3. The Executive §§ 287 - 297

(b) The Executive
§ 287. There is a distinction between the monarch's decisions and their execution and application, or in general between his decisions and the continued execution or maintenance of past decisions, existing laws, regulations, organisations for the securing of common ends, and so forth. This task of ... subsuming the particular under the universal is comprised in the executive power, which also includes the powers of the judiciary and the police. The latter have a more immediate bearing on the particular concerns of civil society and they make the universal interest authoritative over its particular aims.

This is the usual interpretation of the executive. The only thing which can be mentioned as original with Hegel is that he coordinates executive, police, and judiciary, where as a rule the administrative and judiciary powers are treated as opposed.

§ 288. Particular interests which are common to everyone fall within civil society and lie outside the absolutely universal interest of the state proper (see § 256). The administration of these is in the hands of Corporations (see § 251), commercial and professional as well as municipal, and their officials, directors, managers, and the like. It is the business of these officials to manage the private property and interests of these particular spheres and, from that point of view, their authority rests on the confidence of their commonalties and professional equals. On the other hand, however, these circles of particular interests must be subordinated to the higher interests of the state, and hence the filling of positions of responsibility in Corporations, etc., will generally be effected by a mixture of popular election by those interested with appointment and ratification by higher authority.

This is a simple description of the empirical situation in some countries.

§ 289. The maintenance of the state's universal interest, and of legality, in this sphere of particular rights, and the work of bringing these rights back to the universal, require to be superintended by holders of the executive power, by (a) the executive civil servants and (b) the higher advisory officials (who are organised into committees). These converge in their supreme heads who are in direct contact with the monarch.

Hegel has not developed the executive. But given this, he has not demonstrated that it is anything more than a function, a determination of the citizen in general. By viewing the particular interests of civil society as such, as interests which lie outside the absolutely universal interest of the state, he has only deduced the executive as a particular, separate power.

[Remark to § 289:] Just as civil society is the battlefield where everyone's individual private interest meets everyone else's, so here we have the struggle (a) of private interests against particular matters of common concern and (b) of both of these together against the organisation of the state and its higher outlook. At the same time the corporation mind, engendered when the particular spheres gain their title to rights, is now inwardly converted into the mind of the state, since it finds in the state the means of maintaining its particular ends. This is the secret of the patriotism of the citizens in the sense that they know the state as their substance, because it is the state that maintains their particular spheres of interest together with the title, authority, and welfare of these. In the corporation mind the rooting of the particular in the universal is directly entailed, and for this reason it is in that mind that the depth and strength which the state possesses in sentiment is seated.

This is especially worth noting:

1. because of the definition of civil society as the bellum omnium contra omnes;

2. because private egoism is revealed to be the secret of the patriotism of the citizens and the depth and strength which the state possesses in sentiment;

3. because the 'burgher', the man of particular interest as opposed to the universal, the member of civil society, is considered to be a fixed individual whereas the state likewise in fixed individuals opposes the 'burghers'.

One would suppose that Hegel would have to define 'civil society' as well as the 'family' as a determination of each political individual, and so too the later state qualities as equally a determination of the political individual. But with Hegel it is not one and the same individual who develops a new determination of his social essence. It is the essence of the will, which allegedly develops its determinations out of itself. The subsisting, distinct and separated, empirical existences of the state are conceived to be immediate incarnations of one of these determinations.

Just as the universal as such is rendered independent it is immediately mixed in with what empirically exists, and then this limited existent is immediately and uncritically taken for the expression of the Idea.

Here Hegel comes into contradiction with himself only in so far as he does not conceive of the 'family' man in the same way he conceived of the member of civil society, I.e., as a fixed breed excluded from other qualities.

§ 290. Division of labor... occurs in the business of the executive also. For this reason, the organisation of officials has the abstract though difficult task of so arranging that (a) civil life shall be governed in a concrete manner from below where it is concrete, but that (b) none the less the business of government shall be divided into its abstract branches -armed by special officials as different centers of administration, and further that (c) the operations of these various departments shall converge again when they are directed on civil life from above, in the same way as they converge into a general supervision in the supreme executive.

The Addition to this paragraph is to be considered later.

§ 291. The nature of the executive functions is that they are objective and that in their substance they have been explicitly fixed by previous decisions (see Paragraph 287); these functions have to be fulfilled and carried out by individuals. Between all individual and his office there is no immediate natural link. Hence individuals are not appointed to office on account of their birth or native personal gifts. The objective factor in their appointment is knowledge and proof of ability. Such proof guarantees that the state will get what it requires; and since it is the sole condition of appointment, it also guarantees to every citizen the chance of joining the class of civil servants [dem allgemeinen Stande].

§ 292. Since the objective qualification for the civil service is not genius (as it is for work as an artist, for example), there is of necessity an indefinite plurality of eligible candidates whose relative excellence is not determinable with absolute precision. The selection of one of the candidates, his nomination to office, and the grant to him of full authority to transact public business-all this, as the linking of two things, a man and his office, which in relation to each other must always be fortuitous, in the state which is sovereign and has the last word, is the subjective aspect of election to office, and it must lie with the crown as the power.

§ 293. The particular public functions which the monarch entrusts to officials constitute one part of the objective aspect of the sovereignty residing in the crown. Their specific discrimination is therefore given in the nature of the thing. And while the actions of the officials are the fulfilment of their duty, their office is also a right exempt from contingency.

Note only the objective aspect of the sovereignty residing in the crown.

§ 294. Once an individual has been appointed to his official position by the sovereign's act (see § 292), the tenure of his post is conditional on his fulfilling his duties. Such fulfilment is the very essence of his appointment, and it is only consequential that he finds in his office his livelihood and the assured satisfaction of his particular interests (see § 294), and further that his external circumstances and his official work are freed from other kinds of subjective dependence and influence.

What the service of the state ... requires, it says in the Remark, is that men shall forgo the selfish and capricious satisfaction of their subjective ends; by this very sacrifice, they acquire the right to find their satisfaction in, but only in, the dutiful discharge of their public functions. In this fact, so far as public business is concerned, there lies the link between universal and particular interests which constitutes both the concept of the state and its inner stability (see § 260) ... The assured satisfaction of particular needs removes the external compulsion which may tempt a man to seek ways and means of satisfying them at the expense of his official duties. Those who are entrusted with affairs of state find in its universal power the protection they need against another subjective phenomenon, namely the personal passions of the governed, whose primitive interests, etc., suffer injury as the universal interest of the state is made to prevail against them.

§ 295. The security of the state and its subjects against the misuse of power by ministers and their officials lies directly in their hierarchical organisation and their answerability; but it lies too in the authority given to societies and Corporations, because in itself this is a barrier against the intrusion of subjective caprice into the power entrusted to a civil servant, and it completes from below the state control which does not reach down as far as the conduct of individuals.

§ 296. But the fact that a dispassionate, upright, and polite demeanour becomes customary [in civil servants], is (i) partly a result of direct education in thought and ethical conduct. Such an education is a mental counterpoise to the mechanical and semi-mechanical activity involved in acquiring the so-called 'sciences' of matters connected with administration, in the requisite business training, in the actual work done, etc. (ii) The size of the state, however, is an important factor in producing this result, since it diminishes the stress of family and other personal ties, and also makes less potent and so less keen such passions as hatred, revenge, etc. In those who are busy with the important questions arising in a great state, these subjective interests automatically disappear, and the habit is generated of adopting universal interests, points of view, and activities.

§ 297. Civil servants and the members of the executive constitute the greater part of the middle class, the class in which the consciousness of right and the developed intelligence of the mass of the people is found. The sovereign working on the middle class at the top, and Corporation-rights working on it at the bottom, are the institutions which effectively prevent it from acquiring the isolated position of an aristocracy and using its education and skill as means to an arbitrary tyranny.

Addition to § 297. The middle class, to which civil servants belong, is politically conscious and the one in which education is most prominent. ... It is a prime concern of the state that a middle class should be developed, but this can be done only if the state is an organic unity like the one described here, i.e., it can be done only by giving authority to spheres of particular interests, which are relatively independent, and by appointing an army of officials whose personal arbitrariness is broken against such authorised bodies. Action in accordance with everyone's rights, and the habit of such action, is a consequence of the counterpoise to officialdom which independent and self-subsistent bodies create.

What Hegel says about 'the Executive' does not merit the name of a philosophical development. Most of the paragraphs could be found verbatim in the Prussian Landrecht. Yet the administration proper is the most difficult point of the development.

Because Hegel has already claimed the police and the judiciary to be spheres of civil society, the executive is nothing but the administration, which he develops as the bureaucracy.

First of all, the 'Corporations', as the self-government of civil society, presuppose the bureaucracy. The sole determination arrived at is that the choice of the administrators and their officials, etc., is a mixed choice originating from the members of civil society and ratified by the proper authority (or as Hegel says, 'higher authority').

Over this sphere, for the maintenance of the state's universal interest and of legality, stand holders of the executive power, the executive civil servants and the advisory officials, which converge into the monarch.

A division of labour occurs in the business of the executive. Individuals must prove their capability for executive functions, i.e., they must sit for examinations. The choice of the determinate individual for civil service appointment is the prerogative of the royal authority. The distribution of these functions is given in the nature of the thing. The official function is the duty and the life's work of the civil servants. Accordingly they must be paid by the state. The guarantee against malpractice by the bureaucracy is partly its hierarchy and answerability, and on the other hand the authority of the societies and Corporations; its humaneness is a result partly of direct education in thought and ethical conduct and partly of the size of the state. The civil servants form the greater part of the middle class. The safeguard against its becoming like an aristocracy and tyranny is partly the sovereign at the top and partly Corporation-rights at the bottom. The middle class is the class of education. Voila tout! Hegel gives us an empirical description of the bureaucracy, partly as it actually is, and partly according to the opinion which it has of itself And with that the difficult chapter on 'the Executive' is brought to a close.

Hegel proceeds from the separation of the state and civil society, the separation of the particular interests and the absolutely universal; and indeed the bureaucracy is founded on this separation. Hegel proceeds from the presuppositon of the Corporations; and indeed the bureaucracy presupposes the Corporations, in any event the 'corporation mind'. Hegel develops no content of the bureaucracy, but merely some general indications of its formal organisation; and indeed the bureaucracy is merely the formalism of a content which lies outside the bureaucracy itself.

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, and the bureaucracy is the Corporation of the state. In actuality, the bureaucracy as civil society of the state is opposed to the state of civil society, the Corporations. Where the bureaucracy is to become a new principle, where the universal interest of the state begins to become explicitly a singular and thereby a real interest, it struggles against the Corporations as every consequence struggles against the existence of its premises. On the other hand once the real life of the state awakens and civil society frees itself from the Corporations out of its inherent rational impulse, the bureaucracy seeks to restore them; for as soon as the state of civil society falls so too does the civil society of the state. The spiritualism vanishes with its opposite materialism. The consequence struggles for the existence of its premises as soon as a new principle struggles not against the existence of the premises but against the principle of their existence. The same mind that creates the Corporation in society creates the bureaucracy in the state. Thus as soon as the corporation mind is attacked so too is the mind of the bureaucracy; and whereas the bureaucracy earlier fought the existence of the Corporations in order to create room for its own existence, now it seeks vigorously to sustain the existence of the Corporations in order to save the Corporation mind, which is its own mind.

The bureaucracy is the state formalism of civil society. It is the state's consciousness, the state's will, the state's power, as a Corporation. (The universal interest can behave vis-a-vis the particular only as a particular so long as the particular behaves vis-a vis the universal as a universal. The bureaucracy must thus defend the imaginary universality of particular interest, i.e., the Corporation mind, in order to defend the imaginary particularity of the universal interests, i.e., its own mind. The state must be Corporation so long as the Corporation wishes to be state.) Being the state's consciousness, will, and power as a Corporation, the bureaucracy is thus a particular, closed society within the state. The bureaucracy wills the Corporation as an imaginary power. To be sure, the individual Corporation also has this will for its particular interest in opposition to the bureaucracy, but it wills the bureaucracy against the other Corporation, against the other particular interest. The bureaucracy as the completed Corporation therefore wins the day over the Corporation which is like incomplete bureaucracy. It reduces the Corporation to an appearance, or wishes to do so, but wishes this appearance to exist and to believe in its own existence. The Corporation is civil society's attempt to become state; but the bureaucracy is the state which has really made itself into civil society.

The state formalism, which the bureaucracy is, is the state as formalism, and Hegel has described it precisely as such a formalism. Because this state formalism constitutes itself as a real power and becomes itself its own material content, it is evident that the bureaucracy is a tissue of practical illusion, or the illusion of the state. The bureaucratic mind is through and through a Jesuitical, theological mind. The bureaucrats are the Jesuits and theologians of the state. The bureaucracy is la république prêtre.

Since the bureaucracy according to its essence is the state as formalism, so too it is according to its end. The real end of the state thus appears to the bureaucracy as an end opposed to the state. The mind of the bureaucracy is the formal mind of the state. It therefore makes the formal mind of the state, or the real mindlessness of the state, a categorical imperative. The bureaucracy asserts itself to be the final end of the state. Because the bureaucracy makes its formal aims its content, it comes into conflict everywhere with the real aims. Hence it is obliged to present what is formal for the content and the content for what is formal. The aims of the state are transformed into aims of bureaus, or the aims of bureaus into the aims of the state. The bureaucracy is a circle from which no one can escape. Its hierarchy is a hierarchy of knowledge. The highest point entrusts the understanding of particulars to the lower echelons, whereas these, on the other hand, credit the highest with an understanding in regard to the universal; and thus they deceive one another.

The bureaucracy is the imaginary state alongside the real state; it is the spiritualism of the state. As a result everything has a double meaning, one real and one bureaucratic, just as knowledge is double, one real and one bureaucratic (and the same with the will). A real thing, however, is treated according to its bureaucratic essence, according to its otherworldly, spiritual essence. The bureaucracy has the being of the state, the spiritual being of society, in its possession; it is its private property. The general spirit of the bureaucracy is the secret, the mystery, preserved inwardly by means of the hierarchy and externally as a closed corporation. To make public -the mind and the disposition of the state appears therefore to the bureaucracy as a betrayal of its mystery. Accordingly authority is the principle of its knowledge and being, and the deification of authority is its mentality. But at the very heart of the bureaucracy this spiritualism turns into a crass materialism, the materialism of passive obedience, of trust in authority, the mechanism of an ossified and formalistic behaviour, of fixed principles, conceptions, and traditions. As far as the individual bureaucrat is concerned, the end of the state becomes his private end: a pursuit of higher posts, the building of a career. In the first place, he considers real life to be purely material, for the spirit of this life has its separate existence in the bureaucracy. Thus the bureaucrat must make life as materialistic as possible. Secondly, real life is material for the bureaucrat, i.e . in so far as it becomes an object of bureaucratic action, because his spirit is prescribed for him, his end lies outside of him, his existence is the existence of the bureau. The state, then, exists only as various bureau-minds whose connection consists of subordination and dumb obedience. Real knowledge appears to be devoid of content just as real life appears to be dead, for this imaginary knowledge and life pass for what is real and essential. Thus the bureaucrat must use the real state Jesuitically, no matter whether this Jesuitism be conscious or unconscious. But given that his antithesis is knowledge, it is inevitable that he likewise attain to self-consciousness and, at that moment, deliberate Jesuitism. While the bureaucracy is on one hand this crass materialism, it manifests its crass spiritualism in its will to do everything, i.e., in its making the will the causa prima, for it is pure active existence which receives its content from without; thus it can manifest its existence only through forming and restricting this content. The bureaucrat has the world as a mere object of his action.

When Hegel calls the Executive power the objective aspect of the sovereignty residing In the crown, it is precisely in the same sense that the Catholic Church was the real existence of the sovereignty, content, and spirit of the Blessed Trinity. In the bureaucracy the identity of the state's interest and the particular private aim is established such that the state's interest becomes a particular private aim opposed to the other private aims.

The abolition [Aufhebung] of the bureaucracy can consist only in the universal interest becoming really - and not, as with Hegel, becoming purely in thought, in abstraction - particular interest; and this is possible only through the particular interest really becoming universal. Hegel starts from an unreal opposition and thereby brings it to a merely imaginary identity which, in fact, is itself all the more contradictory. Such an identity is the bureaucracy.

Now let's follow his development in its particulars.

The sole philosophical statement which Hegel makes concerning the Executive is that of the 'subsuming' of the individual and particular under the universal, etc.

Hegel is satisfied with that. On one hand, the category of 'subsumption' of the particular, etc. This category must be actualised. Now, he picks anyone of the empirical existences of the Prussian or Modern state (just as it is), which among other things actualises this category even though this category does not express its specific nature. Applied mathematics is also a subsuming of the particular, etc. Hegel doesn't enquire whether this is the rational, the adequate mode of subsumption. He holds fast only to the one category and is satisfied with finding a corresponding existence for it. Hegel gives his logic a political body; he does not give the logic of the political body (§ 287).

On the relationship of the Corporations and societies to the executive we are told first of all that it is required that their administration (the nomination of their magistracy) generally be effected by a mixture of popular election by those interested with appointment and ratification by higher authority. The mixed choice of administrators of the societies and Corporations would thus be the first relationship between civil society and state or executive, their first identity (§ 288). This identity, according to Hegel himself, is quite superficial, a mixtum compositum, a mixture. To the degree that this identity is superficial, opposition is sharp. It is the business of these officials (namely the officials of the Corporations, societies, etc.) to manage the private property and interests of these particular spheres and, from that Point of view, their authority rests on the confidence of their commonalties and professional equals. On the other hand, however, these circles of particular interests must be subordinated to the higher interests of the state. From this results the so-called 'mixed choice'.

The administration of the Corporation thus has within it the opposition of private property and interest of the particular spheres against the higher interest of the state: opposition between private property and state.

We need not emphasise that the resolution of this opposition in the mixed choice is a simple accommodation, a treaty, an avowal of the unresolved dualism which is itself a dualism, a mixture. The particular interests of the Corporations and societies have a dualism within their own sphere, which likewise shapes the character of their administration.

However, the crucial opposition stands out first in the relationship of these 'particular interests which are common to everyone', etc., which 'lie outside the absolutely universal interest of the state proper', and this 'absolutely universal interest of the state proper'. But the first instance once again, it is within this sphere.

The maintenance of the state's universal interest, and of legality, in this sphere of particular rights, and the work of bringing these rights back to the universal, require to be superintended by holders of the executive power, by (a) the executive civil servants, and (b) the higher advisory officials (who are organised into committees). These converge in their supreme heads who are in direct contact with the monarch. (§ 289)

Incidentally, let us draw attention to the construction of the executive committees, which are unknown, for example, in France. To the same extent that Hegel adduces these officials as advisory it is certainly obvious that they are organised into committees.

Hegel has the state proper, the executive, move into the management of the state's universal interest and of legality, etc. within civil society via holders [of the executive power]; and according to him these executive office holders, the executive civil servants are in reality the true representation of the state, not 'of' but 'against' civil society. The opposition between state and civil society is thus fixed; the state does not reside within but outside of civil society; it affects civil society merely through office holders to whom is entrusted the management of the state within this sphere. The opposition is not overcome by means of these office holders but has become a legal and fixed opposition. The state becomes something alien to the nature of civil society; it becomes this nature's otherworldly realm of deputies which makes claims against civil society. The police, the judiciary, and the administration are not deputies of civil society itself, which manages its own general interest in and through them. Rather, they are office holders of the state whose purpose is to manage the state in opposition to civil society. Hegel clarifies this opposition further in the candid Remark to § 289 which we examined earlier.

The nature of the executive functions is that they are objective and ... have been explicitly fixed by previous decisions. (§ 291)

Does Hegel conclude from this that [the executive functions] all the more easily require no hierarchy of knowledge, that they could be executed perfectly by civil society itself? On the contrary.

He makes the profound observation that they are to be executed by individuals, and that between them and these individuals there is no immediate natural link. This is an allusion to the crown, which is nothing but the natural power of arbitrary choice, and thus can be born. The crown is nothing but the representative of the natural moment in the will, the dominion of physical nature in the state.

The executive civil servants are distinguished by the fact that they earn their appointments; hence they are distinguished essentially from the sovereign.

The objective factor in their appointment (namely, to the State's business) is knowledge (subjective caprice lacks this factor) and proof of ability. Such proof guarantees that the state will get what it requires; and since it is the sole condition of appointment, it also guarantees to every citizen the chance of joining the class of civil servants [dem allgemeinen Stande].

The chance which every citizen has to become a civil servant is thus the second affirmative relationship between civil society and state, the second identity. Like the first it is also of a quite superficial and dualistic nature. Every Catholic has the chance to become a priest (i.e., to separate himself from the laity as well as the world). Does the clergy on that account face the Catholic any less as an opposite power? That each has the possibility of gaining the privilege of another sphere proves only that his own sphere is not the actuality of this privilege.

In a true state it is not a question of the possibility of every citizen to dedicate himself to the universal in the form of a particular class, but of the capability of the universal class to be really universal, i.e., to be the class of every citizen. But Hegel proceeds from the postulate of the pseudo-universal, the illusory universal class, universality fixed in the form of a particular class.

The identity which he has constructed between civil society and the state is the identity of two hostile armies in which each soldier has the 'chance' to become through desertion a member of the other hostile army; and in this Hegel indeed correctly describes the present empirical state of affairs.

It is the same with his construction of the examinations. In a rational state, taking an examination belongs more properly to becoming a shoe-maker than an executive civil servant because shoemaking is a skill without which one can be a good citizen of the state, a social man; but the necessary state knowledge is a condition without which a person in the state lives outside the state, is cut off from himself, deprived of air. The examination is nothing other than a masonic rite, the legal recognition of the privileged knowledge of state citizenship.

The link of state office and individual, this objective bond between the knowledge of civil society and the knowledge of the state, in other words the examination, is nothing but the bureaucratic baptism of knowledge, the official recognition of the transubstantiation of profane into holy knowledge (it goes without saying that in the case of every examination the examiner knows all). No one ever heard of the Greek or Roman statesmen taking an examination. But then what is a Roman statesmen even as against a Prussian official!

In addition to the objective bond of the individual with the state office, in addition, that is, to the examination, there is another bond - royal caprice:

Since the objective qualification for the civil service is not genius (as it is for work, an artist, for example), there is of necessity an indefinite plurality of eligible candidates whose relative excellence is not determinable with absolute precision. The selection of one of the candidates, his nomination to office, and the grant to him of full authority to transact public business-all this, as the linking of two things, a man and his office, which in relation to each other must always be fortuitous, is the subjective aspect of election to office, and it must lie with the crown as the power in the state which is sovereign and has the last word. [§ 292.]

The prince is at all times the representative of chance or contingency.

Besides the objective moment of the bureaucratic confession of faith (the examination) there belongs in addition the subjective [moment] of the royal favour, in order that the faith yield fruit.

The particular public functions which the monarch entrusts to officials constitute one part of the objective aspect of the sovereignty residing in the crown. (The monarch distributes and entrusts the particular state activities as functions to the officials, i.e., he distributes the state among the bureaucrats, entrusts it like the holy Roman Church entrusts consecrations Monarchy is a system of emanation; the monarch leases out the functions of the state.) Here Hegel distinguishes for the first time the objective aspect front the subjective aspect of the sovereignty residing in the Crown. Prior to this he mixed the two together. The sovereignty residing in the crown is taken here in a clearly mystical way, just as theologians find the personal God in nature. Earlier it still meant that the crown is the subjective aspect of the sovereignty residing in the state (§ 293).

In § 294 Hegel develops the salary of the civil servants out of the Idea. Here the real identity of civil society and the state is established in the salary of the civil servants, or in the fact that civil service also guarantees security in empirical existence. The wage of the civil servant is the highest identity which Hegel constructs out of all this. The transformation of the activities of the state into ministries presupposes the separation of the state from society.

When Hegel says in the Remark to § 294:

What the service of the state. . . requires is that men shall forgo the selfish and capricious satisfaction of their subjective ends, (this is required in the case of every post of service) and by this very sacrifice they acquire the right to find their satisfaction in, but only in, the dutiful discharge of their public functions. In this fact, so far as public business is concerned, there lies the link between universal and particular interests which constitutes both the concept of the state and its inner stability,

this holds good (1.) of every servant, and (2.) it is correct that the salary of the civil servants constitutes the inner stability of the most modern monarchies. In contrast to the member of civil society only the civil servants existence is guaranteed.

At this point Hegel cannot fail to see that he has constructed the executive as an antithesis to civil society, and indeed as a dominant extreme. How does he now establish a condition of Identity?

According to § 295 the security of the state and its subjects against the misuse [den Missbrauch] of power by ministers and their officials lies partly in their hierarchical organisation (as if the hierarchy itself were not the principal abuse [der Hauptmissbrauch], and the matching personal sins of the civil servants were not it all to be compared with their inevitable hierarchical sins; the hierarchy punishes the civil servant to the extent that he sins against the hierarchy or commits a sin in excess of the hierarchy; but it takes him under its protection when the hierarchy sins through him; moreover the hierarchy is only with great difficulty convinced of the sins of its member) and in the authority given to societies and Corporations, because in itself this is a barrier against the intrusion of subjective caprice into the power entrusted to a civil servant, and it completes front below the state control (as if this control were not exercised with the outlook of the bureaucratic hierarchy) winch does not reach down as far as the conduct of individuals.

Thus the second guarantee against the caprice of the bureaucracy lies in the privileges of the Corporations.

Thus if we ask Hegel what is civil society's protection against the bureaucracy, he answers:

1. The hierarchal organisation of the bureaucracy. Control. This, that the adversary is himself bound hand and foot, and if he is like a hammer vis-a-vis those below he is like all anvil in relation to those above. Now, where is the protection against the hierarchy? The lesser evil will surely be abolished through the greater inasmuch as it vanishes in comparison with it.

2. Conflict, the unresolved conflict between bureaucracy and Corporation. Struggle, the possibility of struggle, is the guarantee against being overcome. Later (§ 297) in addition to this Hegel adds as guarantee the 'institutions [of] the sovereign working ... at the top', by which is to be understood, once again, the hierarchy.

However Hegel further adduces two moments (§ 296):

In the civil servant himself, something which is supposed to humanise him and make dispassionate, upright, and polite demeanour customary, namely, direct education in thought and ethical conduct, which is said to hold 'the mental counterpoise' to the mechanical character of his knowledge and actual work. As if the mechanical character of his bureaucratic knowledge and his actual work did not hold the 'counterpoise' to his education in thought and ethical conduct. And will not his actual mind and his actual work as substance triumph over the accident of his prior endowment? His office is indeed his substantial situation and his bread and butter. Fine, except that Hegel sets direct education in thought and ethical conduct against the mechanism of bureaucratic knowledge and work! The man within the civil servant is supposed to secure the civil servant against himself. What a unity! Mental counterpoise. What a dualistic category!

Hegel further adduces the size of the state, which in Russia certainly doesn't guarantee against the caprice of the executive civil servants, and in any case is a circumstance which lies outside the 'essence' of the bureaucracy.

Hegel has developed the 'Executive' as bureaucratic officialdom [Staatsbediententum].

Here in the sphere of the 'absolutely universal interest of the state proper' we find nothing but unresolved conflict. The civil servants' examination and livelihood constitute the final synthesis.

Hegel adduces the impotency of the bureaucracy, its conflict with the Corporation, as its final consecration.

In § 297 an identity is established in so far as 'civil servants and the members of the executive constitute the greater part of the middle class'. Hegel praises this 'middle class' as the pillar of the state so far as honesty and intelligence are concerned (in the Addition to this paragraph).

It is a prime concern of the state that a middle class should be developed, but this can be done only if the state is an organic unity like the one described here, i.e., it can be done only by giving authority to spheres of particular interests, which are relatively independent, and by appointing an army of officials whose personal arbitrariness is broken against such authorised bodies.

To be sure the people can appear as one class, the middle class, only in such an organic unity; but is something that keeps itself going by means of the counterbalancing of privileges an organic unity? The executive power is the one most difficult to develop; it, much more than the legislature, belongs to the entire people.

Later (in the Remark to § 308) Hegel expresses the proper spirit of the bureaucracy when he characterises it as 'business routine' and the 'horizon of a restricted sphere'.

Part 4: The Legislature §§ 298 - 303

(c) The Legislature
§ 298. The legislature is concerned (a) with the laws as such in so far as they require fresh and extended determination; and (b) with the content of home affairs affecting the entire state (a very general expression). The legislature is itself a part of the constitution which is presupposed by it and to that extent lies absolutely outside the sphere directly determined by it; nonetheless, the constitution becomes progressively more mature in the course of the further elaboration of the laws and the advancing character of the universal business of government.

Above all it is noteworthy that Hegel emphasises the way in which the legislature is itself a part of the constitution which is presupposed by it and lies absolutely outside the sphere directly determined by it, since he had made this statement neither of the Crown nor of the Executive, for both of which it is equally true. But only with the Legislature does Hegel construct the constitution in its entirety, and thus he is unable to presuppose it. However, we recognise his profundity precisely in the way he always begins with and accentuates the antithetical character of the determinate elements (as they exist in our states).

The legislature is itself a part of the constitution which lies absolutely outside the sphere directly determined by it. But the constitution is certainly not self-generating. The laws which 'require fresh and extended determination' must have received formulation. A legislature must exist or have existed before and outside of the constitution. There must exist a legislature outside of the actual empirical, established legislature. But, Hegel will answer, we presuppose an existing state. Hegel, however, is a philosopher of right, and develops the generic idea of the state [die Staatsgattung]. He is not allowed to measure the idea by what exists; he must measure what exists by the idea.

The collision is simple. The legislature is the power which is to organise the universal. it is the power of the constitution. It extends beyond the constitution.

On the other hand, however, the legislature is a constitutional power. Thus it is subsumed under the constitution. The constitution is law for the legislature. It has given laws to the legislature and continues to do so. The legislature is only legislature within the constitution, and the constitution would stand hors de loi if it stood outside the legislature. Voilà la collision! In recent French history much nibbling away [at the constitution] has occurred.

How does Hegel resolve this antinomy?

First of all it is said that the constitution is presupposed by the legislature and to that extent it lies absolutely outside the sphere directly determined by it. 'Nonetheless' - nonetheless in the course of the further elaboration of the laws and the advancing character of the universal business of government it becomes progressively more mature.

That is to say, then: directly, the constitution lies outside the sphere of the legislature; indirectly, however, the legislature modifies the constitution. The legislature does in an indirect way what it neither can nor may do in a direct way. It picks the constitution apart enti détail, since it cannot alter it en gros. It does by virtue of the nature of things and circumstances what according to the constitution it was not supposed to do. it does materially and in fact what it does not do formally, legally, or constitutionally.

With that, Hegel has not resolved the antinomy; he has simply transformed it into another antinomy. He has placed the real effect of the legislature, its constitutional effect, in contradiction with its constitutionally determined character. The opposition between constitution and legislature remains. Hegel has defined the factual and the legal action of the legislature as a contradiction - the contradiction between what the legislature should be and what it really is, between what it believes itself to be doing and what it really does.

How can Hegel present this contradiction as the truth? 'The advancing character of the 'universal business of government' enlightens us just as little, for it is precisely this advancing character which needs explanation.

In the Addition [to this paragraph] Hegel contributes hardly anything to the solution of these problems. He does, however, bring them more into focus:

The constitution must in and by itself be the fixed and recognised ground on which the legislature stands, and for this reason it must not first be constructed. Thus the constitution is, but just as essentially it becomes, i.e., it advances and matures. This advance is an alteration which is imperceptible and which lacks the form of alteration.

That is to say, according to the law (illusion) the constitution is, but according to reality (truth) it becomes. According to its determinate character the constitution is unalterable; but it really is changed, only this change is unconscious and lacks the form of alteration. The appearance contradicts the essence. The appearance is the conscious law of the constitution, and the essence is its unconscious law, which contradicts the other. What is in the nature of the thing is not found in the law. Rather, the opposite is in the law.

Is it the fact, then, that in the state - which, according to Hegel, is the highest existence of freedom, the existence of self-conscious reason - not law, the existence of freedom, but rather blind natural necessity governs? And if the law of the thing is recognised as contradicting the legal definition, why not acknowledge the law of the thing, in this case reason, ,is the law of the state? And how then consciously retain this dualism? Hegel wants always to present the state as the actualisation of free mind; however, re vera he resolves all difficult conflicts through a natural necessity which is the antithesis of freedom. Thus, the transition of particular interest into universal interest is not a conscious law of the state, but is mediated through chance and ratified contrary to consciousness. And in the state Hegel wants everywhere the realisation of free will! (Here we see Hegel's substantial viewpoint.)

Hegel uses as examples to illustrate the gradual alteration of the constitution the conversion of the private wealth of the German princes and their families into state property, and the conversion of the German emperors' personal administration of justice into an administration through delegates. His choice of examples is unfortunate. in the first case, for instance, the transition happened only in such a way that all state property was transformed into royal private property.

Moreover, these changes are particular. Certainly, entire state constitutions have changed such that as new requirements gradually arose the old broke down; but for the new constitution a real revolution was always necessity.

Hence the advance from one state of affairs to another, Hegel concluded [in the Addition], is tranquil in appearance and unnoticed. In this way a constitution changes over a long period of time into something quite different from what it was originally.

The category of gradual transition is, first of all, historically false; and secondly, it explains nothing.

In order not only that the constitution be altered, thus that this illusory appearance not be in the end forcefully shattered, but also that man do consciously what he is otherwise forced to do unconsciously by the nature of the thing, it is necessary that the movement of the constitution, that progress, be made the principle of the constitution, thus that the real corner stone of the constitution, the people, be made the principle of the constitution. Progress itself is then the constitution.

Should the constitution itself, therefore, belong within the domain of the legislature? This question can be posed only (1) if the political state exists as the pure formalism of the actual state, if the political state is a domain apart, if the political state exists as constitution; (2) if the legislature is of a source different than the executive etc.

The legislature produced the French Revolution. In general, when it has appeared in its special capacity as the ruling element, the legislature has produced the great organic, universal revolutions. It has not attacked the constitution, but a particular antiquated constitution, precisely because the legislature was the representative of the people, i.e., of the species-will [des Gattungswillens]. The executive, on the other hand, produced the small, retrograde revolutions, the reactions. It revolted not against an old constitution in favour of a new one, but against the constitution as such, precisely because the executive was the representative of the particular will, subjective caprice, the magical part of the will.

Posed correctly, the question is simply this: Does a people have the right to give itself a new constitution? The answer must be an unqualified 'yes!' because the constitution becomes a practical illusion the moment it ceases to be a true expression of the people's will.

The collision between the constitution and the legislature is nothing more than a conflict of the constitution with itself, a contradiction in the concept of the constitution.

The constitution is nothing more than an accommodation between the political and non-political state; hence it is necessarily in itself a treaty between essentially heterogeneous powers. Here, then, it is impossible for the law to declare that one of these powers, which is a part of the constitution, is to have the right to modify the constitution itself, which is the whole.

In so far as we speak of the constitution as a particular thing, however, it must be considered a part of the whole.

In so far as the constitution is understood to be the universal and fundamental determinations of the rational will, then clearly every people (state) presupposes this and must form it to its political credo. Actually, this is a matter of knowledge rather than of will. The will of a people can no more exceed the laws of reason than can the will of an individual. In the case of an irrational people one cannot speak at all of a rational organisation of the state. In any case, here in the philosophy of right we are concerned with the species-will.

The legislature does not make the law, it merely discovers and formulates it.

The resolution of this conflict has been attempted by differentiating between assemblée constituante and assemblée constituée.

§ 299. Legislative business (the concerns of the legislature) is more precisely determined in relation to private individuals, under these two heads: (a) provision by the state for their well being and happiness, and [b] the exaction of services from them. The former comprises the laws dealing with all sorts of private rights, the rights of communities, Corporations, and organisations affecting the entire state, and further it indirectly (see § 298) comprises the whole of the constitution. As for the services to be exacted, it is only if these are reduced to terms of money, the really existent and universal value of both things and services, that they can be fixed justly and at the same time in such a way that any particular tasks and services which an individual may perform come to be mediated through his own arbitrary will.

Concerning this determination of the legislature's business, Hegel himself notes, in the Remark to this paragraph:

The proper object of universal legislation may be distinguished in a general way from the proper function of administrative officials or of some kind of state regulation, in that the content of the former is wholly universal, i.e., determinate laws, while it is what is particular in content which falls to the latter, together with ways and means of enforcing the law. This distinction, however, is not a hard and fast one, because a law, by being a law, is ab initio something more than a mere command in general terms (such as 'Thou shalt not kill'. . . ). A law must in itself be something determinate, but the more determinate it is, the more readily are its terms capable of being carried out as they stand. At the same time, however, to give to laws such a fully detailed determinacy would give them empirical features subject inevitably to alteration in the course of their being actually carried out, and this would contravene their character as laws. The organic unity of the powers of the state itself implies that it is one single mind which both firmly establishes the universal and also brings it into its determinate actuality and carries it out.

But it is precisely this organic unity which Hegel has failed to construct. The various powers each have a different principle, although at the same time they are all equally real. To take refuge from their real conflict in an imaginary organic unity, instead of developing the various powers as moments of an organic unity, is therefore an empty, mystical evasion.

The first unresolved collision was that between the constitution as a whole and the legislature. The second is that between the legislature and the executive, i.e., between the law and its execution.

The second determination found in this paragraph [§ 299] is that the only service the state exacts from individuals is money.

The reasons Hegel gives for this are:

1. money is the really existent and universal value of both things and services;

2. the services to be exacted can be fixed justly only by means of this reduction;

3. only in this way can the services be fixed in such a way that the particular tasks and services which an individual may perform conic to be mediated through his own arbitrary will. Hegel notes in the Remark [to this paragraph]:

ad. 1. In the state it may happen, to begin with, that the numerous aptitudes, possessions, pursuits, and talents of its members, together with the infinitely varied richness of life intrinsic to these - all of which are at the same time linked with their owner's mentality - are not subject to direct levy by the state. It lays claim only to a single form of riches, namely money. (Services requisitioned for the defence of the state in war arise for the first time in connection with the duty considered in the next sub-division of this book.) We shall consider personal duty with regard to the military only later - not because of the following sub-division, but for other reasons. In fact, however, money is not one particular type of wealth amongst others, but the universal form of all types so far as they are expressed in an external embodiment and so can be taken as 'things'.

In our day, it continues in the Addition, the state purchases what it requires.

ad 2. Only by being translated into terms of this extreme culmination of externality (sc. wherein riches are transformed into the externality of existence, in which they can be grasped as an object) can services exacted by the state be fixed quantitatively and so justly and equitably.

The Addition reads: By means of money, however, the justice of equality can be achieved much more efficiently. Otherwise, if assessment depended on concrete ability, a talented man would be more heavily taxed than an untalented one.

ad 3. In Plato's Republic, the Guardians are left to allot individuals to their particular classes and impose on them their particular tasks ... Under the feudal monarchies the services required from vassals were equally indeterminate, but they had also to serve in their particular capacity, e.g. as judges. The same particular character pertains to tasks imposed in the East and in Egypt in connection with colossal architectural undertakings, and so forth. In these circumstances the principle of subjective freedom is lacking, i.e., the principle that the individual's substantive activity - which in any case becomes something particular in content in services like those mentioned - shall be mediated through his particular volition. This is a right which can be secured only when the demand for service takes the form of a demand for something of universal value, and it is this right which has brought with it this conversion of the state's demands into demands for cash.

The Addition reads:

In our day, the state purchases what it requires. This may at first sight seem ail abstract, heartless, and dead state of affairs, and for the state to be satisfied with indirect services may also look like decadence in the state. But the principle of the modern state requires that the whole of an individual's activity shall be mediated through his Will ... But nowadays respect for subjective freedom is publicly recognised precisely in the fact that the state lays hold of a man only by that which is capable of being held.

Do what you want, pay what you must.

The beginning of the Addition reads:

The two sides of the constitution bear respectively on the rights and the services of individuals. Services are now almost entirely reduced to money payments, and military service is now almost the only personal one exacted.

§300. In the legislature as a whole the other powers are the first two moments which are effective, (i) the monarchy as that to which ultimate decisions belong: (ii) the executive as the advisory body since it is the moment possessed of [a] a concrete knowledge and oversight of the whole state in its numerous facets and the actual principles firmly established within it, and [b] a knowledge in particular of what the state's power needs. The last moment in the legislature is the Estates.

The monarchy and the executive are ... the legislature. If, however, the legislature is the whole, then the monarchy and the executive must accordingly be moments of the legislature. The supervening Estates are the legislature merely, or the legislature in distinction from the monarchy and the executive.

§ 301. The Estates have the function of bringing public affairs into existence not only implicitly, but also actually, i.e., of bringing into existence the moment of subjective formal freedom, the public consciousness as an empirical universal, of which the thoughts and opinions of the Many are particulars.

The Estates are civil society's deputation to the state, to which it [i.e., civil society] is opposed as the 'Many'. The Many must for a moment deal consciously with universal affairs as if they were their own, as objects of public consciousness, which, according to Hegel, is nothing other than the empirical universal, of which the thoughts and opinions of the Many are particulars. (And in fact, it is no different in modern or constitutional monarchies.) It is significant that Hegel, who shows such great respect for the state-mind [dem Staatsgeist] - the ethical spirit, state-consciousness - absolutely disdains it when it faces him in actual empirical form.

This is the enigma of mysticism. The same fantastic abstraction that rediscovers state-consciousness in the degenerate form of bureaucracy, a hierarchy of knowledge, and that uncritically accepts this incomplete existence as the actual and full-valued existence - the same mystical abstraction admits with equanimity that the actual empirical state-mind, public consciousness, is a mere potpourri of the 'thoughts and opinions of the Many'. As it imputes to the bureaucracy an essence which is foreign to it, so it grants to the actuality of that essence only the inferior form of appearance. Hegel idealises the bureaucracy and empiricises public consciousness. He can treat actual public consciousness very much à part precisely because he has treated the à part consciousness as the public consciousness. He need concern himself all the less with the actual existence of the state-mind in that he believes he has sufficiently realised it in its soi-disant existences. So long is the state-mind mystically haunted the forecourt it received many plaudits. Now that we have caught it in persona it is barely respected.

'The Estates have the function of bringing public affairs into existence not only implicitly [an sich], but also actually [für sich].' And indeed it comes into existence actually as the public consciousness, as 'an empirical universal, of which the thoughts and opinions of the Many arc particulars'.

The process in which 'public affairs' becomes subject, and thus gains autonomy, is here presented as a moment of the life-process of public affairs. Instead of having subjects objectifying themselves in public affairs Hegel has public affairs becoming the subject. Subjects do not need public affairs as their true affairs, but public affairs needs subjects for its formal existence. It is an affair of public affairs that it exist also as subject.

Here the difference between the 'being-in-itself' [Ansichsein] and the 'being-for-itself' [Fürsichsein] of public affairs must be especially considered.

Public affairs already exists 'in-itself' [i.e., implicitly] as the business of the executive etc. Thus, public affairs exists without actually being public affairs; nothing less, for it is not the affair of civil society. It has already found its essential existence, its being-in-itself. The fact that public affairs now actually becomes public consciousness, or empirical universal, is purely formal and, as it were, only a symbolic coming to actuality. The formal or empirical existence of public affairs is separated from its substantial existence. The truth of the matter is that public affairs as being-in-itself is not actually public, and actual empirical public affairs is only formal.

Hegel separates content and form, being-in-itself and being-for-itself, and allows the latter the superficial status of formal moment. The content is complete and exists in many forms which are not the forms of this content; while, clearly, the form which is supposed to be the actual form of the content doesn't have the actual content for its content.

Public affairs is complete without being the actual affairs of the people. The actual affairs of the people have been established without the activity of the people. The Estates are the illusory existence of the affairs of the state as being an affair of the people. The illusion is that public affairs are public affairs, or that truly public affairs are the affair of the people. It has come to the point in our states as well as in the Hegelian philosophy of right where the tautological sentence, 'The public affairs are the public affairs', can appear only as an illusion of practical consciousness. The Estates are the political illusion of civil society. Subjective freedom appears in Hegel as formal freedom (it is important, however, that what is free be done freely, that freedom doesn't prevail as an unconscious natural instinct of society), precisely because Hegel has not presented objective freedom as the actualisation, the activity, of subjective freedom. Because he has given the presumed or actual content of freedom a mystical bearer, the actual subject of freedom takes on a formal meaning. The separation of the in-itself and the for-itself, of substance and subject, is abstract mysticism.

Hegel, in his Remark to § 301 presents the Estates quite rightly as something 'formal' and 'illusory'.

Both the knowledge and the will of the Estates are treated partly as unimportant and partly as suspect; that is to say, the Estates make no significant contribution.

1. The idea uppermost in men's minds when they speak about the necessity or the expediency of 'summoning the Estates' is generally something of this sort: (i) The deputies of the people, or even the people themselves, must know best what is in their best interest, - .and (ii) their will for its promotion is undoubtedly the most disinterested. So far as the first of these points is concerned, however, the truth is that if 'people' means a particular section of the citizens, then it means precisely that section which does not know what it wills. To know what one wills, and still more to know what the absolute will, Reason, wills, is the fruit of profound apprehension (which is found, no doubt, in the bureaus) and insight, precisely the things which are not popular.

Further along in the paragraph we read the following about the Estates themselves:

The highest civil servants necessarily have a deeper and more comprehensive insight into the nature of the state's organisation and requirements. They arc also more habituated to the business of government and have greater skill in it, so that even without the Estates they are able to do what is best, just as they also continually have to do while the Estates are in session.

And it goes without saying that this is perfectly true in the organisation described by Hegel.

2. As for the conspicuously good will for the general welfare which the Estates are supposed to possess, it has been pointed out already. . . that to regard the will of the executive as bad, or as less good [than that of the ruled] is a presupposition characteristic of the rabble or of the negative outlook generally. This presupposition might at once be answered on its own ground by the countercharge that the Estates start from isolated individuals, from a private point of view, from particular interests, and so are inclined to devote their activities to these at the expense of the general interests, while per contra the other moments in the power of the state explicitly take up the standpoint of the state from the start and devote themselves to the universal end.

Therefore the knowledge and will of the Estates are partly superfluous and partly suspect. The people do not know what they want. III the possession of political knowledge [Staatswssenschaft] the Estates are not equal to the officials, who have a monopoly on it. The Estates are superfluous for the execution of public affairs. The officials can carry out this execution without the Estates; moreover they must, in spite of the Estates, do what is best. Thus the Estates, with regard to their content, are pure superfluity. Their existence, therefore, is a pure formality in the most literal sense.

Furthermore, the sentiment of the Estates, their will, is suspect, for they start from the private point of view and private interests. In truth, private interest is their public affairs, not public affairs their private interest. But what a way for public affairs to obtain form as public affairs - i.e., through a will which doesn't know what it wills, or at least lacks any special knowledge of t he universal, a will, furthermore, whose actual content is an opposing interest!

In modern states, as in Hegel's Philosophy of Right, the conscious, true actuality of public affairs is merely formal, or only what is formal constitutes actual public affairs.

Hegel is not to be blamed for depicting the nature of the modern state as it is, but rather for presenting what is as the essence of the state. The claim that the rational is actual is contradicted precisely by an irrational actuality, which everywhere is the contrary of what it asserts and asserts the contrary of what it is.

Instead of showing how public affairs exists for-itself, 'subjectively, and thus actually as such', and that it also has the form of public affairs, Hegel merely shows that formlessness is its subjectivity; and a form without content must be formless. The form which public affairs obtains in a state which is not the state of public affairs can be nothing but a non-form, a self-deceiving, self-contradicting form, a form which is pure appearance [eine Scheinform] and which will betray itself as this appearance.

Only for the sake of logic does Hegel want the luxury of the Estates. The being-for-itself of public affairs as empirical universal must have an existence [ein Dasein]. Hegel does not search for an adequate actualisation of the being-for-itself of public affairs, but contents himself with finding an empirical existent which can be dissolved into this logical category. This is the Estates. And Hegel himself does not fail to note how pitiful and full of contradiction this existent is. Yet he still reproaches ordinary consciousness for being discontent with this satisfaction of logic, for being unwilling to see actuality dissolved into logic by this arbitrary abstraction, for wanting logic, rather, to be transformed into concrete objectivity.

I say arbitrary abstraction, for since the executive power wills, knows, and actualises public affairs, arises from the people, and is an empirical plurality (Hegel himself tells us that it is not a totality), why should we not be able to characterise the executive as the 'being-for-itself of public affairs'? Or, again, why not the Estates as their being-in-itself, since it is only in the executive that [public affairs] receives illumination, determinacy, execution, and independence?

The true antithesis, however, is this: public affairs must somewhere be represented in the state as actual, and thus as empirical public affairs; it must appear somewhere in the crown and robes of the universal, whereby the universal automatically becomes a fiction, an illusion.

Here it is a question of the opposition of the universal as 'form', in the form of universality, and the universal as 'content'.

In science, for example, an individual can fully perform public affairs, and it is always individuals who do so. But public affairs become actually public only when they are no longer the affair of an individual but of society. This changes not only the form but also the content. In this case, however, it is a question of the state in which the people itself constitutes the public affairs, a question of the will which has its true existence as species-will only in the self-conscious will of the people, and, moreover, a question of the idea of the state.

