Marx, Karl Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right

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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 r�publique pr�tre.
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 [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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