I. Mutual recognition and social contract

In one of the Phenomenology of Spirit’s most influential chapters, Hegel argues that self-consciousness is an originally social phenomenon. More specifically, he claims that human beings are only really conscious of themselves once they recognise another human being and are recognised in return. Individual selfhood is not an immediate ontological asset, as it were, but the result of a mutual process of recognition.

Afterwards, this momentous claim is further developed, and self-consciousness is shown to be not merely the product of two mutually recognising individuals, but the necessary result of a universal web of recognition. As it turns out, ‘it is the nature of humanity to press onward to agreement with others’ and human beings really only exist ‘in an achieved community of minds’ (PhG: §69).Footnote ² In Hegel’s vocabulary, this discovery amounts to the acknowledgement that self-consciousness is an abstract semblance of Spirit (Geist), the ‘“I” that is “We” and “We” that is “I”’ (PhG: §177) and the remaining course of the progression will see the ‘spiritual’ link between subjectivity and intersubjectivity materialise into increasingly sophisticated modes of social recognition. In its mature form, Spirit is revealed as the basis of a universal social order with historical, cultural, political, religious and aesthetic implications.

Hegel’s collective account of subjectivity is also the main theme of his Philosophy of Right. Here, however, what is at stake is no longer consciousness as such, but the notion of freedom in its concrete actualisation. The progression starts with freedom in its simplest form—namely, the individual freedom to do what one pleases—and moves on to the legal notions of right and contract and to the moral notions of good and evil. But although legal and moral considerations are necessary to the full comprehension of personal freedom, they are still mere abstractions. If freedom is to be grasped in its concrete or rational form, it must be revealed as an ethical phenomenon, embedded in the laws and institutions of communal life.

Sittlichkeit is Hegel’s name for the social actualisation of freedom, and its first embodiment is family life, wherein each person is immediately recognised and respected as a member. The family’s ultimate aim, however, is the education of children, that is, the transition from a system of recognition based on love and kinship to one based on free personhood and legal responsibility. The logical outcome of family life is the universal Kampfplatz of civil society, in which every individual counts as a citizen and is thus equally free to particularise his or her freedom. But although civil society represents a step further in the path towards the full actualisation of freedom, it also demonstrates the necessarily mediated nature of freedom. Since each person’s rights are entirely dependent on other people’s rights, the essence of freedom lies in the dialectical conflict between particularity, or private interest, and universality, or the common good.

In modern societies, although most people are primarily concerned with their private affairs, each person is involuntarily tied to ‘a system of complete interdependence, wherein the livelihood, welfare and rightful existence [rechtliches Dasein] of one individual are interwoven with the livelihood, welfare and rights of all’ (PR: §183). Yet although this system amounts to a social fact, it can nonetheless be interpreted in very different ways. Indeed, if the need for mutual recognition and cooperation that defines civil society is construed merely as the necessary means for particularising one’s freedom, then the common good is nothing more than the total sum of every individual particularisation of freedom. It is the product of an ‘invisible hand’, whose actions are the result of the need to accommodate one’s private interests to the collective constraints of public life.

This account of the common good presupposes a liberal understanding of human relations in which ‘particularity, restricted by universality, is the only standard whereby each particular individual promotes his welfare’ (PR: §182A). Granted, the liberal emphasis on individual freedom does not exclude the existence of a state, nor does it suggest that the welfare of a single individual or group should be placed above the common good. However, it does mean that the latter is not cherished in itself, nor pursued for itself. In this scenario, respect for the common good is the result of a compromise: it is both a restriction of individual freedom and the condition for individual freedom to exist in the first place. In either case, however, there is no state in the Hegelian sense of the word, but merely an inflated version of civil society, in which particularity has been illegitimately raised to universality.

This kind of logic is the defining feature of social contract theories, and the reason why Hegel dismisses them as ‘superficial’ (PR: §75A) and destined to be ‘repudiated by the philosophical concept’ (PR: §29R).Footnote ³ For Hobbes or Locke, the founding element of human sociality is the singular self. In this atomistic scheme, personal freedom is construed as an immediate or natural attribute, posited alongside the natural freedom of others. One’s free will is therefore limited by the free will of others, and this limitation is only accepted in view of the order and security required to pursue one’s personal interests. In the Hegelian scheme, on the contrary, the starting point is sociality itself. Hegel aims to show that mutual recognition is not the result of a sacrifice, but the very process whereby freedom comes into being. His whole argument consists in showing that every individual account of free will amounts to an abstraction, falsely acknowledged as concrete.