The modern state, in which public affairs and their pursuit is a monopoly while monopolies are the actual public affairs, has effected the peculiar device of appropriating public affairs as a pure form. (in fact, only the form is public affairs.) With that, the modern state has found the appropriate form for its content, which only appears to be actual public affairs.

The constitutional state is the state in which the state-interest is only formally the actual interest of the people, but is nevertheless present as a distinct form alongside of the actual state. Here the state-interest has again received formal actuality as the people's interest; but it is to have only this formal actuality. It has become ) formality, the haut gout of the life of the people - a ceremony. The Estates are the sanctioned, legal lie of constitutional states, the lie that the state is the people's interest or the people the interest of the state. This lie will betray itself in its content. The lie has established itself as the legislature precisely because the legislature has the universal as its content and, being more an affair of knowledge than of will, is the metaphysical power of the state; whereas had the same lie established itself as the executive etc., it would have had either immediately to dissolve itself or be transformed into a truth. The metaphysical power of the state was the most likely seat for the metaphysical, universal illusion of the state.

[Remark to § 301.] The Estates are a guarantee of the general welfare and public freedom. A little reflection will show that this guarantee does not lie in their particular power of insight ... the guarantee lies on the contrary [a] in the additional (!!) insight of the deputies, insight in the first place into the activity of such officials as are not immediately under the eye of the higher functionaries of state, and in particular into the more pressing and more specialised needs and deficiencies which are directly in their view; [b] in the fact that the anticipation of criticism from the Many, particularly of public criticism, has the effect of inducing officials to devote their best attention beforehand to their duties and the schemes under consideration, and to deal with these only in accordance with the purest motives. This same compulsion is effective also on the members of the Estates themselves.

As for the general guarantee which is supposed to lie peculiarly in the Estates, each of the other political institutions shares with the Estates in being a guarantee of public welfare and rational freedom, and some of these institutions, as for instance the sovereignty of the monarch, hereditary succession to the throne, the judicial system etc., guarantee these things far more effectively than the Estates can. Hence the specific function which the concept assigns to the Estates is to be sought in the fact that in them the subjective moment in universal freedom - the private judgment and private will of the sphere called 'civil society' in this book - comes into existence integrally related to the state. This moment is a determination of the Idea once the Idea has developed to totality, a moment arising as a result of an inner necessity not to be confused with external necessities and expediencies. The proof of this follows, like all the rest of our account of the state, from adopting the philosophical point of view.

Public, universal freedom is allegedly guaranteed in the other institutions of the state, while the Estates constitute its alleged self-guarantee. [But the fact is] that the people rely more heavily on the Estates, in which the self-assurance of their freedom is thought to be, than on the institutions which are supposed to assure their freedom independent of their own participation, institutions which are supposed to be verifications of their freedom without being manifestations of it. The coordinating function Hegel assigns to the Estates, alongside the other institutions, contradicts the essence of the Estates.

Hegel solves the problem by finding the 'specific function which the concept assigns to the Estates' in the fact that in them 'the private judgment and private will ... of civil society... comes into existence integrally related to the state'. It is the reflection of civil society on the state. just as the bureaucrats are delegates of the state to civil society, so the Estates are delegates of civil society to the state. Consequently, it is always a case of transactions of two opposing wills.

What is said in the Addition to this paragraph, namely:

The attitude of the executive to the Estates should not be essentially hostile, and a belief in the necessity of such hostility is a sad mistake.

is a sad truth.

'The executive is not a party standing over against another party.' Just the contrary.

The taxes voted by the Estates, moreover, are not to be regarded as a present given to the state. On the contrary they are voted in the best interests of the voters themselves.

Voting for taxes in a constitutional state is, by the very idea of it, necessarily a present.

The real significance of the Estates lies in the fact that it is through them that the state enters the subjective consciousness of the people and that the people begins to participate in the state.

This last statement is quite correct. In the Estates the people begins to participate in the state, just as the state enters the people's subjective consciousness as something opposed. But how can Hegel possibly pass off this beginning as the full reality!

§ 302. Regarded as a mediating organ, the Estates stand between the government in general on the one hand and the nation broken up into particulars (people and associations) on the other. Their function requires them to possess a political and administrative sense and temper, no less than a sense for the interests of individuals and particular groups. At the same time the significance of their position is that, in common with the organised executive, they are a middle term preventing both the extreme isolation of the power of the crown, which otherwise might seem a mere arbitrary tyranny, and also the isolation of particular interests of persons, societies, and Corporations. Further, and more important, they prevent individuals from having the appearance of a mass or an aggregate and so from acquiring an unorganised opinion and volition and from crystallising into a powerful bloc in opposition to the organised state.

On the one hand we have the state and the executive, always taken as identical, and on the other the nation broken up into particulars (people and associations). The Estates stand as a mediating organ between the two. The Estates are the middle term wherein political and administrative sense and temper meet and are to be united with the sense and temper of individuals and particular groups. The identity of these two opposed senses and tempers, in which identity the state was supposed to actually lie, acquires . a symbolic appearance in the Estates. The transaction between state and civil society appears as a particular sphere. The Estates are the synthesis between state and civil society. But how the Estates are to begin to unite in themselves two contradictory tempers is not indicated. The Estates are the established contradiction of the state and civil society within the state. At the same time they are the demand for the dissolution of this contradiction.

At the same time the significance of their position is that, in common with the organised executive they are the middle term etc.

The Estates not only mediate between the people and the executive, but they also prevent the extreme isolation of the power of the crown, whereby it would appear as mere arbitrary tyranny, and also the isolation of the particular interests etc. Furthermore they prevent individuals from having the appearance of a mass or an aggregate. This mediating function is what the Estates have in common with the organised executive power. In a state in which the position of the Estates prevents individuals from having the appearance of a mass or an aggregate, and so from acquiring an unorganised opinion and volition and from crystallising into a powerful bloc in opposition to the organised state, the organised state exists outside the mass and the aggregate; or, in other words, the mass and aggregate belong to the organisation of the state. But its unorganised opinion and volition is to be prevented from crystallising into an opinion and volition in opposition to the state, through which determinate orientation it would become an organised opinion and volition. At the same time this powerful bloc is to remain powerful only in such a way that understanding remains foreign to it, so that the mass is unable to make a move on its own and can only be moved by the monopolists of the organised state and be exploited as a powerful bloc. Where it is not a matter of the particular interests of persons, societies and Corporations isolating themselves from the state, but rather of the individuals being prevented from having the appearance of a mass or an aggregate and from acquiring an unorganised opinion and volition and from crystallising into a powerful bloc in opposition to the state, precisely then it becomes evident not that a particular interest contradicts the state, but rather that the actual organised universal thought of the mass and aggregate is not the thought of the organised state and cannot find its realisation in the state. What is it then that makes the Estates appear to be the mediation against this extreme? It is merely the isolation of the particular interests of persons, societies and Corporations; or the fact that their isolated interests balance their account with the state through the Estates while, at the same time, the unorganised opinion and volition of a mass or aggregate employed its volition (its activity) in creating the Estates and its opinion in judging their activity, and enjoyed the illusion of its own objectification. The Estates preserve the state from the unorganised aggregate only through the disorganisation of this very aggregate.

At the same time, however, the mediation of the Estates is to prevent the isolation of the particular interests of persons, societies and Corporations. This they achieve, first, by coming to an understanding with the interest of the state and, second, by being themselves the political isolation of these particular interests, this isolation as political act, in that through them these isolated interests achieve the rank of the universal.

Finally, the Estates are to mediate against the isolation of the power of the crown as an extreme (which otherwise might seem a mere arbitrary tyranny). This is correct in so far as the principle of the power of the crown (arbitrary will) is limited by means of the Estates, at least can operate only in fetters, and in so far as the Estates themselves become a partaker and accessory of the power of the crown.

In this way, either the power of the crown ceases to be actually the extreme of the power of the crown (and the power of the crown exists only as an extreme, a one-sidedness, because it is not an organic principle) and becomes a mere appearance of power [eine Scheingewalt], a symbol, or else it loses only the appearance of arbitrary tyranny. The Estates mediate against the isolation of particular interests by presenting this isolation as a political act. They mediate against the isolation of the power of the crown as an extreme partly by becoming themselves a part of that power, partly by making the executive power an extreme.

All the contradictions of modern state-organisations converge in the Estates. They mediate in every direction because they are, from every direction, the middle term.

It should be noted that Hegel develops the content of the Estates' essential political activity, viz., the legislature, less than he does their position, or political rank.

It should be further noted that, while the Estates, according to Hegel, stand between the government in general on the one hand and the nation broken up into particulars (people and associations) on the other, the significance of their position as developed above is that, in common with the organised executive, they are a middle term.

Regarding the first position, the Estates represent the nation over against the executive, but the nation en miniature. This is their oppositional position.

Regarding the second, they represent the executive over against the nation, but the amplified executive. This is their conservative position. They are themselves a part of the executive over against the people, but in such a way that they simultaneously have the significance of representing the people over against the executive.

Above, Hegel called the legislature a 'totality' (§ 300). In fact, however, the Estates are this totality, the state within the state; but it is precisely in them that it becomes apparent that the state is not a totality but a duality. The Estates represent the state in a society that is no state. The state is a mere representation [eine blosse Vorstellung].

In the Remark Hegel says:

It is one of the most important discoveries of logic that a specific moment, which, by standing in an opposition, has the position of ail extreme, ceases to be such and is a moment in an organic whole by being at the same time a mean.

(Thus the Estates are at one and the same time (1) the extreme of the nation over against the executive, but (2) the mean between nation and executive; or, in other words, the opposition within the nation itself The opposition between the executive and the nation is mediated through the opposition between the Estates and the nation. From the point of view of the executive the Estates have the position of the nation, but from the point of view of the nation they have the position of the executive. The nation in its occurrence as image, fantasy, illusion, representation - i.e., the imagined nation, or the Estates, which are immediately situated as a particular power in dissociation from the actual nation - abolishes [hebt auf] the actual opposition between the nation and the executive. Here the nation is already dressed out, exactly as required in this particular organism, so as to have no determinate character.)

The Remark continues:

In connection with our present topic it is all the more important to emphasise this aspect of the matter because of the popular, but most dangerous, prejudice which regards the Estates principally from the point of view of their opposition to the executive, as if that were their essential attitude. If the Estates become an organ in the whole by being taken up into the state, they evince themselves solely through their mediating function. In this way their opposition to the executive is reduced to a show. There may indeed be an appearance of opposition between them, but if they were opposed, not merely superficially, but actually and in substance, then the state would be in the throes of destruction. That the clash is not of this kind is evident in the nature of the thing, because the Estates have to deal, not with the essential elements in the organism of the state, but only with rather specialised and trifling matters, while the passion which even these arouse spends itself in party cravings in connection with purely subjective interests such as appointments to higher offices of state.

In the Addition it says: 'The constitution is essentially a system of mediation.'

§ 303. The universal class, or, more precisely, the class of civil servants, must, purely in virtue of its character as universal, have the universal as the end of its essential activity. In the Estates, as an element in the legislative power, the unofficial class acquires its political significance and efficacy; it appears, therefore, in the Estates neither as a mere indiscriminate multitude nor as an aggregate dispersed into its atoms, but as what it already is, namely a class subdivided into two, one subclass [the agricultural class] being based on a tic of substance between its members, and the other [the business class] on particular needs and the work whereby these are met . . . It is only in this way that there is a genuine link between the particular which is effective in the state and the universal.

Here we have the solution of the riddle. 'In the Estates, as an element in the legislative power, the unofficial class acquires its political significance.' acquires It is understood that the unofficial, or private class [der Privatstand] this significance in accordance with what it is, with its articulation within civil society; (Hegel has already designated the universal class as the class dedicated to the executive; the universal class, therefore, is represented in the legislature by the executive.)

The Estates are the political significance of the unofficial class, i.e., of the unpolitical class, which is a contradictio in adjecto; or to put it another way, in class as described by Hegel the unofficial class (or, more correctly, unofficial class difference) has a political significance. The unofficial class belongs to the essence, to the very political reality [zur Politik] of this state, which thus gives it also a political significance, that is, one that differs from its actual significance.

In the Remark it says:

This runs counter to another prevalent idea, the idea that since it is in the legislature that the unofficial class rises to the level of participating in matters of state, it must appear there in the form of individuals, whether individuals are to choose representatives for this purpose, or whether every single individual is to have a vote in the legislature himself. This atomistic and abstract point of view vanishes at the stage of the family, as well as that of civil society where the individual is in evidence only as a member of a general group. The state, however, is essentially an organisation each of whose members is in itself a group of this kind, and hence no one of its moments should appear as an unorganised aggregate. The Many, as units - a congenial interpretation of 'people', are of course something connected, but they are connected only as an aggregate, a formless mass whose commotion and activity could therefore only be elementary, irrational, barbarous, and frightful.

The circles of association in civil society are already communities. To picture these communities as once more breaking up into a mere conglomeration of individuals as soon as they enter the field of politics, i.e., the field of the highest concrete universality, is eo ipso to hold civil and political life apart from one another and as it were to hang the latter in the air, because its basis could then only be the abstract individuality of caprice and opinion, and hence it would be grounded on chance and not on what is absolutely stable and justified.

So-called 'theories' of this kind involve the idea that the classes [Stände] of civil society and the Estates [Stände], which are the 'classes' given a political significance, stand wide apart from each other. But the German language, by calling them both Stände has still maintained the unity which in any case they actually possessed in former times.

'The universal class, or, more precisely, the class of civil servants. Hegel proceeds from the hypothesis that the universal class is the class of civil servants. For him, universal intelligence is attached permanently to a class.

'In the Estates as an element etc.' Here, the political significance and efficacy of the unofficial class is precisely its particular significance and efficacy. The unofficial class is not changed into a political class, but appears as the unofficial class in its political significance and efficacy. It does not have political significance and efficacy simply; its political efficacy and significance are those of the unofficial class as unofficial or private. Accordingly, the unofficial class can appear in the political sphere only in keeping with the class difference found in civil society. The class difference within civil society becomes a political difference.

Even the German language, says Hegel, expresses the identity of the classes of civil society with the classes given a political significance; it expresses a unity which in any case they actually possessed in former times - a unity, one should thus conclude, which no longer exists.

Hegel finds that, in this way there is a genuine link between the particular which is effective in the state and the universal. In this way the separation of civil and political life is to be abolished and their identity established.

Hegel finds support in the following: 'The circles of association (family and civil society) are already communities.' How can one want these to break up into a mere conglomeration of individuals as soon as they enter the field of politics, i.e., the field of the highest concrete universality?

It is important to follow this development very carefully.

The peak of Hegelian identity, as Hegel himself admits, was the Middle Ages. There, the classes of civil society in general and the Estates, or classes given political significance, were identical. The spirit of the Middle Ages can be expressed thus: the classes of civil society and the political classes were identical because civil society was political society, because the organic principle of civil society was the principle of the state.

But Hegel proceeds from the separation of civil society and the political state as two actually different spheres, firmly opposed to one another. And indeed this separation does actually exist in the modern state. The identity of the civil and political classes in the Middle Ages was the expression of the identity of civil and political society. This identity has disappeared; and Hegel presupposes it as having disappeared. The identity of the civil and political classes, if it expressed the truth, could be now only an expression of the separation of civil and political society! Or rather, only the separation of the civil and political classes expresses the true relationship of modern civil and political society.

Secondly: the political classes Hegel deals with here have a wholly different meaning than those political classes of the Middle Ages, which are said to be identical with the classes of civil society.

The whole existence of the medieval classes was political; their existence was the existence of the state. Their legislative activity, their grant of taxes for the realm was merely a particular issue of their universal political significance and efficacy. Their class was their state. The relationship to the realm was merely one of transaction between these various states and the nationality, because the political state in distinction from civil society was nothing but the representation of nationality. Nationality was the point d'honneur, the kat exhin political sense of these various Corporations etc., and taxes etc., pertained only to them. That was the relationship of the legislative classes to the realm. The classes were related in a similar way within the particular principalities. There, the principality, the sovereignty was a particular class which enjoyed certain privileges but was equally inconvenienced by the privileges of the other classes. (With the Greeks, civil society was a slave to political society.) The universal legislative efficacy of the classes of civil society was in no way the acquisition of political significance and efficacy by the unofficial, or private class, but was rather a simple issue of its actual and universal political significance and efficacy. The appearance of the private class as legislative power was simply a complement of its sovereign and governing (executive) power; or rather it was its appropriation of wholly public affairs as a private affair, its acquisition, qua private class, of sovereignty. In the Middle Ages, the classes of civil society were as such simultaneously legislative because they were not private classes, or because private classes were political classes. The medieval classes did not, as political Estates, acquire a new character. They did not become political classes because they participated in legislation; rather they participated in legislation because they were political classes. But what does that have in common with Hegel's unofficial class which, as a legislative element, acquires political bravura, an ecstatic condition, a remarkable, stunning, extraordinary political significance and efficacy?

All the contradictions of the Hegelian presentation are found together in this development.

1. He has presupposed the separation of civil society and the political state (which is a modern situation), 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 form of the separation of the various powers. For its body he has given the actual acting state the bureaucracy, which he ordains to be the knowing spirit over and above the materialism of civil society. He has opposed the state, as the actual universal, to the particular interest and need of civil society. in short, he presents everywhere the conflict between civil society and the state.

2. He opposes civil society as unofficial, or private class to the political state.

3. He calls the Estates, as element of the legislative power, the pure political formalism of civil society. He calls them a relationship of civil society to the state which is a reflection of the former on the latter, a reflection which does not alter the essence of the state. A relationship of reflection is also the highest identity between essentially different things.

On the other hand:

1. Hegel wants civil society, in its self-establishment as legislative clement, to appear neither as a mere indiscriminate multitude nor as an aggregate dispersed into its atoms. He wants no separation of civil and political life.

2. He forgets that he is dealing with a relationship of reflection, and makes the civil classes as such political classes; but again only with reference to the legislative power, so that their efficacy itself is proof of the separation.

He makes the Estates the expression of the separation [of civil and political life]; but at the same time they are supposed to be the representative of an identity - an identity which does not exist. Hegel is aware of the separation of civil society and the political state, but he wants the unity of the state expressed within the state; and this is to be achieved by having the classes of civil society, while remaining such, form the Estates as an element of legislative society. (cf. xiv, x)'

Part 5: The Estates §§ 304 - 307

§ 304. The Estates, as an element in political life, still retain in their own function the class distinctions already present in the lower spheres of civil life. The position of the classes is abstract to begin with, i.e., in contrast with the whole principle of monarchy or the crown, their position is that of an extreme — empirical universality. This extreme opposition implies the possibility, though no more, of harmonisation, and the equally likely possibility of set hostility. This abstract position changes into a rational relation (into a syllogism, see Remark to § 302) only if the middle term between the opposites comes into existence. From the point of view of the crown, the executive already has this character (see § 300). So, from the point of view of the classes, one moment in them must be adapted to the task of existing as in essence the moment of mediation.

§ 305. The principle of one of the classes of civil society is in itself capable of adaptation to this political position. The class in question is the one whose ethical life is natural, whose basis is family life, and, so far as its livelihood is concerned, the possession of land. Its particular members attain their position by birth, just as the monarch does, and, in common with him, they possess a will which rests on itself al6ne.

§ 306. This class is more particularly fitted for political position and significance in that its capital is independent alike of the state's capital, the uncertainty of business, the quest for profit, and any sort of fluctuation in possessions. It is likewise independent of favour, whether from the executive or the mob. It is even fortified against its own wilfulness, because those members of this class who are called to political life are not entitled, as other citizens are, either to dispose of their entire property at will, or to the assurance that it will pass to their children, whom they love equally, in similarly equal divisions. Hence their wealth becomes inalienable, entailed, and burdened by primogeniture.

Addition: This class has a volition of a more independent character. On the whole, the class of landed-property owners is divided into an educated section and a section of farmers. But over against both of these sorts of people there stands the business class, which is dependent on needs and concentrated on their satisfaction, and the civil servant class, which is essentially dependent on the state. The security and stability of the agricultural class may be still further increased by the institution of primogeniture, though this institution is desirable only from the point of view of politics, since it entails a sacrifice for the political end of giving the eldest son a life of independence. Primogeniture is grounded on the fact that the state should be able to reckon not on the bare possibility of political inclinations, but on something necessary. Now an inclination for politics is of course not bound up with wealth, but there is a relatively necessary connection between the two, because a man with independent means is not hemmed in by external circumstances and so there is nothing to prevent him from entering politics and working for the state. Where Political institutions are lacking, however, the foundation and encouragement of primogeniture is nothing but a chain on the freedom of private rights, and either political meaning must be given to it, or else it will in due course disappear.

§ 307. The right of this section of the agriculture class is thus based in a way on the natural principle of the family. But this principle is at the same time reversed owing to hard sacrifices made for political ends, and thereby the activity of this class is essentially directed to those ends. As a consequence of this, this class is summoned and entitled to its political vocation by birth without the hazards of election. It therefore has the fixed substantive position between the subjective wilfulness or contingency of both extremes; and while it mirrors in itself. . . 1 the moment of the monarchical power, it also shares in other respects the needs and rights of the other extreme [i.e., civil society], and hence it becomes a support at once of the throne and society.

Hegel has accomplished the masterpiece: he has developed peerage by birthright, wealth by inheritance, etc. etc., this support of the throne and society, on top of the absolute Idea.

Hegel's keenest insight lies in his sensing the separation of civil and political society to be a contradiction. But his error is that he contents himself with the appearance of its dissolution, and passes it off as the real thing; while the 'so-called theories' which he despises demand the separation of the civil and political classes, and rightly, for they express a consequence of modern society, in that here the political Estates are precisely nothing but the factual expression of the actual relationship of state and civil society — their separation.

Hegel has failed to identify the issue in question here. It is the issue of representative versus Estate constitution. The representative constitution is a great advance, for it is the open, genuine, consistent expression of the condition of the modern state. It is the unconcealed contradiction.

Before we take up this matter itself, let's take another look at this Hegelian presentation.

In the Estates as an element in the legislative power, the unofficial class acquires its political significance.

Earlier (in the Remark to § 301) it was said:

Hence the specific function which the concept assigns to the Estates is to be sought in the fact that in them ... the private judgment and private will of the sphere called 'civil society' in this book come into existence integrally related to the state.

The meaning of these two, taken in combination, is as follows: Civil society is the unofficial class, or, the unofficial class is the immediate, essential, concrete class of civil society. Only within the Estates as an element of the legislative power does it acquire political significance and efficacy. This is a new endowment, a particular function, for precisely its character as unofficial class expresses its opposition to political significance and efficacy, the privation of political character, and the fact that civil society actually lacks political significance and efficacy. The unofficial class is the class of civil society, or civil society is the unofficial class. Thus, in consequence, Hegel also excludes the universal class from the Estates as an element of the legislative power:

The universal class, or, more precisely, the class of civil servants, must purely in virtue of its character as universal, have the universal as the end of its essential activity.

In virtue of its character, civil society, or the unofficial class, does not have the universal as the end of its essential activity. Its essential activity is not a determination of the universal; it has no universal character. The unofficial class is the class of civil society as opposed to the [political] class.' The class of civil society is not a political class.

In declaring civil society to be the unofficial class, Hegel has declared the class differences of civil society to be non-political differences and civil and political life to be heterogeneous in character, even antitheses. How then does he proceed?

[The unofficial class] appears, therefore, in the Estates neither as a mere indiscriminate multitude nor as an aggregate dispersed into its atoms, but as what it already is, namely a class subdivided into two, one sub-class [the agricultural class] being based on a tie of substance between its members, and the other [the business class] on particular needs and the work whereby these are met (see § 201 ff.). It is only in this way that there is a genuine link between the particular which is effective in the state and the universal.

To be sure, civil society (the unofficial class), in its legislative activity in the Estates, cannot appear as a mere indiscriminate multitude because the mere indiscriminate multitude exists only in imagination or fantasy, but not in actuality. What actually exists is only accidental multitudes of various sizes (cities, villages, etc.). These multitudes, or this aggregate not only appears but everywhere really is an aggregate dispersed into its atoms; and when it appears in its political-class activity it must appear as this atomistic thing. The unofficial class, civil society, cannot appear here as what it already is. For what is it already? Unofficial class, i.e., opposition to and separation from the state. In order to achieve political significance and efficacy it must rather renounce itself as what it already is, as unofficial class. Only through this does it acquire its political significance and efficacy. This political act is a complete transubstantiation. In this political act civil society must completely renounce itself as such, as unofficial class, and assert a part of its essence which not only has nothing in common with the actual civil existence of its essence, but directly opposes it.

What the universal law is appears here in the individual. Civil society and the state are separated. Consequently the citizen of the state and the member of civil society are also separated. The individual must thus undertake an essential schism within himself As actual citizen he finds himself in a two-fold organisation: [a] the bureaucratic, which is an external formal determination of the otherworldly state, of the executive power, which does not touch him and his independent actuality; [b] the social, the organisation of civil society, within which he stands outside the state as a private man, for civil society does not touch upon the political state as such. The former [the bureaucratic] is an organisation of the state to which he continually contributes the material. The latter [the social] is a civil organisation whose material is not the state. In the former the state relates to him as formal opposition; in the latter he himself relates to the state as material opposition. Thus, in order to behave as actual citizen of the state, to acquire political significance and efficacy, he must abandon his civil actuality, abstract from it, and retire from this entire organisation into his individuality. He must do this because the only existence that he finds for his state-citizenship is his pure, bare individuality, for the existence of the state as executive is complete without him, and his existence in civil society is complete without the state. Only in opposition to these exclusively existing communities, only as an individual, can he be a citizen of the state. His existence as citizen is an existence lying outside the realm of his communal existences, and is hence purely individual. The legislature as a power is precisely the organisation, the communal embodiment, which his political existence is supposed to receive. Prior to the legislature, civil society, or the unofficial class, does not exist as political organisation. In order that it come to existence as such, its actual organisation, actual civil life, must be established as non-existing, for the Estates as an element of the legislative power have precisely the character of rendering the unofficial class, civil society, non-existent. The separation of civil society and the political state appears necessarily to be a separation of the political citizen, the citizen of the state, from civil society, i.e., from his own actual, empirical reality; for as a state-idealist he is a being who is completely other, distinct, different from and opposed to his own actuality. Here civil society effects within itself the relationship of the state and civil society, a relationship which already exists on the other side [i.e., within the state] as the bureaucracy. in the Estates the universal becomes actually, explicitly [für sich] what it is implicitly [an sich], namely, opposition to the particular. The citizen must renounce his class, civil society, the unofficial class, in order to achieve political significance and efficacy; for it is precisely this class which stands between the individual and the political state.

If Hegel already contrasts the whole of civil society as unofficial class to the political state, then it is self-evident that the distinctions within the unofficial class, i.e., the various civil classes, have only an unofficial significance with regard to the state; in other words, they have no political significance. For the various civil classes are simply the actualisation, the existence, of the principle, i.e., of the unofficial class as of the principle of civil society. If, however, the principle must be abandoned, then it is self-evident that still more the schisms within this principle are non-existent for the political state.

'It is only in this way', says Hegel in concluding the paragraph, 'that there is a genuine link between the particular which is effective in the state and the universal.' But here Hegel confuses the state as the whole of a people's existence with the political state. That particular is not the particular in, but rather outside the state, namely, the political state. It is not only not the particular which is effective in the state, but also the ineffectiveness [Unwirklichkeit] of the state. What Hegel wants to establish is that the classes of civil society are political classes; and in order to prove this he asserts that the classes of civil society are the particularity of the political state, that is to say, that civil society is political society. The expression, 'The particular in the state', can here only mean the particularity of the state. A bad conscience causes Hegel to choose the vague expression. Not only has he himself developed just the opposite, but he even ratifies it in this paragraph by characterising civil society as the 'unofficial class'. His statement that the particular is 'linked' to the universal is very cautious. The most dissimilar things can be linked. But here we are not dealing with a gradual transition but with a transubstantiation, and it is useless to ignore deliberately this cleft which has been jumped over and yet manifested by the very jump.

In the Remark Hegel says: 'This runs counter to another prevalent idea' etc. We have just shown how this prevalent idea is consequently and inevitably a necessary idea of the people's present development, and how Hegel's idea, despite its also being very prevalent in certain circles, is nevertheless untrue.

Returning to this prevalent idea Hegel says: 'This atomistic and abstract point of view vanishes at the stage of the family' etc. etc. 'The state, however, is' etc. This point of view is undeniably 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 point of view cannot be concrete when the object of the point of view is abstract. The atomism into which civil society is driven by its political act results necessarily from the fact that the commonwealth [das Gemeinwesen], the communal being [das kommunistische Wesen], within which the individual exists, is [reduced to] civil society separated from the state, or in other words, that the political state is an abstraction of civil society.'

This atomistic point of view, although it already vanishes in the family, and perhaps (??) also in civil society, recurs in the political state precisely because the political state is an abstraction of the family and civil society. But the reverse is also true. By expressing the strangeness [das Befremdliche] of this occurrence Hegel has not eliminated the estrangement [die Entfremdung].

The circles of association in civil society, Hegel continues, are already communities. To picture these communities as once more breaking up into a mere conglomeration of individuals as soon as they enter the field of politics, i.e., the field of the highest concrete universality, is eo ipso to hold civil and political life apart from one another and as it were to hang the latter in the air, because its basis could then only be the abstract individuality of caprice and opinion, and hence it would be grounded on chance and not on what is absolutely stable and justified.

This picturing [of these communities as breaking up] does not hold civil and political life apart; it is simply the picturing of an actually existing separation.

Nor does this picturing hang political life in the air; rather, political life is the life in the air, the ethereal region of civil society.

Now we turn to the representative and the Estate systems.

It is a development of history that has transformed the political classes into social classes such that, just as the Christians are equal in heaven yet unequal on earth, so the individual members of a people are equal in the heaven of their political world yet unequal in the earthly existence of society. The real transformation of the political classes into civil classes took place under the absolute monarchy. The bureaucracy asserted the idea of unity over against the various states within the state. Nevertheless, even alongside the bureaucracy of the absolute executive, the social difference of the classes remained a political difference, political within and alongside the bureaucracy of the absolute executive. Only the French Revolution completed the transformation of the political classes into social classes, in other words, made the class distinctions of civil society into merely social distinctions, pertaining to private life but meaningless in political life. With that, the separation of political life and civil society was completed.

At the same time the classes of civil society were likewise transformed: civil society underwent a change by reason of its separation from political society. Class in the medieval sense remained only within the bureaucracy itself, where civil and political positions are immediately identical. Over against this stands civil society as unofficial class. Here class distinction is no longer one of need and of labor as an independent body. The sole general, superficial and formal distinction which remains is that of town and country. But within civil society itself the distinctions take shape in changeable, unfixed spheres whose principle is arbitrariness. Money and education are the prevalent criteria. Yet it's not here, but in the critique of Hegel's treatment of civil society that this should be developed. Enough said. Class in civil society has neither need — and therefore a natural impulse — nor politics for its principle. It is a division of the masses whose development is unstable and whose very structure is arbitrary and in no sense an organisation.

The sole characteristic thing is that the lack of property, and the class in need of immediate labor, of concrete labor, forms less a class of civil society than the basis upon which the spheres of civil society rest and move. The sole class in which political and civil positions coincide is that of the members of the executive power. The present social class already manifests a distinction from the former class of civil society by the fact that it does not, as was formerly the case, regard the individual as a communal in individual, as a communal being [ein Gemeinwesen]; rather, it is partly chance, partly labor, etc., of the individual which determines whether he remains in his class or not, a class which is, further, only an external determination of this individual; for he neither inheres in his work nor does the class relate to him as an objective communal being organised according to firm laws and related firmly to him. Moreover, he stands in no actual relation to his substantial activity, to his actual class. The medical man, for instance, forms no particular class in civil society. one businessman belongs to a class different than that of another businessman, i.e., he belongs to another social position. Just as civil society is separated from political society, so within itself civil society is separated into class and social position, even though some relations obtain between the two. The principle of the civil class, or of civil society, is enjoyment and the capacity to enjoy. In his political role the member of civil society rids himself of his class, of his actual private position; by this alone does he acquire significance as man. in other words, his character as a member of the state, as a social being, appears to be his human character. For all of his other characteristics in civil society appear to be unessential to the man, the individual; that is, they appear to be external characteristics which are indeed necessary to his existence within the whole, i.e., as being a bond with the whole, but a bond that he can just as well throw off. (Present civil society is the accomplished principle of individualism: individual existence is the final end, while activity, labor, content, etc., are merely means.)

The Estate-constitution, when not a tradition of the Middle Ages, is the attempt, partly within the political sphere itself, to thrust man back into the limitation of his private sphere, to make his particularity his substantial consciousness and, by means of the political character of class difference, also to make him once more into a social being.

The actual man is the private man of the present-day political constitution.

In general, the significance of the estate is that it makes difference, separation, subsistence, things pertaining to the individual as such.' His manner of life, activity, etc. is his privilege, and instead of making him a functional member of society, it makes him an exception from society. The fact that this difference is not only individual but also established as community, estate, corporation, not only fails to abolish the exclusiveness of its nature, but is rather its expression. Instead of the particular function being a function of society, the particular function is made into a society for itself.

Not only is the estate based on the separation of society as the governing principle, but it separates man from his universal nature; it makes him an animal whose being coincides immediately with its determinate character. The Middle Ages constitutes the animal history of mankind, its zoology.

Modern times, civilisation, commits the opposite mistake. It separates man s objective essence from him, taking it to be merely external and material. Man's content is not taken to be his true actuality.

Anything further regarding this is to be developed in the section on 'Civil Society'.

Now we come to

§ 304. The Estates, as an element in political life, still retain in their own significance, the class distinctions already present in the lower spheres of civil life.

We have already shown that the class distinctions already present in the lower spheres of life have no significance for the political spheres, or if so, then only the significance of private, hence non-political, distinctions. But according to Hegel here they do not even have their already present significance (their significance in civil society). Rather, the Estates as an element in political life affirms its essence by embodying these distinctions within itself; and, thus immersed in political life, they receive a significance of their 'own' which belongs not to them but to this element.

As long as the organisation of civil society remained political, and the political state and civil society were one, this separation, this duplication of the estates' significance was not present. The estates did not signify one thing in the civil world and something other in the political world. They acquired no [additional] significance in the political world, but signified only themselves. The duality of civil society and the political state, which the Estate-constitution purports to resolve through a reminiscence, appears within that constitution itself, in that class difference (the differentiation within civil society) acquires in the political sphere a significance different than in the civil sphere. There is apparent identity here: the same subject, but in an essentially different determination, and thus in fact a double subject. And this illusory identity (surely an illusory identity because, in fact, the actual subject, man, remains constantly himself, does not lose his identity in the various determinations of his being; but here man is not the subject, rather he is identified with a predicate — the class — and at the same time it is asserted that he exists in this definite determination and in another determination, that he is, as this definite, exempted and restricted thing, something other than this restricted thing) is artificially maintained through that reflection [mentioned earlier], by at one time having civil class distinction as such assume a character which should accrue to it only in the political sphere, and at another time reversing things and having the class distinction in the political sphere acquire a character which issues not from the political sphere but from the subject of the civil sphere. In order to present the one limited subject, the definite class (the class distinction), as the essential subject of both predicates, or in order to prove the identity of the two predicates, both are mystified and developed in an illusory and vague dimorphism [Doppelgestalt].

Here the same subject is taken in different meanings, but the meaning is not a self-determination [of the subject]; rather, it is an allegorical determination foisted on the subject. One could use the same meaning for a different concrete subject, or another meaning for the same subject. The significance that civil class distinction acquires in the political sphere is not its own, but proceeds from the political sphere; and even here it could have a different significance, as was historically the case. The reverse is also true. This is the uncritical, the mystical way of interpreting an old world-view in terms of a new one, through which it becomes nothing but an unhappy hybrid in which the form betrays the meaning and the meaning the form, and neither does the form achieve significance, thus becoming actual form, nor the significance become form, thus becoming actual significance. This uncritical spirit, this mysticism, is the enigma of the modern constitution (kat exohin the Estate-constitution) as well as the mystery of Hegelian philosophy, especially the Philosophy of Right and the Philosophy of Religion.

The best way to rid oneself of this illusion is to take the significance as what it is, i.e., as the actual determination, then as such make it the subject, and consider whether its ostensibly proper subject is its actual predicate, i.e., whether this ostensibly proper subject expresses its [the actual determination's] essence and true actualisation.

The position of the classes (the Estates as an element in political life), is abstract to begin with, i.e., in contrast with the whole principle of monarchy or the crown, their position is that of an extreme — empirical universality. This extreme opposition implies the possibility, though no more, of harmonisation, and the equally likely possibility of set hostility. This abstract position changes into a rational relation (into a syllogism, see Remark to § 302) only if the middle term between the opposites comes into existence.

We have already seen that the Estates, in common with the executive power, form the middle term between the principle of monarchy and the people, between the will of the state existing as one and as many empirical Wills, and between empirical singularity and empirical universality. Just as he had to define the will of civil society as empirical universality, so Hegel had to define the sovereign will as empirical singularity; but he does not articulate the antithesis in all of its sharpness.

Hegel continues:

From the point of view of the crown, the executive already has this character (see § 300). So, from the point of view of the classes, one moment in them must be adapted to the task of existing as in essence the moment of mediation.

The true antitheses, however, are the sovereign and civil society. And as we have already seen, the Estates have the same significance from the people's point of view as the executive has from the point of view of the sovereign. Just as the executive emanates in an elaborate circular system, so the people condenses into a miniature edition; for the constitutional monarchy can get along well only with the people en miniature. The Estates, from the point of view of civil society, are the very same abstraction of the political state as is the executive from the sovereign's point of view. Thus it appears that the mediation has been fully achieved. Both extremes have left their obstinacy behind, each has imparted the spirit of its particular essence into a fusion with that of the other; and the legislature, whose elements are the executive as well as the Estates, appears not to be that which must first allow this mediation to come to existence, but to be itself the already existing mediation. Also, Hegel has already [§ 302] declared the Estates in common with the executive to be the middle term between the people and the sovereign (the same way the Estates are the middle term between civil society and the executive, etc.). Thus the rational relation, the syllogism, appears to be complete. The legislature, the middle term, is a mixtum compositum of both extremes: the sovereign-principle and civil society, empirical singularity and empirical universality, subject and predicate. In general, Hegel conceives of the syllogism as middle term, to be a mixtum compositum. We can say that in his development of the rational syllogism all of the transcendence and mystical dualism of his system becomes apparent. The middle term is the wooden sword, the concealed opposition between universality and singularity.

To begin with, we notice in regard to this whole development that the mediation Hegel wants to establish here is not derived from the essence of the legislature, from its own character, but rather with regard to an existence lying outside its essential character. It is a construction of reference. The legislature is chiefly developed with regard only to a third [party]. Hence, it is primarily the construction of its formal existence which receives all the attention. The legislature is constructed very diplomatically. This results from the false, illusory kat exohin political position given to the legislature in the modern state (whose interpreter is Hegel himself). What follows immediately is that this is no true state, because in it the determinate functions of the state, one of which is the legislature, must not be regarded in and for themselves, not theoretically, but rather practically; they must not be regarded as independent powers, but as powers bound up with an opposite, and this in accordance with the rules of convention rather than by the nature of things.

Thus the Estates, in common with the executive, should actually be the middle term between the will of empirical singularity, i.e., the sovereign, and the will of empirical universality, i.e., civil society. But in fact their position is really 'abstract to begin with, i.e., in contrast with the whole principle of monarchy or the crown, their position is that of an extreme empirical universality. This extreme opposition implies the possibility, though no more, of harmonisation, and the equally likely possibility of set hostility. In other words their position, as Hegel quite rightly remarks, is an abstract position.

It appears at first that neither the extreme of empirical universality nor the principle of monarchy or the crown, i.e., the extreme of empirical singularity, are opposed to one another. For from the point of view of civil society the Estates are delegated just as the executive is from the point of view of the sovereign. Just as the principle of the crown ceases, in the delegated executive power, to be the extreme of empirical singularity, surrendering its self-determined will and lowering itself to the finitude of knowledge, responsibility, and thought, so civil society appears in the Estates to be no longer an empirical universality, but a very definite whole which has political and administrative sense and temper, and no less a sense for the interests of individuals and particular groups (§ 302). Civil society, in its miniature edition as the Estates, has ceased to be empirical universality. Rather, it has been reduced to a delegated committee of very definite number. If the sovereign assumes empirical universality in the executive power, then civil society assumes empirical singularity or particularity in the Estates. Both have become a particular.

The only opposition which remains possible appears to be that between the two emanations, between the executive- and the Estate-elements within the legislature. It appears, therefore, to be an opposition within the legislature itself. And these elements which mediate 'in common' seem quite prone to get into one another's hair. In the executive element of the legislature the inaccessible empirical singularity of the sovereign has come down to earth in a number of limited, tangible, responsible personalities; and in the Estates, civil society has exalted itself into a number of political men. Both sides have lost their inaccessibility. The crown — the inaccessible, exclusive, empirical One — has lost its obstinacy, while civil society — the inaccessible, vague, empirical All — has lost its fluidity. In the Estates on the one hand, and the executive element of the legislature on the other, which together would mediate between civil society and the sovereign, the opposition thus appears to have become, first of all, a refereed opposition, but also an irreconcilable contradiction.

As for this mediation, it is therefore, as Hegel rightly argues, all the more necessary that the middle term between the opposites comes into existence; for it is itself much more the existence of the contradiction than of the mediation.

That this mediation will be effected by the Estates seems to be maintained by Hegel without any foundation. He says:

But we have already seen that Hegel arbitrarily and inconsistently posits the sovereign and the Estates as opposed extremes. As the executive has this character from the point of view of the crown, so the Estates have it from the point of view of civil society. Not only do [the Estates] stand, in common with the executive, between the sovereign and civil society, but also between the executive in general and the people (§ 302). They do more on behalf of civil society than the executive does on behalf of the crown, which is itself in opposition to the people. Thus they have accomplished their full measure of mediation. Why make these asses bear still more? Why should they always be made the donkey-bridge, even between themselves and their own adversaries? Why must they always perform the self-sacrifice? Should they cut off one of their hands when both are needed to withstand their adversary, the executive element of the legislature?

In addition, Hegel first has the Estates arise from the Corporations, class distinctions, etc., lest they be a mere empirical universality; and now he reverses the process, and makes them mere empirical universality in order to have class distinction arise from them! just as the sovereign is mediated with civil society through the executive, so society is mediated with the executive through the Estates — the executive thus acting as society's Christ, and the Estates as its priests.

Now it appears all the more that the role of the extremes — the crown (empirical singularity) and civil society (empirical universality) - must be that of mediating as the middle term between the opposites; all the more because 'it is one of the most important discoveries of logic that a specific moment which, by standing in an opposition, has the position of an extreme, ceases to be such and is a moment in an organic whole by being at the same time the mean' (Remark to § 302). Civil society appears to be unable to play this role, for civil society as itself, as an extreme, occupies no seat in the legislature. The other extreme, the sovereign principle, exists as an extreme within the legislature, and thus apparently must be the mediator between the Estate- and the executive-elements. And it appears to have all the qualifications; for, on the one hand, the whole of the state, and therefore also civil society, is represented within it, and, more specifically, it has empirical singularity of will in common with the Estates, since empirical universality is actual only as empirical singularity. Furthermore, the sovereign principle does not merely op pose civil society as a kind of formula, as state-consciousness, the way the executive does. It is itself the state; it has the material, natural moment in common with civil society. On the other hand, it is the head and the representative of the executive. (Hegel, who inverts everything, makes the executive the representative, the emanation, of the sovereign. When he considers the idea whose existence the sovereign is supposed to be, Hegel has in mind not the actual idea of the executive, the executive as idea, but rather the subject of the Absolute Idea which exists corporeally in the sovereign; hence the executive becomes a mystical continuation of the soul existing in his body - the sovereign body.)

The sovereign, then, had to be the middle term in the legislature between the executive and the Estates; but, of course, the executive is the middle term between him and the Estates, and the Estates between him and civil society. How is he to mediate between what he himself needs as a mean lest his own existence become a one-sided extreme? Now the complete absurdity of these extremes, which interchangeably play now the part of the extreme and now the part of the mean, becomes apparent. They are like Janus with two-faced heads, which now show themselves from the front and now from the back, with a diverse character at either side. What was first intended to be the mean between two extremes now itself occurs as an extreme; and the other of the two extremes, which had just been mediated by it, now intervenes as an extreme' (because of its distinction from the other extreme) between its extreme and its mean. This is a kind of mutual reconciliation society. It is as if a man stepped between two opponents, only to have one of them immediately step between the mediator and the other opponent. It is like the story of the man and wife who quarrelled and the doctor who wished to mediate between them, whereupon the wife soon had to step between the doctor and her husband, and then the husband between his wife and the doctor. It is like the lion in A Midsummer Night's Dream who exclaims: 'I am the lion, and I am not the lion, but Snug.' So here each extreme is sometimes the lion of opposition and sometimes the Snug of mediation. When the one extreme cries: 'Now I am the mean', then the other two may not touch it, but rather only swing at the one that was just the extreme. As one can see, this is a society pugnacious at heart but too afraid of bruises to ever really fight. The two who want to fight arrange it so that the third who steps between them will get the beating, but immediately one of the two appears as the third, and because of all this caution they never arrive at a decision. We find this system of mediation in effect also where the very man who wishes to beat an opponent has at the same time to protect him from a beating at the hands of other opponents, and because of this double pursuit never manages to execute his own business. It is remarkable that Hegel, who reduces this absurdity of mediation to its abstract logical, and hence pure and irreducible, expression, calls it at the same time the speculative mystery of logic, the rational relationship, the rational syllogism. Actual extremes cannot be mediated with each other precisely because they are actual extremes. But neither are they in need of mediation, because they are opposed in essence. They have nothing in common with one another; they neither need nor complement one another. The one does not carry in its womb the yearning, the need, the anticipation of the other. (When Hegel treats universality and singularity, the abstract moments of the syllogism, as actual opposites, this is precisely the fundamental dualism of his logic. Anything further regarding this belongs in the critique of Hegelian logic.)

This appears to be in opposition to the principle: Les extrêmes se touchent. The North and South Poles attract each other; the female and male sexes also attract each other, and only through the union of their extreme differences does man result.

On the other hand, each extreme is its other extreme. Abstract spiritualism is abstract materialism; abstract materialism is the abstract spiritualism of matter.

In regard to the former, both North and South Poles are poles; their essence is identical. In the same way both female and male gender are of one species, one nature, i.e., human nature. North and South Poles are opposed determinations of one essence, the variation of one essence brought to its highest degree of development. They are the differentiated essence. They are what they are only as differentiated determinations; that is, each is this differentiated determination of the one same essence. Truly in real extremes would be Pole and non-Pole, human and non-human gender. Difference here is one of existence, whereas there [i.e., in the case of Pole and non-Pole, etc.,] difference is one of essence, i.e., the difference between two essences. in regard to the second [i.e. where each extreme is its other extreme], the chief characteristic lies in the fact that a concept (existence, etc.) is taken abstractly, and that it does not have significance as independent but rather as an abstraction from another, and only as this abstraction. Thus, for example, spirit is only the abstraction from matter. It is evident that precisely because this form is to be the content of the concept, its real essence is rather the abstract opposite, i.e., the object from which it abstracts taken in its abstraction — in this case, abstract materialism.

Had the difference within the existence of one essence not been confused, in part, with the abstraction given independence (an abstraction not from another, of course, but from itself) and, in part, with the actual opposition of mutually exclusive essences, then a three-fold error could have been avoided, namely:

1. that because only the extreme is true, every abstraction and one-sidedness takes itself to be the truth, whereby a principle appears to be only an abstraction from another instead of a totality in itself;

2. that the decisiveness of actual opposites, their formation into extremes, which is nothing other than their self-knowledge as well as their inflammation to the decision to fight, is thought to be something which should be prevented if possible, in other words, something harmful;

3. that their mediation is attempted. For no matter how firmly both extremes appear, in their existence, to be actual and to be extremes, it still lies only in the essence of the one to be an extreme, and it does not have for the other the meaning of true actuality.

The one infringes upon the other, but they do not occupy a common position. For example, Christianity, or religion in general, and philosophy are extremes. But in fact religion is not a true opposite to philosophy, for philosophy comprehends religion in its illusory actuality. Thus, for philosophy — in so far as it seeks to be an actuality — religion is dissolved in itself. There is no actual duality of essence. More on this later.

The question arises, why does Hegel need a new mediation on the side of the Estates at all? Or does he share with [others] 'the popular, but not dangerous prejudice, which regards the Estates principally from the point of view of their opposition to the executive, as if that were their essential attitude'? (Remark to § 302.)

The fact of the matter is simply this: On the one hand we have seen that it is only in the legislature that civil society as the element of the Estates, and the power of the crown as the element of the executive have taken on the spirit of actual, immediately practical opposition.

