Source: http://marxists.anu.edu.au/archive/marx/works/1843/critique-hpr/ch03.htm
Timestamp: 2013-05-25 15:28:47
Document Index: 89149004

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 287', '§ 288', '§ 256', '§ 251', '§ 289', '§ 289', '§ 290', '§ 292', '§ 295', '§ 296', '§ 297', '§ 297', '§ 287', '§ 288', '§ 289', '§ 289', '§ 291', '§ 292', '§ 293', '§ 294', '§ 295', '§ 297', '§ 297', '§ 308']

§ 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
This is a simple description of the empirical situation in some
§ 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.
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
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
§ 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.
§ 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 I 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
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.
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 abstractions 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.
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
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
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
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 1 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
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
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.]
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.
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
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
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
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.
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 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
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'.