Marx's Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right

Hegel's theory of the state and of law rests on speculative philosophy. His philosophy of right and his logic occupy the foreground and the background respectively: the philosophy of right is public or explicit, the foreground display of mental operations; the logic is secret or obscure, the background program of mental operations. Whether it is the evolution of the three ethical substances—family, civil society, and state—or the operation of the three political powers—the princely power, the administrative power, and the legislative power—both are linked to the three logical moments of individuality, particularity, and universality. Therefore, Marx's *Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right* continually exposes the contradiction between Hegel's philosophy of right, that is, its "content," and his logic, that is, its "mode of consideration or mode of linguistic expression" and its "mode of logical inference."

黑格尔的国家学和法学依据的是思辨哲学。他的法哲学和逻辑学分别位于前台和后台：法哲学是公开的或明述的，是思维操作的前台显示；逻辑学是秘密的或隐晦的，是思维操作的后台程序。无论是家庭—市民社会—国家三大伦理实体的演进，还是王权—行政权—立法权三大政治权力的运作，都与个别性—特殊性—普遍性三大逻辑环节相关联。因此，马克思的《黑格尔法哲学批判》不断揭示黑格尔的法哲学亦即“内容”与其逻辑学亦即“考察方式或语言表达方式”“逻辑推理方式”之间的矛盾。

At that time Marx had not yet freed himself from the influence of Hegel's speculative philosophy, and so his critique of Hegel's philosophy of right was conducted not outside speculative philosophy but within it. What Marx and Hegel shared was the demand of the logic of universality. In Hegel's *Elements of the Philosophy of Right*, this demand is the state—the ethical substance of universality. But whether it is the monarch, the bureaucratic estate, the landed estate, or the commercial and industrial estate, as private estates within civil society, none of them can safeguard the public interest of the state; they can only safeguard their own private interests, or even turn public property into private property. In Marx's critique of the philosophy of right, not only is civil society the foundation of the state, but the estate of proletarian labor is also the foundation of the other estates of civil society. This is precisely the crucial step by which Marx took leave of Hegel.

当时马克思还没有摆脱黑格尔思辨哲学的影响，因而马克思对黑格尔的法哲学批判不是在思辨哲学外，而是在思辨哲学内进行的。马克思和黑格尔的共同诉求是普遍性的逻辑学诉求。在黑格尔的法哲学原理那里，这一诉求就是国家——普遍性伦理实体。但是，无论君王、官僚等级、地产等级还是工商等级，作为市民社会中的私人等级，他们都不能维护国家公共利益，都只会维护各自私人利益甚至化公为私。在马克思的法哲学批判这里，不仅市民社会是国家的基础，而且无产劳动等级也是市民社会其他等级的基础。这正是马克思告别黑格尔的关键一步。

Hegel divides the political state into three substantive distinctions: the legislative power, which determines and establishes the universal; the administrative power, which subordinates particular spheres and individual affairs to the universal; and the princely power, which is the subjectivity of the final decision of the will. He advocates "constitutional monarchy," "bureaucratic politics," and "the assembly of estates." Through his critique of Hegel, Marx, in direct opposition, establishes the principle of popular sovereignty and implements this principle in the administrative and legislative powers. Marx's critique shows that Hegel, in his philosophy of right, violates the presuppositions of his logic; this is the paradox of the foreground display and the background program.

黑格尔把政治国家分为三种实体性的差别：规定和确立普遍物的立法权、使各个特殊领域和个别事件从属于普遍物的行政权和作为意志最后决断的主观性的王权，主张“君主立宪”“官僚政治”和“等级会议”。马克思通过对黑格尔的批判，针锋相对地确立了人民主权原则并且将这一原则落实在行政权和立法权中。马克思的批判表明，黑格尔在法哲学中违背了逻辑学的设定，这也就是前台显示和后台程序的悖论。

The princely power is originally a singularity, yet it contains the three moments of the whole. This is Hegel's organicism, which holds that the princely power is the seed of state power, containing the other two powers within itself. On the one hand, the constitution is said to derive the three powers; on the other hand, the princely power is said to derive the other powers. This falls into paradox. Hegel's philosophy of right, out of political position, proceeds not from logical deduction but from actuality. The actual state system of Prussia determines the direction of Hegel's theory of the state, to the point that even the inversion of subject and predicate is accommodated: in the relation between the monarch and the state, the state (the "great word") is originally the subject, and the monarch (the "small word") is originally the predicate; but Hegel also makes the monarch equivalent to the state, making the small word the subject. This opportunism of Hegel's is by no means rare; its rule is that whenever his logic conflicts with actuality, the logic submits to the philosophy of right, and the background submits to the foreground.