On the other hand, the legislature is the totality. In it we find (1) the deputation of the sovereign principle, i.e., the executive; (2) the deputation of civil society, i.e., the Estates; but in addition, (3) the one extreme as such, i.e., the sovereign principle; while the other extreme, civil society, does not exist in it as such. It is only because of this that the Estates become the extreme to the sovereign principle, when civil society really should be. As we have seen, only as Estates does civil society organise itself into a political existence. The Estates are its political existence, its transubstantiation into the political state. Again as we have seen, only the legislature is, therefore, the actual political state in its totality. Here, then, there is (1) sovereign principle, (2) executive, (3) civil society. The Estates are the civil society of the political state, i.e., the legislature. The extreme to the sovereign, which civil society was supposed to have been, is therefore the Estates. (Because civil society is the non-actuality of political existence, the political existence of civil society is its own dissolution, its separation from itself.) Therefore it also constitutes an opposition to t executive.

Hegel, therefore, again designates the Estates as the extreme of empirical universality, which is actually civil society itself. (Hence he unnecessarily allows the Estates, as an element in political life, to proceed from the Corporations and different classes. This procedure would make sense only if the distinct classes as such were in fact the legislative classes, if, accordingly, the distinction of civil society — i.e., its civil character - were re vera the political character. We would then not have a legislature of the state as a whole, but rather a legislature of the various estates, Corporations, and classes over the state as a whole. The estates [or classes] of civil society would receive no political character, but would rather determine the political state. They would make their particularity a power determining the whole. They would be the power of the particular over the universal. And we would not have one legislature, but several, which would come to terms among themselves and with the executive. However, Hegel has in mind the Estates in the modern sense, namely the actualisation of state citizenship, or of the Bourgeois. He does not want the actual universal, the political state, to be determined by civil society, but rather civil society to be determined by the state. Thus while he accepts the Estates in their medieval form, he gives them the opposite significance, namely, that of being determined by the political state. The Estates as representatives of the Corporations, etc., would not be empirical universality, but rather empirical particularity, i.e., the particularity of the empirical!) The legislature, therefore, needs mediation within itself, that is to say, a concealment of the opposition. And this mediation must come from the Estates because in the legislature the Estates lose their significance of being the representation of civil society and become the primary element, the very civil society of the legislature. The legislature is the totality of the political state and, precisely because of this, the contradiction of the political state brought forcibly to appearance. Thus it is also its established dissolution. Entirely different principles collide within it. To be sure, it appears to be the opposition between the two elements, that of the sovereign principle and that of the Estates, and so forth. But in fact it is the antinomy of political state and civil society, the self-contradiction of the abstract political state. The legislature is the established revolt. (Hegel's chief mistake consists in the fact that he conceives of the contradiction in appearance as being a unity in essence, i.e., in the Idea; whereas it certainly has something more profound in its essence, namely, an essential contradiction. For example here, the contradiction in the legislature itself is nothing other than the contradiction of the political state, and thus also the self-contradiction of civil society.

Vulgar criticism falls into an opposite dogmatic error. Thus, for example, it criticises the constitution, drawing attention to the opposition Of the powers etc. It finds contradictions everywhere. But criticism that struggles with its opposite remains dogmatic criticism, as for example in earlier times, when the dogma of the Blessed Trinity was set aside by appealing to the contradiction between 1 and 3. True criticism, however, shows the internal genesis of the Blessed Trinity in the human mind. it describes the act of its birth. Thus, true philosophical criticism of the present state constitution not only shows the contradictions as existing, but clarifies them, grasps their essence and necessity. It comprehends their own proper significance. However, this comprehension does not, as Hegel thinks, consist in everywhere recognising the determinations of the logical concept, but rather in grasping the proper logic of the proper object.)

As Hegel expresses it, the position of the political Estates relative to the sovereign implies the possibility, though no more, of harmonisation, and the equally likely possibility of set hostility.

The possibility of hostility is implied everywhere different volitions meet. Hegel himself says that the possibility of harmonisation is the possibility of hostility. Thus, he must now construct an element which is both the impossibility of hostility and the actuality of harmonisation. For him, such an element would be the freedom of decision and thought in face of the sovereign will and the executive. Thus it would no longer be an element belonging to the Estates as an element in political life. Rather, it would be an element of the sovereign will and the executive, and would stand in the same opposition to the actual Estates as does the executive itself

This demand is already quite muted by the conclusion of the paragraph:

The moment which is dispatched from the estates [or classes] must have a character the reverse of that which the executive has from the point of view of the sovereign, since the sovereign and the estates are opposite extremes. Just as the sovereign democratises himself in the executive, so this estate element must monarchise itself in its deputation. Thus what Hegel wants is a moment of sovereignty issuing from the estates. Just as the executive has an estate-moment on behalf of the sovereign, so there should also be a sovereign-moment on behalf of the estates.

The actuality of harmonisation and the impossibility of hostility converts into the following demand: 'So, from the point of view of the classes, one moment in them must be adapted to the task of existing as in essence the moment of mediation.' Adapted to the task! According to § 302 the Estates as a whole have this task. It should not say 'task' but rather 'certainty'. And what kind of task is this anyway which exists as in essence the moment of mediation — being in 'essence' Buridan's ass?

The fact of the matter is simply this:

The Estates are supposed to be the mediation between the crown and the executive on the one hand, and the crown and the people on the other. But they are not this, but rather the organised political opposition to civil society. The legislature in itself is in need of mediation, and indeed a mediation coming from the Estates, as has been shown. The presupposed moral harmonisation of the two wills, the will of the state as sovereign will and the will of the state as the will of civil society, does not suffice. Indeed only the legislature is the organised, total political state; yet, precisely in it appears, because it is in its highest degree of development, the open contradiction of the political state with itself. Thus, the appearance of a real identity of the sovereign and Estate wills must be established. Either the Estates must be established as the sovereign will or the sovereign will established as the Estates. The Estates must establish themselves as the actuality of a will which is not the will of the Estates. The unity which is non-existent in essence (otherwise it would have to prove itself by the Estates' efficacy and not by their mode of existing) must at least be present in existence, or else an existing instance of the legislature (of the Estates) has the task of being the unity of what is not united. This moment of the Estates, the Chamber of Peers, the Upper House, etc., is the highest synthesis of the political state in the organisation just considered. With that, however, Hegel does not achieve what he wants, namely, the actuality of harmonisation and the impossibility of set hostility; rather, the whole thing remains at the point of the possibility of harmonisation. However, it is the established illusion of the internal unity of the political state (of the sovereign will and that of the Estates, and furthermore of the principle of the political state and that of civil society), the illusion of this unity as material principle, that is to say, such that not only two opposed principles unite but that the unity is that of one nature or existential ground. The Estates, as this moment, are the romanticism of the political state, the dreams of its substantiality or internal harmony. They are an allegorical existence.

Whether this illusion is an effective illusion or a conscious self-deception depends now on the actual status quo of the relationship between the Estate and sovereign-elements. As long as the Estates and the crown in fact harmonise, or get along together, the illusion in its essential unity is an actual, and thus effective illusion. But on the other hand, should the truth of the illusion become manifest, then it becomes a conscious lie and a ridicule.

We have already demonstrated Hegel's inconsistencies: (1) conceiving of the Estates in their modern abstraction from civil society etc., after having them proceed from Corporations; (2) determining them now once again according to the class distinction of civil society, after having already determined the political Estates as such to be the extreme of empirical universality.

To be consistent one would have to examine the political Estates by themselves as a new element, and then construct out of them the mediation which was demanded in § 304.

But now we see how Hegel reintroduces civil class distinction and, at the same time, makes it appear that it is not the actuality and particular nature of civil class distinction which determines the highest political sphere, the legislature, but rather the reverse, that civil class distinction declines to a pure matter which the political sphere forms and constructs in accordance with its need, a need which arises out of the political sphere itself.

The principle of one of the classes of civil society is in itself capable of adaptation to this political position. The class in question is one whose ethical life is natural. (The agricultural class.)

What, then, does this principle capability, or capability in principle of the agricultural class consist in?

Its basis is family life, and, so far as its livelihood is concerned, the possession of land. Its particular members attain their position by birth, just as the monarch does, and, in common with him, they possess a will which rests on itself alone.

The will which rests on itself alone is related to its livelihood, i.e., the possession of land, to its position by birth which it has in common with the monarch, and to family life, as its basis.

Livelihood as possession of land and a will which rests on itself alone are two quite different things. One should rather say a will which rests on ground and soil. One should rather speak of a will resting on the disposition of the state, not of one resting on itself but in the whole. The possession of land takes the place of the disposition, or the possession of political spirit.

Furthermore, in regard to family life as basis, the social ethical life of civil society appears to occupy a higher position than this natural ethical life. Moreover, family life is the natural ethical life of the other classes, of the civil as well as the agricultural class of civil society. But the fact that 'family life' is, in the case of the agricultural class, not only the principle of the family but also the basis of this class' social existence in general, seems to disqualify it for the highest political task; for this class will apply patriarchal laws to a non-patriarchal sphere, and will think and act in terms of child or father, master and servant, where the real questions are the political state and political citizenship.

Regarding the monarch's position by birth, Hegel has not developed a patriarchal but rather a modern constitutional king. His position by birth consists in his being the bodily representative of the state and in being born as king, or in the kingdom being his family inheritance. But what does this have in common with family life as the basis of the agricultural class; and what does natural ethical-life have in common with position by birth as such? The king has this in common with a horse, namely, just as the horse is born a horse so the king is born a king.

Had Hegel made the class distinction, which he already accepted, a political distinction, then the agricultural class as such would already be an independent part of the Estates; and if it is as such a moment of mediation with the principality, why would the construction of a new mediation be necessary? And why separate it off from the actual moment of the Estates, since this moment achieves its abstract position vis-a-vis the crown only because of this separation? After he has developed the political Estates as a specific element, as a transubstantiation of the unofficial class into state citizenship, and precisely because of this has found the mediation to be a necessity, by what right does Hegel dissolve this organism once more into the distinction of the unofficial class, and thus into the unofficial class, and then derive from it the political state's mediation with itself?

In any case, what an anomaly, that the highest synthesis of the political state is nothing but the synthesis of landed property and family life!

In a word:

If civil classes as such are political classes, then the mediation is not needed; and if this mediation is needed, then the civil class is not political, and thus also not this mediation. The member of the agricultural class is not as such, but as state citizen, a part of the political Estates; while in the opposite case (i.e., where he, as member of the agricultural class, is state citizen, or as state citizen is member of this class), his state citizenship is membership in the agricultural class; and then he is not, as member of this class, a state citizen, but is as state citizen a member of this class!

Here, then, we find one of Hegel's inconsistencies within his own way of viewing things; and such an inconsistency is an accommodation. The political Estates in the modern sense, which is the sense developed by Hegel, constitute the frilly established separation of civil society from its unofficial class and its distinctions. How can Hegel make the unofficial class the solution of the antinomies which the legislature has within itself? Hegel wants the medieval system of Estates, but in the modern sense of the legislature; and he wants the modern legislature, but within the framework of the medieval system of Estates! This is syncretism at its worst.

The beginning of § 304 reads:

The Estates, as an element in political life, still retail). in their own function the class distinctions already present in the lower spheres of civil life.

But in their own function, the Estates, as an element in political life, retain this distinction only by annulling it, negating it within themselves, abstracting themselves from it.

Should the agricultural class — or, as we will hear later, the empowered agricultural class, aristocratic landed property — become as such, and as described, the mediation of the total political state, i.e., of the legislature within itself, then it is certainly the mediation of the political Estates with the crown, in the sense of being the dissolution of the political Estates as an actual political clement. Not the agricultural class, but class, the unofficial class, the analysis (reduction) of the political Estates into the unofficial class, constitutes here the re-established unity of the political state with itself. (The mediation here is not the agricultural class as such, but rather its separation from the political Estates in its quality as civil unofficial class; that is, its unofficial class [reality] gives it a separate position within the political Estates, whereupon the other section of the political Estates is also given the position of a particular unofficial class, and, therefore, it ceases to represent the state citizenship of civil society.) Here then, the political state no longer exists as two opposed wills; rather, on the one side stands the political state (the executive and the sovereign), and on the other side stands civil society in its distinction from the political state (the various classes). With that, then, the political state as a totality is abolished.

The other sense of the duplication of the political Estates within themselves as a mediation with the crown is, in general, this: the internal separation of the political Estates, their own inner opposition, is a re-established unity with the crown. The fundamental dualism between the crown and the Estates as an element in the legislature is neutralised by the dualism within the Estates themselves. With Hegel, however, this neutralisation is effected by the political Estates separating themselves from their political element.

We will return later to the subject of possession of land as livelihood, which is supposed to accord with sovereignty of Will, i.e., the sovereignty of the crown, and to family life as the basis of the agricultural class, which is supposed to accord with the position by birth of the crown. What is developed here in § 305 is the principle of the agricultural class which is in itself capable of adaptation to this political position.

§ 306 deals with the adaption to political position and significance; it reduces to the following: 'Their wealth becomes inalienable, entailed, and burdened by primogeniture. Thus, primogeniture would be the adaption of the agricultural class to politics.

Primogeniture is grounded, so it says in the Addition, on the fact that the state should be able to reckon not on the bare possibility of political inclinations, but on something necessary. Now an inclination for politics is of course not bound up with wealth, but there is a relatively necessary connection between the two, because a man with independent means is not hemmed in by external circumstances and so there is nothing to prevent him from entering politics and working for the state.

First sentence: The state is not content with the bare possibility of political inclinations, but should be able to reckon on something necessary.
Second sentence: An inclination for politics is of course not bound up with wealth; that is, the inclination for politics in those of wealth is a bare possibility.
Third sentence: But there is a relatively necessary connection, namely, a man with independent means etc. finds nothing to prevent him from working for the state; that is, the means provide the possibility of political inclinations. But according to the first sentence, this possibility precisely does not suffice.

In addition, Hegel has failed to show that possession of land is the sole independent means.

The adaption of its means to independence is the adaption of the agricultural class to political position and significance. In other words, independent means is its political position and significance.

This independence is further developed as follows:

Its wealth is independent of the state's capital. 'State's capital' here apparently means the government treasury. In this respect the universal class, as essentially dependent on the state, stands in opposition.

As it says in the Preface:

Apart from anything else philosophy with us is not, as it was with the Greeks for instance, pursued in private like an art, but has an existence in the open, in contact with the public, and especially, or even only, in the service of the state.

Thus, philosophy is also essentially dependent upon the government treasury.

Its ['the agricultural class'] wealth is independent of the uncertainty of business, the quest for profit, and any sort of fluctuation in possessions. From this aspect it is opposed by the business class as the one which is dependent on needs and concentrated on their satisfaction.

This wealth is independent of favour, whether from the executive or the mob.

Finally, it is even fortified against its own wilfulness, because those members of this class who are called to political life are not entitled, as other citizens are, either to dispose of their entire property at will, or to the assurance that it will pass to their children, whom they love equally, in similarly equal divisions.

Here the oppositions have taken on an entirely new and materialistic form such as we would hardly expect to find in the heaven of the political state.

In sharpest terms, the opposition, as Hegel develops it, is the opposition of private property and wealth.

The possession of land is private property kat exohin true private property. Its exact private nature is prominent (1) as independence from state capital, from favour from the executive, from property existing as universal property of the political state, a particular wealth which, alongside of other wealth, is in accordance with the construction of the political state; (2) as independence from the need of society or the social wealth, from favour from the mob. (Equally significant is the fact that a share in state capital is understood as favour from the executive just as a share in the social wealth is understood as favour from the mob.) Neither the wealth of the universal class nor that of the business class is true private property, because such wealth is occasioned, in the former case directly, in the latter case indirectly, by the connection with the universal wealth, or property as social property; both are a participation in it, and therefore both are mediated through favour, that is, through the contingency of will. In opposition to that stands the possession of land as sovereign private property, which has not yet acquired the form of wealth, i.e., property established by the social will.

Thus, at its highest point the political constitution is the constitution of private property. The highest political inclination is the inclination of private property. Primogeniture is merely the external appearance of the internal nature of the possession of land. Because it is inalienable, its social nerves have been severed and- its isolation from civil society is secured. By not passing on to the children whom they love equally, it is independent even of the smallest society, the natural society, the family. By having withdrawn from the volition and laws of the family it thus safeguards its rough nature of private property against the transition into family wealth.

In § 305, Hegel declared the class of landed property to be capable of adaption to the political position because family life would be its basis. But he himself has declared love to be the basis, the principle, the spirit of family life. The class whose basis is family life thus lacks the basis of family life, i.e., love, as the actual and thus effective and determining principle. It is spiritless family life, the illusion of family life. In its highest form of development, the principle of private property contradicts the principle of the family. Family life in civil society becomes family life, the life of love, only in opposition to the class of natural ethical life, [which is, according to Hegel] the class of family life. This latter is, rather, the barbarism of private property against family life.

This, then, would be the sovereign splendour of private property, of possession of land, about which so many sentimentalities have recently been uttered and on behalf of which so many multi-colored crocodile tears have been shed. It does not help Hegel to say that primogeniture would be merely a requirement of politics and would have to be understood in its political position and significance. Neither does it help him to say: 'The security and stability of the agricultural class may be still further increased by the institution of primogeniture, though this institution is desirable only from the point of view of politics, since it entails a sacrifice for the political end of giving the eldest son a life of independence. There is a certain decency of mind in Hegel. He does not want primogeniture in and for itself, but only in reference to something else, not as something self-determined but as something determined by another, not as an end but as a means for justifying and constructing an end. In fact, primogeniture is a consequence of the exact possession of land; it is petrified private property, private property (quand même) in the highest independence and sharpness of its development. What Hegel presents as the end, the determining factor, the prima causa, of primogeniture is, instead, an effect, a consequence of the power of abstract private property over the political state, while Hegel presents primogeniture as the power of the political state over private property. He makes the cause the effect and the effect the cause, the determining that which has been determined and that which has been determined the determining.

What then is the content of political adaption, of the political end: what is the end of this end, what is its substance? Primogeniture, the superlative of private property, sovereign private property. What kind of power does the political state exercise over private property in primogeniture? Does the state isolate it from the family and society and bring it to its abstract autonomy? What then is the power of the political state over private property? Private property's own power, its essence brought to existence. What remains to the political state in opposition to this essence? The illusion that it determines when it is rather determined. indeed, it breaks the will of the family and of society, but merely in order to give existence to the will of private property lacking family and 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 relate here in the legislature to the total state, the state having achieved actuality, consistency, and consciousness, i.e., to the actual political state in connection with the ideal or what ought be, with the logical character and form of these elements.

(Primogeniture is not, as Hegel says, a chain on the freedom of private rights; it is rather the freedom of private rights which has freed itself from all social and ethical chains.) (The highest political construction is the construction of abstract private property.)

Before we make this comparison we should first consider more closely one statement of the paragraph, namely, that because of primogeniture the wealth of the agricultural class, possession of land, private property, is even fortified against its own wilfulness, because those members of this class who are called to political life are not entitled, as other citizens are, to dispose of their entire property at will'.

We have already indicated how the social nerves of private property are severed because of the inalienability of landed property. Private property (landed property) is fortified against the owner's own wilfulness by having the sphere of his wilfulness suddenly changed from a universal human sphere into the specific wilfulness of private property. In other words, private property has become the subject of the will, and the will is merely the predicate of private property. Private property is no longer a determined object of wilfulness, but rather wilfulness is the determined predicate of private property. Yet let us compare this with what Hegel himself says about the sphere of private rights:

§ 65. The reason I can alienate my property is that it is mine only in so far as I put my will into it ... provided always that the thing in question is a thing external by nature.

§ 66. Therefore those goods, or rather substantive characteristics, which constitute my own private personality and the universal essence of my self-consciousness are inalienable and my right to them is imprescriptible. Such characteristics are my personality as such, my universal freedom of will, my ethical life, my religion.

Therefore in primogeniture landed property, exact private property, becomes an inalienable good, thus a substantive characteristic which constitutes the very private personality and universal essence of self-consciousness of the class of noble entailed estates, its personality as such, its universal freedom of will, its ethical life, its religion. Thus it is also consistent to say that where private property, landed property, is inalienable, universal freedom of will (to which also belongs free disposition of something alienable, like landed property) and ethical life (to which also belongs love as the actual spirit of the family, the spirit which is also identified with the actual law of the family) are alienable. in general then, the inalienability of private property is the alienability of universal freedom of will and ethical life. Here it is no longer the case that property is in so far as I put my will into it, but rather my will is in so far as it is in property. Here my will does not own but is owned. This is precisely the romantic itch of the nobility of primogeniture, namely, that here private property, and thus private wilfulness in its most abstract form - the totally ignorant, unethical, crude will — appears to be the highest synthesis of the political state, the highest renunciation of wilfulness, the hardest and most self-sacrificing struggle with human weakness; for what appears here to be human weakness is actually the humanising, the humanisation of private property.

Primogeniture is private property which has become a religion for itself, which has become absorbed in itself, enchanted with its autonomy and nobility. Just as primogeniture is derived from direct alienation, so too it is derived from the contract. Hegel presents the transition from property to contract in the following manner:

§ 71. Existence as determinate being is in essence being for another;... One aspect of property is that it is an existent as an external thing, and in this respect property exists for other external things and is connected with their necessity and contingency. But it is also an existent as an embodiment of will, and from this point of view the 'other' for which it exists can only be the will of another person. This relation of will to will is the true and proper ground in which freedom is existent. — The sphere of contract is made up of this mediation whereby I hold property not merely by means of a thing and my subjective will but by means of another person's will as well and so hold it in virtue of my participation in a common will.

(In primogeniture it has been made a state law to hold property not in one common will, but merely by means of a thing and my subjective will.) While Hegel here perceives in private rights the alienability and dependence of private property on a common will as its true idealism, in state rights, on the other hand, he praises the imaginary nobility of independent property as opposed to the uncertainty of business, the quest for profit, any sort of fluctuation in possessions, and dependence on the state's capital. What kind of state is this that cannot even tolerate the idealism of private rights? And what kind of philosophy of right is this in which the independence of private property has diverse meanings in the spheres of private and state rights?

Over against the crude stupidity of independent private property, the uncertainty of business is elegiac, the quest for profit solemn (dramatic), fluctuation in possessions a serious fatum (tragic), dependence on the state's capital ethical. In short, in all of these qualities the human heart pulses throughout the property, which is the dependence of man on man. No matter how it may be constituted it is human toward the slave who believes himself to be free, because the sphere that limits him is not society but the soil. The freedom of this will is its emptiness of content other than that of private property.

To define monstrosities like primogeniture as a determination of private property by the state is absolutely unavoidable if one interprets an old world view in terms of a new one, if one attributes to a thing, as in this case to private property, a double meaning, one in the court of abstract right and an opposed one in the heaven of the political state.

Now we come to the comparison mentioned earlier. § 257 says:

The state is the actuality of the ethical Idea. It is ethical mind qua the substantial will manifest and revealed to itself.. The state exists immediately in custom, mediately in individual self-consciousness ... while self-consciousness in virtue of its sentiment towards the state finds in the state, as its essence and the end and product of its activity, its substantive freedom.

§ 268 says:

The political sentiment, patriotism pure and simple, is assured conviction with truth as its basis... and a volition which has become habitual. In this sense it is simply a product of the institutions subsisting in the state, since rationality is actually present in the state, while action in conformity with these institutions gives rationality its practical proof. This sentiment is, in general, trust (which may pass over into a greater or lesser degree of educated insight), or the consciousness that my interest, both substantive and particular, is contained and preserved in another's (i.e., in the state's) interest and end, i.e., in the other's relation to me as an individual. In this way, this very other is immediately not another in my eyes, and in being conscious of this fact I am free.

Here, the actuality of the ethical Idea appears as the religion of private property (because in primogeniture private property relates to itself in a religious manner, so it happens that in our modern times religion in general has become a quality inherent in landed property, and that all of the writings on the nobility of primogeniture are full of religious unction. Religion is the highest thought form of this brutality.) The substantial will manifest and revealed to itself changes into a will dark and broken on the soil, a will enraptured precisely with the impenetrability of the element to which it is attached. The assured conviction with truth as its basis, which is political sentiment, is the conviction standing on 'its own ground' (in the literal sense). The political volition which has become habitual no longer remains simply a product [of the institutions subsisting in the state], but rather an institution subsisting outside the state. The political sentiment is no longer trust but rather the reliance, the consciousness that my interest, both substantive and particular, is independent of another's (i.e., the state's) interest and end, i.e., in the other's relation to me as an individual. This is the consciousness of my freedom from the state.

The maintenance of the state's universal interest etc. was (§ 289) the task of the executive. In it resided the consciousness of right and the developed intelligence of the mass of the people (§ 297). It actually makes the Estates superfluous, for even without the Estates they [i.e., the highest civil servants] are able to do what is best, just as they also continually have to do while the Estates are in session (Remark to § 301). The universal class, or, more precisely, the class of civil servants, must, purely in virtue of its character as universal, have the universal as the end of its essential activity [§ 303].

And how does the universal class, the executive, appear now? As essentially dependent upon the state, as wealth dependent upon the favour of the executive. The very same transformation has occurred within civil society, which earlier achieved its ethical life in the Corporation. It is a wealth dependent upon the uncertainty of business etc., upon the favour of the mob.

What then is the quality which ostensibly specifies the owners of entailed estates? And what, in any case, constitutes the ethical quality of an inalienable wealth? Incorruptibility. Incorruptibility appears to be the highest political virtue, an abstract virtue. Yet, incorruptibility in the state as constructed by Hegel is something so uncommon that it has to be built up into a particular political power; which precisely proves, that incorruptibility is not the spirit of the political state, not the rule but the exception, and is constructed as such. The owners of entailed estates are corrupted by their independent property in order that they be preserved from corruption. While according to the idea dependence upon the state and the feeling of this dependence is supposed to be the highest political freedom, here the independent private person is constructed; because political freedom is the private person's feeling of being an abstract, dependent person, whereas he feels and should feel independent only as a citizen. Its capital is independent alike of the state's capital, the uncertainty of business, etc. In opposition to it stands the business class, which is dependent on needs and concentrated on their satisfaction, and the civil servant class, which is essentially dependent upon the state. Here, therefore, independence from the state and civil society and this actualised abstraction of both, which in reality is the crudest dependence on the soil, forms in the legislature the mediation and the unity of both. Independent private wealth, i.e., abstract private wealth and the corresponding private person, are the highest political construction of the state. Political independence is constructed as independent private property and the person of this independent private property. We shall see in the following paragraph what the situation is re vera regarding this independence and incorruptibility, and the political sentiment arising from them.

The fact that primogeniture is inherited, or entailed wealth speaks for itself. More about this later. The fact that it accrues to the first-born is, as Hegel notes in the Addition, purely historical.

§ 307. The right of this section of the agricultural class is thus based in a way on the natural principle of the family. But this principle is at the same time reversed owing to hard sacrifices made for political ends, and thereby the activity of this class is essentially directed to those ends. As a consequence of this, this class is summoned and entitled to its political vocation by birth without the hazards of election.

Hegel has failed to develop the way in which the right of this agricultural class is based on the natural principle of the family, unless by this he understands that landed property exists as entailed or inherited wealth. That, however, establishes no right of this class in the political sense, but only the birthright of the owners of entailed estates to landed property. 'This', i.e., the natural principle of the family, is 'at the same time reversed owing to hard sacrifices made for political ends'. We have certainly seen how the natural principle of the family is reversed; this, however, is no hard sacrifice made for political ends, but rather the actualised abstraction of private property. But with this reversal of the natural principle of the family the political ends are likewise reversed, 'thereby (?) the activity of this class is essentially directed to those ends' — because private property received independence? - and 'as a consequence of this, this class is summoned and entitled to its political vocation by birth without the hazards of election'.

Here then participation in the legislature is an innate human right. Here we have born legislators, i.e., born mediation of the political state with itself. innate human rights have been mocked, especially on behalf of the owners of entailed estates. Isn't it even more humorous that one particular group of men is entrusted with the right to the highest honour, the legislature? In Hegel's treatment of the summons to the legislator, to the representative of state citizenship, there is nothing more ridiculous than his opposing summons by birth to summons by the hazards of election. As if election, the conscious product of civil trust, would not stand in a completely different necessary connection with the political ends than does the physical accident of birth. Hegel everywhere falls from his political spiritualism into the crassest materialism. At the summit of the political state it is always birth that makes determinate individuals into embodiments of the highest political tasks. The highest political activities coincide with individuals by reason of birth, Just like an animal's position, character, way of life, etc. are immediately inborn. in its highest functions the state acquires an animal actuality. Nature takes revenge on Hegel for the disdain he showed it. If matter is supposed to constitute no longer anything for itself over against the human will, the human will no longer retains anything for itself except the matter.

The false identity, the fragmentary and sporadic identity of nature and spirit, body and soul, appears as incarnation. Since birth gives man only an individual existence and establishes him merely as a natural individual, and since the functions of the state - as for instance the legislature, etc. are social products, i.e., births of society and not procreations of the natural individual, then what is striking and miraculous is precisely the immediate identity, the sudden coincidence, of the individual's birth with the individual as individuation of a certain social position, function, etc. — In this system, nature immediately creates kings, peers, etc. Just as it creates eyes and noses. What is striking is to see as immediate product of the physical species what is only the product of the self-conscious species. I am man by birth, without the agreement of society; yet only through universal agreement does this determinate birth become peer or king. Only the agreement makes the birth of this man the birth of a king. It is therefore the agreement, not birth, that makes the king. If birth, in distinction from other determinations, immediately endows man with a position, then his body makes him this determined social functionary. His body is his social right. In this system, the physical dignity of man, or the dignity of the human body (with further elaboration, meaning: the dignity of the physical natural element of the state), appears in such a form that determinate dignities, specifically the highest social dignities, are the dignities of certain bodies which are determined and predestined by birth to be such. This is, of course, why we find in the aristocracy such pride in blood and descent, in short, in the life history of their body. It is this zoological point of view which has its corresponding science in heraldry. The secret of aristocracy is zoology.

Two moments in hereditary primogeniture are to be stressed:

1. That which is permanent is entailed wealth, landed property. This is the preserving moment in the relation — the substance. The master of the entailed estate, the owner, is really a mere accident. Landed property anthropomorphises itself in the various generations. Landed property always inherits, as it were, the first born of the house as an attribute linked to it. Every first born in the line of land owners is the inheritance, the property, of the inalienable landed property, which is the predestined substance of his will and activity. The subject is the thing and the predicate is the man. The will becomes the property of the property.

2. The political quality of the owner of the entailed estate is the political quality of his inherited wealth, a political quality inhering in his inherited wealth. Here, therefore, the political quality appears also as the property of landed property, as a quality which is ascribed directly to the bare physical earth (nature).

Regarding the first point, it follows that the owner of the entailed estate is the serf of the landed property, and that in the serfs who are subordinated to him there appears only the practical consequence of the theoretical relationship with landed property in which he himself stands. The depth of German subjectivity appears everywhere as the crudity of a mindless objectivity.

Here we must analyse (1) the relation between private property and inheritance, (2) the relation between private property, inheritance, and, thereby, the privilege of certain generations to participate in political sovereignty, (3) the actual historical relation, or the Germanic relation.

We have seen that primogeniture is the abstraction of independent private property. A second consequence follows from this. Independence, autonomy, in the political state whose construction we have followed so far, is private property, which at its peak appears as inalienable landed property. Political independence thus flows not ex proprio sinu of the political state; it is not a gift of the political state to its members, nor is it the animating spirit [of the political state]. Rather, the members of the political state receive their independence from a being which is not the being of the political state, from a being of abstract private right, namely, from abstract private property. Political independence is an accident of private property and not the substance of the political state. The political state — and within it the legislature, as we have seen — is the unveiled mystery of the true value and essence of the moments of the state. The significance that private property has in the political state is its essential, its true significance; the significance that class distinction has in the political state is the essential significance of class distinction. In the same way, the essence of the sovereign and of the executive come to appearance in the legislature. It is here, in the sphere of the political state, that the individual moments of the state relate to themselves as to the being of the species, the 'species-being'; because the political state is the sphere of their universal character, i.e., their religious sphere. The political state is the mirror of truth for the various moments of the concrete state.

Thus, if independent private property in the political state, in the legislature, has the significance of political independence, then it is the political independence of the state. Independent private property, or actual private property is then not only the support of the constitution but the constitution itself. And isn't the support of the constitution nothing other than the constitution of constitutions, the primary, the actual constitution?

Hegel himself was surprised about the immanent development of science, the derivation of its entire content from the concept in its simplicity (Remark to § 279), when he was constructing the hereditary monarch, and made the following remark:

Hence it is the basic moment of personality, abstract at the start in immediate rights, which has matured itself through its various forms of subjectivity, and now — at the stage of absolute rights, of the state, of the completely concrete objectivity of the will — has become the personality of the state, its certainty of itself.

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

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

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

Hegel calls private rights the rights of abstract personality, or abstract rights. And indeed they have to be developed as the abstraction, and thus the illusory rights, of abstract personality, just as the moral doctrine developed by Hegel is the illusory existence of abstract subjectivity. Hegel develops private rights and morals as such abstractions, from which it does not follow, for him, that the state or ethical life of which they are the presuppositions can be nothing but the society (the social life) of these illusions; rather, he concludes that they are subalternate moments of this ethical life. But what are private rights except the rights of these subjects of the state, and what is morality except their morality? In other words, the person of private rights and the subject of morals are the person and the subject of the state. Hegel has been widely criticised for his development of morality. He has done nothing but develop the morality of the modern state and modern private rights. A more complete separation of morality from the state, its fuller emancipation, was desired. What did that prove except that the separation of the present-day state from morals is moral, that morals are non-political and that the state is not moral? It is rather a great, though from one aspect (namely, from the aspect that Hegel declares the state, whose presupposition is such a morality, to be the realistic idea of ethical life) an unconscious service of Hegel to have assigned to modern morality its true position.

In the constitution, wherein primogeniture is a guarantee, private property is the guarantee of the political constitution. In primogeniture, it appears that this guarantee is a particular kind of private property. Primogeniture is merely a particular existence of the universal relationship of private property and the political state. Primogeniture is the political sense of private property, private property in its political significance, that is to say, in its universal significance. Thus the constitution here is the constitution of private property.

With the Germanic peoples, where we encounter primogeniture in its classical formation, we also find the constitution of private property. Private property is a universal category, the universal bond of the state. Even the universal functions appear as the private property sometimes of a Corporation, sometimes of an estate.

Trade and business in their particular nuances were the private property of particular Corporations. Royal offices, jurisdiction, etc., were the private property of particular estates. The various provinces were the private property of individual princes etc. Service for the realm was the private property of the ruler. The spirit was the private property of the spiritual authority.' One's loyal activity was the private property of another, just as one's right was, once again, a particular private property. Sovereignty, here nationality, was 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, an exception from the rule. The empirical fact that all these privileges appear in the form of private property could thus not have been overlooked. What is the universal reason for this coincidence? Private property is the species-existence of privilege, of right as an exception.

Where the sovereigns, as in France for instance, attacked the independence of private property, they directed their attention more to the property of the Corporations than to that of individuals. But in attacking the private property of the Corporations they attacked private property as Corporations, i.e., as the social bond.

In the feudal reign it almost appears that the power of the crown is the power of private property, and that the mystery of the nature of the universal power, the power of all spheres of the state, is deposited in the sovereign.

(The powerfulness of the state is expressed in the sovereign as the representative of the power of the state. The constitutional sovereign, therefore, expresses the idea of the constitutional state in its sharpest abstraction. On the one hand he is the idea of the state, the sanctified majesty of the state, and precisely as this person. At the same time he is a pure imagination; as person and as sovereign he has neither actual power nor actual function. Here, the separation of the political and the actual, the formal and the material, the universal and the particular person, Of man and social man, is expressed in its highest contradiction.)

Private property is a child of Roman intellect and Germanic heart. At this point it will be valuable to undertake a comparison of these two extreme developments. This will help solve the political problem as discussed.

The Romans were the first to have formulated the right of private property, i.e., the abstract right, the private right, the right of the abstract person. The Roman conception of private right is private right in its classical formulation. Yet nowhere with the Romans do we find that the right of private property was mystified as in the case of the Germans. Nowhere does it become right of the state.

The right of private property is jus utendi et abutendi, the right of wilfulness in disposing of a thing. The main interest of the Romans lay in developing the relationships, and in determining which ones resulted in abstract relations of private property. The actual basis of private property, the property, is a factum, an unexplainable factum, and no right. Only through legal determinations, which the society attributes to the factual property, does it receive the quality of rightful property, private property.

Regarding the connection between the political constitution and private property with the Romans, it appears that:

1. Man (as slave), as is generally the case with ancient peoples, is the object of private property.
This is nothing specific.

2. Conquered countries are treated as private property, jus utendi et abutendi being asserted in their case.

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

In other respects, private property as a whole, as with the ancient classical peoples in general, is asserted to be public property, either as the republic's expenditure — as in good times — or as luxurious and universal benefaction (baths, etc.) towards the mob.

Slavery finds its explanation in the rights of war, the rights of occupation: men are slaves precisely because their political existence is destroyed.

We especially stress two relationships in distinction from the Germans.

1. The imperial power was not the power of private property, but rather the sovereignty of the empirical will as such, which was far from regarding private property as the bond between itself and its subjects; on the contrary, it dealt with private property as it did with all other social goods. The imperial power, therefore, was nothing other than factually hereditary. The highest formation of the right of private property, of private right, indeed belongs to the imperial epoch; however, it is a consequence of the political dissolution rather than the political dissolution being a consequence of private property. Furthermore, when private right achieved full development in Rome, state right was abolished, [or] was in the process of its dissolution, while in Germany the opposite was the case.

2. In Rome, state honours are never hereditary; that is to say, private property is not the dominant category of the state.

3. Contrary to German primogeniture etc., in Rome the wilfulness of the testator appears to be the derivative of private property. In this latter antithesis lies the entire difference between the German and the Roman development of private property.

(In primogeniture it appears that private property is the relationship to the function of the state which is such that the existence of the state is something inhering in, or is an accident of, direct private property, i.e., landed property. At its highest levels the state appears as private property, whereas private property should appear as property of the state. Instead of making private property a civil quality, Hegel makes political citizenship, existence, and sentiment a quality of private property.)

Part 6: Civil Society and the Estates §§ 308 - 313

§ 308. The second section of the Estates comprises the fluctuating element in civil society. This element can enter politics only through its deputies; the multiplicity of its members is an external reason for this, but the essential reason is the specific character of this element and its activity. Since these deputies are the deputies of civil society, it follows as a direct consequence that their appointment is made by the society as a society. That is to say, in making the appointment, society is not dispersed into atomic units, collected to perform only a single and temporary act, and kept together for a moment and no longer. On the contrary, it makes the appointment as a society, articulated into associations, communities, and Corporations, which although constituted already for other purposes, acquire in this way a connection with politics. The existence of the Estates and their assembly finds a constitutional guarantee of its own in the fact that this class is entitled to send deputies at the summons of the crown, while members of the former class are entitled to present themselves in person in the Estates (see § 307).

Here we find a new distinction within civil society and the Estates: the distinction between a fluctuating element and an immutable element (landed property). This distinction has also been presented as that of space and time, conservative and progressive, etc. On this, see Hegel's previous paragraphs. Incidentally, by means of the Corporations, associations, etc., Hegel has made the fluctuating element of society also a stable element.

The second distinction consists in the fact that the first element of the Estates as developed above, the owners of entailed estates, are, as such, legislators; that legislative power is an attribute of their empirical, personal existence; that they act not as deputies but as themselves; whereas in the second element of the Estates election and selection of deputies take place.

Hegel gives two reasons why this fluctuating element of civil society can enter the political state, or legislature, only through deputies. Hegel himself calls the first reason - namely, the multiplicity of its members - external, thereby relieving us of the need of giving the same reply.

But the essential reason, he says, is the specific character of this element and its activity. Political occupation and activity are alien to its specific character and activity.

Hegel replays his old song about these Estates being deputies of civil society. Civil society must make the appointments as a society. Rather, civil society must do this as what it is not, because it is unpolitical society, and is supposed to perform here a political act as something essential to it and arising from it. With that it is 'dispersed into atomic units', and collected to perform only a single and temporary act, and kept together for a moment and no longer'. First of all, its political act is a single and temporary act, and can therefore only appear as such in being carried out. It is an ecstasy, an act of political society which causes a stir, and must also appear as such. Secondly, Hegel was not disturbed by the fact - indeed, he argued its necessity - that civil society materially (merely as a second society deputised by it) separates itself from its civil actuality and establishes itself as what it is not. How can he now formally dispose of this?

He thinks that society's associations etc., which are constituted already for other purposes, acquire a connection with politics because society in its Corporations etc. appoints the deputies. But either they acquire a significance which is not their significance, or their connection as such is political, in which case it does not just 'acquire' the political tinge, as developed above, but rather in it politics acquires its connection. By designating only this part of the Estates as that of the deputy, Hegel has unwittingly stated the nature of the two Chambers (at the point where they actually have the relationship to one another he indicated). The Chamber of Deputies and the Chamber of Peers (or whatever they be called) are not, in the present case, different instances of the same principle) but derive from two essentially different principles and social positions. Here the Chamber of Deputies is the political constitution of civil society in the modern sense, while the Chamber of Peers is the political constitution of civil society in the sense proper to the Estates. The Chamber of Peers and the Chamber of Deputies are opposed here as the Estate- and the political-representation of civil society. The one is the existing estate principle of civil society, the other is the actualisation of civil society's abstract political existence. It is obvious, therefore, that the latter cannot come into existence again as the representation of the estates, Corporations, etc., for it simply does not represent civil society's existence qua estate, but rather its political existence. It is further obvious, then, that only the estate element of civil society, i.e., sovereign landed property or the hereditary nobility, is seated in the former Chamber, for it is not one estate among others. Rather, the estate principle of civil society as an actually social, and thus political, principle now exists only in that one element. It is the estate. Civil society, then, has in the Chamber of the estates the representative of its medieval existence, and in the Chamber of Deputies the representative of its political (modern) existence. The only advance beyond the Middle Ages consists in the fact that estate politics has been reduced to a particular political existence alongside the politics of citizenship. The empirical political existence Hegel has in mind (England) has, therefore, a meaning entirely other than the one he imputes to it.

The French Constitution also constitutes an advance in this regard. To be sure, it has reduced the Chamber of Peers to a pure nullity; but within the principle of constitutional kingship as Hegel has pretended to develop it, this Chamber can by its very nature be merely an empty vanity, the fiction of a harmony between the sovereign and civil society, or of the legislature or political state with itself, and a fiction, moreover, which has the form of a particular and thereby once more opposed existence.

The French have allowed the peers to retain life tenure in order to express their independence from both the regime and the people. But they did away with the medieval expression - hereditariness. Their advance consists in their no longer allowing the Chamber of Peers to proceed from actual civil society, but in creating it in abstraction from civil society. They have the choice of peers proceed from the existing political state, from the sovereign, without binding him to any other civil quality. In this constitution the honour of being a peer actually constitutes a class in civil society which is purely political, created from the standpoint of the abstraction of the political state; but it appears to be more a political decoration than an actual class endowed with particular rights. During the Restoration the Chamber of Peers was a reminiscence, while the Chamber of Peers resulting from the July Revolution is an actual creature of constitutional monarchy.

Since in modern times the idea of the state could appear only in the abstraction of the merely political state, or in the abstraction of civil society from itself and its actual condition, it is to the credit of the French that they have marked and produced this abstract actuality, and thereby have produced the political principle itself. The abstraction for which they are blamed is, then, a genuine consequence and product of a patriotism rediscovered, to be sure, only in an opposition, but in a necessary opposition. The merit of the French in this regard, then, is to have established the Chamber of Peers as the unique product of the political state, or in general, to have made the political principle in its uniqueness the determining and effective factor.

Hegel also remarks that in the deputation, as he constructs it, the existence of the Estates and their assembly finds a constitutional guarantee of its own in the fact that the Corporations etc. are entitled to send deputies. Thus, the guarantee of the existence of the Estates' assembly, their truly primitive existence, becomes the privilege of the Corporations etc. With this, Hegel reverts completely to the medieval standpoint and has abandoned entirely his abstraction of the political state as the sphere of the state as state, the actually existing universal.

In the modern sense, the existence of the Estates' assembly is the political existence of civil society, the guarantee of its political existence. To question the existence of the Estates' assembly is to question the existence of the state. Whereas patriotism, the essence of the legislature, finds its guarantee in independent private property according to Hegel, so the existence of the legislature finds its guarantee in the privileges of the Corporations.

But the one element in the Estates is much more the political privilege of civil society, or its privilege of being political. Therefore, that element can never be the privilege of a particular civil mode of civil society's existence, and can still less find its guarantee in that mode, because it is supposed to be, rather, the universal guarantee.

Thus Hegel is everywhere reduced to giving the political state a precarious actuality in a relationship of dependence upon another, rather than describing it as the highest, completely existing actuality of social existence; he is reduced to having it find its true existence in the other sphere rather than describing it as the true existence of the other sphere. The political state everywhere needs the guarantee of spheres lying outside it. It is not actualised power, but supported impotence. It is not the power over these supports, but the power of the support. The support is the seat of power.

What kind of lofty existent is it whose existence needs a guarantee outside itself, and which is supposed to be at the same time the universal existence - and thus the actual guarantee - of this very guarantee. In general, in his development of the legislature Hegel everywhere retreats from the philosophical standpoint to that other standpoint which fails to examine the matter in its own terms.

If the existence of the Estates requires a guarantee, then they are not an actual, but merely a fictitious political existence. In constitutional states, the guarantee for the existence of the Estates is the law. Thus, their existence is a legal existence, dependent on the universal nature of the state and not on the power or impotence of individual Corporations or associations; their existence is the actuality of the state as an association. (It is precisely here that the Corporations, etc., the particular spheres of civil society, should receive their universal existence for the first time. Again, Hegel anticipates this universal existence as the privilege and the existence of these particular spheres.)

Political right as the right of Corporations etc. completely contradicts political right as political, i.e., as the right of the state and of citizenship, for political right precisely should not be the right of this existence as a particular existence, not right as this particular existence.

Before we proceed to the category of election as the political act by which civil society decides upon its political choice, let us examine some additional statements from the Remark to this paragraph.

To hold that every single person should share in deliberating and deciding on political matters of general concern o the ground that all individuals are members of the state, that its concerns are their concerns, and that it is their right that what is done should be done with their knowledge and volition, is tantamount to a proposal to put the democratic element without any rational form into the organism of the state, although it is only in virtue of the possession of such a form that the state is an organism at all. This idea comes readily to mind because it does not go beyond the abstraction of 'being a member of the state'. and it is superficial thinking which clings to abstractions. [§ 308]

First of all, Hegel calls being a member of the state an abstraction, although according to the idea, [and therefore] the intention of his own doctrinal development, it is the highest and most concrete social determination of the legal person, of the member of the state. To stop at the abstraction of 'being a member of the state' and to conceive of individuals in terms of this abstraction does not therefore seem to be just superficial thinking which clings to abstractions. That the abstraction of 'being a member of the state' is really an abstraction is not, however, the fault of this thinking but of Hegel's line of argument and actual modern conditions, which presuppose the separation of actual life from political life and make the political quality an abstraction of actual participation in the state.

According to Hegel, the direct participation of all in deliberating and deciding on political matters of general concern admits the democratic element without any rational form into the organism of the state, although it is only in virtue of the possession of such a form that the state is an organism at all. That is to say, the democratic element can be admitted only as a formal element in a state organism that is merely a formalism of the state. The democratic element should be, rather, the actual element that acquires its rational form in the whole organism of the state. If the democratic element enters the state organism or state formalism as a particular element, then the rational form of its existence means a drill, an accommodation, a form, in which it does not exhibit what is characteristic of its essence. In other words, it would enter the state organism merely as a formal principle.

We have already pointed out that Hegel develops merely a state formalism. For him, the actual material principle is the Idea, the abstract thought-form of the state as a subject, the absolute Idea which has in it no passive or material moment. In contrast to the abstraction of this Idea the determinations of the actual, empirical state formalism appear as content; and hence the actual content (here actual man, actual society, etc.) appear as formless inorganic matter.

Hegel had established the essence of the Estates in the fact that in them empirical universality becomes the subject of the actually existing universal. Does this mean anything other than that matters of political concern 'are their concerns, and that it is their right that what is done should be done with their knowledge and volition'? And should not the Estates precisely constitute their actualised right? And is it surprising then that all seek the actuality of what is theirs by right?

To hold that every single person should share in deliberating and deciding on political matters of general concern...

In a really rational state one could answer, 'Not every single person should share in deliberating and deciding on political matters of general concern', because the individuals share in deliberating and deciding on matters of general concern as the 'all', that is to say, within and as members of the society. Not all individually, but the individuals as all.

Hegel presents himself with the dilemma: either civil society (the Many, the multitude) shares through deputies in deliberating and deciding on political matters of general concern or all [as] I individuals do this. This is no opposition of essence, as Hegel subsequently tries to present it, but of existence, and indeed of the most external existence, quantity. Thus, the basis which Hegel himself designated as external - the multiplicity of members - remains the best reason against the direct participation of all. The question of whether civil society should participate in the legislature either by entering it through deputies or by the direct participation of all as individuals is itself a question within the abstraction of the political state or within the abstract political state; it is an abstract political question.

It is in both cases, as Hegel himself has developed this, the political significance of 'empirical universality'.