In the Phenomenology of Spirit, this central argument is linked to Hegel’s characterization of self-consciousness as the product of a universal process of mutual recognition. In the Philosophy of Right, this same process is further defined as the ultimate truth of civil society, i.e., the state. This does not mean, however, that the previous stages of the progression are entirely misguided. Right, morality, family life and civil society do provide important insights into the nature and organisation of a free society. But inasmuch as all of those stages retain traces of the individualism favoured by social contract theories, they are still mere abstractions. Just as sociality is the ground zero of human freedom, so too is the state the bedrock of social life—whether or not it is recognised as such.

Hegel’s conception of the state is directly opposed to the traditional medieval distinction between natural and positive law, reiterated by Hobbes’s distinction between internal and external duties (e.g., Hobbes Reference Hobbes1998: 105), or by Kant’s contrast between the realms of legality and morality.Footnote ⁴ In these and similar models, the state is construed not as the coming-to-be of freedom, but as an external layer added to a more primitive substratum of individual beliefs. Although a state is indeed necessary, and although its role is precisely to make sure that freedom is recognised and respected, public laws and regulations apply to the external aspects of human freedom, and not to its inner core.

This kind of approach is found in Rawls’s theory of justice, and particularly in his idea of an ‘overlapping consensus’. To be fair, the Rawlsian conception of the common good is in many ways more robust than the one proffered by classical social contract theories. Instead of sacrificing their freedom for purely pragmatic reasons, citizens are led to ‘desire for its own sake a social world in which they, as free and equal, can cooperate with others on terms all can accept’ (Rawls Reference Rawls1996: 50). Yet this definition of social cooperation is once again the result of an atomistic understanding of freedom (Buchwalter Reference Buchwalter2012: 98ff.). The common good is really only the common ground agreed to by citizens, and follows from the immediate assumption that the different conceptions of freedom and happiness found in modern societies are ultimately irreconcilable and must be ‘contained’ by a minimalist account of social relations. Moreover, this kind of solution is not as liberal as it may seem, for it regards this specific definition of common ground as a condition for the creation of any common ground. As Andrew Buchwalter points out, ‘a political philosophy focused on an overlapping consensus bars from the outset those doctrines whose incommensurability precludes participation in a consensus predicated on a doctrine’s ability to share “common ground”’ (Buchwalter Reference Buchwalter2012: 99). In other words, an overlapping consensus only extends to those citizens who endorse the definition of freedom and social cooperation as the result of an overlapping consensus.

Hegel’s position is of course very different. He argues that freedom is not achieved despite the differences arising from different conceptions of happiness and welfare, but precisely because of them. Freedom is the product of these differences and can only be truly actualised within a higher and more comprehensive account of social relations. This does not mean, however, that the Hegelian state is one in which difference and conflict are eliminated, and everyone is led to pursue the same interests and to endorse the same definition of happiness. On the contrary, Hegel’s state, regardless of the concrete political structure laid out in the Philosophy of Right, is best construed as the universal and never-ending process whereby regional or one-sided versions of freedom are confronted with one another and dialectically subsumed under more comprehensive and sophisticated versions of freedom. Accordingly, the stability of the Hegelian state is greatly dependent on legislative assemblies and public debates whose main role is precisely to ensure that the particular and universal dimensions of freedom are adequately harmonised, and that each citizen views the state simultaneously as the means and the end of his or her actions. If this process is undervalued or fails to keep up with the evolution of social conditions, the concrete bond uniting the citizens and the state will deteriorate and mutual recognition will eventually relapse into a one-sided or undialectical form of sociality—it will return either to the atomism of the liberal model, and perhaps to a complete dissolution of the existing social order, or to an autocratic regime in which individual freedom is replaced by the dictates of an authoritarian state.

II. Individuals, ‘corporations’ and the state

For all of the above reasons, civil society embodies an account of freedom that is still abstract and one-sided. Although most individuals are aware that their happiness and welfare are irrevocably tied to the happiness and welfare of others, this interdependence is viewed as a merely practical necessity. Recognition and cooperation are construed as vehicles and not as aims in themselves. Against this view, Hegel sets about to show that the stage of civil society, when considered in isolation, is both logically inconsistent, for society is by definition a universal or ‘spiritual’ phenomenon, and ultimately untenable, for civil society harbours the principle of its own destruction.

There is an interesting parallel between the Philosophy of Right's dialectic of civil society and the Phenomenology of Spirit's dialectic of self-consciousness. In both cases, the individual logic of desire, self-consciousness’ most primitive form of actualisation, is mediated by labour. In the phenomenological progression, labour enables self-consciousness to rise above the immediate element of nature and natural needs, and to attain the freedom of thought embodied by the stages of stoicism and scepticism. In the context of civil society, labour raises the individual above the immediate element of family life and provides him with the knowledge and skills required to secure his livelihood. Through labour, civil society becomes an increasingly complex system of private needs and private means, mediated by the activity of countless individuals and by the goods produced and exchanged as a result of that activity.