王权原本是单一性的，但包含了整体的三个环节。这就是黑格尔的机体论，认为王权是国家权力的种子，包含了其他两种权力。一方面说宪法派生三种权力，另一方面又说王权派生其他权力。这就陷入悖论之中。黑格尔法哲学出于政治立场，不是从逻辑推导，而是从现实出发。普鲁士现实国家制度决定了黑格尔的国家理论走向，甚至在主谓颠倒上都变通了，在王和国家的关系上，国家（大词）原本是主词，王（小词）原本是谓词；但黑格尔又让王等同于国家，让小词做主词。黑格尔的这种机会主义屡见不鲜，其规律是每当自己的逻辑与现实相悖时，逻辑学就服从法哲学，后台就服从前台。

Hegel's deification of the princely power is a typical expression of his statism. His inversion is obvious: even according to the organicist view, the people are the whole, and the monarch is only a part. But Hegel inverts this common sense: the monarch is the key, the hinge by which the people become a whole; the monarch is not "derived" from the people but "originates" from himself; since the state is the "earthly god," the monarch is the "true God-man" and the "true incarnation of the Idea," and absolute monarchy is grounded in the absolute state; without the monarch, the people are "a formless mass" or "an abstraction without determination." Hegel even reduces the princely power to "the contingency of the will, namely caprice, and the contingency of nature, namely birth," and endows the monarch with the privilege of "bearing no responsibility." Of course, the "monarch" Hegel explicates is not the traditional patriarchal king but the modern constitutional king. Yet Hegel's advocacy of constitutional monarchy is half-hearted, leading at every turn toward absolute monarchy.

黑格尔神化王权是其国家主义的典型表现。他的颠倒是显而易见的：即使按照机体主义观点，人民也是整体，君主只是部分。但黑格尔却把这个常识颠倒为：君主是人民成为整体的关键、枢纽；君主不是“派生”于人民，而是“起源”于自身；既然国家是“地上的神”，君主就是“真正的神人”和“观念的真正化身”，绝对君主是以绝对国家为基础的；没有君主，人民就是“无定形的东西”或“没有规定性的抽象”。黑格尔甚至将王权归结为“意志的偶然性即任意和自然的偶然性即出生”，并赋予君主“不承担责任”的特权。当然，黑格尔阐释的“君主”不是传统的宗法的国王，而是现代的立宪的国王。但黑格尔的君主立宪主张是不彻底的，时时处处通向君主专制。

Marx criticizes Hegel for reducing the essence of the "particular person" to the natural "body." But "social quality" is "political quality," not "private quality." In this way, Marx accomplishes a re-inversion of Hegel's inversion; on nearly every question Marx comes into conflict with Hegel: it is not the people who depend on the monarch, but the monarch who depends on the people; sovereignty belongs not to the monarch but to the people. Of course, all these discussions remain enveloped in speculative philosophy, entangled in the conceptual framework of whole and part, genus and species, content and form. His comparison of constitutional government with religion, and even more of democracy with Christianity, undeniably leaves the traces of the Young Hegelians' critique of religion and politics, and bears the stamp of Feuerbach's naturalism and humanism. But Marx is after all more radical than they are: he holds that popular sovereignty is exclusive and non-negotiable.

马克思批评黑格尔把“特殊的人格”的本质归结为自然“肉体”。但“社会特质”是“政治特质”，不是“私人特质”。这样，马克思就实现了黑格尔颠倒的再颠倒，马克思几乎在一切问题上与黑格尔相冲突：不是人民依赖于君主，而是君主依赖于人民；主权不属于君主，而属于人民。当然，所有这些论述依然笼罩在思辨哲学中，纠缠于整体和部分、类和种、内容和形式的概念框架中。他把宪制和宗教相比较，更把民主制和基督教相比较，无疑留下了青年黑格尔派宗教批判和政治批判的痕迹，打上了费尔巴哈自然主义和人本主义的烙印。但是，马克思毕竟比他们更激进，他认为人民主权是专一的和排他的。

Hegel places the administrative power between the princely power and the legislative power, which lands him in an insoluble self-contradiction: on the one hand, the administrative power is subordinate to the legislative power of the universal; on the other hand, the administrative power is subordinate to the princely power, the subjectivity of the final decision of the will. According to Hegel's dialectic, the universal generates the particular and the singular; therefore, the administrative power, as particularity, ought to be subordinate to the legislative power, as universality. But according to Hegel's statism, the singular instead becomes the decisive moment of the universal and the particular; therefore, the administrative power, as particularity, is instead subordinate to the princely power, as singularity. The bureaucrats are entrusted by the monarch and execute the monarch's decisions; the administrative power is dependent on the princely power. The principle of bureaucratic politics is the derivation of the principle of monarchical sovereignty that conforms to actuality (history) and to reason (logic).