In its proper form the opposition is this: the individuals participate as all, or the individuals participate as a few, as not all. In both cases allness remains merely an external plurality or totality of individuals. Allness is no essential, spiritual, actual quality of the individual. It is not something through which he would lose the character of abstract individuality. Rather, it is merely the sum total of individuality. One individuality, many individualities, all individualities. The one, the many, the all - none of these determinations changes the essence of the subject, individuality.

All as individuals should share in deliberating and deciding on political matters of general concern; that is to say, then, that all should share in this not as all but as individuals.

The question appears to contradict itself in two respects.

The political matters of general concern are the concern of the state, the state as actual concern. Deliberation and decision is the effectuation of the state as actual concern. It seems obvious then that all the members of the state have a relationship to the state as being their actual concern. The very notion of member of the state implies their being a member of the state, a part of it, and the state having them as its part. But if they are an integral part of the state, then it is obvious that their social existence is already their actual participation in it. They are not only integral parts of the state, but the state is their integral part. To be consciously an integral part of something is to participate consciously in it, to be consciously integral to it. Without this consciousness the member of the state would be an animal.

To say 'political matters of general concern' makes it appear that matters of general concern and the state are something different. But the state is the matter of general concern, thus really the matters of general concern.

Participation in political matters of general concern and participation in the state are, therefore, identical. It is a tautology [to say] that a member of the state, a part of the state, participates in the state, and that this participation can appear only as deliberation or decision, or related forms, and thus that every member of the state shares in deliberating and deciding (if these functions are taken to be the functions of actual participation in the state) the political matters of general concern. If we are talking about actual members of the state, then this participation cannot be regarded as a 'should'; otherwise we would be talking about subjects who should be and want to be members of the state, but actually are not.

On the other hand, if we are talking about definite concerns, about single political acts, then it is again obvious that not all as individuals accomplish them. Otherwise, the individual would be the true society, and would make society superfluous. The individual would have to do everything at once, while society would have him act for others just as it would have others act for him.

The question whether all as individuals should share in deliberating and deciding on political matters of general concern is a question that arises from the separation of the political state and civil society.

As we have seen, the state exists merely as political state. The totality of the political state is the legislature. To participate in the legislature is thus to participate in the political state and to prove and actualise one's existence as member of the political state, as member of the state. That all as individuals want to participate integrally in the legislature is nothing but the will of all to be actual (active) members of the state, or to give themselves a political existence, or to prove their existence as political and to effect it as such. We have further seen that the Estates are civil society as legislature, that they are its political existence. The fact, therefore, that civil society invades the sphere of legislative power en masse, and where possible totally, that actual civil society wishes to substitute itself for the fictional civil society of the legislature, is nothing but the drive of civil society to give itself political existence, or to make political existence its actual existence. The drive of civil society to transform itself into political society, or to make political society into the actual society, shows itself as the drive for the most fully possible universal participation in legislative power.

Here, quantity is not without importance. If the augmentation of the Estates is a physical and intellectual augmentation of one of the hostile forces - and we have seen that the various elements of the legislature oppose one another as hostile forces - then the question of whether all as individuals are members of the legislature or whether they should enter the legislature through deputies is the placing in question of the representative principle within the representative principle, i.e., within that fundamental conception of the political state which exists in constitutional monarchy. (1) The notion that the legislature is the totality of the political state is a notion of the abstraction of the political state. Because this one act is the sole political act of civil society, all should participate and want to participate in it at once. (2) All as individuals. In the Estates, legislative activity is not regarded as social, as a function of society, but rather as the act wherein the individuals first assume an actually and consciously social function, that is, a political function. Here the legislature is no derivative, no function of society, but simply its formation. This formation into a legislative power requires that all members of civil society regard themselves as individuals, that they actually face one another as individuals. The abstraction of 'being a member of the state' is their 'abstract definition', a definition that is not actualised in the actuality of their life.

There are two possibilities here: either the separation of the political state and civil society actually obtains, or civil society is actual political society. In the first case, it is impossible that all as individuals participate in the legislature, for the political state is an existent which is separated from civil society. On the one hand, civil society would abandon itself as such if all [its members] were legislators; on the other hand, the political state which stands over against it can tolerate it only if it has a form suitable to the standards of the state. In other words, the participation of civil society in the political state through deputies is precisely the expression of their separation and merely dualistic unity.

Given the second case, i.e., that civil society is actual political society, it is nonsense to make a claim which has resulted precisely from a notion of the political state as an existent separated from civil society, from the theological notion of the political state. In this situation, legislative power altogether loses the meaning of representative power. Here, the legislature is a representation in the same sense in which every function is representative. For example, the shoemaker is my representative in so far as he fulfils a social need, just as every definite social activity, because it is a species-activity, represents only the species; that is to say, it represents a determination of my own essence the way every man is the representative of the other. Here, he is representative not by virtue of something other than himself which he represents, but by virtue of what he is and does.

Legislative power is sought not for the sake of its content, but for the sake of its formal political significance. For example, executive power, in and for itself, has to be the object of popular desire much more than legislative power, which is the metaphysical political function. The legislative function is the will, not in its practical but in its theoretical energy. Here, the will should not pre-empt the law; rather, the actual law is to be discovered and formulated.

Out of this divided nature of the legislature - i.e., its nature as actual lawgiving function and at the same time representative, abstract-political function - stems a peculiarity which is especially prevalent in France, the land of political culture.

(We always find two things in the executive: the actual deed and the state's reason for this deed, as another actual consciousness, which in its total organisation is the bureaucracy.)

The actual content of legislative power (so long as the prevailing special interests do not come into significant conflict with the objectum quaestionis) is treated very much à part, as a matter of secondary importance.

A question attracts particular attention only when it becomes political, that is to say, either when it can be tied to a ministerial question, and thus becomes a question of the power of the legislature over the executive, or when it is a matter of rights in general, which are connected with the political formalism. How come this phenomenon? Because the legislature is at the same time the representation of civil society's political existence; because in general the political nature of a question consists in its relationship to the various powers of the political state; and finally, because the legislature represents political consciousness, which can manifest itself as political only in conflict with the executive. There is the essential demand that every social need, law, etc., be investigated and identified politically, that is to say, determined by the whole of the state in its social sense. But in the abstract political state this essential demand takes a new turn; specifically, it is given a formal change of expression in the direction of another power (content) besides its actual content. This is no abstraction of the French, but rather the inevitable consequence of the actual state's existing merely as the political state formalism examined above. The opposition within the representative power is the kat exohin political existence of the representative power. Within this representative constitution, however, the question under investigation takes a form other than that in which Hegel considered it. It is not a question of whether civil society should exercise legislative power through deputies or through all as individuals. Rather, it is a question of the extension and greatest possible universalisation of voting, of active as well as passive suffrage. This is the real point of dispute in the matter of political reform, in France as well as in England.

Voting is not considered philosophically, that is, not in terms of its proper nature, if it is considered in relation to the crown or the executive. The vote is the actual relation of actual civil society to the civil society of the legislature, to the representative element. In other words, the vote is the immediate, the direct, the existing and not simply imagined relation of civil society to the political state. It therefore goes without saying that the vote is the chief political interest of actual civil society. In unrestricted suffrage, both active and passive, civil society has actually raised itself for the first time to an abstraction of itself, to political existence as its true universal and essential existence. But the full achievement of this abstraction is at once also the transcendence [Aufhebung] of the abstraction. In actually establishing its political existence as its true existence civil society has simultaneously established its civil existence, in distinction from its political existence, as inessential. And with the one separated, the other, its opposite, falls. Within the abstract political state the reform of voting advances the dissolution [Auflösung] of this political state, but also the dissolution of civil society.

We will encounter the question of the reform of voting later under another aspect, namely, from the point of view of the interests. We will also discuss later the other conflicts which arise from the two-fold character of the legislature (being at one time the delegate, mandatory of civil society, at another time on the contrary primarily the political existence of civil society and a specific existent within the political formalism of the state).

In the meantime we return to the Remark to § 308.

The rational consideration of a topic, the consciousness of the Idea, is concrete and to that extent coincides with a genuine practical sense. The concrete state is the whole, articulated into its particular groups. The member of a state is a member of such a group, i.e., of a social class, and it is only as characterised in this objective way that he comes under consideration when we are dealing with the state.

We have already said all that is required concerning this.

His (the member of a state's), mere character as universal implies that he is at one and the same time both a private person and also a thinking consciousness, a will which wills the universal. This consciousness and will, however, lose their emptiness and acquire a content and a living actuality only when they are filled with particularity, and particularity means determinacy as particular and a particular class status; or, to put the matter otherwise, abstract individuality is a generic essence, but has its immanent universal actuality as the generic essence next higher in the scale.

Everything Hegel says is correct, with the restriction

1. that he assumes particular class status and determinacy as particular to be identical,

2. that this determinacy, the species, the generic essence next higher in the scale must also actually, not only implicitly but explicitly, be established as the species or specification of the universal generic essence.

But in the state, which he demonstrates to be the self-conscious existence of the moral spirit, Hegel tacitly accepts this moral spirit's being the determining thing only implicitly, that is, in accordance with the universal Idea. He does not allow society to become the actually determining thing, because for that an actual subject is required, and he has only an abstract, imaginary subject.

§ 309. Since deputies are elected to deliberate and decide on public affairs, the point about their election is that it is a choice of individuals on the strength of confidence felt in them, i.e., a choice of such individuals as have a better understanding of these affairs than their electors have and such also as essentially vindicate the universal interest, not the particular interest of a society or a Corporation in preference to that interest. Hence their relation to their electors is ,,or that of agents with a commission or specific instructions. A further bar to their being so is the fact that their assembly is meant to be a living body in which all members deliberate in common and reciprocally instruct and convince each other.

1. The deputies are supposed to be something other than agents with a commission or specific instructions, for they are supposed to be such as essentially vindicate the universal interest, not the particular interest of a society or a Corporation in preference to that interest. Hegel has constructed the representatives primarily as representatives of the Corporations etc., in order subsequently to reintroduce the other political determination, namely, that they are not to vindicate the particular interest of the Corporation etc. With that he abolishes his own determination, for he completely separates [the representatives], in their essential character as representatives, from their Corporation-existence. In so doing he also separates the Corporation from itself in its actual content, for it is supposed to vote not from its own point of view but from the state's point of view; that is to say, it is supposed to vote in its non-existence as Corporation. Hegel thus acknowledges the material actuality of the thing he formally converts into its opposite, namely, the abstraction of civil society from itself in its political act; and its political existence is nothing but this abstraction. Hegel gives as reason that the representatives are elected precisely to the activity of public affairs; but the Corporations are not instances of public affairs.

2. The point about their election is supposed to be that it is a choice of individuals on the strength of confidence felt in them, i.e., a choice of such individuals as have a better understanding of these affairs than their electors have; from which, once again, it is supposed to follow that the relationship which the deputies have to their electors is not that of agents.

Only by means of a sophism can Hegel declare that these individuals understand these affairs 'better' and not 'simply'., This conclusion [namely, that they understand these affairs better] could be drawn only if the electors had the option of deliberating and deciding themselves about public affairs or of delegating definite individuals to discharge these things, i.e., precisely if deputation, or representation, did not belong essentially to the character of civil society's legislature. But in the state constructed by Hegel, deputation, or representation, constitutes precisely the legislature's specific essence, precisely as realised.

This example is characteristic [of the way] Hegel proposes the thing half intentionally, and imputes to it in its narrow form the sense opposed to this narrowness.

Hegel gives the proper reason last. The deputies of civil society constitute themselves into an assembly, and only this assembly is the actual political existence and will of civil society. The separation of the political state from civil society appears as the separation of the deputies from their mandators. From itself, society delegates to its political existence only the elements.

The contradiction appears two-fold:

1. Formal. The delegates of civil society are a society whose members are connected by the form of instruction or commission with those who commission them. They are formally commissioned, but once they are actual they are no longer commissioned. They are supposed to be delegates, and they are not.

2. Material. [This is] in regard to the interests. We will come back to this point later. Here, we find the opposite of the formal contradiction. The delegates are commissioned to be representatives of public affairs, but they really represent particular affairs.

What is significant is that Hegel here designates trust as the substance of election, as the substantial relation between electors and deputies. Trust is a personal relationship. Concerning this, it says further in the Addition to § 309:

Representation is grounded on trust, but trusting another is something different from giving my vote myself in my own personal capacity. Hence majority voting runs counter to the principle that I should be personally present in anything which is to be obligatory on me. We have confidence in a man when we take him to be a man of discretion who will manage our affairs conscientiously and to the best of his knowledge, just as if they were his own.

§310. The guarantee that deputies will have the qualifications and disposition that accord with this end - since independent means attains its right in the first section of the Estates - is to be found so far as the second section is concerned - the section drawn from the fluctuating and changeable element in civil society - above all in the knowledge of the organisation and interests of the state and civil society, the temperament, and the skill which a deputy acquires as a result of the actual transaction of business in managerial or official positions, and then evinces in his actions. As a result, he also acquires and develops a managerial and political sense, tested by his experience, and this is a further guarantee of his suitability as a deputy.

First, the Upper Chamber, that of independent private property, was constructed for the sake of the Crown and the executive as a guarantee against the disposition of the Lower Chamber as the political existence of empirical universality; and now Hegel further requires a new guarantee which is supposed to guarantee the disposition of the Lower Chamber itself.

First, trust, the guarantee of the elector, was the guarantee of the deputy. Now this trust itself further requires the guarantee of the deputy's ability.

Hegel would rather have liked to make the Lower Chamber one of pensioned civil servants. He requires of the deputy not only political sense but also managerial, bureaucratic sense.

What he really wants here is that the legislature be the real governing power. He expresses this such that he twice requires the bureaucracy, once as representation of the Crown, at another time as representative of the people.

Even if officials are allowed to be deputies in constitutional states, this is only because there is on the whole an abstraction from class, from the civil quality, and the abstraction of state citizenship predominates.

With this Hegel forgets that he allowed representation to proceed from the Corporations, and that the executive directly opposes these. In this forgetfulness, which persists likewise in the following paragraph, he goes so far that he creates an essential distinction between the deputies of the Corporations and those of the classes.

In the Remark to this paragraph it says:

Subjective opinion, naturally enough, finds superfluous and even perhaps offensive the demand for such guarantees, if the demand is made with reference to what is called the 'people'. The state, however, is characterised by objectivity, not by a subjective opinion and its self-confidence. Hence it can recognise in individuals only their objectively recognisable and tested character, and it must be all the more careful on this point in connection with the second section of the Estates, since this section is rooted in interests and activities directed towards the particular, i.e., ill the sphere where chance, mutability, and caprice enjoy their right of free play.

Here, Hegel's thoughtless inconsistency and managerial sense become really disgusting. At the close of the Addition to the preceding paragraph [i.e., § 309] it says:

The electors require a guarantee that their deputy will further and secure this general interest (the task of the deputies described earlier).

This guarantee for the electors has underhandedly evolved into a guarantee against the electors, against their self-confidence. in the Estates, empirical universality was supposed to come to the moment of subjective formal freedom. Public consciousness was supposed to come to existence in that moment as the empirical universality of the opinions and thoughts of the Many. (§ 301.)

Now these opinions and thoughts must give proof beforehand to the executive that they are its opinions and thoughts. Unfortunately, Hegel here speaks of the state as a finished existence, although he is precisely now in the process of finishing the construction of the state within the Estates. He speaks of the state as a concrete subject which does not take offence at subjective opinion and its self-confidence, and for which the individuals have first made themselves recognisable and tested. The only thing he still lacks is a requirement that the Estates take an examination in the presence of the honourable executive. Here, Hegel goes almost to the point of servility. It is evident that he is thoroughly infected with the miserable arrogance of the world of Prussian officialdom which, distinguished in its bureaucratic narrow-mindedness, looks down on the self-confidence of the subjective opinion of the people regarding itself. Here, the state is at all times for Hegel identical with the Executive.

To be sure, in a real state mere trust or subjective opinion cannot suffice. But in the state which Hegel constructs the political sentiment of civil society is mere opinion precisely because its political existence is an abstraction from its actual existence, precisely because the state as a whole is not the objectification of the political sentiment. Had Hegel wished to be consistent, he would have bad to work much harder to construct the Estates in conformity with their essential definition (§ 3oi) as the explicit existence of public affairs in the thought etc. of the Many, and thus nothing less than fully independent of the other presuppositions of the political state.

Just as Hegel earlier called the presupposing of bad will in the executive etc. the view of the rabble, so just as much and even more is it the view of the rabble to presuppose bad will in the people. Hegel has no right to find it either superfluous or offensive when, among [the doctrines of] the theorists he scorns, guarantees are demanded in reference to what is called the state, the soi-disant state, the executive, when guarantees are demanded that the sentiment of the bureaucracy be the sentiment of the state.

§ 311. A further point about the election of deputies is that, since civil society is the electorate, the deputies should themselves be conversant with and participate in its special needs, difficulties, and particular interests. Owing to the nature of civil society, its deputies are the deputies of the various Corporations (see § 308), and this simple mode of appointment obviates any confusion due to conceiving the electorate abstractly and as an agglomeration of atoms. Hence the deputies eo ipso adopt the point of view of society, and their actual election is therefore either something wholly superfluous or else reduced to a trivial play of opinion and caprice.

First of all, Hegel joins the election in its determination as legislature (§§ 309, 310) to the fact that civil society is the electorate, i. e., he joins the legislature to its representative character, through a simple 'further'. And just as thoughtlessly he expresses the enormous contradictions which lie in this 'further'.

* According to § 309 the deputies should essentially vindicate the universal interest, not the particular interest of a society or a Corporation in preference to that interest.

* According to § 311 the deputies proceed from the Corporations, represent these particular interests and needs, and avoid confusion due to abstract conceptions - as if the universal interest were not also such an abstraction, an abstraction precisely from their Corporation, etc., interests.

* According to § 310 it is required that, as a result of the actual transaction of business etc., they have acquired and evinced a managerial and political sense. In §311 a Corporation and civil sense is required.

* In the Addition to § 309 it says, representation is grounded on trust. According to § 311 the actual election, this realisation of trust, its manifestation and appearance, is either something wholly superfluous or else reduced to a trivial play of opinion and caprice.

That on which representation is grounded, its essence, is thus either something wholly superfluous, etc. for representation. Thus in one breath Hegel establishes the absolute contradictions: Representation is grounded on trust, on the confidence of man in man, and it is not grounded on trust. This is simply a playing around with formalities.

The object of the representation is not the particular interest, but rather man and his state citizenship, i.e., the universal interest. On the other hand, the particular interest is the matter of the representation, and the spirit of this interest is the spirit of the representative.

In the Remark to this paragraph, which we examine now, these contradictions are still more glaringly carried through. At one time representation is representation of the man, at another time of the particular interest of particular matter.

It is obviously of advantage that the deputies should include representatives of each particular main branch of society (e.g. trade, manufactures, &c., &c.) - representatives who are thoroughly conversant with it and who themselves belong to it. The idea of free unrestricted election leaves this important consideration entirely at the mercy of chance. All such branches of society, however, have equal rights of representation. Deputies are sometimes regarded as 'representatives'; but they are representatives in an organic, rational sense only if they are representatives not of individuals or a conglomeration of them, but of one of the essential spheres of society and its large-scale interests. Hence representation cannot now be taken to mean simply the substitution of one man for another; the point is rather that the interest itself is actually present in its representative, while he himself is there to represent the objective element of his own being.

As for popular suffrage, it may be further remarked that especially in large states it leads inevitably to electoral indifference, since the casting of a single vote is of no significance where there is a multitude of electors. Even if a voting qualification is highly valued and esteemed by those who are entitled to it, they still do not enter the poring booth. Thus the result of an institution of this kind is more likely to be the opposite of what was intended; election actually falls into the power of a few, of a caucus, and so of the particular and contingent interest which is precisely what was to have been neutralised.

Both §§ 312 and 313 are taken care of by our earlier comments, and are worth no special discussion. So we simply put them down as is:

§ 312. Each class in the Estates (see §§ 305-8) contributes something peculiarly its own to the work of deliberation. Further, one moment in the class-element has in the sphere of politics the special function of mediation, mediation between two existing things. Hence this moment must likewise acquire a separate existence of its own. For this reason the assembly of the Estates is divided into two houses.

O jerum!

§ 313. This division, by providing chambers of the first and second instance, is a surer guarantee for ripeness of decision and it obviates the accidental character which a snap-division has and which a numerical majority may acquire. But the principal advantage of this arrangement is that there is less chance of the Estates being in direct opposition to the executive; or that, if the mediating element is at the same time on the side of the lower house, the weight of the lower house's opinion is all the stronger, because it appears less partisan and its opposition appears neutralised.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1843/critique-hpr/index.htm

Hegel's Philosophy of History - Part II

Robert Paris — 2024-12-03T12:50:00Z

Part II : The Greek World

Among the Greeks we feel ourselves immediately at home, for we are in the region of Spirit ; and though the origin of the nation, as also its philological peculiarities, may be traced farther – even to India – the proper Emergence, the true Palingenesis of Spirit must be looked for in Greece first. At an earlier stage I compared the Greek world with the period of adolescence ; not, indeed, in that sense, that youth bears within it a serious, anticipative destiny, and consequently by the very conditions of its culture urges towards an ulterior aim – presenting thus an inherently incomplete and immature form, and being then most defective when it would deem itself perfect – but in that sense, that youth does not yet present the activity of work, does not yet exert itself for a definite intelligent aim – but rather exhibits a concrete freshness of the soul's life. It appears in the sensuous, actual world, as Incarnate Spirit and Spiritualized Sense – in a Unity which owed its origin to Spirit. Greece presents to us the cheerful aspect of youthful freshness, of Spiritual vitality. It is here first that advancing Spirit makes itself the content of its volition and its knowledge ; but in such a way that State, Family, Law, Religion, are at the same time objects aimed at by individuality, while the latter is individuality only in virtue of those aims. The [full-grown] man, on the other hand, devotes his life to labor for an objective aim ; which he pursues consistently, even at the cost of his individuality.

The highest form that floated before Greek imagination was Achilles, the Son of the Poet, the Homeric Youth of the Trojan War. Homer is the element in which the Greek world lives, as man does in the air. The Greek life is a truly youthful achievement. Achilles, the ideal youth, of poetry, commenced it : Alexander the Great, the ideal youth of reality, concluded it. Both appear in contest with Asia. Achilles, as the principal figure in the national expedition of the Greeks against Troy, does not stand at its head, but is subject to the Chief of Chiefs ; he cannot be made the leader without becoming a fantastic untenable conception. On the contrary, the second youth, Alexander – the freest and finest individuality that the real world has ever produced – advances to the head of this youthful life that has now perfected itself, and accomplishes the revenge against Asia. We have, then, to distinguish three periods in Greek history : the first, that of the growth of real Individuality ; the second, that of its independence and prosperity in external conquest (through contact with the previous World-historical people) ; and the third, the period of its decline and fall, in its encounter with the succeeding organ of World-History. The period from its origin to its internal completeness (that which enables a people to make head against its predecessor) includes its primary culture. If the nation has a basis – such as the Greek world has in the Oriental – a foreign culture enters as an element into its primary condition, and it has a double culture, one original, the other of foreign suggestion. The uniting of these two elements constitutes its training ; and the first period ends with the combination of its forces to produce its real and proper vigor, which then turns against the very element that had been its basis. The second period is that of victory and prosperity. But while the nation directs its energies outwards, it becomes unfaithful to its principles at home, and internal dissension follows upon the ceasing of the external excitement. In Art and Science, too, this shows itself in the separation of the Ideal from the Real. Here is the point of decline. The third period is that of ruin, through contact with the nation that embodies a higher Spirit. The same process, it may be stated once for all, will meet us in the life of every world-historical people.

Section I : The Elements of the Greek Spirit.

Greece is [that form of] the Substantial [i.e., of Moral and Intellectual Principle], which is at the same time individual. The Universal [the Abstract], as such, is overcome ;[16] the submersion in Nature no longer exists, and consentaneously the unwieldy character of geographical relations has also vanished. The country now under consideration is a section of territory spreading itself in various forms through the sea – a multitude of islands, and a continent which itself exhibits insular features. The Peloponnesus is connected with the continent only by a narrow isthmus : the whole of Greece is indented by bays in numberless shapes. The partition into small divisions of territory is the universal characteristic, while at the same time, the relationship and connection between them is facilitated by the sea. We find here mountains, plains, valleys, and streams of limited extent : no great river, no absolute Valley-Plain presents itself ; but the ground is diversified by mountains and rivers in such a way as to allow no prominence to a single massive feature. We see no such display of physical grandeur as is exhibited in the East – no stream such as the Ganges, the Indus, etc., on whose plains a race delivered over to monotony is stimulated to no change, because its horizon always exhibits one unvarying form. On the contrary, that divided and multiform character everywhere prevails which perfectly corresponds with the varied life of Greek races and the versatility of the Greek Spirit.

This is the elementary character of the Spirit of the Greeks, implying the origination of their culture from independent individualities ; – a condition in which individuals take their own ground, and are not, from the very beginning, patriarchally united by a bond of Nature, but realize a union through some origin of their moral life the Greeks have preserved, with grateful recollection, in a form of recognition which we may call mythological. In their mythology we have a definite record of the introduction of agriculture by Triptolemus, who was instructed by Ceres, and of the institution of marriage, etc. Prometheus, whose origin is referred to the distant Caucasus, is celebrated as having first taught men the production and the use of fire. The introduction of iron was likewise of great importance to the Greeks ; and while Homer speaks only of bronze, Æschylus calls iron “Scythian.” The introduction of the olive, of the art of spinning and weaving, and the creation of the horse by Poseidon, belong to the same category.

More historical than these rudiments of culture is the alleged arrival of foreigners ; tradition tells us how the various states were founded by such foreigners. Thus, Athens owes its origin to Cecrops, an Egyptian, whose history, however, is involved in obscurity. The race of Deucalion, the son of Prometheus, is brought into connection with the various Greek tribes. Pelops of Phrygia, the son of Tantalus, is also mentioned ; next, Danaus, from Egypt : from him descend Acrisius, Danae, and Perseus. Pelops is said to have brought great wealth with him to the Peloponnesus, and to have acquired great respect and power there. Danaus settled in Argos. Especially important is the arrival of Cadmus, of Phoenician origin, with whom phonetic writing is said to have been introduced into Greece ; Herodotus refers it to Phoenicia, and ancient inscriptions then extant are cited to support the assertion. Cadmus, according to the legend, founded Thebes.

We thus observe a colonization by civilized peoples, who were in advance of the Greeks in point of culture : though we cannot compare this colonization with that of the English in North America, for the latter have not been blended with the aborigines, but have dispossessed them ; whereas in the case of the settlers in Greece the adventitious and autochthonic elements were mixed together. The date assigned to the arrival of these colonists is very remote – the fourteenth and fifteenth century before Christ. Cadmus is said to have founded Thebes about 1490 B.C. – a date with which the Exodus of Moses from Egypt (1500 B.C.) nearly coincides. Amphictyon is also mentioned among the Founders of Greek institutions ; he is said to have established at Thermopylae a union between many small tribes of Hellas proper and Thessaly – a combination with which the great Amphictyonic league is said to have originated. These foreigners, then, are reputed to have established fixed centres in Greece by the erection of fortresses and the founding of royal houses. In Argolis, the walls of which the ancient fortresses consisted, were called Cyclopian ; some of them have been discovered even in recent times, since, on account of their solidity, they are indestructible.

These walls consist partly of irregular blocks, whose interstices are filled up with small stones – partly of masses of stones carefully fitted into each other. Such walls are those of Tiryns and Mycenae. Even now the gate with the lions, at Mycenas, can be recognized by the description of Pausanias. It is stated of Prcetus, who ruled in Argos, that he brought with him from Lycia the Cyclopes who built these walls. It is, however, supposed that they were erected by the ancient Pelasgi. To the fortresses protected by such walls the princes of the heroic times generally attached their dwellings. Especially remarkable are the Treasure-houses built by them, such as the Treasure-house of Minyas at Orchomenus, and that of Atreus at Mycenas. These fortresses, then, were the nuclei of small states ; they gave a greater security to agriculture ; they protected commercial intercourse against robbery. They were, however, as Thucydides informs us, not placed in the immediate vicinity of the sea, on account of piracy ; maritime towns being of later date. Thus with those royal abodes originated the firm establishment of society. The relation of princes to subjects, and to each other, we learn best from Homer. It did not depend on a state of things established by law, but. on superiority in riches, possessions, martial accoutrements, personal bravery, pre-eminence in insight and wisdom, and lastly, on descent and ancestry ; for the princes, as heroes, were regarded as of a higher race. Their subjects obeyed them, not as distinguished from them by conditions of Caste, nor as in a state of serfdom, nor in the patriarchal relation – according to which the chief is only the head of the tribe or family to which all belong – nor yet as the result of the express necessity for a constitutional government ; but only from the need, universally felt, of being held together, and of obeying a ruler accustomed to command – without envy and ill-will towards him. The Prince has just so much personal authority as he possesses the ability to acquire and to assert ; but as this superiority is only the individually heroic, resting on personal merit, it does not continue long. Thus in Homer we see the suitors of Penelope taking possession of the property of the absent Ulysses, without showing the slightest respect to his son. Achilles, in his inquiries about his father, when Ulysses descends to Hades, indicates the supposition that, as he is old, he will be no longer honored. Manners are still very simple : princes prepare their own repasts ; and Ulysses labors at the construction of his own house. In Homer's Iliad we find a King of Kings, a generalissimo in the great national undertaking – but the other magnates environ him as a freely deliberating council ; the prince is honored, but he is obliged to arrange everything to the satisfaction of the others ; he indulges in violent conduct towards Achilles, but, in revenge, the latter withdraws from the struggle. Equally lax is the relation of the several chiefs to the people at large, among whom there are always individuals who claim attention and respect. The various peoples do not fight as mercenaries of the prince in his battles, nor as a stupid serf-like herd driven to the contest, nor yet in their own interest ; but as the companions of their honored chieftain – as witnesses of his exploits, and his defenders in peril. A perfect resemblance to these relations is also presented in the Greek Pantheon. Zeus is the Father of the Gods, but each one of them has his own will ; Zeus respects them, and they him : he may sometimes scold and threaten them, and they then allow his will to prevail or retreat grumbling ; but they do not permit matters to come to an extremity, and Zeus so arranges matters on the whole – by making this concession to one, that to another – as to produce satisfaction. In the terrestrial, as well as in the Olympian world, there is, therefore, only a lax bond of unity maintained ; royalty has not yet become monarchy, for it is only in a more extensive society that the need of the latter is felt.

While this state of things prevailed, and social relations were such as have been described, that striking and great event took place – the union of the whole of Greece in a national undertaking, viz., the Trojan War ; with which began that more extensive connection, with Asia which had very important results for the Greeks. (The expedition of Jason to Colchis – also mentioned by the poets – and which bears an earlier date, was, as compared with the war of Troy, a very limited and isolated undertaking.) The occasion of that united expedition is said to have been the violation of the laws of hospitality by the son of an Asiatic prince, in carrying off the wife of his host. Agamemnon assembles the princes of Greece through the power and influence which he possesses. Thucydides ascribes his authority to his hereditary sovereignty, combined with naval power (Hom. II. ii. 108), in which he was far superior to the rest. It appears, however, that the combination was effected without external compulsion, and that the whole armament was convened simply on the strength of individual consent. The Hellenes were then brought to act unitedly, to an extent of which there is no subsequent example. The result of their exertions was the conquest and destruction of Troy, though they had no design of making it a permanent possession. No external result, therefore, in the way of settlement ensued, any more than an enduring political union, as the effect of the uniting of the nation in the accomplishment of this single achievement. But the poet supplied an imperishable portraiture of their youth and of their national spirit, to the imagination of the Greek people ; and the picture of this beautiful human heroism hovered as a directing ideal before their whole development and culture. So likewise, in the Middle Ages, we see the whole of Christendom united to attain one object – the conquest of the Holy Sepulchre ; but, in spite of all the victories achieved, with just as little permanent result. The Crusades are the Trojan War of newly awakened Christendom, waged against the simple, homogeneous clearness of Mahometanism.

The royal houses perished, partly as the consequence of particular atrocities, partly through gradual extinction. There was no strictly moral bond connecting them with the tribes which they governed. The same relative position is occupied by the people and the royal houses in the Greek Tragedy also. The people is the Chorus – passive, deedless : the heroes perform the deeds, and incur the consequent responsibility. There is nothing in common between them ; the people have no directing power, but only appeal to the gods. Such heroic personalities as those of the princes in question, are so remarkably suited for subjects of dramatic art on this very account – that they form their resolutions independently and individually, and are not guided by universal laws binding on every citizen ; their conduct and their ruin are individual. The people appears separated from the royal houses, and these are regarded as an alien body – a higher race, fighting out the battles and undergoing the penalties of their fate, for themselves alone. Royalty having performed that which it had to perform, thereby rendered itself superfluous. The several dynasties are the agents of their own destruction, or perish not as the result of animosity, or of struggles on the side of the people : rather the families of the sovereigns are left in calm enjoyment of their power – a proof that the democratic government which followed is not regarded as something absolutely diverse. How sharply do the annals of other times contrast with this !

This fall of the royal houses occurs after the Trojan war, and many changes now present themselves. The Peloponnesus was conquered by the Heraclidae, who introduced a calmer state of things, which was not again interrupted by the incessant migrations of races. The history now becomes more obscure ; and though the several occurrences of the Trojan war are very circumstantially described to us, we are uncertain respecting the important transactions of the time immediately following, for a space of many centuries. No united undertaking distinguishes them, unless we regard as such that of which Thucydides speaks, viz., the war between the Chalcidians and Eretrians in Euboea, in which many nations took part. The towns vegetate in isolation, or at most distinguish themselves by war with their neighbors. Yet, they enjoy prosperity in this isolated condition, by means of trade ; a kind of progress to which their being rent by many party-struggles offers no opposition. In the same way, we observe in the Middle Ages the towns of Italy – which, both internally and externally, were engaged in continual struggle – attaining so high a degree of prosperity. The flourishing state of the Greek towns at that time is proved, according to Thucydides, also by the colonies sent out in every direction. Thus, Athens colonized Ionia and several islands ; and colonies from the Peloponnesus settled in Italy and Sicily. Colonies, on the other hand, became relatively mother states ; e.g., Miletus, which founded many cities on the Propontis and the Black Sea. This sending out of colonies – especially during the period between the Trojan war and Cyrus – presents us with a remarkable phenomenon. It can be thus explained. In the several towns the people had the governmental power in their hands, since they gave the final decision in political affairs. In consequence of the long repose enjoyed by them, the population and the development of the community advanced rapidly ; and the immediate result was the amassing of great riches, contemporaneously with which fact great want and poverty make their appearance. Industry, in our sense, did not exist ; and the lands were soon occupied. Nevertheless a part of the poorer classes would not submit to the degradations of poverty, for everyone felt himself a free citizen. The only expedient, therefore, that remained, was colonization. In another country, those who suffered distress in their own, might seek a free soil, and gain a living as free citizens by its cultivation. Colonization thus became a means of maintaining some degree of equality among the citizens ; but this means is only a palliative, and the original inequality, founded on the difference of property, immediately reappears. The old passions were rekindled with fresh violence, and riches were soon made use of for securing power : thus “Tyrants” gained ascendancy in the cities of Greece. Thucydides says, “When Greece increased in riches, Tyrants arose in the cities, and the Greeks devoted themselves more zealously to the sea.” At the time of Cyrus, the History of Greece acquires its peculiar interest ; we see the various states now displaying their particular character. This is the date, too, of the formation of the distinct Greek Spirit. Religion and political institutions are developed with it, and it is these important phases of national life which must now occupy our attention.

In tracing up the rudiments of Greek culture, we first recall attention to the fact that the physical condition of the country does not exhibit such a characteristic unity, such a uniform mass, as to exercise a powerful influence over the inhabitants. On the contrary, it is diversified, and produces no decided impression. Nor have we here the unwieldy unity of a family or national combination ; but, in the presence of scenery and displays of elemental power broken up into fragmentary forms, men's attention is more largely directed to themselves, and to the extension of their immature capabilities. Thus we see the Greeks – divided and separated from each other – thrown back upon their inner spirit and personal energy, yet at the same time most variously excited and cautiously circumspect. We behold them quite undetermined and irresolute in the presence of Nature, dependent on its contingencies, and listening anxiously to each signal from the external world ; but, on the other hand, intelligently taking cognizance of and appropriating that outward existence, and showing boldness and independent vigor in contending with it. These are the simple elements of their culture and religion. In tracing up their mythological conceptions, we find natural objects forming the basis – not en masse, however ; only in dissevered forms. The Diana of Ephesus (that is, Nature as the universal Mother), the Cybele and Astarte of Syria – such comprehensive conceptions remained Asiatic, and were not transmitted to Greece. For the Greeks only watch the objects of Nature, and form surmises respecting them ; inquiring, in the depth of their souls, for the hidden meaning. According to Aristotle's dictum, that Philosophy proceeds from Wonder, the Greek view of Nature also proceeds from wonder of this kind.

Not that in their experience, Spirit meets something extraordinary, which it compares with the common order of things ; for the intelligent view of a regular course of Nature, and the reference of phenomena to that standard, do not yet present themselves ; but the Greek Spirit was excited to wonder at the Natural in Nature. It does not maintain the position of stupid indifference to it as something existing, and there an end of it ; but regards it as something in the first instance foreign, in which, however, it has a presentiment of confidence, and the belief that it bears something within it which is friendly to the human Spirit, and which it may be permitted to sustain a positive relation. This Wonder, and this Presentiment, are here the fundamental categories ; though the Hellenes did not content themselves with these moods of feelings, but projected the hidden meaning, which was the subject of the surmise, into a distinct conception as an object of consciousness. The Natural holds its place in their minds only after undergoing some transformation by Spirit – not immediately. Man regards Nature only as an excitement to his faculties, and only the Spiritual which he has evolved from it can have any influence over him. Nor is this commencement of the Spiritual apprehension of Nature to be regarded as an explanation suggested by us ; it meets us in a multitude of conceptions formed by the Greeks themselves. The position of curious surmise, of attentive eagerness to catch the meaning of Nature, is indicated to us in the comprehensive idea of Pan. To the Greeks Pan did not represent the objective Whole, but that indefinite neutral ground which involves the element of the subjective ; he embodies that thrill which pervades us in the silence of the forests ; he was, therefore, especially worshipped in sylvan Arcadia : (a “panic terror” is the common expression for a groundless fright). Pan, this thrill-exciting being, is also represented as playing on the flute ; we have not the bare internal presentiment, for Pan makes himself audible on the seven-reeded pipe. In what has been stated we have, on the one hand, the Indefinite, which, however, holds communication with man ; on the other hand the fact, that such communication is only a subjective imagining – an explanation furnished by the percipient himself. On the same principle the Greeks listened to the murmuring of the fountains, and asked what might be thereby signified ; but the signification which they were led to attach to it was not the objective meaning of the fountain, but the subjective – that of the subject itself, which further exalts the Naiad to a Muse. The Naiads, or Fountains, are the external, objective origin of the Muses. Yet the immortal songs of the Muses are not that which is heard in the murmuring of the fountains ; they are the productions of the thoughtfully listening Spirit – creative while observant. The interpretation and explanation of Nature and its transformations – the indication of their sense and import – is the act of the subjective Spirit ; and to this the Greeks attached the name manteia. The general idea which this embodies, is the form in which man realizes his relationship to Nature. Manteia has reference both to the matter of the exposition and to the expounder who divines the weighty import in question. Plato speaks of it in reference to dreams, and to that delirium into which men fall during sickness ; an interpreter, mantis, is wanted to explain these dreams and this delirium. That Nature answered the questions which the Greek put to her, is in this converse sense true, that he obtained an answer to the questions of Nature from his own Spirit. The insight of the Seer becomes thereby purely poetical ; Spirit supplies the signification which the natural image expresses. Everywhere the Greeks desired a clear presentation and interpretation of the Natural. Homer tells us, in the last book of the Odyssey, that while the Greeks were overwhelmed with sorrow for Achilles, a violent agitation came over the sea : the Greeks were on the point of dispersing in terror, when the experienced Nestor arose and interpreted the phenomenon to them. Thetis, he said, was coming, with her nymphs, to lament for the death of her son. When a pestilence broke out in the camp of the Greeks, the Priest Calchas explained that Apollo was incensed at their not having restored the daughter of his priest Chryses when a ransom had been offered. The Oracle was originally interpreted exactly in this way. The oldest Oracle was at Dodona (in the district of the modern Janina). Herodotus says that the first priestesses of the temple there, were from Egypt ; yet this temple is stated to be an ancient Greek one. The rustling of the leaves of the sacred oaks was the form of prognostication there. Bowls of metal were also suspended in the grove. But the sounds of the bowls dashing against each other were quite indefinite, and had no objective sense ; the sense – the signification – was imparted to the sounds only by the human beings who heard them. Thus also the Delphic priestesses, in a senseless, distracted state – in the intoxication of enthusiasm (mantia) – uttered unintelligible sounds ; and it was the manteis who gave to these utterances a definite meaning. In the cave of Trophonius the noise of subterranean waters was heard, and apparitions were seen : but these indefinite phenomena acquired a meaning only through the interpreting, comprehending Spirit. It must also be observed, that these excitements of Spirit are in the first instance external, natural impulses. Succeeding them are internal changes taking place in the human being himself – such as dreams, or the delirium of the Delphic priestess – which require to be made intelligible by the mantis. At the commencement of the Iliad, Achilles is excited against Agamemnon, and is on the point of drawing his sword ; but on a sudden he checks the movement of his arm, and recollects himself in his wrath, reflecting on his relation to Agamemnon. The Poet explains this by saying that it was Pallas-Athene (Wisdom or Consideration) that restrained him. When Ulysses among the Phaeacians has thrown his discus farther than the rest, and one of the Phaeacians shows a friendly disposition towards him, the Poet recognizes in him Pallas-Athene. Such an explanation denotes the perception of the inner meaning, the sense, the underlying truth ; and the poets were in this way the teachers of the Greeks – especially Homer. Manteia in fact is Poesy – not a capricious indulgence of fancy, but an imagination which introduces the Spiritual into the Natural – in short a richly intelligent perception. The Greek Spirit, on the whole, therefore, is free from superstition, since it changes the sensuous into the sensible – the Intellectual – so that [oracular] decisions are derived from Spirit ; although superstition comes in again from another quarter, as will be observed when impulsions from another source than the Spiritual, are allowed to tell upon opinion and action.

But the stimuli that operated on the Spirit of the Greeks are not to be limited to these objective and subjective excitements. The traditional element derived from foreign countries, the culture, the divinities and ritual observances transmitted to them ab extra must also be included. It has been long a much vexed question whether the arts and the religion of the Greeks were developed independently or through foreign suggestion. Under the conduct of a one-sided understanding the controversy is interminable ; for it is no less a fact of history that the Greeks derived conceptions from India, Syria, and Egypt, than that the Greek conceptions are peculiar to themselves, and those others alien. Herodotus (II. 53) asserts, with equal decision, that “Homer and Hesiod invented a Theogony for the Greeks, and assigned to the gods their appropriate epithets” (a most weighty sentence, which has been the subject of deep investigation, especially by Creuzer) – and, in another place, that Greece took the names of its divinities from Egypt, and that the Greeks made inquiry at Dodona, whether they ought to adopt these names or not. This appears selfcontradictory : it is, however, quite consistent ; for the fact is that the Greeks evolved the Spiritual from the materials which they had received. The Natural, as explained by man – i.e., its internal essential element – is, as a universal principle, the beginning of the Divine. Just as in Art the Greeks may have acquired a mastery of technical matters from others – from the Egyptians especially – so in their religion the commencement might have been from without ; but by their independent spirit they transformed the one as well as the other.

Traces of such foreign rudiments may be generally discovered (Creuzer, in his “Symbolik,” dwells especially on this point). The amours of Zeus appear indeed as something isolated, extraneous, adventitious, but it may be shown that foreign theogonic representations form their basis. Hercules is, among the Hellenes, that Spiritual Humanity which by native energy attains Olympus through the twelve far-famed labors : but the foreign idea that lies at the basis is the Sun, completing its revolution through the twelve signs of the Zodiac. The Mysteries were only such ancient rudiments, and certainly contained no greater wisdom than already existed in the consciousness of the Greeks. All Athenians were initiated in the mysteries – Socrates excepted, who refused initiation, because he knew well that science and art are not the product of mysteries, and that Wisdom never lies among arcana. True science has its place much rather in the open field of consciousness.

In summing up the constituents of the Greek Spirit, we find its fundamental characteristic to be, that the freedom of Spirit is conditioned by and has an essential relation to some stimulus supplied by Nature. Greek freedom of thought is excited by an alien existence ; but it is free because it transforms and virtually reproduces the stimulus by its own operation. This phase of Spirit is the medium between the loss of individuality on the part of man (such as we observe in the Asiatic principle, in which the Spiritual and Divine exists only under a Natural form), and Infinite Subjectivity as pure certainty of itself – the position that the Ego is the ground of all that can lay claim to substantial existence. The Greek Spirit as the medium between these two, begins with Nature, but transforms it into a mere objective form of its (Spirit's) own existence ; Spirituality is therefore not yet absolutely free ; not yet absolutely self-produced – is not self-stimulation. Setting out from surmise and wonder, the Greek Spirit advances to definite conceptions of the hidden meanings of Nature. In the subject itself too, the same harmony is produced. In Man, the side of his subjective existence which he owes to Nature, is the Heart, the Disposition, Passion, and Variety of Temperament : this side is then developed in a spiritual direction to free Individuality ; so that the character is not placed in a relation to universally valid moral authorities, assuming the form of duties, but the Moral appears as a nature peculiar to the individual – an exertion of will, the result of disposition and individual constitution. This stamps the Greek character as that of Individuality conditioned by Beauty, which is produced by Spirit, transforming the merely Natural into an expression of its own being. The activity of Spirit does not yet possess in itself the material and organ of expression, but needs the excitement of Nature and the matter which Nature supplies : it is not free, self-determining Spirituality, but mere naturalness formed to Spirituality – Spiritual Individuality. The Greek Spirit is the plastic artist, forming the stone into a work of art. In this formative process the stone does not remain mere stone – the form being only superinduced from without ; but it is made an expression of the Spiritual, even contrary to its nature, and thus transformed. Conversely, the artist needs for his spiritual conceptions, stone, colors, sensuous forms to express his idea. Without such an element he can no more be conscious of the idea himself, than give it an objective form for the contemplation of others ; since it cannot in Thought alone become an object to him. The Egyptian Spirit also was a similar laborer in Matter, but the Natural had not yet been subjected to the Spiritual. No advance was made beyond a struggle and contest with it ; the Natural still took an independent position, and formed one side of the image, as in the body of the Sphinx. In Greek Beauty the Sensuous is only a sign, an expression, an envelope, in which Spirit manifests itself.

It must be added, that while the Greek Spirit is a transforming artist of this kind, it knows itself free in its productions ; for it is their creator, and they are what is called the “work of man.” They are, however, not merely this, but Eternal Truth – the energizing of Spirit in its innate essence, and quite as really not created as created by man. He has a respect and veneration for these conceptions and images – this Olympian Zeus – this Pallas of the Acropolis – and in the same way for the laws, political and ethical, that guide his actions. But He, the human being, is the womb that conceived them, he the breast that suckled them, he the Spiritual to which their grandeur and purity are owing. Thus he feels himself calm in contemplating them, and not only free in himself, but possessing the consciousness of his freedom ; thus the honor of the Human is swallowed up in the worship of the Divine. Men honor the Divine in and for itself, but at the same time as their deed, their production, their phenomenal existence ; thus the Divine receives its honor through the respect paid to the Human, and the Human in virtue of the honor paid to the Divine.

Such are the qualities of that Beautiful Individuality, which constitutes the centre of the Greek character. We must now consider the several radiations which this idea throws out in realizing itself. All issue in works of art, and we may arrange under three heads : the subjective work of art, that is, the culture of the man himself ; – the objective work of art, i.e., the shaping of the world of divinities ; – lastly, the political work of art – the form of the Constitution, and the relations of the Individuals who compose it.