As societies grow, labour becomes increasingly divided and increasingly abstract, which leads to an even greater interdependence of each on all, but also to the rise of social inequalities. Administrative and technological innovations generate overproduction and overpopulation, which in turn favours the growth of unemployment, poverty and social unrest. Hegel’s acute consciousness of the social importance of labour is decisive not only due to its economic implications, notoriously developed by the Marxist tradition, but also to its strictly political meaning. Apart from enabling each citizen to secure his or her immediate livelihood, labour is also the first and most basic source of political recognition. Likewise unemployment and poverty are not simply material plights, but also the most powerful and damning sources of political alienation. According to Hegel, the increase of social inequalities gives rise both to a ‘pauperised rabble’ (Pöbel) and to an elite of overly wealthy people, whose expansion poses a serious danger to the orderly functioning of social institutions (PR: §§240–46). But the problem is not merely economic: the very rich, in monopolising the circuits of production, enjoyment and exchange, tend to take over the running of society and to shape social institutions in their own image. On the other end of the scale, the very poor no longer feel represented or recognised as socially relevant individuals—they no longer ‘count’ or ‘have a say’ in society’s organisation and unfolding.

The idea that social justice depends on a sustainable web of social recognition is the Leitmotiv of Hegel’s entire theory of political representation. When social injustice increases and this web is compromised, the citizens seek the legal protection of public authorities and courts of law. But even though the purpose of these authorities is to ‘actualize and maintain the universal contained within the particularity of civil society’ (PR: §249), their actions and deliberations are ultimately incapable of stopping the rise of inequality and injustice. In Hegel’s eyes, this ineffectiveness is linked, once again, to civil society’s atomistic conception of freedom. Since the whole sphere of social relations is still regarded as a global patchwork of individual, albeit necessarily interdependent life projects, the legal check on inequality and injustice is only the universal means to a particular end.

A truly communal or ‘spiritual’ understanding of freedom entails the replacement of the individual logic of civil society with a new political stage, in which social recognition is acknowledged as an end in itself. In other words, the ‘unconscious necessity’ of recognising other people’s life projects as an essential part of one’s own life project must evolve into a ‘known and thoughtful ethical mode of life’ (PR: §255A). This decisive turning point is mediated by a web of social institutions destined to regulate civil society’s different branches of activity (PR: §§250–56). These institutions, which Hegel refers to, in different contexts, as Korporationen, Genossenschaften or Gemeinden, act as a bridge between the particular interests of each professional group and the universal interests of the state. What brings its members together is no longer simply the abstract universality of right, nor the basic need to ensure one’s livelihood and welfare. The common element is each citizen’s particular skill, rooted on a similar educational path, a common ground of shared interests and the need to overcome similar challenges.

Hegel’s emphasis on the importance of corporations is revealing in a number of ways. When describing the benefits of belonging to a corporation, he highlights the economic and legal protection afforded to each member, but also the pedagogical role of this kind of collectivity. Just like a medieval guild, the corporation provides education and training to its future members, enabling them not only to become successful workers, but also to acknowledge the social and economic relevance of their profession. In the latter sense, the corporation’s role is similar to that of a labour union, a civic association or even a political party, inasmuch as all of these groups stimulate the political awakening and engagement of their members.

The reasons why Hegel locates the birthplace of political consciousness in the corporation are both practical and logical, in the Hegelian sense of the word. On the one hand, the sheer size and complexity of modern societies makes it impossible for individuals to influence on their own the decisions taken at the highest levels of power. The interests and contingencies in play are so vast and differentiated that a direct line of communication between the spheres of private welfare and the common good seems utterly utopian. On the other hand, however, this gap is not simply a quantitative gap, but also—and above all—a qualitative gap. Insofar as the primary focus of individuals is their own particular interest, they are in direct opposition to the state’s universal concerns. In Hegelian logic, this contrast is still an abstract contrast, which must be superseded and raised to a more comprehensive form. Its truth can only emerge once particularity and universality are revealed as the poles of a dialectical opposition, and subsumed under a wider synthetic whole.

In the corporation, the egotistical logic of liberalism is unmasked as the abstract semblance of a truly communitarian or ‘spiritual’ account of freedom. Each member is led to acknowledge that ‘he belongs to a whole which is itself an organ of society in general, and that he is interested in and actively engaged in promoting the less selfish end of this whole’ (PR: §253). As communal ties grow stronger, the qualitative leap achieved within the corporation is extended to the political sphere as a whole, and the stage of civil society passes over into the state. Once again, however, it is important to note that Hegel’s state is not merely the crowning element of a wider political edifice, but the logical outcome, or the truth of the system’s previous stages. The state is the actualisation of the notion of freedom which the previous stages have not been able to accomplish, but each of the previous stages is itself preserved as a necessary moment of the state. Therefore, although every citizen must come to cherish the common good as an end in itself, and although the state is the ultimate embodiment of the common good, the former must not be construed as an absolute power posited alongside individual freedom and demanding blind obedience. ‘The universal does not prevail or achieve completion except along with particular interests and through the cooperation of particular knowing and willing’ (PR: §260). Obedience to the state is grounded in the recognition of the legitimacy of its institutions, which like corporations must succeed in fostering a sense of trust and belonging in the minds of citizens. Hegel’s emphasis on the primacy of the universal will and his (in)famous claims about the divine nature of the state must not overshadow the equally high premium he placed on the state’s ability to incorporate and articulate the welfare of its members. The relationship between the citizens and the state, just like the relationship between the citizens themselves, must be one of mutual recognition. And hence ‘if the subjective aims [of the citizens] are not satisfied, if they do not find that the state as such is the means to their satisfaction, then the footing of the state itself is insecure’ (PR: §265A).