黑格尔将行政权置于王权和立法权之间，这就陷入了不可解决的自相矛盾之中：一方面，行政权从属于普遍物的立法权；另一方面，行政权又从属于作为意志最后决断的主观性的王权。根据黑格尔的辩证法，普遍派生特殊、单一，因此，作为特殊性的行政权，本应从属于作为普遍性的立法权。但是，根据黑格尔的国家主义，单一反而变成了普遍和特殊的决定性的环节，因此，作为特殊性的行政权，反而从属于作为单一性的王权。官僚是君主委托、执行君主决断的，行政权依附于王权。官僚政治原则是君主主权原则之合乎现实（历史）和合乎理性（逻辑）的推导。

Marx criticizes what Hegel calls "bureaucratic politics" as "state formalism" and "the state as formalism." His critique is penetrating, exposing the hierarchical structure of bureaucracy, the privatization of the state, and its secrecy and closure as opposed to the openness and publicity of the democratic principle. Hegel's hope that the bureaucratic stratum holding the administrative power would be the universal estate (the middle estate) embodying the spirit of the state is sheer fantasy. For the bureaucratic stratum is a private estate rooted in civil society. The entire bureaucratic stratum treats the state not as public property but as private property. How is bureaucratic politics to be eradicated? Marx is still confined within Hegelian speculative philosophy, entangled in the conceptual circle of the universal and the particular. But since Marx has established the principle of popular sovereignty, he has negated the princely power and carried the principle of popular sovereignty through into the administrative power. This is popular self-government.

马克思批评黑格尔所谓“官僚政治”是“国家形式主义”“作为形式主义的国家”。他的批判可谓入木三分，揭露了官僚制的科层制结构、国家的私有财产化、与公开性和开放性的民主制原则相对立的秘密性和封闭性。黑格尔指望执掌行政权的官僚阶层是普遍等级（中间等级）体现国家精神，这完全是妄想。因为官僚阶层是根源于市民社会的私人等级。整个官僚阶层不是把国家当作公共财产，而是把国家当作私有财产。如何铲除官僚政治？马克思还是囿于黑格尔式的哲学思辨，纠缠于普遍和特殊的概念循环中。但是，马克思既然确立了人民主权原则，就否决了王权，并将人民主权原则贯彻于行政权之中。这也就是人民自治。

Hegel went so far as to degrade legislative power to the status of advisory power, just as he degraded executive power to the status of implementing power, in order to guarantee the final decision-making power of the royal prerogative, but he did not advocate monarchical constituent power either. Of course, since Hegel's statism exalted monarchical sovereignty, it was bound to oppose popular sovereignty. In Hegel's view, the people were a "mass" and a "rabble," possessing only "inorganic opinions and wishes," and only the estates could constitute the "organic state." Hegel took the estate element as the "middle term": the estates mediated not only between government and people but also between the royal prerogative and civil society. It was an empirical particularity that avoided the two extremes of empirical singularity and empirical universality. Among these, in order to restrict the participation of the commercial and industrial estate in politics, Hegel also used the landed estate as a mediating intermediary, a "middle term of the middle term." In the architecture of legislative power, representation presupposed the estate system. On the one hand, the executive power was structured as bureaucracy; on the other hand, the legislative power was structured as an assembly of estates (the commercial and industrial estate element constituting the lower house, the landed estate constituting the upper house). The monarch entrusted the bureaucracy with executing his own decisions; the commercial and industrial estate in civil society delegated estate representatives to express its own will indirectly; the landed estate expressed its own will directly; the bureaucratic estate constituted the universal estate, while the commercial and industrial estate element and the landed estate embodied the political efficacy and political significance of the private estates. But in actual operation, all estate representatives or estates did not strive for their respective estate interests but rather safeguarded the interests of the state, and in the final analysis safeguarded the interests of the king. Hegel's intention was, through this division of estates, to let the bureaucratic stratum grasp the executive power and the aristocratic stratum grasp the legislative power as far as possible, so as ultimately to uphold the royal prerogative.