Section II : Phases of Individuality Æsthetically Conditioned

Chapter I. – The Subjective Work of Art

Man with his necessities sustains a practical relation to external Nature, and in making it satisfy his desires, and thus using it up, has recourse to a system of means. For natural objects are powerful, and offer resistance in various ways. In order to subdue them, man introduces other natural agents ; thus turns Nature against itself, and invents instruments for this purpose. These human inventions belong to Spirit, and such an instrument is to be respected more than a mere natural object. We see, too, that the Greeks are accustomed to set an especial value upon them, for in Homer, man's delight in them appears in a very striking way. In the notice of Agamemnon's sceptre, its origin is given in detail : mention is made of doors which turn on hinges, and of accoutrements and furniture, in a way that expresses satisfaction. The honor of human invention in subjugating Nature is ascribed to the gods. But, on the other hand, man uses Nature for ornament, which is intended only as a token of wealth and of that which man has made of himself. We find Ornament, in this interest, already very much developed among the Homeric Greeks. It is true that both barbarians and civilized nations ornament themselves ; but barbarians content themselves with mere ornament ; they intend their persons to please by an external addition. But ornament by its very nature is destined only to beautify something other than itself, viz. the human body, which is man's immediate environment, and which, in common with Nature at large, he has to transform. The spiritual interest of Primary importance is, therefore, the development of the body to a perfect organ for the Will – an adaptation which may on the one hand itself be the means for ulterior objects, and on the other hand, appear as an object per se. Among the Greeks, then, we find this boundless impulse of individuals to display themselves, and to find their enjoyment in so doing. Sensuous enjoyment does not become the basis of their condition when a state of repose has been obtained, any more than the dependence and stupor of superstition which enjoyment entails. They are too powerfully excited, too much bent upon developing their individuality, absolutely to adore Nature, as it manifests itself in its aspects of power and beneficence. That peaceful condition which ensued when a predatory life had been relinquished, and liberal nature had afforded security and leisure, turned their energies in the direction of self-assertion – the effort to dignify themselves. But while on the one side they have too much independent personality to be subjugated by superstition, that sentiment has not gone to the extent of making them vain ; on the contrary, essential conditions must be first satisfied, before this can become a matter of vanity with them. The exhilarating sense of personality, in contrast with sensuous subjection to nature, and the need, not of mere pleasure, but of the display of individual powers, in order thereby to gain special distinction and consequent enjoyment, constitute therefore the chief characteristic and principal occupation of the Greeks. Free as the bird singing in the sky, the individual only expresses what lies in his untrammelled human nature – [to give the world “assurance of a man"] – to have his importance recognized. This is the subjective beginning of Greek Art – in which the human being elaborates his physical being, in free, beautiful movement and agile vigor, to a work of art. The Greeks first trained their own persons to beautiful configurations before they attempted the expression of such in marble and in paintings. The innocuous contests of games, in which every one exhibits his powers, is of very ancient date. Homer gives a noble description of the games conducted by Achilles, in honor of Patroclus ; but in all his poems there is no notice of statues of the gods, though he mentions the sanctuary at Dodona, and the treasure-house of Apollo at Delphi. The games in Homer consist in wrestling and boxing, running, horse and chariot races, throwing the discus or javelin, and archery. With these exercises are united dance and song, to express and form part of the enjoyment of social exhilaration, and which arts likewise blossomed into beauty. On the shield of Achilles, Hephaestus represents, among other things, how beautiful youths and maidens move as quickly “with well-taught feet,” as the potter turns his wheel. The multitude stand round enjoying the spectacle ; the divine singer accompanies the song with the harp, and two chief dancers perform their evolutions in the centre of the circle.

These games and aesthetic displays, with the pleasures and honors that accompanied them, were at the outset only private, originating in particular occasions ; but in the sequel they became an affair of the nation, and were fixed for certain times at appointed places. Besides the Olympic games in the sacred district of Elis, there were also held the Isthmian, the Pythian, and Nemean, at other places.

If we look at the inner nature of these sports, we shall first observe how Sport itself is opposed to serious business, to dependence and need. This wrestling, running, contending was no serious affair ; bespoke no obligation of defence, no necessity of combat. Serious occupation is labor that has reference to some want. I or Nature must succumb ; if the one is to continue, the other must fall. In contrast with this kind of seriousness, however, Sport presents the higher seriousness ; for in it Nature is wrought into Spirit, and although in these contests the subject has not advanced to the highest grade of serious thought, yet in this exercise of his physical powers, man shows his Freedom, viz. that he has transformed his body to an organ of Spirit. Man has immediately in one of his organs, the Voice, an element which admits and requires a more extensive purport than the mere sensuous Present. We have seen how Song is united with the Dance, and ministers to it : but, subsequently Song makes itself independent, and requires musical instruments to accompany it ; it then ceases to be unmeaning, like the modulations of a bird, which may indeed express emotion, but which have no objective import ; but it requires an import created by imagination and Spirit, and which is then further formed into an objective work of art.

Chapter II. – The Objective Work of Art

If the subject of Song as thus developed among the Greeks is made a question, we should say that its essential and absolute purport is religious. We have examined the Idea embodied in the Greek Spirit ; and Religion is nothing else than this Idea made objective as the essence of being. According to that Idea, we shall observe also that the Divine involves the vis natura only as an element suffering a process of transformation to spiritual power. Of this Natural Element, as its origin, nothing more remains than the accord of analogy involved in the representation they formed of Spiritual power ; for the Greeks worshipped God as Spiritual. We cannot, therefore, regard the Greek divinity as similar to the Indian – some Power of Nature for which the human shape supplies only an outward form. The essence is the Spiritual itself, and the Natural is only the point of departure. But on the other hand, it must be observed, that the divinity of the Greeks is not yet the absolute, free Spirit, but Spirit in a particular mode, fettered by the limitations of humanity – still dependent as a determinate individuality on external conditions. Individualities, objectively beautiful, are the gods of the Greeks. The divine Spirit is here so conditioned as to be not yet regarded as abstract Spirit, but has a specialized existence – continues to manifest itself in sense ; but so that the sensuous is not its substance, but is only an element of its manifestation. This must be our leading idea in the consideration of the Greek mythology, and we must have our attention fixed upon it so much the more firmly, as – partly through the influence of erudition, which has whelmed essential principles beneath an infinite amount of details, and partly through that destructive analysis which is the work of the abstract Understanding – this mythology, together with the more ancient periods of Greek history, has become a region of the greatest intellectual confusion.

In the Idea of the Greek Spirit we found the two elements, Nature and Spirit, in such a relation to each other, that Nature forms merely the point of departure. This degradation of Nature is in the Greek mythology the turning point of the whole – expressed as the War of the Gods, the overthrow of the Titans by the race of Zeus. The transition from the Oriental to the Occidental Spirit is therein represented, for the Titans are the merely Physical – natural existences, from whose grasp sovereignty is wrested. It is true that they continue to be venerated, but not as governing powers ; for they are relegated to the verge [the limbus] of the world. The Titans are powers of Nature, Uranus, Gaea, Oceanus, Selene, Helios, etc. Chronos expresses the dominion of abstract Time, which devours its children. The unlimited power of reproduction is restrained, and Zeus appears as the head of the new divinities, who embody a spiritual import, and are themselves Spirit.[17] It is not possible to express this transition more distinctly and naively than in this myth ; the new dynasty of divinities proclaim their peculiar nature to be of a Spiritual order.

The second point is, that the new divinities retain natural elements, and consequently in themselves a determinate relation to the powers of Nature, as was previously shown. Zeus has his lightnings and clouds, and Hera is the creatress of the Natural, the producer of crescent vitality. Zeus is also the political god, the protector of morals and of hospitality. Oceanus, as such, is only the element of Nature which his name denotes. Poseidon has still the wildness of that element in his character ; but he is also an ethical personage ; to him is ascribed the building of walls and the production of the Horse. Helios is the sun as a natural element. This Light, according to the analogy of Spirit, has been transformed to self-consciousness, and Apollo has proceeded from Helios. The name lukeios points to the connection with light ; Apollo was a herdsman in the employ of Admetus, but oxen not subjected to the yoke were sacred to Helios : his rays, represented as arrows, kill the Python. The idea of Light as the natural power constituting the basis of the representation, cannot be dissociated from this divinity ; especially as the other predicates attached to it are easily united with it, and the explanations of Müller and others, who deny that basis, are much more arbitrary and far-fetched. For Apollo is the prophesying and discerning god – Light, that makes everything clear. He is, moreover, the healer and strengthener ; as also the destroyer, for he kills men. He is the propitiating and purifying god, e.g., in contravention of the Eumenides – the ancient subterrene divinities – who exact hard, stern justice. He himself is pure ; he has no wife, but only a sister, and is not involved in various disgusting adventures, like Zeus ; moreover, he is the discerner and declarer, the singer and leader of the dances – as the sun leads the harmonious dance of stars. – In like manner the Naiads became the Muses. The mother of the gods, Cybele – continuing to be worshipped at Ephesus as Artemis – is scarcely to be recognized as the Artemis of the Greeks – the chaste huntress and destroyer of wild beasts. Should it be said that this change of the Natural into the Spiritual is owing to our allegorizing, or that of the later Greeks, we may reply, that this transformation of the Natural to the Spiritual is the Greek Spirit itself. The epigrams of the Greeks exhibit such advances from the Sensuous to the Spiritual. But the abstract Understanding cannot comprehend this blending of the Natural with the Spiritual.

It must be further observed, that the Greek gods are to be regarded as individualities – not abstractions, like “Knowledge,” “Unity,” “Time,” “Heaven,” “Necessity.” Such abstractions do not form the substance of these divinities ; they are no allegories, no abstract beings, to which various attributes are attached, like the Horatian “Necessitas clavis trabalibus.” As little are the divinities symbols, for a symbol is only a sign, an adumbration of something else. The Greek gods express of themselves what they are. The eternal repose and clear intelligence that dignifies the head of Apollo, is not a symbol, but the expression in which Spirit manifests itself, and shows itself present. The gods are personalities, concrete individualities : an allegorical being has no qualities, but is itself one quality and no more. The gods are, moreover, special characters, since in each of them one peculiarity predominates as the characteristic one ; but it would be vain to try to bring this circle of characters into a system. Zeus, perhaps, may be regarded as ruling the other gods, but not with substantial power ; so that they are left free to their own idiosyncrasy. Since the whole range of spiritual and moral qualities was appropriated by the gods, the unity, which stood above them all, necessarily remained abstract ; it was therefore formless and unmeaning Fact, [the absolute constitution of things] – Necessity, whose oppressive character arises from the absence of the Spiritual in it ; whereas the gods hold a friendly relation to men, for they are Spiritual natures. That higher thought, the knowledge of Unity as God – the One Spirit – lay beyond that grade of thought which the Greeks had attained.

With regard to the adventitious and special that attaches to the Greek gods, the question arises, where the external origin of this adventitious element is to be looked for. It arises partly from local characteristics – the scattered condition of the Greeks at the commencement of their national life, fixing as this did on certain points, and consequently introducing local representations. The local divinities stand alone, and occupy a much greater extent than they do afterwards, when they enter into the circle of the divinities, and are reduced to a limited position ; they are conditioned by the particular consciousness and circumstances of the countries in which they appear. There are a multitude of Herculeses and Zeuses, that have their local history like the Indian gods, who also at different places possess temples to which a peculiar legend attaches. A similar relation occurs in the case of the Catholic saints and their legends ; though here, not the several localities, but the one “Mater Dei” supplies the point of departure, being afterwards localized in the most diversified modes. The Greeks relate the liveliest and most attractive stories of their gods – to which no limit can be assigned, since rich fancies were always gushing forth anew in the living Spirit of the Greeks. A second source from which adventitious specialities in the conception of the gods arose is that Worship of Nature, whose representations retain a place in the Greek myths, as certainly as they appear there also in a regenerated and transfigured condition. The preservation of the original myths, brings us to the famous chapter of the “Mysteries.” already mentioned. These mysteries of the Greeks present something which, as unknown, has attracted the curiosity of all times, under the supposition of profound wisdom. It must first be remarked that their antique and primary character, in virtue of its very antiquity, shows their destitution of excellence – their inferiority ; – that the more refined truths are not expressed in these mysteries, and that the view which many have entertained is incorrect, viz. – that the Unity of God, in opposition to polytheism, was taught in them. The mysteries were rather antique rituals ; and it is as unhistorical as it is foolish, to assume that profound philosophical truths are to be found here ; since, on the contrary, only natural ideas – ruder conceptions of the metamorphoses occurring everywhere in nature, and of the vital principle that pervades it – were the subjects of those mysteries. If we put together all the historical data pertinent to the question, the result we shall inevitably arrive at will be that the mysteries did not constitute a system of doctrines, but were sensuous ceremonies and exhibitions, consisting of symbols of the universal operations of Nature, as, e.g., the relation of the earth to celestial phenomena. The chief basis of the representations of Ceres and Proserpine, Bacchus and his train, was the universal principle of Nature ; and the accompanying details were obscure stories and representations, mainly bearing on the universal vital force and its metamorphoses. An analogous process to that of Nature, Spirit has also to undergo ; for it must be twice-born, i.e. abnegate itself ; and thus the representations given in the mysteries called attention, though only feebly, to the nature of Spirit. In the Greeks they produced an emotion of shuddering awe ; for an instinctive dread comes over men, when a signification is perceived in a form, which as a sensuous phenomenon does not express that signification, and which therefore both repels and attracts – awakes surmises by the import that reverberates through the whole, but at the same time a thrill of dread at the repellent form. Æschylus was accused of having profaned the mysteries in his tragedies. The indefinite representations and symbols of the Mysteries, in which the profound import is only surmised, are an element alien to the clear pure forms, and threaten them with destruction ; on which account the gods of Art remain separated from the gods of the Mysteries, and the two spheres must be strictly dissociated. Most of their gods the Greeks received from foreign lands – as Herodotus states expressly with regard to Egypt – but these exotic myths were transformed and spiritualized by the Greeks ; and that part of the foreign theogonies which accompanied them, was, in the mouth of the Hellenes, worked up into a legendary narrative which often redounded to the disadvantage of the divinities. Thus also the brutes which continued to rank as gods among the Egyptians, were degraded to external signs, accompanying the Spiritual god. While they have each an individual character, the Greek gods are also represented as human, and this anthropomorphism is charged as a defect. On the contrary (we may immediately rejoin) man as the Spiritual constitutes the element of truth in the Greek gods, which rendered them superior to all elemental deities, and all mere abstractions of the One and Highest Being. On the other side it is alleged as an advantage of the Greek gods that they are represented as men – that being regarded as not the case with the Christian God. Schiller says :

“While the gods remained more human,

The men were more divine.”

But the Greek gods must not be regarded as more human than the Christian God. Christ is much more a Man : he lives, dies – suffers death on the cross – which is infinitely more human than the humanity of the Greek Idea of the Beautiful. But in referring to this common element of the Greek and the Christian religions, it must be said of both, that if a manifestation of God is to be supposed at all, his natural form must be that of Spirit, which for sensuous conception is essentially the human ; for no other form can lay claim to spirituality. God appears indeed in the sun, in the mountains, in the trees, in everything that has life ; but a natural appearance of this kind, is not the form proper to Spirit : here God is cognizable only in the mind of the percipient. If God himself is to be manifested in a corresponding expression, that can only be the human form : for from this the Spiritual beams forth. But if it were asked : Does God necessarily manifest himself ? the question must be answered in the affirmative ; for there is no essential existence that does not manifest itself. The real defect of the Greek religion, as compared with the Christian, is, therefore, that in the former the manifestation constitutes the highest mode in which the Divine being is conceived to exist – the sum and substance of divinity ; while in the Christian religion the manifestation is regarded only as a temporary phase of the Divine. Here the manifested God dies, and elevates himself to glory ; only after death is Christ represented as sitting at the right hand of God. The Greek god, on the contrary, exists for his worshippers perennially in the manifestation – only in marble, in metal or wood, or as figured by the imagination. But why did God not appear to the Greeks in the flesh ? Because man was not duly estimated, did not obtain honor and dignity, till he had more fully elaborated and developed himself in the attainment of the Freedom implicit in the aesthetic manifestation in question ; the form and shaping of the divinity therefore continued to be the product of individual views, [not a general, impersonal one]. One element in Spirit is, that it produces itself – makes itself what it is : and the other is, that it is originally free – that Freedom is its nature and its Idea. But the Greeks, since they had not attained an intellectual conception of themselves, did not yet realize Spirit in its Universality – had not the idea of man and the essential unity of the divine and human nature according to the Christian view. Only the self-reliant, truly subjective Spirit can bear to dispense with the phenomenal side, and can venture to assign the Divine Nature to Spirit alone. It then no longer needs to inweave the Natural into its idea of the Spiritual, in order to hold fast its conception of the Divine, and to have its unity with the Divine, externally visible ; but while free Thought thinks the Phenomenal, it is content to leave it as it is ; for it also thinks that union of the Finite and the Infinite, and recognizes it not as a mere accidental union, but as the Absolute – the eternal Idea itself. Since Subjectivity was not comprehended in all its depth by the Greek Spirit, the true reconciliation was not attained in it, and the human Spirit did not yet assert its true position. This defect showed itself in the fact of Fate as pure subjectivity appearing superior to the gods ; it also shows itself in the fact, that men derive their resolves not yet from themselves, but from their Oracles. Neither human nor divine subjectivity, recognized as infinite, has as yet, absolutely decisive authority.

Chapter III. – The Political Work of Art

The State unites the two phases just considered, viz., the Subjective and the Objective Work of Art. In the State, Spirit is not a mere Object, like the deities, nor, on the other hand, is it merely subjectively developed to a beautiful physique. It is here a living, universal Spirit, but which is at the same time the self-conscious Spirit of the individuals composing the community. The Democratical Constitution alone was adapted to the Spirit and political condition in question. In the East we recognized Despotism, developed in magnificent proportions, as a form of government strictly appropriate to the Dawn-Land of History. Not less adapted is the democratical form in Greece, to the part assigned to it in the same great drama. In Greece, viz., we have the freedom of the Individual, but it has not yet advanced to such a degree of abstraction, that the subjective unit is conscious of direct dependence on the [general] substantial principle – the State as such. In this grade of Freedom, the individual will is unfettered in the entire range of its vitality, and embodies that substantial principle [the bond of the political union], according to its particular idiosyncrasy. In Rome, on the other hand, we shall observe a harsh sovereignty dominating over the individual members of the State ; as also in the German Empire, a monarchy, in which the Individual is connected with and has devoirs to perform not only in regard to the monarch, but to the whole monarchical organization.

The Democratical State is not Patriarchal – does not rest on a still unreflecting, undeveloped confidence – but implies laws, with the consciousness of their being founded on an equitable and moral basis, and the recognition of these laws as positive. At the time of the Kings, no political life had as yet made its appearance in Hellas ; there are, therefore, only slight traces of Legislation. But in the interval from the Trojan War till near the time of Cyrus, its necessity was felt. The first Lawgivers are known under the name of The Seven Sages – a title which at that time did not imply any such character as that of the Sophists – teachers of wisdom, designedly [and systematically] proclaiming the Right and True – but merely thinking men, whose thinking stopped short of Science, properly so called. They were practical politicians ; the good counsels which two of them – Thales of Miletus and Bias of Priene – gave to the Ionian cities, have been already mentioned. Thus Solon was commissioned by the Athenians to give them laws, as those then in operation no longer sufficed. Solon gave the Athenians a constitution by which all obtained equal rights, yet not so as to render the Democracy a quite abstract one. The main point in Democracy is moral disposition. Virtue is the basis of Democracy, remarks Montesquieu ; and this sentiment is as important as it is true in reference to the idea of Democracy commonly entertained. The Substance, [the Principle] of Justice, the common weal, the general interest, is the main consideration ; but it is so only as Custom, in the form of Objective Will, so that morality properly so called – subjective conviction and intention – has not yet manifested itself. Law exists, and is in point of substance, the Law of Freedom – rational [in its form and purport,] and valid because it is Law, i.e., without ulterior sanction. As in Beauty the Natural element – its sensuous coefficient – remains, so also in this customary morality, laws assume the form of a necessity of Nature. The Greeks occupy the middle ground of Beauty and have not yet attained the higher standpoint of Truth. While Custom and Wont is the form in which the Right is willed and done, that form is a stable one, and has not yet admitted into it the foe of [unreflected] immediacy – reflection and subjectivity of Will. The interests of the community may, therefore, continue to be intrusted to the will and resolve of the citizens – and this must be the basis of the Greek constitution ; for no principle has as yet manifested itself, which can contravene such Choice conditioned by Custom, and hinder its realizing itself in action. The Democratic Constitution is here the only possible one : the citizens are still unconscious of particular interests, and therefore of a corrupting element : the Objective Will is in their case not disintegrated. Athene the goddess is Athens itself – i.e., the real and concrete spirit of the citizens. The divinity ceases to inspire their life and conduct, only when the Will has retreated within itself – into the adytum of cognition and conscience – and has posited the infinite schism between the Subjective and the Objective. The above is the true position of the Democratic polity ; its justification and absolute necessity rest on this still immanent Objective Morality. For the modern conceptions of Democracy this justification cannot be pleaded. These provide that the interests of the community, the affairs of State, shall be discussed and decided by the People ; that the individual members of the community shall deliberate, urge their respective opinions, and give their votes ; and this on the ground that the interests of the State and its concerns are the interests of such individual members. All this is very well ; but the essential condition and distinction in regard to various phases of Democracy is : What is the character of these individual members ? They are absolutely authorized to assume their position, only in as far as their will is still Objective Will – not one that wishes this or that, not mere “good” will. For good will is something particular – rests on the morality of individuals, on their conviction and subjective feeling. That very subjective Freedom which constitutes the principle and determines the peculiar form of Freedom in our world – which forms the absolute basis of our political and religious life, could not manifest itself in Greece otherwise than as a destructive element. Subjectivity was a grade not greatly in advance of that occupied by the Greek Spirit ; that phase must of necessity soon be attained : but it plunged the Greek world into ruin, for the polity which that world embodied was not calculated for this side of humanity – did not recognize this phase ; since it had not made its appearance when that polity began to exist. Of the Greeks in the first and genuine form of their Freedom, we may assert, that they had no conscience ; the habit of living for their country without further [analysis or] reflection, was the principle dominant among them. The consideration of the State in the abstract – which to our understanding is the essential point – was alien to them. Their grand object was their country in its living and real aspect ; – this actual Athens, this Sparta, these Temples, these Altars, this form of social life, this union of fellow-citizens, these manners and customs. To the Greek his country was a necessary of life, without which existence was impossible. It was the Sophists – the “Teachers of Wisdom” – who first introduced subjective reflection, and the new doctrine that each man should act according to his own conviction. When reflection once comes into play, the inquiry is started whether the Principles of Law (das Recht) cannot be improved. Instead of holding by the existing state of things, internal conviction is relied upon ; and thus begins a subjective independent Freedom, in which the individual finds himself in a position to bring everything to the test of his own conscience, even in defiance of the existing constitution. Each one has his “principles,” and that view which accords with his private judgment he regards as practically the best, and as claiming practical realization. This decay even Thucydides notices, when he speaks of every one's thinking that things are going on badly when he has not a hand in the management.

To this state of things – in which every one presumes to have a judgment of his own – confidence in Great Men is antagonistic. When, in earlier times, the Athenians commission Solon to legislate for them, or when Lycurgus appears at Sparta as lawgiver and regulator of the State, it is evidently not supposed that the people in general think that they know best what is politically right. At a later time also, it was distinguished personages of plastic genius in whom the people placed their confidence : Cleisthenes, e.g., who made the constitution still more democratic than it had been – Miltiades, Themistocles, Aristides, and Cimon, who in the Median wars stand at the head of Athenian affairs – and Pericles, in whom Athenian glory centres as in its focus. But as soon as any of these great men had performed what was needed, envy intruded – i.e. the recoil of the sentiment of equality against conspicuous talent – and he was either imprisoned or exiled. Finally, the Sycophants arose among the people, aspersing all individual greatness, and reviling those who took the lead in public affairs.

But there are three other points in the condition of the Greek republics that must be particularly observed.

1. With Democracy in that form in which alone it existed in Greece, Oracles are intimately connected. To an independent resolve, a consolidated Subjectivity of the Will (in which the latter is determined by preponderating reasons) is absolutely indispensable ; but the Greeks had not this element of strength and vigor in their volition. When a colony was to be founded, when it was proposed to adopt the worship of foreign deities, or when a general was about to give battle to the enemy, the oracles were consulted. Before the battle of Plataea, Pausanias took care that an augury should be taken from the animals offered in sacrifice, and was informed by the soothsayer Tisam-enus that the sacrifices were favorable to the Greeks provided they remained on the hither side of the Asopus, but the contrary, if they crossed the stream and began the battle. Pausanias, therefore, awaited the attack. In their private affairs, too, the Greeks came to a determination not so much from subjective conviction as from some extraneous suggestion. With the advance of democracy we observe the oracles no longer consulted on the most important matters, but the particular views of popular orators influencing and deciding the policy of the State. As at this time Socrates relied upon his “Daemon,” so the popular leaders and the people relied on their individual convictions in forming their decisions. But contemporaneously with this were introduced corruption, disorder, and an unintermitted process of change in the constitution.

2. Another circumstance that demands special attention here, is the element of Slavery. This was a necessary condition of an aesthetic democracy, where it was the right and duty of every citizen to deliver or to listen to orations respecting the management of the State in the place of public assembly, to take part in the exercise of the Gymnasia, and to join in the celebration of festivals. It was a necessary condition of such occupations, that the citizens should be freed from handicraft occupations ; consequently, that what among us is performed by free citizens – the work of daily life – should be done by slaves. Slavery does not cease until the Will has been infinitely self-reflected[18] – until Right is conceived as appertaining to every freeman, and the term freeman is regarded as a synonym for man in his generic nature as endowed with Reason. But here we still occupy the standpoint of Morality as mere Wont and Custom, and therefore known only as a peculiarity attaching to a certain kind of existence [not as absolute and universal Law].

3. It must also be remarked, thirdly, that such democratic constitutions are possible only in small states – states which do not much exceed the compass of cities. The whole Polis of the Athenians is united in the one city of Athens. Tradition tells that Theseus united the scattered Demes into an integral totality. In the time of Pericles, at the beginning of the Peloponnesian War, when the Spartans were marching upon Attica, its entire population took refuge in the city. Only in such cities can the interests of all be similar ; in large empires, on the contrary, diverse and conflicting interests are sure to present themselves. The living together in one city, the fact that the inhabitants see each other daily, render a common culture and a living democratic polity possible. In Democracy, the main point is that the character of the citizen be plastic, all “of a piece.” He must be present at the critical stages of public business ; he must take part in decisive crises with his entire personality – not with his vote merely ; he must mingle in the heat of action – the passion and interest of the whole man being absorbed in the affair, and the warmth with which a resolve was made being equally ardent during its execution. That unity of opinion to which the whole community must be brought [when any political step is to be taken,] must be produced in the individual members of the state by oratorical suasion. If this were attempted by writing – in an abstract, lifeless way – no general fervor would be excited among the social units ; and the greater the number, the less weight would each individual vote have. In a large empire a general inquiry might be made, votes might be gathered in the several communities, and the results reckoned up – as was done by the French Convention. But a political existence of this kind is destitute of life, and the World is ipso facto broken into fragments and dissipated into a mere Paper-world. In the French Revolution, therefore, the republican constitution never actually became a Democracy : Tyranny, Despotism, raised its voice under the mask of Freedom and Equality.

We come now to the Second Period of Greek History. The first period saw the Greek Spirit attain its aesthetic development and reach maturity – realize its essential being. The second shows it manifesting itself – exhibits it in its full glory as producing a work for the world, asserting its principle in the struggle with an antagonistic force, and triumphantly maintaining it against that attack.

The Wars with the Persians

The period of contact with the preceding World-Historical people, is generally to be regarded as the second in the history of any nation. The World-Historical contact of the Greeks was with the Persians ; in that, Greece exhibited itself in its most glorious aspect. The occasion of the Median wars was the revolt of the Ionian cities against the Persians, in which the Athenians and Eretrians assisted them. That which, in particular, induced the Athenians to take their part, was the circumstance that the son of Pisistratus, after his attempts to regain sovereignty in Athens had failed in Greece, had betaken himself to the King of the Persians. The Father of History has given us a brilliant description of these Median wars, and for the object we are now pursuing we need not dwelling upon them.

At the beginning of the Median wars, Lacedaemon was in possession of the Hegemony, partly as the result of having subjugated and enslaved the free nation of the Messenians, partly because it had assisted many Greek states to expel their Tyrants. Provoked by the part the Greeks had taken in assisting the Ionians against him, the Persian King sent heralds to the Greek cities to require them to give Water and Earth, i.e. to acknowledge his supremacy. The Persian envoys were contemptuously sent back, and the Lacedaemonians went so far as to throw them into a well – a deed, however, of which they afterwards so deeply repented, as to send two Lacedaemonians to Susa in expiation. The Persian King then despatched an army to invade Greece. With its vastly superior force the Athenians and Plataeans, without aid from their compatriots, contended at Marathon under Miltiades, and gained the victory. Afterwards, Xerxes came down upon Greece with his enormous masses of nations (Herodotus gives a detailed description of this expedition) ; and with the terrible array of land-forces was associated the not less formidable fleet. Thrace, Macedon, and Thessaly were soon subjugated ; but the entrance into Greece Proper – the Pass of Thermopylae – was defended by three hundred Spartans and seven hundred Thespians, whose fate is well known. Athens, voluntarily deserted by its inhabitants, was ravaged ; the images of the gods which it contained were “an abomination” to the Persians, who worshipped the Amorphous, the Unformed. In spite of the disunion of the Greeks, the Persian fleet was beaten at Salamis ; and this glorious battle-day presents the three greatest tragedians of Greece in remarkable chronological association : for Æschylus was one of the combatants, and helped to gain the victory, Sophocles danced at the festival that celebrated it, and on the same day Euripides was born. The host that remained in Greece, under the command of Mardonius, was beaten at Plataea by Pausanias, and the Persian power was consequently broken at various points.

Thus was Greece freed from the pressure which threatened to overwhelm it. Greater battles, unquestionably, have been fought ; but these live immortal not in the historical records of Nations only, but also of Science and of Art – of the Noble and the Moral generally. For these are World-Historical victories ; they were the salvation of culture and Spiritual vigor, and they rendered the Asiatic principle powerless. How often, on other occasions, have not men sacrificed everything for one grand object ! How often have not warriors fallen for Duty and Country ! But here we are called to admire not only valor, genius and spirit, but the purport of the contest – the effect, the result, which are unique in their kind. In all other battles a particular interest is predominant ; but the immortal fame of the Greeks is none other than their due, in consideration of the noble cause for which deliverance was achieved. In the history of the world it is not the formal [subjective and individual] valor that has been displayed, not the so-called merit of the combatants, but the importance of the cause itself, that must decide the fame of the achievement. In the case before us, the interest of the World's History hung trembling in the balance. Oriental despotism – a world united under one lord and sovereign – on the one side, and separate states – insignificant in extent and resources, but animated by free individuality – on the other side, stood front to front in array of battle. Never in History has the superiority of spiritual power over material bulk – and that of no contemptible amount – been made so gloriously manifest. This war, and the subsequent development of the states which took the lead in it, is the most brilliant period of Greece. Everything which the Greek principle involved, then reached its perfect bloom and came into the light of day.

The Athenians continued their wars of conquest for a considerable time, and thereby attained a high degree of prosperity ; while the Lacedaemonians, who had no naval power, remained quiet. The antagonism of Athens and Sparta now commences – a favorite theme for historical treatment. It may be asserted that it is an idle inquiry, which of these two states justly claims the superiority, and that the endeavor should rather be, to exhibit each as in its own department a necessary and worthy phase of the Greek Spirit. On Sparta's behalf, e.g., many categories may be referred to in which she displays excellence ; strictness in point of morals, subjection to discipline, etc., may be advantageously cited. But the leading principle that characterizes this state is Political Virtue, which Athens and Sparta have, indeed, in common, but which in the one state developed itself to a work of Art, viz., Free Individuality – in the other retained its substantial form. Before we speak of the Pelopon-nesian War, in which the jealousy of Sparta and Athens broke out into a flame, we must exhibit more specifically the fundamental character of the two states – their distinctions in a political and moral respect.

Athens

We have already become acquainted with Athens as an asylum for the inhabitants of the other districts of Greece, in which a very mixed population was congregated. The various branches of human industry – agriculture, handicraft, and trade (especially by sea) – were united in Athens, but gave occasion to much dissension. An antagonism had early arisen between ancient and wealthy families and such as were poorer. Three parties, whose distinction had been grounded on their local position and the mode of life which that position suggested were then fully recognized. These were, the Pediaeans – inhabitants of the plain, the rich and aristocratic ; the Diacrians – mountaineers, cultivators of the vine and olive, and herdsmen, who were the most numerous class ; and between the two [in political status and sentiment] the Paralians – inhabitants of the coast, the moderate party. The polity of the state was wavering between Aristocracy and Democracy. Solon effected, by his division into four property-classes, a medium between these opposites. All these together formed the popular assembly for deliberation and decision on public affairs ; but the offices of government were reserved for the three superior classes. It is remarkable that even while Solon was still living and actually present, and in spite of his opposition, Pisistratus acquired supremacy. The constitution had, as it were, not yet entered into the blood and life of the community ; it had not yet become the habit of moral and civil existence. But it is still more remarkable that Pisistratus introduced no legislative changes, and that he presented himself before the Areopagus to answer an accusation brought against him. The rule of Pisistratus and of his sons appears to have been needed for repressing the power of great families and factions – for accustoming them to order and peace, and the citizens generally, on the other hand, to the Solonian legislation. This being accomplished, that rule was necessarily regarded as superfluous, and the principles of a free code enter into conflict with the power of the Pisistratidae. The Pisistratidae were expelled, Hipparchus killed, and Hippias banished. Then factions were revived ; the Alcmaeonidas, who took the lead in the insurrection, favored Democracy ; on the other hand, the Spartans aided the adverse party of Isagoras, which followed the aristocratic direction. The Alcmaeonidae, with Cleisthenes at their head, kept the upper hand. This leader made the constitution still more democratic than it had been ; the pulai, of which hitherto there had been only four, were increased to ten, and this had the effect of diminishing the influence of the clans. Lastly, Pericles rendered the constitution yet more democratic by diminishing the essential dignity of the Areopagus, and bringing causes that had hitherto belonged to it, before the Demos and the [ordinary] tribunals.

Pericles was a statesman of plastic[19] antique character : when he devoted himself to public life, he renounced private life, withdrew from all feasts and banquets, and pursued without intermission his aim of being useful to the state – a course of conduct by which he attained such an exalted position, that Aristophanes calls him the Zeus of Athens. We cannot but admire him in the highest degree : he stood at the head of a light-minded but highly refined and cultivated people ; the only means by which he could obtain influence and authority over them, was his personal character and the impression he produced of his being a thoroughly noble man, exclusively intent upon the weal of the State, and of superiority to his fellow-citizens in native genius and acquired knowledge. In force of individual character no statesman can be compared with him.

As a general principle, the Democratic Constitution affords the widest scope for the development of great political characters ; for it excels all others in virtue of the fact that it not only allows of the display of their powers on the part of individuals, but summons them to use those powers for the general weal. At the same time, no member of the community can obtain influence unless he has the power of satisfying the intellect and judgment, as well as the passions and volatility of a cultivated people. In Athens a vital freedom existed, and a vital equality of manners and mental culture ; and if inequality of property could not be avoided, it nevertheless did not reach an extreme. Together with this equality, and within the compass of this freedom, all diversities of character and talent, and all variety of idiosyncrasy could assert themselves in the most unrestrained manner, and find the most abundant stimulus to development in its environment ; for the predominant elements of Athenian existence were the independence of the social units, and a culture animated by the Spirit of Beauty. It was Pericles who originated the production of those eternal monuments of sculpture whose scanty remains astonish posterity ; it was before this people that the dramas of Æschylus and Sophocles were performed ; and later on those of Euripides – which, however, do not exhibit the same plastic moral character, and in which the principle of corruption is more manifest. To this people were addressed the orations of Pericles : from it sprung a band of men whose genius has become classical for all centuries ; for to this number belong,” besides those already named, Thucydides, Socrates, Plato, and Aristophanes – the last of whom preserved entire the political seriousness of his people at the time when it was being corrupted ; and who, imbued with this seriousness, wrote and dramatized with a view to his country's weal. We recognize in the Athenians great industry, susceptibility to excitement, and development of individuality within the sphere of Spirit conditioned by the morality of Custom. The blame with which we find them visited in Xenophon and Plato, attaches rather to that later period when misfortune and the corruption of the democracy had already supervened. But if we would have the verdict of the Ancients on the political life of Athens, we must turn, not to Xenophon, nor even to Plato, but to those who had a thorough acquaintance with the state in its full vigor – who managed its affairs and have been esteemed its greatest leaders – i.e., to its Statesmen. Among these, Pericles is the Zeus of the human Pantheon of Athens. Thucydides puts into his mouth the most profound description of Athenian life, on the occasion of the funeral obsequies of the warriors who fell in the second year of the Peloponnesian War. He proposes to show for what a city and in support of what interests they had died ; and this leads the speaker directly to the essential elements of the Athenian community. He goes on to paint the character of Athens, and what he says is most profoundly thoughtful, as well as most just and true. “We love the beautiful,” he says, “but without ostentation or extravagance ; we philosophize without being seduced thereby into effeminacy and inactivity (for when men give themselves up to Thought, they get further and further from the Practical – from activity for the public, for the common weal). We are bold and daring ; but this courageous energy in action does not prevent us from giving ourselves an account of what we undertake (we have a clear consciousness respecting it) ; among other nations, on the contrary, martial daring has its basis in deficiency of culture : we know best how to distinguish between the agreeable and the irksome ; notwithstanding which, we do not shrink from perils.”

Thus Athens exhibited the spectacle of a state whose existence was essentially directed to realizing the Beautiful, which had a thoroughly cultivated consciousness respecting the serious side of public affairs and the interests of Man's Spirit and Life, and united with that consciousness, hardy courage and practical ability.

Sparta

Here we witness on the other hand rigid abstract virtue – a life devoted to the State, but in which the activity and freedom of individuality are put in the background. The polity of Sparta is based on institutions which do full justice to the interest of the State, but whose object is a lifeless equality – not free movement. The very first steps in Spartan History are very different from the early stages of Athenian development. The Spartans were Dorians – the Athenians, Ionians ; and this national distinction has an influence on their Constitution also. In reference to the mode in which the Spartan State originated, we observe that the Dorians invaded the Peloponnesus with the Heracleidas, subdued the indigenous tribes, and condemned them to slavery ; for the Helots were doubtless aborigines. The fate that had befallen the Helots was suffered at a later epoch by the Messenians ; for inhuman severity of this order was innate in Spartan character. While the Athenians had a family-life, and slaves among them were inmates of the house, the relation of the Spartans to the subjugated race was one of even greater harshness than that of the Turks to the Greeks ; a state of warfare was constantly kept up in Lacedaemon. In entering upon office, the Ephors made an unreserved declaration of war against the Helots, and the latter were habitually given up to the younger Spartans to be practised upon in their martial exercises. The Helots were on some occasions set free, and fought against the enemy ; moreover, they displayed extraordinary valor in the ranks of the Spartans ; but on their return they were butchered in the most cowardly and insidious way. As in a slave-ship the crew are constantly armed, and the greatest care is taken to prevent an insurrection, so the Spartans exercised a constant vigilance over the Helots, and were always in a condition of war, as against enemies.

Property in land was divided, even according to the constitution of Lycurgus (as Plutarch relates), into equal parts, of which 9,000 only belonged to the Spartans – i.e., the inhabitants of the city – and 30,000 to the Lacedaemonians or Period. At the same time it was appointed, in order to maintain this equality, that the portions of ground should not be sold. But how little such an institution avails to effect its object, is proved by the fact, that in the sequel Lacedaemon owed its ruin chiefly to the inequality of possessions. As daughters were capable of inheriting, many estates had come by marriage into the possession of a few families, and at last all the landed property was in the hands of a limited number ; as if to show how foolish it is to attempt a forced equality – an attempt which, while ineffective in realizing its professed object, is also destructive of a most essential point of liberty – the free disposition of property. Another remarkable feature in the legislation of Lycurgus, is his forbidding all money except that made of iron – an enactment which necessitated the abolition of all foreign business and traffic. The Spartans moreover had no naval force – a force indispensable to the support and furtherance of commerce ; and on occasions when such a force was required, they had to apply to the Persians for it.

It was with an especial view to promote similarity of manners, and a more intimate acquaintance of the citizens with each other, that the Spartans had meals in common – a community, however, which disparaged family life ; for eating and drinking is a private affair, and consequently belongs to domestic retirement. It was so regarded among the Athenians ; with them association was not material but spiritual, and even their banquets, as we see from Xenophon and Plato, had an intellectual tone. Among the Spartans, on the other hand, the costs of the common meal were met by the contributions of the several members, and he who was too poor to offer such a contribution was consequently excluded.

As to the Political Constitution of Sparta, its basis may be called democratic, but with considerable modifications which rendered it almost an Aristocracy and Oligarchy. At the head of the State were two Kings, at whose side was a Senate (gerousia), chosen from the best men of the State, and which also performed the functions of a court of justice – deciding rather in accordance with moral and legal customs, than with written laws.[20] The gerousia also the highest State-Council – the Council of the Kings, regulating the most important affairs. Lastly, one of the highest magistracies was that of the Ephors, respecting whose election we have no definite information ; Aristotle says that the mode of choice was exceedingly childish. We learn from Aristotle that even persons without nobility or property could attain this dignity. The Ephors had full authority to convoke popular assemblies, to put resolutions to the vote, and to propose laws, almost in the same way as the tribuni plebis in Rome. Their power became tyrannical, like that which Robespierre and his party exercised for a time in France.

While the Lacedaemonians directed their entire attention to the State, Intellectual Culture – Art and Science – was not domiciled among them. The Spartans appeared to the rest of the Greeks, stiff, coarse, awkward beings, who could not transact business involving any degree of intricacy, or at least performed it very clumsily. Thucydides makes the Athenians say to the Spartans : “You have laws and customs which have nothing in common with others ; and besides this, you proceed, when you go into other countries, neither in accordance with these, nor with the traditionary usages of Hellas.” In their intercourse at home, they were, on the whole, honorable ; but as regarded their conduct towards other nations, they themselves plainly declared that they held their own good pleasure for the Commendable, and what was advantageous for the Right. It is well known that in Sparta (as was also the case in Egypt) the taking away of the necessaries of life, under certain conditions, was permitted ; only the thief must not allow himself to be discovered. Thus the two States, Athens and Sparta, stand in contrast with each other. The morality of the latter is rigidly directed to the maintenance of the State ; in the former we find a similar ethical relation, but with a cultivated consciousness, and boundless activity in the production of the Beautiful – subsequently, of the True also. This Greek morality, though extremely beautiful, attractive and interesting in its manifestation, is not the highest point of view for Spiritual self-consciousness. It wants the form of Infinity, the reflection of thought within itself, the emancipation from the Natural element – (the Sensuous that lurks in the character of Beauty and Divinity [as comprehended by the Greeks]) – and from that immediacy, [that undeveloped simplicity,] which attaches to their ethics. Self- Comprehension on the part of Thought is wanting – illimitable Self-Consciousness – demanding, that what is regarded by me as Right and Morality should have its confirmation in myself – from the testimony of my own Spirit ; that the Beautiful (the Idea as manifested in sensuous contemplation or conception) may also become the True – an inner, supersensuous world. The standpoint occupied by the Æsthetic Spiritual Unity which we have just described, could not long be the resting-place of Spirit ; and the element in which further advance and corruption originated, was that of Subjectivity – inward morality, individual reflection, and an inner life generally. The perfect bloom of Greek life lasted only about sixty years – from the Median wars, B.C. 492, to the Peloponnesian War, B.C. 431. The principle of subjective morality which was inevitably introduced, became the germ of corruption, which, however, showed itself in a different form in Athens from that which it assumed in Sparta : in Athens, as levity in public conduct, in Sparta, as private depravation of morals. In their fall, the Athenians showed themselves not only amiable, but great and noble – to such a degree that we cannot but lament it ; among the Spartans, on the contrary, the principle of subjectivity develops itself in vulgar greed, and issues in vulgar ruin.

The Peloponnesian War

The principle of corruption displayed itself first in the external political development – in the contest of the states of Greece with each other, and the struggle of factions within the cities themselves. The Greek Morality had made Hellas unfit to form one common state ; for the dissociation of small states from each other, and the concentration in cities, where the interest and the spiritual culture pervading the whole, could be identical, was the necessary condition of that grade of Freedom which the Greeks occupied. It was only a momentary combination that occurred in the Trojan War, and even in the Median wars a union could not be accomplished. Although the tendency towards such a union is discoverable, the bond was but weak, its permanence was always endangered by jealousy, and the contest for the Hegemony set the States at variance with each other. A general outbreak of hostilities in the Peloponnesian War was the consummation. Before it, and even at its commencement, Pericles was at the head of the Athenian nation – that people most jealous of its liberty ; it was only his elevated personality and great genius that enabled him to maintain his position. After the wars with the Medes, Athens enjoyed the Hegemony ; a number of allies – partly islands, partly towns – were obliged to contribute to the supplies required for continuing the war against the Persians ; and instead of the contribution being made in the form of fleets or troops, the subsidy was paid in money. Thereby an immense power was concentrated in Athens ; a part of the money was expended in great architectural works, in the enjoyment of which, since they were products of Spirit, the allies had some share. But that Pericles did not devote the whole of the money to works of Art, but also made provision for the Demos in other ways, was evident after his death, from the quantity of stores amassed in several magazines, but especially in the naval arsenal. Xenophon says : “Who does not stand in need of Athens ? Is she not indispensable to all lands that are rich in corn and herds, in oil and wine – to all who wish to traffic either in money or in mind ? – to craftsmen, sophists, philosophers, poets, and all who desire what is worth seeing or hearing in sacred and public matters ?”

In the Peloponnesian War, the struggle was essentially between Athens and Sparta. Thucydides has left us the history of the greater part of it, and his immortal work is the absolute gain which humanity has derived from that contest. Athens allowed herself to be hurried into the extravagant projects of Alcibiades ; and when these had already much weakened her, she was compelled to succumb to the Spartans, who were guilty of the treachery of applying for aid to Persia, and who obtained from the King supplies of money and a naval force. They were also guilty of a still more extensive treason, in abolishing democracy in Athens and in the cities of Greece generally, and in giving a preponderance to factions that desired oligarchy, but were not strong enough to maintain themselves without foreign assistance. Lastly, in the peace of Antalcidas, Sparta put the finishing stroke to her treachery, by giving over the Greek cities in Asia Minor to Persian dominion.

Lacedaemon had therefore, both by the oligarchies which it had set up in various countries, and by the garrisons which it maintained in some cities – as, e.g., Thebes – obtained a great preponderance in Greece. But the Greek states were far more incensed at Spartan oppression than they had previously been at Athenian supremacy. With Thebes at their head, they cast off the yoke, and the Thebans became for a moment the most distinguished people in Hellas. But it was to two distinguished men among its citizens that Thebes owed its entire power – Pelopidas and Epaminondas ; as for the most part in that state we find the Subjective preponderant. In accordance with this principle, Lyrical Poetry – that which is the expression of subjectivity – especially flourished there ; a kind of subjective amenity of nature shows itself also in the so- called Sacred Legion which formed the kernel of the Theban host, and was regarded as consisting of persons connected by amatory bonds [amantes and amati] ; while the influence of subjectivity among them was especially proved by the fact, that after the death of Epaminondas, Thebes fell back into its former position. Weakened and distracted, Greece could no longer find safety in itself, and needed an authoritative prop. In the towns there were incessant contests ; the citizens were divided into factions, as in the Italian cities of the Middle Ages. The victory of one party entailed the banishment of the other ; the latter then usually applied to the enemies of their native city, to obtain their aid in subjugating it by force of arms. The various States could no longer co-exist peaceably : they prepared ruin for each other, as well as for themselves.

We have, then, now to investigate the corruption of the Greek world in its profounder import, and may denote the principle of that corruption as subjectivity obtaining emancipation for itself. We see Subjectivity obtruding itself in various ways. Thought – the subjectively Universal – menaces the beautiful religion of Greece, while the passions of individuals and their caprice menace its political constitution. In short, Subjectivity, comprehending and manifesting itself, threatens the existing state of things in every department – characterized as that state of things is by Immediacy [a primitive, unreflecting simplicity]. Thought, therefore, appears here as the principle of decay – decay, viz. of Substantial [prescriptive] morality ; for it introduces an antithesis, and asserts essentially rational principles. In the Oriental states, in which there is no such antithesis, moral freedom cannot be realized, since the highest principle is [Pure] Abstraction. But when Thought recognizes its positive character, as in Greece, it establishes principles ; and these bear to the real world the relation of Essence to Form. For the concrete vitality found among the Greeks, is Customary Morality – a life for Religion, for the State, without further reflection, and without analysis leading to abstract definitions, which must lead away from the concrete embodiment of them, and occupy an antithetical position to that embodiment. Law is part of the existing state of things, with Spirit implicit in it. But as soon as Thought arises, it investigates the various political constitutions : as the result of its investigation it forms for itself an idea of an improved state of society, and demands that this ideal should take the place of things as they are.

In the principle of Greek Freedom, inasmuch as it is Freedom, is involved the self-emancipation of Thought. We observed the dawn of Thought in the circle of men mentioned above under their well-known appellation of the Seven Sages. It was they who first uttered general propositions ; though at that time wisdom consisted rather in a concrete insight [into things, than in the power of abstract conception]. Parallel with the advance in the development of Religious Art and with political growth, we find a progressive strengthening of Thought, its enemy and destroyer ; and at the time of the Peloponnesian War science was already developed. With the Sophists began the process of reflection on the existing state of things, and of ratiocination. That very diligence and activity which we observed among the Greeks in their practical life, and in the achievement of works of art, showed itself also in the turns and windings which these ideas took ; so that, as material things are changed, worked up and used for other than their original purposes, similarly the essential being of Spirit – what is thought and known – is variously handled ; it is made an object about which the mind can employ itself, and this occupation becomes an interest in and for itself. The movement of Thought – that which goes on within its sphere [without reference to an extrinsic object] – a process which had formerly no interest – acquires attractiveness on its own account. The cultivated Sophists, who were not erudite or scientific men, but masters of subtle turns of thought, excited the admiration of the Greeks. For all questions they had an answer ; for all interests of a political or religious order they had general points of view ; and in the ultimate development of their art, they claimed the ability to prove everything, to discover a justifiable side in every position. In a democracy it is a matter of the first importance, to be able to speak in popular assemblies – to urge one's opinions on public matters. Now this demands the power of duly presenting before them that point of view which we desire them to regard as essential. For such a purpose, intellectual culture is needed, and this discipline the Greeks acquired under their Sophists. This mental culture then became the means, in the hands of those who possessed it, of enforcing their views and interests on the Demos : the expert Sophist knew how to turn the subject of discussion this way or that way at pleasure, and thus the doors were thrown wide open to all human passions. A leading principle of the Sophists was, that “Man is the measure of all things” ; but in this, as in all their apophthegms, lurks an ambiguity, since the term “Man” may denote Spirit in its depth and truth, or in the aspect of mere caprice and private interest. The Sophists meant Man simply as subjective, and intended in this dictum of theirs, that mere liking was the principle of Right, and that advantage to the individual was the ground of final appeal. This Sophistic principle appears again and again, though under different forms, in various periods of History ; thus even in our own times subjective opinion of what is right – mere feeling – is made the ultimate ground of decision.

In Beauty, as the Greek principle, there was a concrete unity of Spirit, united with Reality, with Country and Family, etc. In this unity no fixed point of view had as yet been adopted within the Spirit itself, and Thought, as far as it transcended this unity, was still swayed by mere liking ; [the Beautiful, the Becoming (to prepou) conducted men in the path of moral propriety, but apart from this they had no firm abstract principle of Truth and Virtue]. But Anaxagoras himself had taught, that Thought itself was the absolute Essence of the World. And it was in Socrates, that at the beginning of the Peloponnesian War, the principle of subjectivity – of the absolute inherent independence of Thought – attained free expression. He taught that man has to discover and recognize in himself what is the Right and Good, and that this Right and Good is in its nature universal. Socrates is celebrated as a Teacher of Morality, but we should rather call him the Inventor of Morality. The Greeks had a customary morality ; but Socrates undertook to teach them what moral virtues, duties, etc. were. The moral man is not he who merely wills and does that which is right – not the merely innocent man – but he who has the consciousness of what he is doing. Socrates – in assigning to insight, to conviction, the determination of men's actions – posited the Individual as capable of a final moral decision, in contraposition to Country and to Customary Morality, and thus made himself an Oracle, in the Greek sense. He said that he had a daimonion within him, which counselled him what to do, and revealed to him what was advantageous to his friends. The rise of the inner world of Subjectivity was the rupture with the existing Reality. Though Socrates himself continued to perform his duties as a citizen, it was not the actual State and its religion, but the world of Thought that was his true home. Now the question of the existence and nature of the gods came to be discussed. The disciple of Socrates, Plato, banished from his ideal state, Homer and Hesiod, the originators of that mode of conceiving of religious objects which prevailed among the Greeks ; for he desiderated a higher conception of what was to be reverenced as divine – one more in harmony with Thought. Many citizens now seceded from practical and political life, to live in the ideal world. The principle of Socrates manifests a revolutionary aspects towards the Athenian State ; for the peculiarity of this State was, that Customary Morality was the form in which its existence was moulded, viz. – an inseparable connection of Thought with actual life. When Socrates wishes to induce his friends to reflection, the discourse has always a negative tone ; he brings them to the consciousness that they do not know what the Right is. But when on account of the giving utterance to that principle which was advancing to recognition, Socrates is condemned to death, the sentence bears on the one hand the aspect of unimpeachable rectitude – inasmuch as the Athenian people condemns its deadliest foe – but on the other hand, that of a deeply tragical character, inasmuch as the Athenians had to make the discovery, that what they reprobated in Socrates had already struck firm root among themselves, and that they must be pronounced guilty or innocent with him. With this feeling they condemned the accusers of Socrates, and declared him guiltless.

In Athens that higher principle which proved the ruin of the Athenian state, advanced in its development without intermission. Spirit had acquired the propensity to gain satisfaction for itself – to reflect. Even in decay the Spirit of Athens appears majestic, because it manifests itself as the free, the liberal – exhibiting its successive phases in their pure idiosyncrasy – in that form in which they really exist. Amiable and cheerful even in the midst of tragedy is the light- heartedness and nonchalance with which the Athenians accompany their [national] morality to its grave. We recognize the higher interest of the new culture in the fact that the people made themselves merry over their own follies, and found great entertainment in the comedies of Aristophanes, which have the severest satire for their contents, while they bear the stamp of the most unbridled mirth.

In Sparta the same corruption is introduced, since the social unit seeks to assert his individuality against the moral life of the community : but there we have merely the isolated side of particular subjectivity – corruption in its undisguised form, blank immorality, vulgar selfishness and venality. All these passions manifest themselves in Sparta, especially in the persons of its generals, who, for the most part living at a distance from their country, obtain an opportunity of securing advantages at the expense of their own state as well as of those to whose assistance they are sent.

The Macedonian Empire

After the fall of Athens, Sparta took upon herself the Hegemony ; but misused it – as already mentioned – so selfishly, that she was universally hated. Thebes could not long sustain the part of humiliating Sparta, and was at last exhausted in the war with the Phocians. The Spartans and the Phocians – the former because they had surprised the citadel of Thebes, the latter because they had tilled a piece of land belonging to the Delphin Apollo – had been sentenced to pay considerable sums of money. Both states however refused payment ; for the Amphictyonic Council had not much more authority than the old German Diet, which the German princes obeyed only so far as suited their inclination. The Phocians were then to be punished by the Thebans ; but by an egregious piece of violence – by desecrating and plundering the temple at Delphi – the former attained momentary superiority. This deed completes the ruin of Greece ; the sanctuary was desecrated, the god so to speak, killed ; the last support of unity was thereby annihilated ; reverence for that which in Greece had been as it were always the final arbiter – its monarchical principle – was displaced, insulted, and trodden under foot.

The next step in advance is then that quite simple one, that the place of the dethroned oracle should be taken by another deciding will – a real authoritative royalty. The foreign Macedonian King – Philip – undertook to avenge the violation of the oracle, and forthwith took its place, by making himself lord of Greece. Philip reduced under his dominion the Hellenic States, and convinced them that it was all over with their independence, and that they could no longer maintain their own footing. The charge of littleness, harshness, violence, and political treachery – all those hateful characteristics with which Philip has so often been reproached – did not extend to the young Alexander, when he placed himself at the head of the Greeks. He had no need to incur such reproaches ; he had not to form a military force, for he found one already in existence. As he had only to mount Bucephalus, and take the rein in hand, to make him obsequious to his will, just so he found that Macedonian phalanx prepared for his purpose – that rigid welltrained iron mass, the power of which had been demonstrated under Philip, who copied it from Epaminondas.

Alexander had been educated by the deepest and also the most comprehensive thinker of antiquity – Aristotle ; and the education was worthy of the man who had undertaken it. Alexander was initiated into the profoundest metaphysics : therefore his nature was thoroughly refined and liberated from the customary bonds of mere opinion, crudities and idle fancies. Aristotle left this grand nature as untrammelled as it was before his instructions commenced ; but impressed upon it a deep perception of what the True is, and formed the spirit which nature had so richly endowed to a plastic being, rolling freely like an orb through its circumambient ether.

Thus accomplished, Alexander placed himself at the head of the Hellenes, in order to lead Greece over into Asia. A youth of twenty, he commanded a thoroughly experienced army, whose generals were all veterans, well versed in the art of war. It was Alexander's aim to avenge Greece for all that Asia had inflicted upon it for so many years, and to fight out at last the ancient feud and contest between the East and the West. While in this struggle he retaliated upon the Oriental world what Greece had suffered from it, he also made a return for the rudiments of culture which had been derived thence by spreading the maturity and culmination of that culture over the East ; and, as it were, changed the stamp of subjugated Asia and assimilated it to a Hellenic land. The grandeur and the interest of this work were proportioned to his genius – to his peculiar youthful individuality – the like of which in so beautiful a form we have not seen a second time at the head of such an undertaking. For not only were the genius of a commander, the greatest spirit, and consummate bravery united in him, but all these qualities were dignified by the beauty of his character as a man and an individual. Though his generals were devoted to him, they had been the long tried servants of his father ; and this made his position difficult : for his greatness and youth was a humiliation to them, as inclined to regard themselves and the achievements of the past, as a complete work ; so that while their envy, as in Clitus's case, arose to blind rage, Alexander also was excited to great violence.

Alexander's expedition to Asia was at the same time a journey of discovery ; for it was he who first opened the Oriental World to the Europeans, and penetrated into countries – as e.g. Bactria, Sogdiana, northern India – which have since been hardly visited by Europeans. The arrangement of the march, and not less the military genius displayed in the disposition of battles, and in tactics generally, will always remain an object of admiration. He was great as a commander in battles, wise in conducting marches and marshalling troops, and the bravest soldier in the thick of the fight. Even the death of Alexander, which occurred at Babylon in the three-and-thirtieth year of his age, gives us a beautiful spectacle of his greatness, and shows in what relation he stood to his army : for he takes leave of it with the perfect consciousness of his dignity.

Alexander had the good fortune to die at the proper time ; i.e. it may be called good fortune, but it is rather a necessity. That he may stand before the eyes of posterity as a youth, an early death must hurry him away. Achilles, as remarked above, begins the Greek world, and his autotype Alexander concludes it : and these youths not only supply a picture of the fairest kind in their own persons, but at the same time afford a complete and perfect type of Hellenic existence. Alexander finished his work and completed his ideal ; and thus bequeathed to the world one of the noblest and most brilliant of visions, which our poor reflections only serve to obscure. For the great World-Historical form of Alexander, the modern standard applied by recent historical “Philistines” – that of virtue or morality – will by no means suffice. And if it be alleged in depreciation of his merit, that he had no successor, and left behind no dynasty, we may remark that the Greek kingdoms that arose in Asia after him, are his dynasty. For two years he was engaged in a campaign in Bactria, which brought him into contact with the Massagetse and Scythians ; and there arose the Grseco-Bactrian kingdom which lasted for two centuries. Thence the Greeks came into connection with India, and even with China. The Greek dominion spread itself over northern India, and Sandrokottus (Chandraguptas) is mentioned as the first who emancipated himself from it. The same name presents itself indeed among the Hindoos, but for reasons already stated, we can place very little dependence upon such mention. Other Greek Kingdoms arose in Asia Minor, in Armenia, in Syria and Babylonia. But Egypt especially, among the kingdoms of the successors of Alexander, became a great centre of science and art ; for a great number of its architectural works belong to the time of the Ptolemies, as has been made out from the deciphered inscriptions. Alexandria became the chief centre of commerce – the point of union for Eastern manners and tradition with Western civilization. Besides these, the Macedonian Kingdom, that of Thrace, stretching beyond the Danube, that of Illyria, and that of Epirus, flourished under the sway of Greek princes.

Alexander was also extraordinarily attached to the sciences, and he is celebrated as next to Pericles the most liberal patron of the arts. Meier says in his “History of Art,” that his intelligent love of art would have secured him an immortality of fame not less than his conquests.

Section III : The Fall of the Greek Spirit.

This third period in the history of the Hellenic World, which embraces the protracted development of the evil destiny of Greece, interests us less. Those who had been Alexander's Generals, now assuming an independent appearance on the stage of history as Kings, carried on long wars with each other, and experienced, almost all of them, the most romantic revolutions of fortune. Especially remarkable and prominent in this respect is the life of Demetrius Poliorcetes.

In Greece the States had preserved their existence : brought to a consciousness of their weakness by Philip and Alexander, they contrived to enjoy an apparent vitality, and boasted of an unreal independence. That self-consciousness which independence confers, they could not have ; and diplomatic statesmen took the lead in the several States – orators who were not at the same time generals, as was the case formerly – e.g. in the person of Pericles. The countries of Greece now assume various relations to the different monarchs, who continued to contend for the sovereignty of the Greek States – partly also for their favor, especially for that of Athens : for Athens still presented an imposing figure – if not as a Power, yet certainly as the centre of the higher arts and sciences, especially of Philosophy and Rhetoric. Besides it kept itself more free from the gross excess, coarseness and passions which prevailed in the other States, and made them contemptible ; and the Syrian and Egyptian kings deemed it an honor to make Athens large presents of corn and other useful supplies. To some extent too the kings of the period reckoned it their greatest glory to render and to keep the Greek cities and states independent. The Emancipation of Greece had as it were, become the general watch-word ; and it passed for a high title of fame to be called the Deliverer of Greece. If we examine the hidden political bearing of this word, we shall find that it denotes the prevention of any indigenous Greek State from obtaining decided superiority, and keeping all in a state of weakness by separation and disorganization.

The special peculiarity by which each Greek State was distinguished from the others consisted in a difference similar to that of their glorious divinities, each one of whom has his particular character and peculiar being, yet so that this peculiarity does not derogate from the divinity common to all. When therefore, this divinity has become weak and has vanished from the States, nothing but the bare particularity remains – the repulsive speciality which obstinately and waywardly asserts itself, and which on that very account assumes a position of absolute dependence and of conflict with others. Yet the feeling of weakness and misery led to combinations here and there. The Italians and their allies as a predatory people, set up injustice, violence, fraud, and insolence to others, as their charter of rights. Sparta was governed by infamous tyrants and odious passions, and in this condition was dependent on the Macedonian Kings. The Boeotian subjective character had, after the extinction of Theban glory, sunk down into indolence and the vulgar desire of coarse sensual enjoyment. The Achaean league distinguished itself by the aim of its union (the expulsion of Tyrants,) by rectitude and the sentiment of community. But this too was obliged to take refuge in the most complicated policy. What we see here on the whole is a diplomatic condition – an infinite involvement with the most manifold foreign interests – a subtle intertexture and play of parties, whose threads are continually being combined anew.

In the internal condition of the states, which, enervated by selfishness and debauchery, were broken up into factions – each of which on the other hand directs its attention to foreign lands, and with treachery to its native country begs for the favors of the Kings – the point of interest is no longer the fate of these states, but the great individuals, who arise amid the general corruption, and honorably devote themselves to their country. They appear as great tragic characters, who with their genius, and the most intense exertion, are yet unable to extirpate the evils in question ; and perish in the struggle, without having had the satisfaction of restoring to their fatherland repose, order and freedom, nay, even without having secured a reputation with posterity free from all stain. Livy says in his prefatory remarks : “In our times we can neither endure our faults nor the means of correcting them.” And this is quite as applicable to these Last of the Greeks, who began an undertaking which was as honorable and noble, as it was sure of being frustrated. Agis and Cleomenes, Aratus and Philopoemen, thus sunk under the struggle for the good of their nation. Plutarch sketches for us a highly characteristic picture of these times, in giving us a representation of the importance of individuals during their continuance.

The third period of the history of the Greeks brings us to their contact with that people which was to play the next part on the theatre of the World's History ; and the chief excuse for this contact was – as pretexts had previously been – the liberation of Greece. After Perseus the last Macedonian King, in the year 168 B.C. had been conquered by the Romans and brought in triumph to Rome, the Achaean league was attacked and broken up, and at last in the year 146 B.C. Corinth was destroyed. Looking at Greece as Polybius describes it, we see how a noble nature such as his, has nothing left for it but to despair at the state of affairs and to retreat into Philosophy ; or if it attempts to act, can only die in the struggle. In deadly contraposition to the multiform variety of passion which Greece presents – that distracted condition which whelms good and evil in one common ruin – stands a blind fate – an iron power ready to show up that degraded condition in all its weakness, and to dash it to pieces in miserable ruin ; for cure, amendment, and consolation are impossible. And this crushing Destiny is the Roman power.

The Proletariat in Power, for Trotsky after 1905 Russian Revolution

Robert Paris — 2024-10-17T04:01:29Z

The Proletariat in Power, for Trotsky after 1905 Russian Revolution

Revolution and the Proletariat

Revolution is an open measurement of strength between social forces in a struggle for power. The State is not an end in itself. It is only a machine in the hands of the dominating social forces. Like every machine it has its motor, transmitting and executive mechanism. The driving force of the State is class interest; its motor mechanism is agitation, the press, church and school propaganda, parties, street meetings, petitions and revolts. The transmitting mechanism is the legislative organization of caste, dynastic, estate or class interests represented as the will of God (absolutism) or the will of the nation (parliamentarism). Finally, the executive mechanism is the administration, with its police, the courts, with their prisons, and the army.

The State is not an end in itself, but is a tremendous means for organizing, disorganizing and reorganizing social relations. It can be a powerful lever for revolution or a tool for organized stagnation, depending on the hands that control it.

Every political party worthy of the name strives to capture political power and thus place the State at the service of the class whose interests it expresses. The Social-Democrats, being the party of the proletariat, naturally strive for the political domination of the working class.

The proletariat grows and becomes stronger with the growth of capitalism. In this sense the development of capitalism is also the development of the proletariat towards dictatorship. But the day and the hour when power will pass into the hands of the working class depends directly not upon the level attained by the productive forces but upon relations in the class struggle, upon the international situation, and, finally, upon a number of subjective factors: the traditions, the initiative and the readiness to fight of the workers.

It is possible for the workers to come to power in an economically backward country sooner than in an advanced country. In 1871 the workers deliberately took power in their hands in petty-bourgeois Paris – true, for only two months, but in the big-capitalist centres of Britain or the United States the workers have never held power for so much as an hour. To imagine that the dictatorship of the proletariat is in some way automatically dependent on the technical development and resources of a country is a prejudice of ‘economic' materialism simplified to absurdity. This point of view has nothing in common with Marxism.

In our view, the Russian revolution will create conditions in which power can pass into the hands of the workers – and in the event of the victory of the revolution it must do so – before the politicians of bourgeois liberalism get the chance to display to the full their talent for governing.

Summing up the revolution and counter-revolution of 1848-49 in the American newspaper The Tribune, Marx wrote:

‘The working class in Germany is, in its social and political development, as far behind that of England and France as the German bourgeoisie is behind the bourgeoisie of those countries. Like master, like man. The evolution of the conditions of existence for a numerous, strong, concentrated and intelligent proletarian class goes hand in hand with the development of the conditions of existence for a numerous, wealthy, concentrated and powerful middle class. The working-class movement itself never is independent, never is of an exclusively proletarian character until all the different factions of the middle class, and particularly its most progressive faction, the large manufacturers, have conquered political power, and remodeled the State according to their wants. It is then that the inevitable conflict between the employer and the employed becomes imminent, and cannot be adjourned any longer ...' [1]

This quotation is probably familiar to the reader, for it has been considerably abused by the textual Marxists in recent times. It has been brought forward as an irrefutable argument against the idea of a working class government in Russia. ‘Like master, like man.' If the capitalist bourgeoisie is not strong enough to take power, they argue, then it is still less possible to establish a workers' democracy, i.e., the political domination of the proletariat.

Marxism is above all a method of analysis – not analysis of texts, but analysis of social relations. Is it true that, in Russia, the weakness of capitalist liberalism inevitably means the weakness of the labour movement? Is it true, for Russia, that there cannot be an independent labour movement until the bourgeoisie has conquered power? It is sufficient merely to put these questions to see what a hopeless formalism lies concealed beneath the attempt to convert an historically-relative remark of Marx's into a supra-historical axiom.

During the period of the industrial boom, the development of factory industry in Russia bore an ‘American' character; but in its actual dimensions capitalist industry in Russia is an infant compared with the industry of the United States. Five million persons – 16.6 per cent of the economically occupied population – are engaged in manufacturing industry in Russia; for the USA the corresponding figures would be six million and 22.2 per cent. These figures still tell us comparatively little, but they become eloquent if we recall that the population of Russia is nearly twice that of the USA. But in order to appreciate the actual dimensions of Russian and American industry it should be observed that in 1900 the American factories and large workshops turned out goods for sale to the amount of 25 milliard roubles, while in the same period the Russian factories turned out goods to the value of less than two and a half milliard roubles. [2]

There is no doubt that the numbers, the concentration, the culture and the political importance of the industrial proletariat depend on the extent to which capitalist industry is developed. But this dependence is not direct. Between the productive forces of a country and the political strength of its classes there cut across at any given moment various social and political factors of a national and international character, and these displace and even sometimes completely alter the political expression of economic relations. In spite of the fact that the productive forces of the United States are ten times as great as those of Russia, nevertheless the political role of the Russian proletariat, its influence on the politics of its own country and the possibility of its influencing the politics of the world in the near future are incomparably greater than in the case of the proletariat of the United States.

Kautsky, in his recent book on the American proletariat, points out that there is no direct relation between the political power of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, on the one hand, and the level of capitalist development on the other. ‘Two states exist' he says, ‘diametrically contrasted one with the other. In one of them there is developed inordinately, i.e., out of proportion to the level of the development of the capitalist mode of production, one of the elements of the latter, and in the other, another of these elements. In one state – America – it is the capitalist class, while in Russia it is the proletariat. In no other country than America is there so much basis for speaking of the dictatorship of capital, while the militant proletariat has nowhere acquired such importance as in Russia. This importance must and undoubtedly will increase, because this country only recently began to take a part in the modern class struggle, and has only recently provided a certain amount of elbow room for it.' Pointing out that Germany, to a certain extent, may learn its future from Russia, Kautsky continues: ‘It is indeed most extraordinary that the Russian proletariat should be showing us our future, in so far as this is expressed not in the extent of the development of capital, but in the protest of the working class. The fact that this Russia is the most backward of the large states of the capitalist world would appear', observes Kautsky, ‘to contradict the materialist conception of history, according to which economic development is the basis of political development; but really', he goes on to say, ‘this only contradicts the materialist conception of history as it is depicted by our opponents and critics, who regard it not as a method of investigation but merely as a ready-made stereotype.' [3] We particularly recommend these lines to our Russian Marxists, who replace independent analysis of social relations by deductions from texts, selected to serve every occasion in life. Nobody compromises Marxism so much as these self-styled Marxists.

Thus, according to Kautsky, Russia stands on an economically low level of capitalist development, politically it has an insignificant capitalist bourgeoisie and a powerful revolutionary proletariat. This results in the fact that ‘struggle for the interests of all Russia has fallen to the lot of the only now-existing strong class in the country – the industrial proletariat. For this reason the industrial proletariat has tremendous political importance, and for this reason the struggle for the emancipation of Russia from the incubus of absolutism which is stifling it has become converted into a single combat between absolutism and the industrial proletariat, a single combat in which the peasants may render considerable support but cannot play a leading role.

Does not all this give us reason to conclude that the Russian ‘man' will take power sooner than his ‘master'?

There can be two forms of political optimism. We can exaggerate our strength and advantages in a revolutionary situation and undertake tasks which are not justified by the given correlation of forces. On the other hand, we may optimistically set a limit to our revolutionary tasks – beyond which, however, we shall inevitably be driven by the logic of our position.

It is possible to limit the scope of all the questions of the revolution by asserting that our revolution is bourgeois in its objective aims and therefore in its inevitable results, closing our eyes to the fact that the chief actor in this bourgeois revolution is the proletariat, which is being impelled towards power by the entire course of the revolution.

We may reassure ourselves that in the framework of a bourgeois revolution the political domination of the proletariat will only be a passing episode, forgetting that once the proletariat has taken power in its hands it will not give it up without a desperate resistance, until it is torn from its hands by armed force.

We may reassure ourselves that the social conditions of Russia are still not ripe for a socialist economy, without considering that the proletariat, on taking power, must, by the very logic of its position, inevitably be urged toward the introduction of state management of industry. The general sociological term bourgeois revolution by no means solves the politico-tactical problems, contradictions and difficulties which the mechanics of a given bourgeois revolution throw up.

Within the framework of the bourgeois revolution at the end of the eighteenth century, the objective task of which was to establish the domination of capital, the dictatorship of the sansculottes was found to be possible. This dictatorship was not simply a passing episode, it left its impress upon the entire ensuing century, and this in spite of the fact that it was very quickly shattered against the enclosing barriers of the bourgeois revolution. In the revolution at the beginning of the twentieth century, the direct objective tasks of which are also bourgeois, there emerges as a near prospect the inevitable, or at least the probable, political domination of the proletariat. The proletariat itself will see to it that this domination does not become a mere passing ‘episode', as some realist philistines hope. But we can even now ask ourselves: is it inevitable that the proletarian dictatorship should be shattered against the barriers of the bourgeois revolution, or is it possible that in the given world-historical conditions, it may discover before it the prospect of victory on breaking through these barriers? Here we are confronted by questions of tactics: should we consciously work towards a working-class government in proportion as the development of the revolution brings this stage nearer, or must we at that moment regard political power as a misfortune which the bourgeois revolution is ready to thrust upon the workers, and which it would be better to avoid?

Ought we to apply to ourselves the words of the ‘realist' politician Vollmar in connection with the Communards of 1871: ‘Instead of taking power they would have done better to go to sleep' ...?
Notes

1. Marx, Germany in 1848-50, Russ. trans., Alexeyeva edition, 1905, pp.8-9. – L.T. [i.e. Germany: Revolution and Counter-Revolution, Ch.1; Selected Works of Karl Marx, 1942 edition, Vol.II, p.46.]

2. D. Mendeleyev, Towards the Understanding of Russia, 1906, p.99. – L.T.

3. K. Kautsky, American and Russian Workers, Russian translation, St. Petersburg 1906, pp.4 and 5. – L.T.

The Proletariat in Power and the Peasantry

In the event of a decisive victory of the revolution, power will pass into the hands of that class which plays a leading role in the struggle – in other words, into the hands of the proletariat. Let us say at once that this by no means precludes revolutionary representatives of non-proletarian social groups entering the government. They can and should be in the government: a sound policy will compel the proletariat to call to power the influential leaders of the urban petty-bourgeoisie, of the intellectuals and of the peasantry. The whole problem consists in this: who will determine the content of the government's policy, who will form within it a solid majority?

It is one thing when representatives of the democratic strata of the people enter a government with a workers' majority, but it is quite another thing when representatives of the proletariat participate in a definitely bourgeois-democratic government in the capacity of more or less honoured hostages.

The policy of the liberal capitalist bourgeoisie, in all its waverings, retreats and treacheries, is quite definite. The policy of the proletariat is even more definite and finished. But the policy of the intellectuals, owing to their socially intermediate character and their political elasticity; the policy of the peasantry, in view of their social diversity, ther intermediate position and their primitiveness; the policy of the urban petty-bourgeoisie, once again owing to its lack of character, its intermediate position and its complete lack of political tradition – the policy of these three social groups is utterly indefinite, unformed, full of possibilities and therefore full of surprises.

It is sufficient to try to imagine a revolutionary democratic government without representatives of the proletariat to see immediately the senselessness of such a conception. The refusal of the social-democrats to participate in a revolutionary government would render such a government quite impossible and would thus be equivalent to a betrayal of the revolution. But the participation of the proletariat in a government is also objectively most probable, and permissible in principle, only as a dominating and leading participation. One may, of course, describe such a government as the dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry, a dictatorship of the proletariat, peasantry and intelligentsia, or even a coalition government of the working class and the petty-bourgeoisie, but the question nevertheless remains: who is to wield the hegemony in the government itself, and through it in the country? And when we speak of a workers' government, by this we reply that the hegemony should belong to the working class.

The National Convention, as an organ of the Jacobin dictatorship, was by no means composed of Jacobins alone. More than that – the Jacobins were in a minority in it; but the influence of the sansculottes outside the walls of the Convention, and the need for a determined policy in order to save the country, gave power into the hands of the Jacobins. Thus, while the Convention was formally a national representation, consisting of Jacobins, Girondists and the vast wavering Centre known as the ‘marsh', in essence it was a dictatorship of the Jacobins.

When we speak of a workers' government we have in view a government in which the working-class representatives dominate and lead. The proletariat, in order to consolidate its power, cannot but widen the base of the revolution. Many sections of the working masses, particularly in the countryside, will be drawn into the revolution and become politically organized only after the advance-guard of the revolution, the urban proletariat, stands at the helm of state. Revolutionary agitation and organization will then be conducted with the help of state resources. The legislative power itself will become a powerful instrument for revolutionizing the masses. The nature of our social-historical relations, which lays the whole burden of the bourgeois revolution upon the shoulders of the proletariat, will not only create tremendous difficulties for the workers' government but, in the first period of its existence at any rate, will also give it invaluable advantages. This will affect the relations between the proletariat and the peasantry.

In the revolutions of 1789-93 and 1848 power first of all passed from absolutism to the moderate elements of the bourgeoisie, and it was the latter class which emancipated the peasantry (how, is another matter) before revolutionary democracy received or was even preparing to receive power. The emancipated peasantry lost all interest in the political stunts of the ‘townspeople', that is, in the further progress of the revolution, and placing itself like a heavy foundation-stone at the foot of ‘order', betrayed the revolution to the Caesarist or ancien-regime-absolutist reaction.

The Russian revolution does not, and for a long time will not, permit the establishment of any kind of bourgeois-constitutional order that might solve the most elementary problems of democracy. All the ‘enlightened' efforts of reformer-bureaucrats like Witte and Stolypin are nullified by their own struggle for existence. Consequently, the fate of the most elementary revolutionary interests of the peasantry – even the peasantry as a whole, as an estate, is bound up with the fate of entire revolution, i.e., with the fate of the proletariat.

The proletariat in power will stand before the peasants as the class which has emancipated it. The domination of the proletariat will mean not only democratic equality, free self-government, the transference of the whole burden of taxation to the rich classes, the dissolution of the standing army in the armed people and the abolition of compulsory church imposts, but also recognition of all revolutionary changes (expropriations) in land relationships carried out by the peasants. The proletariat will make these changes the starting-point for further state measures in agriculture. Under such conditions the Russian peasantry in the first and most difficult period of the revolution will be interested in the maintenance of a proletarian regime (workers' democracy) at all events not less than was the French peasantry in the maintenance of the military regime of Napoleon Bonaparte, which guaranteed to the new property-owners, by the force of its bayonets, the inviolability of their holdings. And this means that the representative body of the nation, convened under the leadership of the proletariat, which has secured the support of the peasantry, will be nothing else than a democratic dress for the rule of the proletariat.

But is it not possible that the peasantry may push the proletariat aside and take its place? This is impossible. All historical experience protests against this assumption. Historical experience shows that the peasantry are absolutely incapable of taking up an independent political role. [1]

The history of capitalism is the history of the subordination of the country to the town. The industrial development of the European towns in due course rendered the further existence of feudal relations in agriculture impossible. But the countryside itself never produced a class which could undertake the revolutionary task of abolishing feudalism. The town, which subordinated agriculture to capital, produced a revolutionary force which took political hegemony over the countryside into its hands and spread revolution in state and property relations into the countryside. As further development has proceeded, the country has finally fallen into economic enslavement to capital, and the peasantry into political enslavement to the capitalist parties. These parties have revived feudalism in parliamentary politics, converting the peasantry into a domain for their electoral hunting expeditions. The modern bourgeois state, by means of taxation and militarism, throws the peasant into the clutches of usurers' capital, and by means of state priests, state schools and the corruptions of barrack life makes him a victim of usurers' politics.

The Russian bourgeoisie will surrender the entire revolutionary position to the proletariat. It will also have to surrender the revolutionary hegemony over the peasants. In such a situation, created by the transference of power to the proletariat, nothing remains for the peasantry to do but to rally to the regime of workers' democracy. It will not matter much even if the peasantry does this with a degree of consciousness not larger than that with which it usually rallies to the bourgeois regime. But while every bourgeois party commanding the votes of the peasantry hastens to use its power in order to swindle and deceive the peasants and then, if the worst comes to the worst, gives place to another capitalist party, the proletariat, relying on the peasantry, will bring all forces into play in order to raise the cultural level of the countryside and develop the political consciousness of the peasantry. From what we have said above, it will be clear how we regard the idea of a ‘proletarian and peasant dictatorship'. It is not really a matter of whether we regard it as admissible in principle, whether ‘we do or do not desire' such a form of political co-operation. We simply think that it is unrealisable – at least in a direct immediate sense.

Indeed, such a coalition presupposes either that one of the existing bourgeois parties commands influence over the peasantry or that the peasantry will have created a powerful independent party of its own, but we have attempted to show that neither the one nor the other is possible.
Notes

1. Does the fact of the rise and development first of the Peasant Union and then of the Group of Toil (Trudoviki) in the Duma run counter to these and subsequent arguments? Not in the least. What is the Peasant Union? A Union that embraces some elements of the radical democracy who are looking for masses to support them, together with the more conscious elements of the peasantry – obviously not the lowest strata of the peasantry – on the platform of a democratic revolution and agrarian reform.

As to the agrarian programme of the Peasant Union ('equality in the use of land'), which is the meaning of its existence, the following must be observed: the wider and deeper the development of the agrarian movement and the sooner it comes to the point of confiscation and distribution of land, the sooner will the process of disintegration set in the Peasant Union, in consequence of a thousand contradictions of a class, local, everyday and technical nature. Its members will exercise their share of influence in the Peasants' Committees, the organs of the agrarian revolution in the villages, but needless to say the Peasants' Committees, economic-administrative institutions, will not be able to abolish the political dependence of the country upon the town, which forms one of the fundamental features of modern society.

The radicalism and formlessness of the Group of Toil was the expression of the contradictoriness in the revolutionary aspirations of the peasantry. During the period of constitutional illusions it helplessly followed the ‘Cadets' (Constitutional Democrats). At the moment of the dissolution of the Duma it came naturally under the guidance of the Social-Democratic Group. The lack of independence on the part of the peasant representatives will show itself with particular clearness at the moment when it becomes necessary to show firm initiative, that is, at the time when power has to pass into the hands of the revolutionaries. – L.T.

The Proletarian Regime

The proletariat can only achieve power by relying upon a national upsurge and national enthusiasm. The proletariat will enter the government as the revolutionary representative of the nation, as the recognized national leader in the struggle against absolutism and feudal barbarism. In taking power, however, it will open a new epoch, an epoch of revolutionary legislation, of positive policy, and in this connection it cannot at all be sure of retaining the role of the recognized expressor of the will of the nation. The first measures of the proletariat, cleansing the Augean stables of the old regime and driving out its inmates, will meet with the active support of the whole nation, in spite of what the liberal eunuchs may say about the tenacity of certain prejudices among the masses of the people.

This political cleansing will be supplemented by a democratic reorganization of all social and state relations. The workers' government will be obliged, under the influence of direct pressures and demands, to intervene decisively in all relationships and events ...

Its first task will have to be the dismissal from the army and administration of all those who are stained with the blood of the people, and the cashiering or disbandment of the regiments which have most sullied themselves with crimes against the people. This will have to be done in the very first days of the revolution, that is, long before it is possible to introduce the system of elected and responsible officials and organize a national militia. But the matter will not end there. Workers' democracy will immediately be confronted by questions of the length of the working day, the agrarian question, and the problem of unemployment.

One thing is clear. Every passing day will deepen the policy of the proletariat in power, and more and more define its class character. Side by side with that, the revolutionary ties between the proletariat and the nation will be broken, the class disintegration of the peasantry will assume political form, and the antagonism between the component sections will grow in proportion as the policy of the workers' government defines itself, ceasing to be a general-democratic and becoming a class policy.

Though the absence of accumulated bourgeois-individualistic traditions and anti-proletarian prejudices among the peasantry and intellectuals will assist the proletariat to come into power, it is necessary on the other hand to bear in mind that this absence of prejudices is due not to political consciousness but to political barbarism, social formlessness, primitiveness and lack of character. None of these features can in any way create a reliable basis for a consistent, active proletarian policy.

The abolition of feudalism will meet with support from the entire peasantry, as the burden-bearing estate. A progressive income-tax will also be supported by the great majority of the peasantry. But any legislation carried through for the purpose of protecting the agricultural proletariat will not only not receive the active sympathy of the majority, but will even meet with the active opposition of a minority of the peasantry.

The proletariat will find itself compelled to carry the class struggle into the villages and in this manner destroy that community of interest which is undoubtedly to be found among all peasants, although within comparatively narrow limits. From the very first moment after its taking power, the proletariat will have to find support in the antagonisms between the village poor and village rich, between the agricultural proletariat and the agricultural bourgeoisie. While the heterogeneity of the peasantry creates difficulties and narrows the basis for a proletarian policy, the insufficient degree of class differentiation will create obstacles to the introduction among the peasantry of developed class struggle, upon which the urban proletariat could rely. The primitiveness of the peasantry turns its hostile face towards the proletariat.

The cooling-off of the peasantry, its political passivity, and all the more the active opposition of its upper sections, cannot but have an influence on a section of the intellectuals and the petty-bourgeoisie of the towns.

Thus, the more definite and determined the policy of the proletariat in power becomes, the narrower and more shaky does the ground beneath its feet become. All this is extremely probable and even inevitable ...

The two main features of proletarian policy which will meet opposition from the allies of the proletariat are collectivism and internationalism.

The primitiveness and petty-bourgeois character of the peasantry, its limited rural outlook, its isolation from world-political ties and allegiances, will create terrible difficulties for the consolidation of the revolutionary policy of the proletariat in power.

To imagine that it is the business of Social Democrats to enter a provisional government and lead it during the period of revolutionary-democratic reforms, fighting for them to have a most radical character, and relying for this purpose upon the organized proletariat – and then, after the democratic programme has been carried out, to leave the edifice they have constructed so as to make way for the bourgeois parties and themselves go into opposition, thus opening up a period of parliamentary politics, is to imagine the thing in a way that would compromise the very idea of a workers' government. This is not because it is inadmissible ‘in principle' – putting the question in this abstract form is devoid of meaning – but because it is absolutely unreal, it is utopianism of the worst sort – a sort of revolutionary-philistine utopianism.

For this reason:

The division of our programme into maximum and minimum programmes has a profound and tremendous principled significance during the period when power lies in the hands of the bourgeoisie. The very fact of the bourgeoisie being in power drives out of our minimum programme all demands which are incompatible with private property in the means of production. Such demands form the content of a socialist revolution and presuppose a proletarian dictatorship.

Immediately, however, that power is transferred into the hands of a revolutionary government with a socialist majority, the division of our programme into maximum and minimum loses all significance, both in principle and in immediate practice. A proletarian government under no circumstances can confine itself within such limits. Take the question of the eight-hour day. As is known, this by no means contradicts capitalist relations, and therefore it forms an item in the minimum programme of Social Democracy. But let us imagine the actual introduction of this measure during a period of revolution, in a period of intensified class passions; there is no question but that this measure would then meet the organized and determined resistance of the capitalists in the form, let us say, of lockouts and the closing down of factories.

Hundreds of thousands of workers would find themselves thrown on the streets. What should the government do? A bourgeois government, however radical it might be, would never allow affairs to reach this stage because, confronted with the closing-down of factories, it would be left powerless. It would be compelled to retreat, the eight-hour day would not be introduced and the indignant workers would be suppressed.

Under the political domination of the proletariat, the introduction of an eight-hour day should lead to altogether different consequences. For a government that desires to rely upon the proletariat, and not on capital, as liberalism does, and which does not desire to play the role of an ‘impartial' intermediary of bourgeois democracy, the closing down of factories would not of course be an excuse for increasing the working day. For a workers' government there would be only one way out: expropriation of the closed factories and the organization of production in them on a socialized basis.

Of course, one can argue in this way: we will suppose that the workers' government, true to its programme, issues a decree for an eight-hour day; if capital puts up a resistance which cannot be overcome by the resources of a democratic programme based on the preservation of private property, the Social Democrats will resign and appeal to the proletariat. Such a solution would be a solution only from the standpoint of the group constituting the membership of the government, but it would be no solution for the proletariat or for the development of the revolution. After the resignation of the Social Democrats, the situation would be exactly as it was at the time when they were compelled to take power. To flee before the organized opposition of capital would be a greater betrayal of the revolution than a refusal to take power in the first instance. It would really be far better for the working-class party not to enter the government than to go in so as to expose its own weakness and then to quit.

Let us take another example. The proletariat in power cannot but adopt the most energetic measures to solve the question of unemployment, because it is quite obvious that the representatives of the workers in the government cannot reply to the demands of unemployed workers with arguments about the bourgeois character of the revolution.

But if the government undertakes to maintain the unemployed – it is not important for us at the moment in what form – this would mean an immediate and quite substantial shift of economic power to the side of the proletariat. The capitalists, who in their oppression of the workers always relied upon the existence of a reserve army of labour, would feel themselves economically powerless while the revolutionary government, at the same time, doomed them to political impotence.

In undertaking the maintenance of the unemployed, the government thereby undertakes the maintenance of strikers. If it does not do that, it immediately and irrevocably undermines the basis of its own existence.

There is nothing left for the capitalists to do then but to resort to the lockout, that is, to close the factories. It is quite clear that the employers can stand the closing down of production much longer than the workers, and therefore there is only one reply that a workers' government can give to a general lockout: the expropriation of the factories and the introduction in at least the largest of them of State or communal production.

Similar problems arise in agriculture by the mere fact of the expropriation of the land. In no way must it be supposed that a proletarian government, on expropriating the privately-owned estates carrying on production on a large scale, would break these up and sell them for exploitation to small producers. The only path open to it in this sphere is the organization of co-operative production under communal control or organized directly by the State. But this is the path to Socialism.

All this quite clearly shows that Social Democrats cannot enter a revolutionary government, giving the workers in advance an undertaking not to give way on the minimum programme, and at the same time promising the bourgeoisie not to go beyond it. Such a bilateral undertaking is absolutely impossible to realize. The very fact of the proletariat's representatives entering the government, not as powerless hostages, but as the leading force, destroys the border-line between maximum and minimum programme; that is to say, it places collectivism on the order of the day. The point at which the proletariat will be held up in its advance in this direction depends upon the relation of forces, but in no way upon the original intentions of the proletarian party.

For this reason there can be no talk of any sort of special form of proletarian dictatorship in the bourgeois revolution, of democratic proletarian dictatorship (or dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry). The working class cannot preserve the democratic character of its dictatorship without refraining from overstepping the limits of its democratic programme. Any illusions on this point would be fatal. They would compromise Social Democracy from the very start.

The proletariat, once having taken power, will fight for it to the very end. While one of the weapons in this struggle for the maintenance and the consolidation of power will be agitation and organization, especially in the countryside, another will be a policy of collectivism. Collectivism will become not only the inevitable way forward from the position in which the party in power will find itself, but will also be a means of preserving this position with the support of the proletariat.

When the idea of uninterrupted revolution was formulated in the socialist press – an idea which connected the liquidation of absolutism and feudalism with a socialist revolution, along with growing social conflicts, uprisings of new sections of the masses, unceasing attacks by the proletariat upon the economic and political privileges of the ruling classes – our ‘progressive' press raised a unanimous howl of indignation. ‘Oh!' it cried, ‘we have put up with a lot, but we cannot allow this. Revolution,' it cried, ‘is not a road that can be “legalized”. The application of exceptional measures is only permissible under exceptional circumstances. The aim of the movement for emancipation is not to make revolution permanent but to lead it as soon as possible into the channel of law,' etc., etc.

The more radical representatives of this same democracy do not risk taking up a stand against revolution even from the point of view of already-secured constitutional ‘gains'. For them this parliamentary cretinism, preceding the rise of parliamentarism itself, does not constitute a strong weapon in the struggle against the proletarian revolution. They choose another path. They take their stand not on the basis of law but on what seems to them the basis of facts – on the basis of historical ‘possibility', on the basis of political ‘realism' and, finally ... finally, even on the basis of ‘marxism'. And why not? That pious Venetian bourgeois, Antonio, very aptly said:

‘The devil can quote Scripture to his purpose.'

These radical democrats not only regard the idea of a workers' government in Russia as fantastic, but they even deny the possibility of a socialist revolution in Europe in the historical epoch immediately ahead. ‘The pre-requisites of revolution', they say, ‘are not yet visible.' Is that true? Certainly there is no question of appointing a dateline for the socialist revolution, but it is necessary to point out its real historical prospects.

The Pre-Requisites of Socialism

Marxism converted socialism into a science, but this does not prevent some ‘Marxists' from converting Marxism into a Utopia.

Rozhkov, arguing against the programme of socialization and co-operation, presents the ‘necessary pre-requisites of the future society, firmly laid down by Marx', in the following way: ‘Are there already present,' asks Rozhkov, ‘the material objective pre-requisites, consisting of such a development of technique as would reduce the motive of personal gain and concern for cash [?], personal effort, enterprise and risk, to a minimum, and which would thereby make social production a front-rank question? Such a level of technique is most closely connected with the almost complete [!] domination of large-scale production in all [!] branches of the economy. Has such a stage been reached? Even the subjective, psychological pre-requisites are lacking, such as the growth of class-consciousness among the proletariat, developed to such a level as to achieve the spiritual unity of the overwhelming mass of the people. We know,' continues Rozhkov, ‘of producer associations such as the well-known French glassworks at Albi, and several agricultural associations, also in France, and yet the experience of France shows, as nothing else can, that even the conditions of so advanced a country are not sufficiently developed to permit the dominance of co-operation. These enterprises are of only the average size, their technical level is not higher than ordinary capitalist undertakings, they are not at the head of industrial development, do not lead it, but approach a modest average level.

‘Only when the experience of individual productive associations points to their leading role in economic life can we say that we approaching a new system, only then can we be sure that the necessary conditions for its existence have been established.' [1]

While respecting the good intentions of Comrade Rozhkov, we regretfully have to confess that rarely even in bourgeois literature have we met such confusion as he betrays with regard to what are known as the pre-requisites of socialism. It will be worthwhile dwelling to some extent on this confusion, if not for the sake of Rozhkov, at least for the sake of the question.

Rozhkov declares that we have not yet reached ‘such a stage of technical development as would reduce the motive of personal gain and concern for cash [?], personal effort, enterprise and risk, to a minimum, and which would make social production a front-rank question'.

It is rather difficult to find the meaning of this passage. Apparently Rozhkov wishes to say, in the first place, that modern technique has not yet sufficiently ousted human labour-power from industry and, secondly, that to secure this elimination would require the ‘almost' complete domination of large state enterprises in all branches of the economy, and therefore the ‘almost' complete proletarianization of the whole population of the country. These are the two prerequisites to socialism alleged to have been ‘firmly laid down by Marx'.

Let us try and imagine the setting of capitalist relations which, according to Rozhkov, socialism will encounter when it arrives. ‘The almost complete domination of large-scale enterprise in all branches of industry', under capitalism, means, as has been said, the proletarianization of all small and medium producers in agriculture and industry, that is to say, the conversion of the whole of the population into proletarians. But the complete domination of machine technique in these large undertakings would lead to the reduction of the employment of human labour-power to a minimum, and therefore the overwhelming majority of the population of the country – say, 90 per cent – would be converted into a reserve army of labour living at the expense of the State in workhouses. We said 90 per cent of the population, but there is nothing to prevent us from being logical and imagining a state of affairs in which the whole of production consists of a single automatic mechanism, belonging to a single syndicate and requiring as living labour only a single trained orang-outang. As we know, this is the brilliantly consistent theory of Professor Tugan-Baranovsky. Under such conditions ‘social production' not only occupies ‘front rank' but commands the whole field. Under these circumstances, moreover, consumption would naturally also become socialized in view of the fact that the whole of the nation, except the 10 per cent who own the trust, will be living at the public expense in workhouses. Thus, behind Rozhkov we see smiling the familiar face of Tugan-Baranovsky. Socialism can now come on the scene. The population emerges from the workhouses and expropriates the group of expropriators. No revolution or dictatorship of the proletariat is of course necessary.

The second economic sign of the ripeness of a country for socialism, according to Rozhkov, is the possibility of the domination of co-operative production within it. Even in France the co-operative glassworks at Albi is not on a higher level than any other capitalist undertaking. Socialist production becomes possible only when the co-operatives are in the forefront of industrial development, as the leading enterprises.

The entire argument from beginning to end is turned inside out. The co-operatives cannot take the lead in industrial progress, not because economic development has not gone far enough, but because it has gone too far ahead. Undoubtedly, economic development creates the basis for co-operation, but for what kind of co-operation? For capitalist co-operation, based on wage-labour – every factory shows us a picture of such capitalist co-operation. With the development of technique the importance of such co-operation grows also. But in what manner can the development of capitalism place the co-operative societies ‘in the front rank of industry'? On what does Rozhkov base his hopes that the co-operative societies can squeeze out the syndicates and trusts and take their place in the forefront of industrial development? It is evident that if this took place the co-operative societies would then simply have automatically to expropriate all capitalist undertakings, after which it would remain for them to reduce the working day sufficiently to provide work for all citizens and to regulate the amount of production in the various branches in order to avoid crises. In this manner the main features of socialism would be established. Again it is clear that no revolution and no dictatorship of the working class would be at all necessary.

The third pre-requisite is a psychological one: the need for ‘the class-consciousness of the proletariat to have reached such a stage as to unite spiritually the overwhelming majority of the people'. As ‘spiritual unity', in this instance, must evidently be regarded as meaning conscious socialist solidarity, it follows therefore that Comrade Rozhkov considers that a psychological pre-requisite of socialism is the organization of the ‘overwhelming majority of the population' within the Social-Democratic Party. Rozhkov evidently assumes therefore that capitalism, throwing the small producers into the ranks of the proletariat, and the mass of the proletarians into the ranks of the reserve army of labour, will create the possibility for Social Democracy spiritually to unite and enlighten the overwhelming majority (90 per cent?) of the people.