黑格尔不惜将立法权降格为咨议权，正像他将行政权降格为执行权一样，以便保证王权的最后决断权，但他也没有主张君主制宪权。当然，黑格尔的国家主义既然高扬君主主权，那就必须反对人民主权。在黑格尔心目中，人民是“群体”和“群氓”，只有“无机的见解和希求”，唯有各等级才能构成“有机国家”。黑格尔以等级要素为“中词”，各等级不仅在政府和人民之间起中介作用，而且在王权和市民社会之间起中介作用。它是避免经验单一性和经验普遍性两个极端的经验特殊性。其中，为了限制工商等级参政，黑格尔还以地产等级为中介的中介、“中词的中词”。在立法权的架构中，代议制以等级制为前提。一方面把行政权构架成官僚政治，另一方面则把立法权构架成等级会议（工商等级要素构成下院，地产等级构成上院）。君王委托官僚执行自身决断，市民社会中的工商等级委派等级代表间接表达自身意愿，地产等级直接表达自身意愿，官僚等级构成普遍等级，工商等级要素以及地产等级体现私人等级的政治效能和政治意义。但是，在实际运行中，所有等级代表或者等级不是争取各自等级利益，而是维护国家利益，归根结底是在维护国王利益。黑格尔的意图就是通过这一等级划分，尽可能地让官僚阶层掌握行政权，让贵族阶层掌握立法权，以便最终维护王权。

Marx criticized Hegel for passing off the private estate as the universal estate, holding that the "modern state" was a false, illusory universal form. The conflict between legislative power and the constitution was thus resolved: the people grasp legislative power and establish the constitution. But Marx's so-called democracy was different from representation. To be sure, he affirmed the historical progressiveness of representation, but representation was indirect democracy, whereas Marx demanded direct democracy, namely self-government by the people, and even advocated that each estate legislate for itself. Marx maintained that all power belongs to the people, whether legislative, executive, or judicial (merged into the executive). He therefore opposed the bicameral system (a house of aristocrats and a house of the people) and advocated a unicameral system; he advocated "extending the franchise and making it as universal as possible," that is, "unrestricted election and eligibility for election."

马克思批评黑格尔将私人等级冒充为普遍等级，认为“现代国家”是一种虚假的、虚幻的普遍形式。立法权和宪制的冲突就解决了：人民掌握立法权，设定宪制。但是，马克思所谓民主制与代议制是不同的。当然，他肯定了代议制的历史进步性，但代议制是间接民主，马克思却要求直接民主，就是人民自治，甚至主张各个等级自行立法。马克思主张一切权力属于人民，无论立法权、行政权还是司法权（合并于行政权）。因此他反对两院制（贵族院和众议院），主张一院制；主张“扩大选举并尽可能普及选举”即“不受限制的选举和被选举”。

In short, both Marx and Hegel needed to resolve a fundamental question of the philosophy of right or the philosophy of the state: who represents the universal and common interest of the state? On the one hand, Marx refuted Hegel's proposal of the monarch, the bureaucratic estate, the landed estate, and the commercial and industrial estate as the solution; on the other hand, he put forward his own proposal of the propertyless laboring estate as the solution. Only, at this moment the propertyless laboring estate was still a speculative category, a result of logical derivation, not yet endowed with the practical and historical significance that the proletariat later acquired. Once the principle of popular sovereignty was grounded on the propertyless laboring estate, with the propertyless laboring estate as the subject of the people, the principle of the dictatorship of the proletariat was on the verge of emerging.

总之，马克思和黑格尔都需要解决一个法哲学或国家哲学的根本性问题：谁来代表国家的普遍和公共利益？马克思一方面批驳了黑格尔以君王、官僚等级、地产等级、工商等级为解决方案的主张，另一方面又提出了自己以无产劳动等级为解决方案的主张。只是无产劳动等级此时此刻还是一个思辨范畴，是逻辑推导的结果，尚未赋予后来无产阶级那样的实践性和历史性意义。一旦人民主权原则奠定于无产劳动等级基础上，以无产劳动等级为人民主体，无产阶级专政原则就呼之欲出了。

(The author is a professor in the Department of Philosophy at Capital Normal University)

（作者系首都师范大学哲学系教授）

Online editor: Tongxin

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