This is as impossible of realization in the world of capitalist barbarism as the domination of co-operatives in the realm of capitalist competition. But if this were realizable, then of course, the consciously and spiritually united ‘overwhelming majority' of the nation would crush without any difficulty the few magnates of capital and organize socialist economy without revolution or dictatorship.

But here the following question arises. Rozhkov regards Marx as his teacher. Yet Marx, having outlined the ‘essential prerequisites for socialism' in his Communist Manifesto, regarded the revolution of 1848 as the immediate prologue to the socialist revolution. Of course one does not require much penetration after 60 years to see that Marx was mistaken, because the capitalist world still exists. But how could Marx have made this error? Did he not perceive that large-scale undertakings did not yet dominate in all branches of industry; that producers' co-operatives did not yet stand at the head of the large-scale enterprises; that the overwhelming majority of the people were not yet united on the basis of the ideas set out in the Communist Manifesto? If we do not see these things even now, how is it then that Marx did not perceive that nothing of the kind existed in 1848? Apparently, Marx in 1848 was a Utopian youth in comparison with many of the present-day infallible automata of Marxism!

We thus see that although Comrade Rozhkov by no means belongs among the critics of Marx, nevertheless he completely discards the proletarian revolution as an essential pre-requisite of socialism. As Rozhkov has only too consistently expressed the views shared by a considerable number of Marxists in both trends of our party, it is necessary to dwell on the bases in principle and method of the errors he has made.

One must observe in passing that Rozhkov's argument concerning the destiny of the co-operatives is his very own. We have never and nowhere met socialists who both believed in such a simple irresistible progress of the concentration of production and proletarianization of the people and at the same time believed in the dominating role of producers' co-operative societies prior to the proletarian revolution. To unite these two pre-requisites is much more difficult in economic evolution than in one's head; although even the latter had always seemed to us impossible.

But we will deal with two other ‘pre-requisites' which constitute more typical prejudices. Undoubtedly, the concentration of production, the development of technique and the growth of consciousness among the masses are essential pre-requisites for socialism. But these processes take place simultaneously, and not only give an impetus to each other, but also retard and limit each other. Each of these processes at a higher level demands a certain development of another process at a lower level. But the complete development of each of them is incompatible with the complete development of the others.

The development of technique undoubtedly finds its ideal limit in a single automatic mechanism which takes raw materials from the womb of nature and throws them at the feet of man in the form of finished articles of consumption. If the existence of the capitalist system were not limited by class relations and the revolutionary struggle that arises from them, we should have some grounds for supposing that technique, approaching the ideal of a single automatic mechanism within the framework of the capitalist system, would thereby automatically abolish capitalism.

The concentration of production arising from the laws of competition inherently tends towards proletarianizing the whole population. Isolating this tendency, we should be right in supposing that capitalism would carry out its work to the end, if the process of proletarianization were not interrupted by a revolution; but this is inevitable, given a certain relationship of forces, long before capitalism has converted the majority of the nation into a reserve army, confined to prison-like barracks.

Further – consciousness, thanks to the experience of the everyday struggle and the conscious efforts of the socialist parties, undoubtedly grows progressively, and, isolating this process, we could in imagination follow this growth until the majority of the people were included in the trade unions and political organizations, united by a spirit of solidarity and singleness of aim. If this process could really increase quantitatively without being affected qualitatively, socialism could be realized peaceably by a unanimous, conscious ‘civil act' some time in the 21st or the 22nd century.

But the whole point lies in the fact that the processes which are historically pre-requisite for socialism do not develop in isolation, but limit each other, and, reaching a certain stage, determined by numerous circumstances – which, however, is far removed from the mathematical limit of these processes – they undergo a qualitative change, and in their complex combination bring about what we understand by the name of social revolution.

We will begin with the last-mentioned process – the growth of consciousness. This takes place, as we know, not in academies, in which it might be possible artificially to detain the proletariat for fifty, a hundred or five hundred years, but in the course of all-round life in capitalist society, on the basis of unceasing class struggle. The growth of the consciousness of the proletariat transforms this class struggle, gives it a deeper and more purposeful character, which in its turn calls out a corresponding reaction on the part of the dominant class. The struggle of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie will reach its denouement long before large-scale enterprises begin to dominate in all branches of industry.

Further, it is of course true that the growth of political consciousness depends upon the growth of the numbers of the proletariat, and proletarian dictatorship presupposes that the numbers of the proletariat will be sufficiently large to overcome the resistance of the bourgeois counter-revolution. But this does not at all mean that the ‘overwhelming majority' of the population must be proletarians and the ‘overwhelming majority' of the proletariat conscious socialists. It is clear, of course, that the conscious revolutionary army of the proletariat must be stronger than the counter-revolutionary army of capital, while the intermediate, doubtful or indifferent strata of the population must be in such a position that the regime of proletarian dictatorship will attract them to the side of the revolution and not repel them to the side of its enemies. Naturally, proletarian policy must consciously take this into consideration.

All this in its turn presupposes the hegemony of industry over agriculture and the domination of town over country.

We will now endeavour to examine the pre-requisites of socialism in diminishing order of generality and increasing order of complexity.

1. Socialism is not merely a question of equal distribution but also a question of planned production. Socialism, that is, co-operative production on a large scale, is possible only when the development of productive forces has reached the stage at which large enterprises are more productive than small ones. The more the large enterprises outweigh the smaller, i.e., the more developed technique has become, the more advantageous economically does socialized production become, and, consequently, the higher must the cultural level of the whole population be as a result of equal distribution based upon planned production.

This first objective pre-requisite of socialism has been in existence a long time – ever since the time when social division of labour led to the division of labour in manufacture. It has existed to an even greater extent since the time when manufacture was replaced by factory, machine production. Large undertakings became more and more advantageous, which also meant that the socialization of these large undertakings would have made society more and more wealthy. It is clear that the transition of all the handicraft workshops to the common ownership of all the handicraftsmen would not have made the latter one whit richer, whereas the transfer of manufactures to the common ownership of their detail-workers, or the transfer of the factories into the hands of the workers employed in them – or, it would be better to say, the transfer of all the means of large factory production into the hands of the whole population – would undoubtedly raise the people's material level; and the higher the stage reached by large-scale production, the higher would be this level.

In socialist literature the instance is often quoted of the English Member of Parliament, Bellers [2] who, in 1696, i.e., a century before the conspiracy of Babeuf, submitted to Parliament a project for establishing co-operative societies which should independently supply all their own requirements. According to this measure, these producers' co-operatives were to consist of from two to three hundred persons. We cannot here test his argument, nor is it necessary for our purpose; what is important is that collective economy, even if it was conceived only in terms of groups of 100, 200, 300 or 500 persons, was regarded as advantageous from the standpoint of production already at the end of the 17th century.

At the beginning of the 19th century Fourier drew up his schemes for producer-consumer associations, ‘phalansteries', each consisting of from 2,000 to 3,000 persons. Fourier's calculations were never distinguished by their exactness; but at all events, the development of manufacture by that time suggested to him a field for economic collectives incomparably wider than in the example quoted above. It is clear, however, that both the associations of John Bellers and the ‘phalansteries' of Fourier are much nearer in their character to the free economic communes of which the Anarchists dream, the utopianism of which consists not in their ‘impossibility' or in their being ‘against nature' – the communist communes in America proved that they were possible – but in that they have lagged 100 to 200 years behind the progress of economic development.

The development of the social division of labour, on the one hand, and machine production on the other, has led to the position that nowadays the only co-operative body which could utilize the advantages of collective production on a wide scale is the State. More than that, socialist production, for both economic and political reasons, could not be confined within the restricting limits of individual states.

Atlanticus [3], a German Socialist who did not adopt the Marxist point of view, calculated at the end of last century the economic advantages that would accrue from applying socialist economy in a unit such as Germany. Atlanticus was not at all distinguished by flights of fancy. His ideas generally moved within the circle of the economic routine of capitalism. He based his arguments on the writings of authoritative modern agronomists and engineers. This does not weaken his arguments, rather is it his strong side, because it preserves him from undue optimism. In any case, Atlanticus comes to the conclusion that, with proper organization of socialist economy, with employment of the technical resources of the mid-nineties of the 19th century, the income of the workers could be doubled or trebled, and that the working day could be halved.

One should not imagine, however, that Atlanticus was the first to show the economic advantages of socialism. The greater productivity of labour in large undertakings, on the one hand, and, on the other, the necessity for the planning of production, as proved by the economic crises, has been much more convincing evidence for the necessity of socialism than Atlanticus's socialistic book-keeping. His service consists only in that he expressed these advantages in approximate figures.

From what has been said we are justified in arriving at the conclusion that the further growth of the technical power of man will render socialism more and more advantageous; that sufficient technical pre-requisites for collective production have already existed for a hundred or two hundred years, and that at the present moment socialism is technically advantageous not only on a national but to an enormous extent also on a world scale.

The mere technical advantages of socialism were not at all sufficient for it to be realized. During the 18th and 19th centuries the advantages of large-scale production showed themselves not in a socialist but in a capitalist form. Neither the schemes of Bellers nor those of Fourier were carried out. Why not? Because there were no social forces existent at that time ready and able to carry them out.

2. We now pass from the productive-technical pre-requisites of socialism to the social-economic ones. If we had to deal here not with a society split up by class antagonism, but with a homogeneous community which consciously selects its form of economy, the calculations of Atlanticus would undoubtedly be quite sufficient for socialist construction to be begun. Atlanticus himself, being a socialist of a very vulgar type, thus, indeed, regarded his own work. Such a point of view at the present day could be applied only within the limits of the private business of a single person or of a company. One is always justified in assuming that any scheme of economic reform, such as the introduction of new machinery, new raw materials, a new form of management of labour, or new systems of remuneration, will always be accepted by the owners if only these schemes can be shown to offer a commercial advantage. But in so far as we have to do here with the economy of society, that is not sufficient. Here, opposing interests are in conflict. What is advantageous for one is disadvantageous for another. The egoism of one class acts not only against the egoism of another, but also to the disadvantage of the whole community. Therefore, in order to realize socialism it is necessary that among the antagonistic classes of capitalist society there should be a social force which is interested, by virtue of its objective position, in the realization of socialism, and which is powerful enough to be able to overcome hostile interests and resistances in order to realize it.

One of the fundamental services rendered by scientific socialism consists in that it theoretically discovered such a social force in the proletariat, and showed that this class, inevitably growing along with capitalism, can find its salvation only in socialism, that the entire position of the proletariat drives it towards socialism and that the doctrine of socialism cannot but become in the long run the ideology of the proletariat.

It is easy to understand therefore what a tremendous step backwards Atlanticus takes when he asserts that, once it is proved that, ‘by transferring the means of production into the hands of the State, not only can the general well being be secured, but the working-day also reduced, then it is a matter of indifference whether the theory of the concentration of capital and the disappearance of the intermediate classes of society is confirmed or not'.

According to Atlanticus, immediately the advantages of socialism have been proved, ‘it is useless resting one's hopes on the fetish of economic development, one should make extensive investigations and start [!] a comprehensive and thorough preparation for the transition from private to state or “social” production'. [4]

In objecting to the purely oppositional tactics of the Social Democrats and suggesting an immediate ‘start' in preparing the transition to socialism, Atlanticus forgets that the Social Democrats still lack the power needed for this, and that Wilhelm II, Bülow and the majority in the German Reichstag, although they have power in their hands, have not the slightest intention of introducing socialism. The socialist schemes of Atlanticus are no more convincing to the Hohenzollerns than the schemes of Fourier were to the restored Bourbons, notwithstanding the fact that the latter based his political utopianism on passionate fantasies in the field of economic theory, whereas Atlanticus, in his not less utopian politics, based himself on convincing, philistinely-sober book-keeping.

What level must social differentiation have attained in order that the second pre-requisite for socialism may be realized? In other words, what must be the relative numerical weight of the proletariat? Must it make up a half, two-thirds or nine-tenths of the population? It would be an absolutely hopeless undertaking to try to define the bare arithmetical limits of this second prerequisite for socialism. In the first place, in such a schematic effort, we should have to decide the question of who is to be included in the category ‘proletariat'. Should we include the large class of semi-proletarian semi-peasants? Should we include the reserve masses of the urban proletariat – who on the one hand merge into the parasitical proletariat of beggars and thieves, and on the other fill the city streets as small traders playing a parasitical role in relation to the economic system as a whole? This question is not at all a simple one.

The importance of the proletariat depends entirely on the role it plays in large-scale production. The bourgeoisie relies, in its struggle for political domination, upon its economic power. Before it manages to secure political power, it concentrates the country's means of production in its own hands. This is what determines its specific weight in society. The proletariat, however, in spite of all co-operative phantasmagoria, will be deprived of the means of production right up to the actual socialist revolution. Its social power comes from the fact that the means of production which are in the hands of the bourgeoisie can be set in motion only by the proletariat. From the point of view of the bourgeoisie, the proletariat is also one of the means of production, constituting, in conjunction with the others, a single unified mechanism. The proletariat, however, is the only non-automatic part of this mechanism, and in spite of all efforts it cannot be reduced to the condition of an automaton. This position gives the proletariat the power to hold up at will, partially or wholly, the proper functioning of the economy of society, through partial or general strikes. From this it is clear that the importance of a proletariat – given identical numbers – increases in proportion to the amount of productive forces which it sets in motion. That is to say, a proletarian in a large factory is, all other things being equal, a greater social magnitude than a handicraft worker, and an urban worker a greater magnitude than a country worker. In other words, the political role of the proletariat is the more important in proportion as large-scale production dominates small production, industry dominates agriculture and the town dominates the country. If we take the history of Germany or of England in the period when the proletariat of these countries formed the same proportion of the nation as the proletariat now forms in Russia, we shall see that they not only did not play, but by their objective importance could not play, such a role as the Russian proletariat plays today.

The same thing, as we have seen, applies to the role of the towns. When, in Germany, the population of the towns was only 15 per cent of the whole population of the country, as it is in Russia today, there could be no thought of the German towns playing that role in the economic and political life of the country which the Russian towns play today. The concentration of large industrial and commercial institutions in the towns, and the linking of the towns and the provinces by means of a system of railways, has given our towns an importance far exceeding the mere number of their inhabitants; the growth of their importance has greatly exceeded the growth of their population, while the growth of the population of the towns in its turn has exceeded the natural increase of the population of the country as a whole ... In Italy in 1848 the number of handicraftsmen – not only proletarians but also independent masters – amounted to about 15 per cent of the population, i.e., not less than the proportion of handicraftsmen and proletarians in Russia at the present day. But the role played by them was incomparably less than that played by the modern Russian industrial proletariat.

From what has been said it should be clear that the attempt to define in advance what proportion of the whole population must be proletarian at the moment of the conquest of political power is a fruitless task. Instead of that, we will offer a few rough figures showing the relative numerical strength of the proletariat in the advanced countries at the present time. The occupied population of Germany in 1895 was 20,500,000 (not including the army, state officials and persons without a definite occupation). Out of this number there were 12,500,000 proletarians (including wage-workers in agriculture, industry, commerce and also domestic service); the number of agricultural and workers being 10,750,000. Many of the remaining 8,000,000 are really also proletarians, such as workers in domestic industries, working members of the family, etc. The number of wage-workers in agriculture taken separately was 5,750,000. The agricultural population composed 36 per cent of the entire population of the country. These figures, we repeat, refer to 1895. The eleven years that have passed since then have unquestionably produced a tremendous change – in the direction of an increase in the proportion of the urban to the agricultural population (in 1882 the agricultural population was 42 per cent of the whole), an increase in the proportion of the industrial proletariat to the agricultural proletariat, and, finally, an increase in the amount of productive capital per industrial worker as compared with 1895. But even the 1895 figures show that the German proletariat already long ago constituted the dominant productive force in the country.

Belgium, with its 7,000,000 population, is a purely industrial country. Out of every hundred persons engaged in some occupation, 41 are in industry in the strict sense of the word and only 21 are employed in agriculture. Out of the 3,000,000-odd gainfully employed, nearly 1,800,000, i.e., 60 per cent, are proletarians. This figure would become much more expressive if we added to the sharply differentiated proletariat the social elements related to it – the so-called ‘independent' producers who are independent only in form but are actually enslaved to capital, the lower officials, the soldiers, etc.

But first place as regards industrialization of the economy and proletarianization of the population must undoubtedly be accorded to Britain. In 1901 the number of persons employed in agriculture, forestry and fisheries was 2,300,000, while the number in industry, commerce and transport was 12,500,000. We see, therefore, that in the chief European countries the population of the towns predominates numerically over the population of the countryside. But the great predominance of the urban population lies not only in the mass of productive forces that it constitutes, but also in its qualitative personal composition. The town attracts the most energetic, able and intelligent elements of the countryside. To prove this statistically is difficult, although the comparative age composition of the population of town and country provides indirect evidence of it. The latter fact has a significance of its own. In Germany in 1896 there were calculated to be 8,000,000 persons employed in agriculture and 8,000,000 in industry. But if we divide the population according to age-groups, we see that agriculture has 1,000,000 able-bodied persons between the ages of 14 and 40—less than in industry. This shows that it is ‘the old and the young' who pre-eminently remain in the country.

All this leads us to the conclusion that economic evolution – the growth of industry, the growth of large enterprises, the growth of the towns, and the growth of the proletariat in general and the industrial proletariat in particular – has already prepared the arena not only for the struggle of the proletariat for political power but for the conquest of this power.

3. Now we come to the third pre-requisite of socialism, the dictatorship of the proletariat. Politics is the plane upon which the objective pre-requisites of socialism are intersected by the subjective ones. Under certain definite social-economic conditions, a class consciously sets itself a certain aim – the conquest of political power; it unites its forces, weighs up the strength of the enemy and estimates the situation. Even in this third sphere, however, the proletariat is not absolutely free. Besides the subjective factors – consciousness, preparedness and initiative, the development of which also have their own logic – the proletariat in carrying out its policy comes up against a number of objective factors such as the policy of the ruling classes and the existing State institutions (such as the army, the class schools, the State church), international relations, etc.

We will deal first of all with the subjective conditions: the preparedness of the proletariat for a socialist revolution. It is, of course, not sufficient that the standard of technique has rendered socialist economy advantageous from the point of view of the productivity of social labour. It is not sufficient, either, that the social differentiation based on this technique has created a proletariat which is the main class by virtue of its numbers and its economic role, and which is objectively interested in socialism. It is further necessary that this class should be conscious of its objective interests; it is necessary that it should understand that there is no way out for it except through socialism; it is necessary that it should combine in an army sufficiently powerful to conquer political power in open battle.

It would be stupid at the present time to deny the necessity for the proletariat to be prepared in this manner. Only old-fashioned Blanquists can hope for salvation from the initiative of conspiratorial organizations which have taken shape independently of the masses; or their antipodes, the anarchists, might hope for a spontaneous, elemental outburst of the masses, the end of which no one can tell. Social-Democrats speak of the conquest of power as the conscious action of a revolutionary class.

But many socialist ideologues (ideologues in the bad sense of the word – those who stand everything on its head) speak of preparing the proletariat for socialism in the sense of its being morally regenerated. The proletariat, and even ‘humanity' in general, must first of all cast out its old egoistical nature, and altruism must become predominant in social life, etc. As we are as yet far from such a state of affairs, and ‘human nature' changes very slowly, socialism is put off for several centuries. Such a point of view probably seems very realistic and evolutionary, and so forth, but as a matter of fact it is really nothing but shallow moralizing.

It is assumed that a socialist psychology must be developed before the coming of socialism, in other words that it is possible for the masses to acquire a socialist psychology under capitalism. One must not confuse here the conscious striving towards socialism with socialist psychology. The latter presupposes the absence of egotistical motives in economic life; whereas the striving towards socialism and the struggle for it arise from the class psychology of the proletariat. However many points of contact there may be between the class psychology of the proletariat and classless socialist psychology, nevertheless a deep chasm divides them.

The joint struggle against exploitation engenders splendid shoots of idealism, comradely solidarity and self-sacrifice, but at the same time the individual struggle for existence, the ever-yawning abyss of poverty, the differentiation in the ranks of the workers themselves, the pressure of the ignorant masses from below, and the corrupting influence of the bourgeois parties do not permit these splendid shoots to develop fully. For all that, in spite of his remaining philistinely egoistic, and without his exceeding in ‘human' worth the average representative of the bourgeois classes, the average worker knows from experience that his simplest requirements and natural desires can be satisfied only on the ruins of the capitalist system.

The idealists picture the distant future generation which shall have become worthy of socialism exactly as Christians picture the members of the first Christian communes.

Whatever the psychology of the first proselytes of Christianity may have been – we know from the Acts of the Apostles of cases of embezzlement of communal property – in any case, as it became more widespread, Christianity not only failed to regenerate the souls of all the people, but itself degenerated, became materialistic and bureaucratic; from the practice of fraternal teaching one of another it changed into papalism, from wandering beggary into monastic parasitism; in short, not only did Christianity fail to subject to itself the social conditions of the milieu in which it spread, but it was itself subjected by them. This did not result from the lack of ability or the greed of the fathers and teachers of Christianity, but as a consequence of the inexorable laws of the dependence of human psychology upon the conditions of social life and labour, and the fathers and teachers of Christianity showed this dependence in their own persons.

If socialism aimed at creating a new human nature within the limits of the old society it would be nothing more than a new edition of the moralistic utopias. Socialism does not aim at creating a socialist psychology as a pre-requisite to socialism but at creating socialist conditions of life as a pre-requisite to socialist psychology.
Notes

1. N. Rozhkov, On the Agrarian Question, pp.21 and 22. – L.T.

2. John Bellers was not an MP, but a Quaker landowner, who published his plan in the form of an address to parliament.

3. G. Jaegkh

4. Atlanticus, The State of the Future, published by Dyelo, St. Petersburg 1906, pp.22 and 23. – L.T.

A Workers' Government in Russia and Socialism

We have shown above that the objective pre-requisites for a socialist revolution have already been created by the economic development of the advanced capitalist countries. But what can we say in this connection with regard to Russia?

Can we expect that the transference of power into the hands of the Russian proletariat will be the beginning of the transformation of our national economy into a socialist one? A year ago we replied to this question in an article which was subjected to a severe crossfire of criticism by the organs of both factions of our party. In this article we said the following:

‘“The Paris workers,” Marx tells us, “did not demand miracles from their Commune.” We, too, must not expect immediate miracles from proletarian dictatorship today. Political power is not omnipotence. It would be absurd to suppose that it is only necessary for the proletariat to take power and then by passing a few decrees to substitute socialism for capitalism. An economic system is not the product of the actions of the government. All that the proletariat can do is to apply its political power with all possible energy in order to ease and shorten the path of economic evolution towards collectivism.

‘The proletariat will begin with those reforms which figure in what is known as the minimum programme; and directly from these the very logic of its position will compel it to pass over to collectivist measures.

‘The introduction of the eight-hour day and the steeply progressive income-tax will be comparatively easy, although even here the centre of gravity will lie not in the passing of the “act” but in organizing the practical carrying out of the measures. But the chief difficulty will be – and herein lies the transition to collectivism! – in the state organization of production in those factories which have been closed by their owners in reply to the passing of these acts. To pass a law for the abolition of the right of inheritance and to put such a law into effect will be a comparatively easy task. Legacies in the form of money capital also will not embarrass the proletariat or burden its economy. But to act as the inheritor of land and industrial capital means that the workers' state must be prepared to undertake the organizing of social production.

‘The same thing, but to a wider degree, must be said of expropriation – with or without compensation. Expropriation with compensation would be politically advantageous but financially difficult, whereas expropriation without compensation would be financially advantageous but politically difficult. But the greatest difficulties of all will be met within the organization of production. We repeat, a government of the proletariat is not a government that can perform miracles.

‘The socialization of production will commence with those branches of industry which present the least difficulties. In the first period, socialized production will be like a number of eases, connected with private undertakings by the laws of commodity circulation. The wider the field of social production becomes extended, the more obvious will become its advantages, the firmer will the new political regime feel, and the bolder will the further economic measures of the proletariat become. In these measures it can and will rely not merely upon the national productive forces, but also upon the technique of the whole world, just as in its revolutionary policy it will rely on the experience not only of the class relations within the country but also on the whole historical experience of the international proletariat.'

The political domination of the proletariat is incompatible with its economic enslavement. No matter under what political flag the proletariat has come to power, it is obliged to take the path of socialist policy. It would be the greatest utopianism to think that the proletariat, having been raised to political domination by the internal mechanism of a bourgeois revolution, can, even if it so desires, limit its mission to the creation of republican-democratic conditions for the social domination of the bourgeoisie. The political domination of the proletariat, even if it is only temporary, will weaken to an extreme degree the resistance of capital, which always stands in need of the support of the state, and will give the economic struggle of the proletariat tremendous scope. The workers cannot but demand maintenance for strikers from the revolutionary government, and a government relying upon the workers cannot refuse this demand. But this means paralyzing the effect of the reserve army of labour and making the workers dominant not only in the political but also in the economic field, and converting private property in the means of production into a fiction. These inevitable social-economic consequences of proletarian dictatorship will reveal themselves very quickly, long before the democratization of the political system has been completed. The barrier between the ‘minimum' and the ‘maximum' programme disappears immediately the proletariat comes to power.

The first thing the proletarian regime must deal with on coming into power is the solution of the agrarian question, with which the fate of vast masses of the population of Russia is bound up. In the solution of this question, as in all others, the proletariat will be guided by the fundamental aim of its economic policy, i.e., to command as large as possible a field in which to carry out the organization of socialist economy. The form and tempo of the execution of this agrarian policy, however, must be determined by the material resources at the disposal of the proletariat, as well as by care to act so as not to throw possible aIlies into the ranks of the counter-revolutionaries.

The agrarian question, i.e., the question of the fate of agriculture in its social relations, is not, of course, exhausted by the land question, i.e., the question of forms of landownership. There is no doubt, however, that the solution of the land question, even if it does not predetermine agrarian evolution, will at least predetermine the agrarian policy of the proletariat: in other words, what the proletarian regime does with the land must be closely connected with its general attitude to the course and the requirements of agricultural development. For that reason the land question occupies first place.

One solution of the land question, to which the Socialist-Revolutionaries have given a far from irreproachable popularity, is the socialization of all land; a term, which, relieved of its European make-up, means nothing else than the ‘equalization of the use of land' (or ‘black redistribution'). The programme of the equal distribution of the land thus presupposes the expropriation of all land, not only privately-owned land in general, or privately-owned peasant land, but even communal land. If we bear in mind that this expropriation would have to be one of the first acts of the new regime, while commodity-capitalist relations were still completely dominant, then we shall see that the first ‘victims' of this expropriation would be (or rather, would feel themselves to be) the peasantry. If we bear in mind that the peasant, during several decades, has paid the redemption money which should have converted the allotted land into his own private property; if we bear in mind that some of the more well-to-do of the peasants have acquired – undoubtedly by making considerable sacrifices, borne by a still-existing generation – large tracts of land as private property, then it will be easily imagined what a tremendous resistance would be aroused by the attempt to convert communal and small-scale privately-owned lands into state property. If it acted in such a fashion the new regime would begin by rousing a tremendous opposition against itself among the peasantry.

For what purpose should communal and small-scale privately-owned land be converted into state property? In order, in one way or another, to make it available for ‘equal' economic exploitation by all landowners, including the present landless peasants and agricultural labourers. Thus, the new regime would gain nothing economically by the expropriation of small holdings and communal land, since, after the redistribution, the state or public lands would be cultivated as private holdings. Politically, the new regime would make a very big blunder, as it would at once set the mass of the peasantry against the town proletariat as the leader of the revolutionary policy.

Further, equal distribution of the land presupposes that the employment of hired labour will be prohibited by law. The abolition of wage labour can and must be a consequence of economic reform, but it cannot be predetermined by juridical prohibition. It is not sufficient to forbid the capitalist landlord to employ wage-labour, it is necessary first of all to secure for the landless labourer the possibility of existence – and a rational existence from the social-economic point of view. Under the programme of equalization of the use of land, forbidding the employment of wage labour will mean, on the one hand, compelling the landless labourers to settle on tiny scraps of land and, on the other, obliging the government to provide them with the necessary stock and implements for their socially-irrational production.

It is of course understood that the intervention of the proletariat in the organization of agriculture will begin not by binding scattered labourers to scattered patches of land, but with the exploitation of large estates by the State or the communes. Only when the socialization of production has been placed well on its feet can the process of socialization be advanced further, towards the prohibition of hired labour. This will render small capitalist farming impossible, but will still leave room for subsistence or semi-subsistence holdings, the forcible expropriation of which in no way enters into the plans of the socialist proletariat.

In any case, we cannot undertake to carry out a programme of equal distribution which, on the one hand, presupposes an aimless, purely formal expropriation of small holdings, and on the other, demands the complete break-up of large estates into small pieces. This policy, being directly wasteful from the economic standpoint, could only have a reactionary-utopian ulterior motive, and above all would politically weaken the revolutionary party.

But how far can the socialist policy of the working class be applied in the economic conditions of Russia? We can say one thing with certainty – that it will come up against political obstacles much sooner than it will stumble over the technical backwardness of the country. Without the direct State support of the European proletariat the working class of Russia cannot remain in power and convert its temporary domination into a lasting socialistic dictatorship. Of this there cannot for one moment be any doubt. But on the other hand there cannot be any doubt that a socialist revolution in the West will enable us directly to convert the temporary domination of the working class into a socialist dictatorship.

In 1904, Kautsky, discussing the prospects of social development and calculating the possibility of an early revolution in Russia, wrote: ‘Revolution in Russia could not immediately result in a socialist regime. The economic conditions of the country are not nearly mature for this purpose.' But the Russian revolution would certainly give a strong impetus to the proletarian movement in the rest of Europe, and in consequence of the struggle that would flare up, the proletariat might come to power in Germany. ‘Such an outcome,' continued Kautsky, ‘must have an influence on the whole of Europe. It must lead to the political domination of the proletariat in Western Europe and create for the Eastern European proletariat the possibility of contracting the stages of their development and, copying the example of the Germans, artificially setting up socialist institutions. Society as a whole cannot artificially skip any stages of its development, but it is possible for constituent parts of society to hasten their retarded development by imitating the more advanced countries and, thanks to this, even to take their stand in the forefront of development, because they are not burdened with the ballast of tradition which the older countries have to drag along ... This may happen,' says Kautsky, ‘but, as we have already said, here we leave the field of inevitability and enter that of possibility, and so things may happen otherwise.'

These lines were written by this German Social-Democratic theoretician at a time when he was considering the question whether a revolution would break out first in Russia or in the West. Later on, the Russian proletariat revealed a colossal strength, unexpected by the Russian Social-Democrats even in their most optimistic moods. The course of the Russian revolution was decided, so far as its fundamental features were concerned. What two or three years ago was or seemed possible, approached to the probable, and everything points to the fact that it is on the brink of becoming inevitable.

Leon Trotsky, Results and Prospects, 1906

STALIN RUINS THE CHINESE REVOLUTION

Robert Paris — 2024-09-20T14:12:58Z

C.L.LR. James
STALIN RUINS THE CHINESE REVOLUTION

EVEN WHILE THE STALINISTS, BY FALSIFICATION AND PHYSICAL repression, were destroying the propagandists of international Socialism, the world revolution which had seemed so remote in October, 1924, stirred itself, and even while the new theory was being made law presented the International with one of its greatest opportunities. We have to pass over how the Stalinists forced the Communist Party of Poland to support Pilsudski in the coup d'etat which put him in power. Purcell and Hicks, Pilsudski and Chiang Kai-Shek were Stalin's allies in this period, and the greatest of these was Chiang Kai-Shek.

CHINA AND IMPERIALISM

China remained comparatively untouched by European civilisation until less than a century ago, but even in those early days Britain was already too small for British Capitalism, and between 1839 and 1860 the British bombarded Chinese ports and massacred the Chinese people to ensure the continuance of the opium traffic, one of the main sources of revenue to British India. Besides the profits of this lucrative trade they extorted millions of pounds as indemnities, seized Hong-Kong and territory on the mainland, and opened Chinese ports to British trade by force. In 1842 the Treaty of Nanking limited the Chinese tariff to 5 per cent, ad valorem, to prevent Chinese industry developing behind a high tariff wall. This they maintained by brute force until 1925 when, under the menace of the revolution, the first small breaches were promised. In the war of 1857 the British Government, again at the point of the bayonet, added to the usual indemnity, seizure of territory, etc., a British Inspector General of Customs. The steady drain of silver from China for the purchase of opium, the ruin of Chinese handicraft industry, the breakdown of the Manchu government under the blows of the British navy, the corruption of the Chinese official class by the opium smuggling, undermined the foundations of the once great but now outpaced civilisation of China.

In the middle of the century a serious rebellion broke out in the South, held power in the Southern provinces for eleven years, and then failed. The British at Hong-Kong sided with the rebels, and the other powers followed their lead. But as the movement disintegrated the foreign powers, chiefly Britain, deserted it and (after first defeating the Manchu Dynasty and bringing it under its financial control) gave assistance against the rebels. By 1870 there were other rivals to Britain in the field. Russia and France stole large territories, the British seized Burma. China was still a market, and between 1851 and 1855 the excess of imports over exports from China was over £175,000,000. But the late eighties were the crisis years for European Capitalism, when for the export of goods was gradually substituted the export of capital. Africa was for the time being divided, but Africa was not enough. The Chinese people had now to give concessions and accept loans in order to buy iron and steel from Europe. They had no choice in the matter. The British Government on occasion offered them the choice of British loans or British shells.

In 1894, the scramble entered its most dangerous but inevitable phase. Japanese capitalism tried to annex a portion of China, but the annexation clashed with British and other European interests. Russia and France intervened and checked her “in defence of their own interests.” Japan was too weak to assert her rights (it is a different story today). Yet she got a treaty port and £34½ millions indemnity. To pay this, British and other European banks lent China £48 millions. God spoke to the American President, [1] and in 1898 America seized the Philippine Islands and entered the race. This organised banditry threw an ever-increasing load on the millions of peasants out of whose produce came the taxes to pay these loans. As far back as 1856 Karl Marx, basing himself always on the economic unity of modern Capitalism, had seen that the devastating influences of this unceasing plunder of China would end in revolution, destroy a great market for European Capitalism, and thus precipitate the revolution of the European proletariat. In its essential outlines the analysis is today as sound as when it was made. But the rottenness of the Manchu dynasty was propped up by the military and financial support given it by the European governments, and the Chinese native bourgeoisie, mainly commercial, could not provide the forces for the liberation of China. As in Russia, it was the entry of capital, and the consequent creation of a native proletariat organised and disciplined by large-scale production, that was to provide a means for the destruction of foreign capitalist domination in China.

It was this process which Lenin saw so clearly in 1908, [2] the inevitable intensification of the export of capital, and the consequent growth of the international revolution. He based on it his calculations for world revolution, described in his book, Imperialism. It is the unshakable foundation of the Permanent Revolution. Small though the Chinese or Indian proletariat might be, as in Russia it would have as allies the hundreds of millions of peasants, sucked dry enough before by Oriental feudalism, but now driven to ruin by the burden which capitalist exploitation placed upon them.

CHINA STIRS

The growing Chinese bourgeoisie, now increased by the export of European capital, found itself hampered by the reactionary Manchu Government.

The first spontaneous uprising of the Chinese masses had been easily canalised into the anti-foreign Boxer rebellion at the end of the nineteenth century. But after that failure the Chinese bourgeoisie saw its main enemy in the Manchu dynasty. The Chinese bourgeoisie planned to build a railway with Chinese capital, Chinese material and Chinese labour. European capital stepped between and lent the money to the Chinese Government, and a year later, in 1911, the revolution broke out. Sun Yat-Sen, dreaming of a republic and a regenerated China, was made President. But Yuan Shi-Kai from the North, hitherto a supporter of the Manchus, but with large forces at his disposal, ousted Sun from the position of President. The Chinese Liberal bourgeois who were supporting Sun were afraid he might go too far, and thus, even before 1914, had shown their counter-revolutionary nature. Sun Yat-Sen formed the Kuomintang or People's Party, but once again foreign capital came to the assistance of reaction and made a large loan to Yuan Shi-Kai, who crushed the revolution first in 1913, again in 1915, and died just as he was about to restore the monarchy. Meanwhile industrialisation of China under both European and native capital steadily increased, with the corresponding growth of native bourgeoisie and proletariat and the increasing misery of the peasantry.

The war accelerated all the processes at work in China. Japanese Capitalism seized the opportunity to enforce exorbitant demands on China. Sun Yat-Sen formed a Revolutionary Government in South China, traditionally the revolutionary section of China in revolt. Despite some maneuvering, his main enemy was now foreign capital which had established itself firmly in large concessions, Shanghai the chief, whence it controlled the economic life of the country and drained its blood away, supported reaction and conducted itself to all Chinese, rich and poor, with studied insolence. Yet the insulted Chinese bourgeois was under the domination of foreign capital, and Sun, though no Communist, by 1923 had realised that Chinese reaction, reinforced by foreign Capitalism, could not succeed without the assistance of workers and peasants. By 1923 China was in political chaos. Each huge province, from ancient times economically autonomous, was under the control of a Tchun or feudal military leader, who concentrated into his hands both civil and military power, taxed the peasants for the upkeep of his private armies, and engaged in ceaseless warfare with other Tchuns. The ablest and most powerful of these exercised some sort of overlordship of subsidiary groups and enjoyed the support of the Capitalist countries whose interests predominated in the particular regions he controlled. Thus in Manchuria Japan supported Chang Tso-Lin, while Britain supported Wu Pei-Fu, chief marauder over many provinces in Northern China, and Sung Chan-Fang in Central China. Sun Yat-Sen's Government in South China, seeking to call a constituent assembly for all China, was constantly attacked by militarists supported by British and Japanese Capitalism. He appealed to America for assistance, but America was interested in the Chinese market, not in the aspirations of the Chinese people, and Sun turned at last to the Soviet Union. Russia stood high in Chinese favour for Lenin had given back all that Tsarist Russia had stolen. In 1923 Sun met Joffe, the Russian representative in Shanghai. The Soviet Union promised him assistance in the struggle to free China from imperialism, and its tool and ally, Chinese militarism. Sun Yat-Sen reorganised his party. He declared that the sole aim of the old members was to get rich and obtain posts as high officials, and that the workers and peasants were the only real forces of revolution. But he did not, in the Bolshevik manner, organise a party based on a single class; whence the ultimate ruin of all he hoped for. His reorganised Kuomintang was still a hotch-potch, a few big capitalists, the nationalist bourgeoisie, the petty-bourgeoisie, and workers and peasants. His programme promised the nine-hour day to one, high tariffs to another, reduction of rents to a third, land from the state for landless peasants and tenant-holders, the right of self-determination for the various nationalities, democracy, all lumped together under the one term – Socialism. A determined revolutionary and undoubtedly a great leader, even at the very end of his life, he was only able to leave to his party a programme that Ramsay MacDonald could have drawn up for him without any difficulty in half-an-hour.

LENIN AND CHINA

But Lenin, too, in 1919 had been devoting himself to the problem of China and the colonial countries of the East, and in 1920 he presented theses on the Eastern Revolution to the Second Congress of the Third International. Lenin saw the Chinese revolution as part of the international proletarian revolution. Without the continued exploitation of the colonial people Capitalism in Europe would collapse. His practical proposals were, as always, based on the independent proletarian movement, intransigence in programme and organisation, flexibility in the formation of the United Front.

He knew that the workers and peasants alone could liberate China. But he knew that the chief danger to their activity was exactly such a Popular Front type of Government as the Kuomintang, which would end inevitably by betraying. He therefore called for “determined war” against the attempt of all those quasi-Communist revolutionists to cloak the liberation movement in the backward countries with a Communist garb. “The exclusive purpose” of the Communist International in all backward countries was to educate the Communist movements in those countries, however small, to “the consciousness of their specific tasks, i.e. to the tasks of the struggle against the bourgeois democratic tendencies within their respective nationalities.” It was by fighting against their own bourgeoisie that the workers and peasants would drive out the imperialists. The Communist international would establish temporary relations and even unions with the revolutionary movements in these countries. But it must never amalgamate with them, “always preserving the independent character of the proletarian movement even though it be still in its embryonic state.”

In China the peasant question was far more acute than it had been in Russia before 1917. Consequent on the whole Russian experience, therefore, the most inexperienced Bolshevik could formulate the second step after the organisation of the proletarian party. “Above all, we must strive as far as possible ... to give the peasant movement a revolutionary character to organise the peasants and all the exploited classes into the Soviets.” Lenin wrote this in 1920. In three years the Chinese proletariat had passed even more rapidly than the Russian proletariat before 1905 to the stage where it was mature for revolution. We have to trace this process in some detail, for early in 1923 it was not only already clear that the Chinese Revolution was on its way, but obvious also that the theory of the permanent Revolution and Lenin's organisational principles could carry it to success.

THE CHINESE PROLETARIAT MATURES

The post-war crisis, the resumption of industry in the West, hit Chinese industry severely. There had been small strikes in 1912, and the beginning of a Labour and Socialist movement before the war; an attempt had been made to form a Trade Union in Hong-Kong in 1915. But the Chinese workers who had served in the war brought back with them experience of Labour organisation. In September 1919 the Chinese Returned Labourers' Association was organised in Shanghai to fight for better wages, the right to hold meetings, the right to make public speeches for promoting the welfare of the workers. The more backward the country, the closer the relation between economics and politics.

After the war the Japanese attempted to hold Shantung and in May 1919 a score of students attacked the residences of pro-Japanese ministers in Peking and were arrested. When the news reached Shanghai, Labour leaders declared a strike which spread rapidly even to the public utilities. In a few days the Peking Government was compelled to remove the offending ministers and release the agitators. In 1920 the Overseas Labour Union appeared in Canton. Hundreds of pre-war publications dealing with Syndicalism, Socialism, Anarchism and all phases of the Labour movement were being published. On May 1, 1920, in Peking, Canton and Shanghai, Chinese workers celebrated the workers' anniversary. On January 12, 1922, the Chinese Seamen's Union of Hong-Kong presented its third petition for an increase in wages, and demanded an answer within twenty-four hours. 1,500 men struck the next day. On February 1st the British Governor of Hong-Kong declared the Chinese Seamen's Union an unlawful assembly. The reply was a sympathetic strike of 50,000, a symbolical general strike, representing every trade in the island. The strike lasted for nearly three months, when the seamen won a wage increase of twenty to thirty per cent. The young Communist Party of China organised in Canton the first Chinese Congress of Trades Unions with 170 delegates. Mediaeval Chinese Tchuns and postwar European Capitalism recognised a common enemy. In the autumn of 1922 the British police fired on Chinese workers and killed several of them. In February, 1923, Wu Pei-Fu, the British Tchun, banned a railwaymen's conference. On the 6th a conference took place between the foreign consuls, Wu Pei-Fu's military representatives, and the directors of the Peking-Hankow railway. The next day troops in big railway stations opened fire on the crowds of railwaymen. In Hankow alone sixty were killed. The result was a railway strike of 20,000 men. The workers were ready to resist, but parliamentarians in Peking pressed for an investigation, placatory resolutions were passed, the edge of the workers' attack was blunted, and the strike was called off. At once the repression began; arrests, executions, the closing down of workers' papers, the driving of the Trade Union movement into illegality. Like the Russian workers, the Chinese workers were learning the close connection between economics and politics in a country with a backward or disorganised economy.

It was at this time, in the spring of 1923, that Lenin, writing his last article, spoke with supreme confidence of the coming revolution in the East. China he knew would unloose India. For in addition to the insoluble contradictions of their internal economy, the Russian Revolution had given all these millions a concrete example, more potent than a hundred years of propaganda. But after that spring Lenin never worked again, and at once, in the autumn of 1913 Stalin, Zinoviev and Kamenev in Moscow again revealed their lack of principle and their ingrained opportunism by sending the Chinese Communist Party into the Kuomintang – the first and most criminal error. Trotsky, as so often in those days fighting alone for Lenin's ideas, voted against. Had Lenin been sitting as chairman such an entry could never have taken place. It is in this way that men make history. In that autumn Borodin and other advisers went to Canton and opened a military school at Whampoa to train and organise the Kuomintang army. For the average bourgeois observer such a collaboration was well worth to Stalin even the temporary subordination of the Communist movement. It is here that the wide gulf between Menshevism and Bolshevism opens at once. Always when faced with such a choice Lenin chose the proletarian way. He did under certain circumstances advocate the temporary subordination of a revolutionary organisation, not large enough to be a party, to a centrist organisation; to a Social Democratic, or worse still, a bourgeois organisation, never. The sketch we have given of the Chinese proletariat between 1920 and 1923 shows that to the discerning eye the movement was mature. Stalin, an organic Menshevik and profoundly ignorant of international affairs as well as of Marxism, instinctively chose the other way, and Zinoviev and Kamenev followed. The test lies not in argument but in history.

In January, 1924, the reconstituted Kuomintang held its first meeting in Canton. Sun Yat-Sen agreed to admit the Communists into its ranks. But they entered not as a party, only as individuals, and had to swear to abide by the rules of the Kuomintang. The only conceivable justification for such a step was to consider it as a highly dangerous manoeuvre. [3] The Chinese Communists might possibly, under a strong and supple leadership, have worked under cover of the Kuomintang for a certain period of time and then, having spread their influence, left demonstratively on some political issue understandable to the masses, and resumed their organisational and programmatic independence. They could make a temporary agreement for some specific objective even with the Liberal bourgeoisie, tenaciously guarding their independence. No one in 1923 could have foreseen that under Stalin's orders they were going to cling desperately to the Kuomintang for four years until hacked off by the swords of Chiang Kai-Shek's soldiers.

For the moment, however, the Communists, taking advantage of their new position, began with energy to help the proletariat in its task of organising itself.

THE REVOLUTION BEGINS

At the beginning of 1925 Feng Yu-Hsiang, a nationalist leader, defeated the pro-British Wu Pei-Fu, drove him out of Peking, and proclaimed his army the army of national liberation. The nationalist movement awoke. In Shanghai some worker delegates, elected to negotiate with the management in a dispute, were dismissed. The other workers protested, and the Anglo-Indian police, being summoned, fired on them, seriously wounding five. The Shanghai workers rose against this brutality. They did not know it at the time, but they were beginning the Chinese Revolution. That is the way a revolution often comes, like a thief in the night, and those who have prepared for it and are waiting for it do not see it, and often only realise that their chance has come when it has passed. The protest movement was fed not only from the immediate arrogance and rapacity of the foreigner. It was the whole history of China which was soon to express itself through this channel. The Chinese workers and peasants had reached one of the breaking-points of their history. Inside and outside the foreign concessions the Chinese workers, men, women and children, suffered from some of the most inhuman conditions of labour that obtained in any part of the globe; twelve hours and more seven days a week, no time for meals, no sanitary conveniences in the older factories, foreign and native overseers with loaded rifles to keep discipline, and all for a few pence a day. National liberation rested on the solid foundation of millions of workers, seeking a way out of intolerable conditions.

What had been a small dispute about wages and a protest against administrative injustice, became overnight a political weapon for the liberation of China. The four months and a half between May 1 to the middle of September showed like clockwork the class-forces which would struggle for mastery in the coming revolution. “Down with the imperialists,” was the slogan of the day. The Chinese Government in Shanghai thought it was dealing with a riot, and demonstrations and meetings were met with the killing and wounding of scores of people. The allies of Chinese reaction, foreign imperialism, of necessity rushed to aid in the repression. On June 4 the allied imperialists, whose gunboats are always in Chinese harbours to protect property and rights and interests, landed a party and occupied the University and other buildings in the city. The Shanghai proletariat replied with the general strike. Nearly a quarter of a million workers came out and paralysed the city, and as the mass force of the Shanghai proletariat showed itself, it drew in its wake (exactly as in France in June, 1936) the petty-bourgeois students, the artisans and the small traders, and, in the special conditions of China as a country struggling for national independence, even some of that treacherous brood, the Liberal Chinese bourgeoisie. A special committee was formed, the Committee of Labour, Education and Commerce, which along with delegates from the Trade Unions had representatives from students' associations, the small shop-keepers and even some of the bourgeoisie. But the Trade Unions predominated and, far more clearly than in Russia, from the very start the Chinese proletariat was leading the nation. All classes seemed to support the strike. But in an industrialised country all classes never make a revolution, and as the strike developed, the necessity for Lenin's lifelong principle, the proletarian organisations and party retaining their independence, emerged with startling clearness. After one month the Chinese bourgeoisie, who had never been very ardent, ceased to support the strike. During July and August the petty-bourgeoisie, the intelligentsia, the students, wobblers from the very intermediate position they hold in society, began to weaken: nothing but immediate success and continued vigorous action can ever keep these to the proletarian movement. Aid from the international proletariat would have helped, but only the Third International agitated, collected money, made donations. The Second International, those perpetual preachers of self-determination, did nothing. The International Federation of Trades Unions behaved likewise. The British General Council, at this period consorting with the Russians in the Anglo-Russian Committee, refused even to answer telegrams of appeal from the Chinese Unions. Realising their limitations the Shanghai leaders in good time fell back to the defensive. Some of their most pressing economic demands were satisfied, the strike was called off and the Shanghai workers retired in good order and with a living, vital experience to help them in the future.

But so ripe was China that the Shanghai strike had acted as a detonator. There had been over a hundred sympathetic strikes in various towns, and out of one of these developed the Hong-Kong and Canton strike, demonstrating the fighting power and endurance of the proletariat in the manner that so constantly surprises even the most sanguine revolutionaries.

THE CANTON STRIKE

On June 23 a demonstration of protest against the Shanghai shooting took place in Canton. British police from the Anglo-French concession fired on the demonstration, killing and wounding scores of people. As in Shanghai the Chinese proletariat replied with a general strike and their comrades in Hong-Kong joined. The Chinese bourgeoisie in Canton rallied to the strikers, and supported them, owing to the long revolutionary tradition in Canton and the much more important fact that the strike was accompanied by a boycott of British goods. From all the Chinese communities in the Philippine Islands, East Indies and America, money poured in. The British tried to prevent Chinese money coming into Canton, but failed; in Hong-Kong they unloosed all the forces of repression to break the strike. The Hong-Kong workers were unshakable. In thousands they began to leave Hong-Kong for Canton. Estimates vary, but one Chinese writer claims that from start to finish about 100,000 Chinese left the island for Canton. There a strike committee was formed. The strikers organised propaganda meetings, study-courses and lectures, they drew up regulations for workers and submitted them to the Canton Kuomintang Government, they confiscated and stored contraband goods which British merchants tried to smuggle in, they captured, tried and imprisoned blacklegs, they organised pickets along the entire frontier of Kwangsi province to keep out British ships and British goods from Hong-Kong. They formed a Workers' Guard which led the picketing, fought against smugglers and fought with the Kuomintang Government against counter-revolutionary Tchuns. The strike ruined British trade with China. Between August and December 1924 the British ships entering Canton numbered between 160 and 240 each month. For the corresponding period in 1925 the number was between 27 and 2 [?].

British Capitalism lost half-a-million pounds per day. In 1926 the British Empire lost half its trade with China, and three-quarters of its trade with Hong-Kong. After fifteen months the British began to give way and sought to placate the workers, handling recalcitrant Britishers very roughly. No Government can continue to fight against strikers who will not even stay to be imprisoned or shot at. After one year the strike still continued as powerful as ever, the Communist Party of China playing a leading part, and the spirit of the workers all over China rose steadily. Trades Union membership, in May, 1924, 220,000, reached 540,000 in May, 1925, and in May, 1926, over a million. In Shanghai alone during the 1925 Strike it had reached 280,000. And this unprecedentedly rapid industrial organisation of the workers was expressing itself in many strikes that were primarily political, which meant that the workers were looking to solve their industrial difficulties by the social revolution.

The Communist Party, 800 in 1925, by January, 1926, was 30,000, and to this powerful proletarian movement could be added the overwhelming revolutionary force of the starving Chinese peasantry. In Kwangtung, a province typical of the South, seventy-four per cent of the population held nineteen per cent of the land. In Wiush in Central China, 68.9 per cent of the poor peasantry held 14.2 per cent of the land. In Paoting in the North 65.2 per cent held 25.9 per cent of the land. Of the Chinese population, on a rough estimate, sixty-five per cent were driven by the most consistent and powerful revolutionary urge in all historical periods – the hunger of starving peasants for land.

THE PERMANENT REVOLUTION IN CHINA

The fundamental task of the Communist Party was basically the task of the Bolshevik Party in Russia – to link the proletarian movement with the peasant, organising the peasants into Soviets for the forcible seizure of the land. In no other way but on the basis of the proletarian and peasant revolution could China then or now achieve national independence. Sun Yat-Sen had learnt that by hard experience, though he shrank from drawing the full conclusions. He had hoped somehow to bring the revolutionary masses into the struggle led by the nationalist bourgeoisie. The thing is impossible. Now since the great strikes when it was clear that the Chinese proletariat was challenging the bourgeoisie, it was inevitable that at the first opportunity the Chinese bourgeoisie would join with imperialists and militarists and crush the revolution.

The farther East the bourgeoisie the more cruel and treacherous. The powerful French bourgeoisie in 1789 had joined with the counter-revolution, how much less likely was the weak Chinese bourgeoisie, far weaker than the Russian, to ally itself with a proletariat which had shown its power. That was the whole theoretical prognosis of the Bolshevik party, amply confirmed by the course of the Russian Revolution. After 1917 the main strategic line of the Chinese Revolution could only be as follows. The Chinese Revolution would begin as a bourgeois-democratic revolution, but only as an immediate slogan. While the Communist Party of China would not oppose this slogan, it would be aware that for a backward country with an advanced proletariat (we shall see it in Spain), the bourgeois-democratic regime is impossible. The revolution would conquer as the dictatorship of the proletariat, or not at all. The Communist Party had already shown that it knew how to link industrial with political demands. It had to strive to popularise the ideas of Soviets among the peasantry on the simple slogan – the land for the peasants – and, as the party which urged the seizure of the land, would ultimately have the firm support of the peasantry for its political demands. Guarding its own independence, the Communist Party would boldly raise the slogan of national independence based on the revolutionary demands of the proletariat and the peasantry. If the movement developed (there could have been no doubt of this after the Hong-Kong strike, and in Hupeh in 1926 the peasants were already seizing the land), the anti-imperialist pretence of the Chinese bourgeoisie would be exposed and the Chinese petty-bourgeoisie, the traders, the students, and some of the intellectuals would be swept in the wake of the proletarian movement, and follow the proletariat as leader of the national revolution. A Congress of Soviets would appoint a provisional Revolutionary Government, and call a constituent assembly, arranging the franchise to secure the predominance of the poor. In this assembly the Chinese proletariat, organised in the Communist Party and in the Trade Unions, would occupy a dominating position. According to the strength of the movement and the dangers of the revolution, the dictatorship of the proletariat might be established immediately. But either the bourgeoisie would establish their dictatorship; or conversely the proletariat would establish theirs. It was this strategic line which would guide the Communist Party, already superior in the towns. It would jealously maintain its independence as the party of the proletariat and, if it could draw the hundreds of millions of peasants behind it, it would be the most powerful political force in the country. There was the danger of foreign intervention, but nothing would bind revolutionary China so firmly together as the sight of the Chinese bourgeoisie, but yesterday lovers of their country, attacking China along with the hated imperialists. China could stand a blockade far more easily than Russia. A Soviet China linked to a Soviet Russia, supported by the farflung Third International, would alter the whole relationship of the capitalist and revolutionary forces in the far East. Such a bloc would not only throw British and Japanese economy into the gravest disorder, but would unloose movements in India, Burma, and even Egypt and the Near East which would set the whole structure of Capitalism rocking. The movement might perhaps not develop so powerfully but there was a chance that, at least in a substantial part of China, the revolution might hold power and use it as a base for future extension. At worst it might be totally defeated. The proletariat was ready. But the boldness of its slogans, the strength of its attack would depend on the strength of the peasant movement it could develop.

Even if it failed, as the Russian Revolution of 1905, the Chinese proletariat would have acquired an invaluable experience, the more advanced elements in the peasantry would have had time to recognise with which party their future lay, and the party, with tried and experienced leaders, would be able to prepare for the inevitable return of the revolutionary wave as the Russian party prepared for the new revolution on the basis of 1905. Such is the theory and practice of the Permanent Revolution. Lenin, alive and well in Moscow, would from day to day have analysed the development of events and through the Chinese Communist Party would have made the road clear for the Chinese masses. The Chinese proletariat had, by 1926, shown what it was capable of. Starting in 1929, nearly a hundred million peasants were to show for five heroic years how ready for revolution was the Chinese peasantry. It was not only the objective conditions which were so favourable. The Russian Revolution and the Communist International exercised an enormous subjective influence. The Chinese workers and peasants knew broadly what the Russians had done, and wanted to do the same. They trusted the Chinese Communist Party which they knew to be guided by the now world-famous leaders in Moscow. And yet it was the Communist leadership in Moscow which led the revolution in China to disaster. Step by step Stalin mismanaged it with such incompetence and dishonesty that, one year after the final defeat in December 1927, the name of the International stank in Shanghai and Canton.

In April, 1927, the party had nearly 60,000 members, including 53.8 per cent workers; by July the percentage of workers in the party was seventy-five. On November 8, 1928, a circular of the Central Committee stated: “The party does not have a single healthy party nucleus among the industrial workers.“ In 1930 not two per cent were workers. In 1935 at the Seventh Congress of the Communist International the secretary admitted that they had failed to make progress in organising the industrial workers. The blight that Stalin and Bucharin cast on the Chinese revolution in 1925-27 is still upon it.

STALIN'S TWO-CLASS PARTY

Stalin had had as little to do with international politics as with economics. Now in his important position as Lenin's successor he continued the role he had begun in October, 1924, when he prophesied the imminent revolution in Europe. In May, 1925, the month in which the Shanghai strike began, he spoke at the University of the Peoples of the East and expounded his Leninism for the revolutionary movement in the Orient. There he put forward, for such countries as Egypt and China, what is from the Leninist point of view the most singular of all Stalin's conceptions, surpassing even the relegation to the dust-heap of basic capital. He proposed a two-class party, a party of workers and peasants “after the model of the Kuomintang.“ Not all the red professors in Russia could find him any quotations from Lenin to support this doctrine, and the speech is remarkable as one of the few in the collected volumes which is not interspersed with “Lenin said.“

“They will have to transcend the policy of the united nationalist front, and adopt the policy of forming a revolutionary coalition between the workers and the petty bourgeois. This coalition may find expression in the creation of a single party whose membership will be drawn from among the working class and the peasantry, after the model of the Kuomintang. But such a party should be genuinely representative of the two component forces, the communists and the revolutionary petty-bourgeois. This coalition must see to it that the half-heartedness and duplicity of the great bourgeoisie shall be laid bare, and that a resolute attack shall be made upon imperialism. The formation of such a party, composed, as we have seen, of two distinct elements, is both necessary and expedient, so long as it does not shackle the activities of the Communists, so long as it does not hamper the agitational and propagandist freedom of the Communists, so long as it does not prevent the proletariat from rallying round the Communists, so long as it does not impair the Communist leadership of the revolutionary forces. But the formation of such a party is neither necessary nor expedient unless all these conditions are forthcoming; otherwise the Communist elements would become absorbed into the bourgeois elements and the Communists would lose their position as leaders of the proletarian army.” [4]

In that muddled blundering paragraph lay the germ of all the muddles and blunders which were to come. It is difficult to say where he got the idea of a party representing two classes from. It was due most probably to a misunderstanding of the phrase “the revolutionary democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry.” That there can be only one proletarian or Communist Party, that a peasant may become a member of a Communist Party only by adopting the proletarian policy of the Communist Party, that a peasant party would be a separate entity led by the proletarian party, as the Social Revolutionaries formed a minority party in the Soviet Union between November 1917 and July 1918, that to talk about a party “composed, as we have seen, of two distinct elements" in which Communists would not be shackled by peasants, was the very antithesis of all that Lenin had fought for, was in complete opposition to what the Communist International stood for, was, in fact, the most dangerous nonsense, especially in the mouth of the leader of the international proletariat. To point out all this, of course, was Trotskyism.

Given Stalin's obstinacy and the servility of his subordinates, we can see today that from that moment the Chinese Revolution was doomed. For Stalin and Bucharin the revolution, according to Leninism, was a bourgeois-democratic revolution against the foreign imperialists, and therefore was to be carried out by the bourgeoisie organised in the Kuomintang and the nationalist army of the Canton Government which Borodin was training. The business of the proletariat and the peasantry, therefore, was to do nothing which would impede the bourgeoisie and the Kuomintang in their struggle. Not for nothing had they spent the previous two years abusing the Permanent Revolution and all its teachings as the main vice of Trotskyism. After the imperialists had been driven into the sea by the united nation, by all classes, except the biggest of the bourgeoisie, then the proletariat and peasantry would turn upon the bourgeoisie and conquer. This in 1925, after 1905 and 1917, after over twenty years of reading and expounding Lenin.

THE KUOMINTANG

The two-class party Stalin envisaged on the model of the Kuomintang quickly developed into the four-class party of the Kuomintang.

The Kuomintang, whatever Sun Yat-Sen [5] and his wife might think, was a Government party ruling a large extent of territory in Southern China. By 1925 its membership consisted of about a quarter of a million, big bourgeoisie, factory-owners, petty-bourgeoisie, professional men and petty-traders, landowners, gentry, rich peasants and also, after the reorganisation by Sun Yat-Sen, working men and poor peasants. But the proletariat was being organised in Trade Unions under the leadership of the Communist Party. We have watched its steady growth. And the Kuomintang, as organised, could from its very nature have nothing to do with a revolutionary seizure of land by the poor peasants. There might be a Right Wing and a Left Wing (January 1926 there were 168 Lefts to 45 Rights and Centrists out of 278 delegates), but such a party could never lead a revolutionary proletariat and a revolutionary peasantry. Why should it? Not only in Lenin's thesis at the Second Congress, but also in supplementary theses presented at the Fourth Congress in 1922, the proletarian parties in the colonies had been warned against such parties, and in both sets of theses the Kuomintang had been mentioned by name as one of the specially dangerous. Trotsky therefore continued to demand that the Communist Party leave the Kuomintang. Whatever remote justification there might have been for its being in before, now that the revolution had begun, at all costs it must come out. It might be driven underground for a time. So had been the Bolshevik Party. The rise of the revolution would bring it out again with renewed force. Stalin and Bucharin condemned this as Trotskyism, and bound the Communist Party and the Chinese Revolution to the Kuomintang.

During 1925 the Left Wing of the Kuomintang had been following Sun Yat-Sen's directions, and like good Liberals displayed much sympathy for the workers' movements. [6] They had organised peasant leagues to fight against the Ming Tuans, a sort of Fascist militia on the countryside. But they warned the peasants against the seizure of land. That would come after, duly arranged by law. But even the formation of these peasant leagues had been causing dissatisfaction among the Right elements in the party.

The Executive Committee, however, was Left, and the Executive Committee ruled between congresses. Stalin and Bucharin, through Borodin, supported the Left against the Right, that is to say supported the petty-bourgeois traders and small capitalists against their greater brethren. The Political Bureau of nine members was Left. Wang Chin-Wei (the same who was Prime Minister to Chiang Kai-Shek until a few months ago – a bullet caused his retirement) was head of the party and of the Canton Government. He was absolutely Left, and Borodin, the Russian representative, was high in favour with Wang Chin-Wei. Borodin, with Wang's support, drafted programmes for Kuomintang conferences which sounded revolutionary enough, and the Chinese Communist Party worked and grew within the shelter of the Left Kuomintang. But as the Shanghai strike began and unloosed the hundreds of thousands of striking workers on Canton itself, the Chinese bourgeoisie and landowners grew frightened and demanded the expulsion of the Communists. The Communists had now either to leave and fight for the revolution according to Lenin, or stay and fight for it according to the Left Kuomintang. Stalin chose the Left Kuomintang, and Borodin organised a plan of campaign to suit.

THE NORTHERN CAMPAIGN

In the North Chang Tso-Lin, the pro-Japanese war-lord, had established a dictatorship in Pekin, and gathered some other military chiefs to oppose the nationalists in the South. Borodin and the Left Wing therefore outlined the national revolution as follows. In the coming spring the nationalist forces in the South under Chiang Kai-Shek would set out from Canton in the extreme South, raise the banner of revolution, conquering anti-nationalist Tchuns, uniting with those who wished a liberated China, and end by defeating Chang Tso-Lin and taking the ancient capital of Pekin. Chiang Kai-Shek was willing to lead this revolution but he did not wish to go marching off to Pekin and leave a Radical Kuomintang Government under the influence of Borodin behind him. Yet his party needed the temporary support of the International. It applied for membership as a sympathising party. The Stalinists agreed, as usual Trotsky alone dissenting. To the two plenums of the Executive Committee held in February and again in November, Chiang sent fraternal delegates. He and Stalin exchanged portraits. But on March 20, 1926, while Borodin was out of Canton, Chiang Kai-Shek coalesced with the Right Kuomintang, staged a coup d'etat, seized power and forced Wang Chin-Wei, and other Radical members of the Kuomintang to fly from the country. He had acted too early. He had control of the army, but the nationalist movement was too weak as yet to progress without mass support. There was a sharp reaction against Chiang, and in May Left and Right Wing were reconciled. But Chiang Kai-Shek became head of the party in place of Wang Chin-Wei, and at the May plenum in 1926 he laid down harsh terms. The Communist Party was pledged not to criticise the anticlass struggle doctrines of Sun Yat-Sen. It was compelled to give a list of its members in the Kuomintang to Chiang Kai-Shek (so that he could put his hands on them when he wanted them). It was forbidden to allow its members to become heads of any party or government department. In all important committees its members were limited to one. Members of the Kuomintang were forbidden to join the Communist Party. Borodin, under Stalin's orders, agreed to all these conditions. In return Chiang Kai-Shek expelled some of the members of the Right Wing. (They went to Nanking to await him there.) Thus at the moment when the revolution needed the leadership of the Communist Party Stalin tied it hand and foot. Marxism apart, Chiang Kai-Shek stood revealed. Stalin, however, follows his policies to the end and never gives away to Trotskyism. The news of this coup d'etat would have reinforced Trotsky's insistence that the Communist Party leave the Kuomintang at once. Stalin proved his own policy correct by his favourite method of argument. He suppressed the news. When news of the coup d'etat eventually leaked out, the International Press Correspondence of April 8, 1926, called it a “lying report.” In the May 6 issue of the same journal Voitinsky, one of the Russian delegation under Borodin, called it “an invention of the imperialists.“ Thus encouraged, Chiang made all strikes in Canton illegal, Borodin agreeing.

With his rear tolerably safe from revolution, Chiang set out in July to the North, ostensibly to fight the militarists. He carried with him printing presses and a huge propaganda apparatus, developed and run by Communists, who put forward Chiang's slogans. Believing him to be the leader of the revolution, the masses rushed to his support and the anti-nationalist armies crumbled. As he gained confidence Chiang suppressed Trade Unions, the peasant leagues and the Communists. His support fell away. He recalled the Communists, who came willingly, again did propaganda for him, using the prestige of the October Revolution and the Soviet State in the service of Chiang Kai-Shek, the leader of the revolution. Where the Bolsheviks in Russia had called for Soviets and the confiscation of the land, the Communists now agitated for better working conditions and a twenty per cent reduction in rent. That was all Chiang would allow them to do. Chiang resumed his triumphant progress. By September the Yangtze valley was in his hands, and Stalin and Bucharin and the Internationalist Press were delirious with joy. By October his army had captured the important triple town of Hankow, Wuchang and Hanyang, known as Wuhan. The Kuomintang Government was moved from Canton to Wuhan, and before it left Canton it called off unconditionally the Hong-Kong – Canton strike. This had lasted with undiminished vigour for sixteen months and in all its aspects it is the greatest strike in history. In Canton also the Kuomintang provincial Left Wing was replaced by the Right, the famous workers' guard was disarmed, revolutionary workers were arrested, workers were forbidden to agitate among the peasantry, anti-English demonstrations were prohibited, and the gentry or small landowners in the villages encouraged. The Communist Party leadership submitted to everything. And as the news of all this leaked through to Russia, in Moscow the internal struggle between Stalin's Leninism and Trotskyism was now extended to Stalin's Kuomintang policy.

REVOLUTION FOR RENT REDUCTION

In July 1926 Radek, a member of the Opposition, rector of Sun Yat-Sen University in Moscow, wrote to the Politbureau of the C.P.S.U. and asked for answers to a series of questions so that he might bring his lectures into harmony with the policy of the International in China. The questions were awkward. What was the attitude of the party to the military dictatorship of Chiang Kai-Shek initiated after the coup d'etat of March, 1926, and supported by Borodin? What work was the Kuomintang doing among the peasantry? A manifesto had been issued by the Central Committee of the Chinese party, part of which ran: “We must carry on a minimum of class struggle, and when the policy of the Communist Party is designated as Bolshevik, it is not a matter of Bolshevism but of Bolshevism in the interests of the whole nation.” Did Stalin approve of this as Leninism?

Radek received no reply. He wrote a second letter in July. There was no reply. He wrote again in September. Still no reply. Stalin and Bucharin dared not as yet say openly that they were responsible for the instructions to the Communist Party of China to do nothing which would accelerate any conflict with Chiang Kai-Shek. But in November, 1926, after the Seventh Plenum of the E.C.C.I. (at which a fraternal delegate from Chiang Kai-Shek took part), the Executive issued a manifesto. Stalin had proposed a two-class party; Martynov, one of his henchmen, made the Kuomintang into a three-class party. Now this manifesto defined the revolutionary movement as a bloc of four classes, comedy in the mouths of Liberal bourgeois seeking to deceive the masses, but a shameful crime coming from Lenin's International not three years after his death.

“The proletariat is forming a bloc with the peasantry (which is actively taking up the struggle for its interests) with the petty urban bourgeoisie and a section of the capitalist bourgeoisie. This combination of forces found its political expression in corresponding groups in the Kuomintang and in the Canton Government. Now the movement is at the beginning of the third stage on the eve of a new class combination. In this stage the driving forces of the movement will be a bloc of still more revolutionary nature – of the proletariat, peasantry and urban petty bourgeoisie, to the exclusion of a large section of the big Capitalist bourgeoisie. This does not mean that the whole bourgeoisie as a class will be excluded from the arena of the struggle for national emancipation, for besides the petty and middle bourgeoisie, even certain strata of the big bourgeoisie may, for a certain period, continue to march with the revolution ...“

What pen wrote this we cannot say. But there can be no mistake about the originator of these ideas. It was the same who called the struggle between Lenin and Trotsky a storm in a tea-cup, and urged support of the Provisional Government in 1917.

On the future Chinese Government Stalin had travelled far since the two-class party.

“The structure of the revolutionary State will be determined by its class basis. It will not be a purely bourgeois democratic State. The State will represent the democratic dictatorship of the proletariat, peasantry and other exploited classes. It will be a revolutionary anti-imperialist government of transition to non-capitalist (Socialist) development ...”

All of which meant that the Kuomintang would govern henceforth.

Boldly the manifesto came out for the agrarian revolution:

“The national Government of Canton will not be able to retain power, the revolution will not advance towards the complete victory over foreign imperialism and native reaction, unless national liberation is identified with agrarian revolution ...”

This sounded grand enough, but it was only one of the flourishes which Stalin habitually uses as a preface to the blackest reaction. The next paragraph was many flights lower:

“While recognising that the Communist Party of China should advance the demand for the nationalisation of the land as its fundamental plank in the agrarian programme of the proletariat, it is necessary at the present time, however, to differentiate in agrarian tactics in accordance with the peculiar economic and political conditions prevailing in the various districts in Chinese territory ...”

This meant simply that the views on property of Chiang Kai-Shek and the Kuomintang leaders of the revolution were to be respected. What, therefore, was the revolutionary programme? It had to be a programme that Borodin and Chiang could carry out peacefully together.

“The Communist Party of China and the Kuomintang must immediately carry out the following measures in order to bring over the peasantry to the side of the revolution.”

And the first of a long list of demands was:

To reduce rents to the minimum.

Stalin and Bucharin were asking the peasants of China to make a revolution in order "to reduce rents to the minimum."

Not once was the word Soviet mentioned, and the manifesto took good care to exclude every possibility of the organisation of one. “The apparatus of the National Revolutionary Government provides a very effective way to reach the peasantry. The Communist Party must use this way.” The Kuomintang therefore was to make the peasant revolution.

Chiang had severely limited the participation of the Communists in the organisation of the Kuomintang. Stalin and Bucharin, having hidden this from the International, with their tongues in their cheeks proceeded as follows:

“In the newly liberated provinces State apparatuses of the type of the Canton Government will be set up. The task of the Communists and their revolutionary allies is to penetrate into the apparatus of the new Government to give practical expression to the agrarian programme of national revolution. This will be done by using the State apparatus for the confiscation of land, reduction of taxes, investment of real power in the peasant committees, thus carrying on progressive measures of reform on the basis of a revolutionary programme ...“

They then dealt the now traditional blow at Trotskyism:

“In view of this and many other equally important reasons, the point of view that the Communist Party must leave the Kuomintang is incorrect ...“

The manifesto showed that they knew quite well the nature of the Kuomintang Government in Canton: “Since its foundation the real power of the Canton Government has been in the hands of the Right Wing Kuomintang (five out of the six commissars belong to the Right Wing) ...” But they called on the Communists to enter this Government to assist the revolutionary Left Wing against the right. As if four revolutionary classes were not enough they envisaged five.

“The Communist Party of China must strive to develop the Kuomintang into a real Party of the People – a solid revolutionary bloc of the proletariat, peasantry, the urban petty bourgeoisie and the other oppressed and exploited classes which must carry on a decisive struggle against imperialism and its agents ...”

Stalin and Bucharin might talk about bourgeois-democratic revolution and the democratic dictatorship of proletariat and peasantry and the remaining classes which made up the five, but the Kuomintang Canton Government with five Right-wingers out of its six commissars was quite good enough for them.

“The Canton Government is a revolutionary State primarily owing to its anti-imperialistic character ...”

The industrial programme of the revolution was to be:

“(a) Nationalisation of railways and waterways.
(b) Confiscation of large enterprises, mines and banks having the character of foreign concessions.
(c) Nationalisation of land to be realised by successive radical reform measures enforced by the revolutionary State.” [7]

For twelve years before 1917 the Bolsheviks had tirelessly preached the simple slogans, the democratic republic, the eight-hour day, the land for the peasants. Yet with the Chinese proletariat already in action and millions of hungry peasants ready to fight, this was the programme and policy imposed on them with all the authority of the October Revolution and the Communist International. This cruelly deceptive and dangerous document went to Borodin and the Communist Party of China, through them to demoralise the ardent but trusting Chinese masses and lead scores of thousands into the death-trap of the Kuomintang.

THE REVOLUTION CHAINED

But it was all that Borodin and the Communist Party could do to hold back the Chinese masses. By January 1927 the membership of the C.P. was nearly 60,000; the Young Communist League of China was 35,000, and the organised workers, 230,000 in 1923, were now 2,800,000, a greater number than in the Russia of October 1917. However much Stalin might wish to hold them down in order not to displease Chiang Kai-Shek, the masses in Canton and Wuhan could feel on their backs the blows of reaction. In the Southern provinces by March 1927 ten million peasants had been organised in the peasant leagues. In Hupeh the peasants were already seizing the land on a large scale. Furthermore, Chiang Kai-Shek's treachery, made so clear in March, was now becoming open to the masses. In the early months of 1927 he was carrying on negotiations with the Japanese and the pro-Japanese reactionary war-lords; and the Communist Party knew it. The nearer he got to Shanghai the more he threw off the thin mask. Since December he had been in open conflict with Borodin, Galen and other Communists. But their only strength lay in the mass movement, and this they had, by Stalin's manifesto, to subordinate to the Kuomintang.

Suddenly the masses broke away. On January 3 the workers and petty-bourgeoisie of Hankow were holding a meeting near the British concession. The British authorities got into conflict with them and the masses spontaneously occupied the concession, organised a workers' guard and maintained control. The revolution in the South flared up again, and so powerful wave of nationalist sentiment flowed through the country that even the Japanese supporter, Chang Tso-Lin in Pekin, found it politic to speak of the return of the concessions. Chiang Kai-Shek, now at Nanking, then as today a stronghold of reaction, afraid of the militant workers in the South, demanded that the Government seat should be transferred to Nanking. But the Left Kuomintang, between whom and Chiang there had always been almost open hostility, insisted that according to a resolution passed in Canton the Government should remain at Wuhan. For weeks there existed practically two Kuomintang Governments, two central committees, two political bureaux. Chiang, not yet ready to come out openly against the International, praised Trotskyism because the Trotskyists were demanding the withdrawal of the party from the Kuomintang. [8] In the Russian delegation three young Communists (all anti-Trotskyists), Nassonov, Fokine and Albrecht, were chafing at the suicidal policy of Borodin. The bold action of the Chinese proletariat at Hankow had given Borodin an opportunity. The Left Kuomintang rallied round him and stiffened its resistance to Chiang Kai-Shek. But Borodin, shackled by Stalin, did not know what to do. To the masses holding Hankow neither Borodin nor the Chinese party gave any directives. Instead they rebuked the workers who had formed the guard and were keeping order in Hankow.

Nassonov, Fokine and Albrecht urged Borodin to leave Shanghai and go to Wuhan to rally the Left Kuomintang, initiate a broad mass campaign on the rising militancy of the masses, explain that the quarrel over the Government seat was not personal but political, and demand openly from Chiang Kai-Shek a clear and distinct political declaration. Borodin stuck to Stalin's manifesto.

Chiang took the offensive, and he and the bourgeois and imperialist press brought the struggle against Borodin into the open. On February 21 Chiang delivered a pogrom speech against the party, and the conflict could no longer be hidden. Borodin and the party remained silent before the bewildered masses. Urged to unloose the peasant movement against Chiang, they declared that the peasants did not want land.

THE REVOLUTION MURDERED

In Shanghai the revolutionary proletariat, roused to fever-heat by the victories and approach of Chiang Kai-Shek, the leader of the revolution, received the news that Chiang had defeated Sun Chang-Fang, the reactionary feudal general who dominated Shanghai and the surrounding area. The joy of the workers broke out on February 18 into a spontaneous general strike in which 300,000 workers joined. A section of the petty-bourgeoisie shut up their shops and joined in the strike, the fleet came over to the side of the workers and the strike developed into an armed uprising. A detachment of Sun Chang-Fang's troops in the city broke under the strain. Some began to loot and pillage, others wanted to join the nationalist revolution. But the Chinese Central Committee, which did not expect the strike, deliberated as to whether the rising should take place or not, even while it was taking place. No directives were issued. The slogans were “Down with Sun Chang-Fang,” and “Hail the Northern Expedition,” “Hail Chiang Kai Shek.” Not one anti-imperialist slogan was issued in Shanghai, the centre of foreign imperialism in China. The movement collapsed.

Nassonov, Fokine and Albrecht, seeing the revolution being destroyed by those who were supposed to lead it, sent to Moscow a long and bitter complaint against the leadership of Borodin and the leaders of the Chinese Communist Party.

“The slogan of the democratic national assembly, which we had advanced shortly before the strike, was conceived of as a new means of combinations at the top, and was not launched among the masses. As a result, we let slip an exceptionally favourable historical moment, a rare combination of circumstances, where power lay in the streets but the party did not know how to take it. Worse still, it didn't want to take it; it was afraid to.

“Thus, the Right tendency, which has already contaminated the party for a year, found a crass and consummate expression during the Shanghai events, which can only be compared with the tactics of the German Central Committee in 1923 and of the Mensheviks during the December uprising in 1905. Yet there is a difference. It lies in the fact that in Shanghai the proletariat had considerably more forces and chances on its side and, with an energetic intervention, it could have won Shanghai for the revolution and changed the relationship of forces within the Kuomintang.

“It is not by accident that the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party committed these errors. They flowed from the Right Wing conception of the revolution, the lack of understanding of the mass movement and the complete lack of attention towards it.” [9]

But the Right Wing conception of the revolution which had contaminated the party for a year had come from Stalin. Stalin dealt with the protest against his policy in the usual manner. He suppressed the letter, recalled Nassonov in disgrace and banished him to America.

While the Shanghai proletariat fought, Chiang Kai-Shek, but two days march outside the city, would not enter. He waited while the soldiers of the reaction “bled” the workers. (The military governor of Shanghai was later to receive a command in Chiang's army.) Instead Chiang spread terror in the outlying provinces. Nassonov and his friends had written their despairing letter on March 17, in the belief that the Shanghai proletariat was crushed for some time to come. But on March 21 the workers of Shanghai again rose spontaneously, and this time drove out the Northern forces. Millions of workers all over the globe have suffered at the hands of the Stalin-dominated International, but none so much as the valiant proletariat of Shanghai. For three weeks they held the city. By this time the masses knew that Chiang Kai-Shek meant mischief, for his army had stood outside the gates for several days while they fought with the reactionaries inside. The majority of the workers wished to close the gates to Chiang and fight him. But Stalin's orders were rigid. Mandalian, a Communist official in Shanghai at the time, has written that the orders to the workers were “not to provoke Chiang” and “in case of extreme necessity to bury their arms,” [10] and Bucharin, in his Problems of the Chinese Revolution, has confirmed this. From Chiang's army itself came a warning of the coup that Chiang was preparing. His army was not homogeneous, and contained elements devoted to the revolution. Certain sections of Chiang's army entered the city but took no action. The first division was led by Say-O, who had been promoted from the ranks, and he and his division were in sympathy with the mass movement. Chiang Kai-Shek knew this and hated Say-O. While the main army stood outside the gates of Shanghai, Chiang called Say-O to headquarters, received him coldly and proposed that he leave the city and go to the front. Say-O sought the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party and told them that he would not go back to Chiang Kai-Shek because he feared a trap. He was willing to remain in Shanghai and fight with the workers against the counter-revolutionary overthrow which Chiang was preparing. Tchen Diu-Su and the leaders of the Chinese party told him that they knew the overthrow was being prepared, but that they did not want a premature conflict with Chiang Kai-Shek. Say-O therefore led his division out of the city. [11]

But the split in the Kuomintang ranks and the coming treachery of Chiang were now no secret and were openly discussed even in the imperialist press. The Chinese party holding fast to Moscow, reassured the doubting Shanghai workers.

On April 6 Stalin addressed a meeting in Moscow, and the meeting unanimously adopted a resolution condemning Trotskyism and endorsing the line of the Chinese Communist Party:

“This meeting considers the demand that the Communist Party of China leave the Kuomintang to be equivalent to the isolation of the C.P. of China and the proletariat from the national movement for the emancipation of China and further considers this demand to be absolutely false and erroneous.” [12]

All over the world the Communist International, drugged by the Stalinist policy and the Stalinist lies, was waiting for the victory of Chiang Kai-Shek. On March 23 the Communist Party of France held a great meeting in Paris at which appeared Cachin, Semard and Monmousseau. They sent a telegram to Chiang Kai-Shek:

“The workers of Paris greet the entry of the revolutionary Chinese army into Shanghai. Fifty-six years after the Paris Commune and ten years after the Russian, the Chinese Commune marks a new stage in the development of the world revolution.”

But the Shanghai workers knew that Chiang was a traitor. The British and Americans bombarded Nanking and killed 7,000 Chinese and the imperialists were openly inciting Chiang against the workers. To allay feeling, therefore, Communist Party and Kuomintang issued a joint manifesto in Shanghai on April 6. In all the misleading literature of the Stalinist International this manifesto is perhaps the most criminal.

“The national revolution has reached the last basis of imperialism in China, Shanghai. The counter-revolutionaries both inside and outside China are spreading false reports in order to bring our two parties in opposition to each other. Some say that the Communist Party is preparing to form a Worker's Government, to overthrow the Kuomintang and to recover the concessions by force of arms. Others say that the leaders of the Kuomintang intend to make war on the Communist Party, to suppress the labour unions and to dissolve the workers' defence organisations.

“Now is not the time to discuss the origin of these malicious rumours. The supreme organ of the Kuomintang declared at its last plenary session that it has not the least intention of attacking the Communist Party or of suppressing the labour unions. The military authorities in Shanghai have declared their complete allegiance to the Central Committee of the Kuomintang. If differences of opinion exist they can be amicably settled. The Communist Party is striving to maintain order in the freed territories. It has already completely approved of the tactic of the National Government not to attempt to force a return of the concessions by armed force. The trades council of Shanghai has also declared that it will make no attempt to enter the concession by violence. At the same time it declared that it fully approved of the co-operation between all oppressed classes through the formation of a local government. In face of these facts, there is no basis whatever for these malicious rumours.” [13]

On April 12 Chiang Kai-Shek, having concluded his arrangements with the imperialists, launched the terror on the Shanghai workers. Chiang's long-sword detachments marched through the streets, executing workers on the spot; some of the strikers in the Railway Department were thrown into the furnaces of the locomotives. Communist Party, Trades Union movement, all workers' organisations, were smashed to pieces and driven into illegality. The Chinese counter-revolution, backed by imperialism, reigned triumphant in Shanghai, while Stalin and Bucharin in Moscow led the whole Communist International in an ear-piercing howl of treachery.

Shanghai might be lost, but one thing had to be saved – Stalin's prestige against Trotskyism. In the following month at the Eighth Plenum of the E.C.C.I., Stalin exposed the mistakes of the Opposition:

“The Opposition is dissatisfied because the Shanghai workers did not enter into a decisive battle against the imperialists and their myrmidons. But it does not understand that the revolution in China cannot develop at a fast tempo. It does not understand that one cannot take up a decisive struggle under unfavourable conditions. The Opposition does not understand that one cannot take up a decisive struggle under unfavourable conditions. The Opposition does not understand that not to avoid a decisive struggle under unfavourable conditions (when it can be avoided), means to make easier the work of the enemies of the revolution ...“

For at the Eighth Plenum Stalin and Bucharin insisted that the Communists should remain within the Kuomintang and should now support the Left Kuomintang and the Wuhan Government as leaders of the revolution. Wang Chin-Wei was substituted for Chiang Kai-Shek. Borodin in China was sending urgent messages to Stalin telling him that the Kuomintang leaders in Wuhan were determined to prevent the growing agrarian revolution even at the cost of a split with Moscow. From Stalin's point of view the only thing was to hold the agrarian revolution in. For him now the Left Kuomintang Government at Wuhan, with two Communists in it and supported by Feng Yu-hsiang, (the Christian general)[14] was now the Revolutionary Government, and its head, Wang Chin-Wei was immediately baptised leader of the Chinese Revolution.

It is at this stage that the personal responsibility of Stalin (and Bucharin) assumes international proportions. They could have changed the policy then. It is true that Stalin had the power he held because he was the ideal representative of the bureaucracy. But a change of policy did not in any way involve the internal position of the bureaucracy. Proof of this is that in a few months the policy was violently changed. But Stalin's stubborn ignorance and political blindness held the revolution down.

Seven years before Lenin had said China was ripe for Soviets. Now, in May, 1927, after two years of revolution, Stalin rejected outright the policy of Soviets for which the Left Opposition pressed.

“Now can we say that the situation in Russia from March to July 1917 represents an analogy to the present situation in China? No, this cannot be said ... The history of the workers' Soviets shows that such Soviets can exist and develop further only if favourable premises are given for a direct transition from the bourgeois-democratic revolution to the proletarian revolution ...”[15]

Trotsky, though conscious that against the Stalinised International arguments were useless, led the attack of the Left Opposition with undiminished vigour and courage.

“Stalin has again declared himself here against workers' and peasants' Soviets with the argument that the Kuomintang and the Wuhan Government are sufficient means and instruments for the agrarian revolution. Thereby Stalin assumes, and wants, the International to assume the responsibility for the policy of the Kuomintang and the Wuhan Government, as he repeatedly assumed the responsibility for the policy of the former ‘National Government' of Chiang Kai-Shek (particularly in his speech of April 5, the stenogram of which has, of course, been kept hidden from the International) ...

“The agrarian revolution is a serious thing. Politicians of the Wang Chin-Wei type, under difficult conditions, will unite ten times with Chiang Kai-Shek against the workers and peasants. Under such conditions two Communists in a bourgeois Government become impotent hostages, if not a direct mask for the preparation of a new blow against the working masses. We say to the workers of China: The peasants will not carry out the agrarian revolution to the end if they let themselves be led by petty-bourgeois radicals instead of by you, the revolutionary proletarians. Therefore, build up your workers' Soviets, ally them with the peasant Soviets, arm yourselves through the Soviets, shoot the generals who do not recognise the Soviets, shoot the bureaucrats and bourgeois Liberals who will organise uprisings against the Soviets. Only through peasants' and soldiers' Soviets will you win over the majority of Chiang Kai-Shek's soldiers to your side ...”[16]

The Plenum adopted a resolution against Trotskyism:

“Comrade Trotsky ... demanded at the Plenary Session the immediate establishment of the dual power in the form of Soviets and the immediate adoption of a course towards the overthrow of the Left Kuomintang Government. This apparently ultra-Left but in reality opportunist demand is nothing but the repetition of the old Trotskyist position of jumping over the petty bourgeois, peasant stage of the revolution.“

Barring a note which said that the line of the C.I. had been quite correct, no accounts of this May Plenum were ever published until a year after, long after the Opposition had been expelled and had made some of the documents public. For even while the Plenum was sitting the generals seized power in the province of Honan, a month later Feng Yu-hsiang allied himself with Chiang Kai-Shek, and before another month Wang Chin-Wei, the new leader of the revolution, and the Wuhan Government had come to terms with Chiang Kai-Shek and put to the sword the workers' movement in Wuhan. Even more bitter than that of the workers of Shanghai was the experience of the peasants in the revolutionary district of Changsha, an important revolutionary centre near to Wuhan. The Kuomintang army in Changsha consisted of only 1,700 soldiers, and the peasants around had armed detachments consisting of 20,000 men. When the peasants heard that the counter-revolutionary generals had started to crush the national movement they gathered round Changsha, preparing to march on the city. But at this point a letter came from the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party. Faithful to their instructions from the great revolutionists in Moscow, they told the peasants to avoid conflict and to transfer the matter to the Revolutionary Government in Wuhan. The District Committee ordered the peasants to retreat. Two detachments failed to get the message in time, advanced on Wuhan itself and were there destroyed by the soldiers of Wang Chin-Wei.

CONFUSION IN THE OPPOSITION

The pitiless exposure of the false policy in China only intensified Stalin's attacks against the policy of the Opposition at home, and confusion in the ranks of the Opposition gave Stalin and Bucharin the opportunity to win ideological victories. In the early stages of the Chinese Revolution, Zinoviev, as President of the Communist International, had lent himself to Stalin's Leninism. When the Zinoviev-Trotsky bloc was formed, Trotsky's uncompromising stand for the immediate withdrawal from the Kuomintang which he had maintained since 1923 was voted down by Zinoviev, and Trotsky was compelled for the sake of discipline to moderate his demand for the immediate withdrawal. Stalin and Bucharin knew quite well the differences between Trotsky and Zinoviev, but seized on this divergence and made great play with it against the Opposition, while Chiang Kai-Shek and Wang Chin-Wei massacred tens of thousands of deluded Chinese workers and peasants. After Wuhan the Trotsky Wing won over the Zinoviev Wing and came out unequivocally for the withdrawal from the Kuomintang. Stalin still refused.

THE EBB MISTAKEN FOR THE FLOW

The proletariat had been totally defeated in Shanghai and Wuhan. The peasant movement, which was to show its force a year later, was still hobbled by the Stalinist policy. As always, this was the time chosen by Stalin to make a sharp turn to the Left. Soviets, inadmissible in May, were in July proclaimed the immediate task. Prestige, however, had to he maintained. The first thing to do was to throw the blame on the leadership in China, which was condemned root and branch. Bucharin did the dirty work and let loose a stream of abuse on them. A new representative was sent to replace Borodin. Telegrams from Moscow called a hasty conference. A new leadership was set up and the course set for mass revolt. The Left Opposition raised a protest at the cruel massacres and disillusionment which would inevitably follow. They were now violently abused as liquidationists. On August 9 a joint session of the Central Committee and of the C.P.S.U. made the following declaration: “The Chinese Revolution is not only not on the ebb, but has entered upon a new higher stage ... Not only is the strength of the toiling masses of China not yet exhausted, but it is precisely only now that it is beginning to manifest itself in a new advance of the revolutionary struggle.” On this dreadful orientation the defeated revolution was pounded to pieces. Rising after rising, doomed in advance to failure, destroyed some of the finest and bravest of the Chinese revolutionaries. On September 19, after two risings had been crushed, the Kuomintang was abandoned at last. But Moscow still preached the rising of the revolution to a higher stage and inevitable victory.

All in China who opposed this policy were driven ruthlessly out of the party. In Moscow the Left Opposition were jeered at as counter-revolutionary. This was the Leninism that led to the ill-fated Canton insurrection in December 1927, when, without preparation, without a sign as yet of a mass peasant rising, with thousands of Kuomintang soldiers in and near Canton, the Communist International encouraged the workers to seize the city which they held for two or three days. The insurrection had been timed to coincide with the Fifteenth Congress of the Russian Party, where Stalin was expounding the mistakes of the Opposition. Over seven thousand workers paid with their lives for this last Stalinist adventure. From first to last 100,000 Chinese workers and peasants lost their lives, making the Kuomintang revolution.

Some Communists who escaped from the Canton Commune with other remnants of the revolutionary movement, insurgent peasant-bands and ex-Kuomintang soldiers, raised the countryside in Central China and formed Soviet China. With the proletarian movement dead the Chinese Peasant Soviets were bound to be defeated, but it took Chiang Kai-Shek six years to do it and demonstrated what could have been accomplished in China by a combination of proletariat and peasantry. The remains of the Red Army are now wandering somewhere in North China. While Red China lasted, the Communist International, in writings and speeches, trumpeted. Not so Stalin. With the defeat of the revolution his open role as revolutionary strategist came to a final end. In the second volume of his collected speeches there is only one direct reference to the revolution. It is in the best Stalinist vein, and deserves consideration. It is one of those revealing statements which explain so many things in the history of Soviet Russia. “It is said that already a Soviet government has been formed there. If that is true, I think it is nothing to be surprised at. There can be no doubt that only the Soviets can save China from final collapse and beggary.” [17] Thus the leader of the international proletariat in his political report to the Sixteenth Congress. But not only on revolution in China has he been silent. Never since has he openly taken upon himself the responsibility for the policy of the International. He could send the Opposition to Siberia and pass innumerable resolutions condemning their policy and justifying his own, which would have been successful but for the mistakes of the leadership in China. But nothing could wipe away his responsibility for the hideous failure there, and he would not run that risk again.

What explanation can be given of the policy in China between 1923 and 1927? Bucharin's share in it may be neglected. Stalin has used one after the other of the old Soviet leaders as his mouth-piece: and then cast them aside if the policy failed. The policy was his. What lay behind it? Not conscious sabotage.

That was to come later. Stalin spent enormous sums in China. He knew that a successful Chinese Revolution would enormously strengthen Russia in the Far East, the failure would leave Russia in the position she is in today, with the Chinese Eastern Railway lost, threatened by both China and Japan. He wanted a Chinese Revolution, but he had no belief in the capacity of the Chinese masses to make one. This man of steel, fierce Bolshevik, etc., is first and foremost a bureaucrat (and is therefore the representative man of the Russian bureaucracy). Like Blum, Citrine, Wels, Leipart, Otto Bauer and the other Mensheviks, he believes in the bourgeoisie far more than he believes in the proletariat. He was prepared in 1917 to support the Russian bourgeoisie rather than depend upon the international proletariat. In 1925–1927, despite all facts and warnings, he stuck to Chiang Kai-Shek and Wang Chin-Wei. The consequences, however, did not lead him to recognise error. It had the opposite result. The bureaucracy now not only in theory but in fact turned its back on the revolution. Henceforward the International had one exclusive purpose – the defence of the U.S.S.R.

Footnotes

[1] He (Mackinley) has told us himself. See Imperialism, the Last Stage of Capitalism, by Lenin, in the Little Lenin Library. Martin Lawrence, p. 126.

[2] See p. 63.

[3] Lenin's thesis to the Second Congress should be read in full, in order to understand how clearly he saw the main business of the Chinese proletarian party to be opposition to the bourgeois leadership.

[4] Leninism, Vol. I, p. 278

[5] He died in March 1925, and later, as the Chinese bourgeoisie was revealed in its true colours, Madame Sun became a Communist.

[6] As has been pointed out the Social Democrats do more; they even organise and lead it.

[7] The manifesto appears in full in The Communist, March, 1927.

[8] Stalin's representatives in Shanghai stated explicitly Chiang's treacherous reason for so doing.

[9] Problems of the Chinese Revolution, by L. Trotsky, Pioneer Publishers, New York. The letter is printed as an appendix. Its authenticity cannot be doubted, for Andrews, the British Stalinist, quotes from it (most probably unwittingly) in Where is Trotsky Going? by R.F. Andrews, p. 57. Cp. Problems, p. 404. See also note on p. 256 of this book.

[10] International Press Correspondence. French edition, March 13, 1927.

[11] This narrative Trotsky, who is our authority here, claims was told to the sixteenth session of the XV Congress of the C.P.S.U., December 11, 1927, by Chitarov, home from China. Stalin had the most damaging passages deleted from the minutes and Trotsky quotes the pages, 32 and 33, of the chief omissions. The fanatical obedience of the leadership was due to the prestige of Stalin as representative of the Russian Revolution and the strong backbone of control from above in the International. We shall see it even more strikingly and with more disastrous consequences in Germany, 1930–33.

[12] International Press Correspondence, April 14, 1927.

[13] International Press Correspondence, April 14, 1927.

[14] He made his soldiers sing Methodist hymns every day, and say grace at meals. America, it was stated, backed him.

[15] Minutes of the Plenum, German edition, Hamburg-Berlin 1928, p. 66. See Third International after Lenin, by L. Trotsky, p. 840

[16] Problems of the Chinese Revolution, pp. 102 and 103.

[17] Leninism, Vol. II, p. 318.