The freedom and stability of the state are dependent on its capacity to harmonise the particular and universal demands of human freedom. And such capacity is in turn conditional on the degree to which local political organs, i.e., the corporations, are able to influence the decisions and deliberations aimed at society as a whole. In Hegel’s state, a constitutional monarchy, this mediation is primarily achieved at the legislative level, which affords the first and most direct point of contact between the particular aims of the citizens and the universal aims of the state.

Hegel entrusts the legislative process to a group of Estates (Stände) representing society’s professional and social sectors. Estates assemblies are the vehicle through which corporate aims gain political relevance, and their deliberations take the form of public debates in which each deputy simultaneously voices the interests and demands of his or her sector and is led to recognise the importance of other sectors and their own interests and demands. Hegel emphasises the publicity of these debates as a means of educating public opinion and incorporating civil society within the political life of the state. However, since he regards the corporation as the minimal unit of political representation, individuals as such have no direct input on the state’s legislation. The Estates are divided into two Houses, whose deputies are either entitled to their position by birth (as in the case of major land owners) or elected by the members of each corporation (as in the case of the business class). Therefore, apart from one’s private wealth, individual access to a legislative position is dependent on one’s professional skills and on the recognition granted by the members of one’s corporation.

The legislative assemblies are subordinated to the state’s executive power, which in turn answers to the will of an individual sovereign. In this tripartite scheme, the vast majority of state decisions are taken at the executive level, by a large group of civil servants (in charge of state departments such as Treasury, Justice, Health, etc.) and higher advisory officials (which may or may not answer to a Chancellor, a Prime Minister or a Ministerial Council). This governing body amounts to a ‘middle class’ (Mittelstand) whose actions and decisions are controlled by the sovereign, but whose real judges are the members of civil society. Indeed, ‘it is on the conduct of officials that there depend not only the contentment of citizens and their trust in the government, but also the execution—or alternatively the distortion and frustration—of state projects’ (PR: §295R). Once again, however, the composition of the governing body is not directly determined by the citizens, as it is up to the sovereign to nominate or dismiss state officials. But Hegel does highlight the fact that in a well-functioning state individuals are not appointed to office on account of their birth or natural inclinations. What is valued is their knowledge and competence, which means that every citizen, provided he or she displays the appropriate skills, can move along the hierarchy of the state.

At the very top of the political ladder, the sovereign embodies the unity of the state. But although his power is hereditary, it is not absolute. Hegel’s monarchy is a constitutional monarchy and its political success is measured precisely by how little the monarch is called upon to decide. In a truly organic state, where the corporate and executive elements are fully harmonised, the monarch is bound only by ‘the concrete content of the counsel he receives, and if the constitution is stable, he has often no more to do than sign his name’ (PR: §279A). As a monarch, he does not count as an individual with particular aims and inclinations, but as a referee whose role is to ensure the efficacy of society’s global web of recognition.

A serious characterization of Hegel’s political system would require a more thorough discussion of the constitutional model expounded in the Philosophy of Right and elsewhere. Yet this brief outline already betrays the awkward contrast between Hegel’s uniquely democratic conception of human freedom, based on the key notions of mutual recognition and political mediation, and the much more conservative, not to say reactionary, vein of some of the central features of his theory of the modern state. One way of dealing with this paradox is to acknowledge that Hegel’s understanding of democracy cannot be measured by our current idea of democracy. His system took shape more than two centuries ago, within a political and historical context radically different from ours. In the early nineteenth century, the Prussian state remained relatively immune to the revolutionary ideals that were gaining ground all over Europe. Following Napoleon’s political decline, the liberal reforms promoted by King Friedrich Wilhelm III were halted and the Congress of Vienna (1815) signalled the restoration of conservatism and the consolidation of monarchic rule.

Hegel’s political writings are particularly revealing of their historical time in that they represent a compromise between two radically different political projects. On the one hand, Hegel’s insistence on the ideal of subjective freedom and his admiration for Napoleon’s civil code place him in the first rank of political modernity. On the other hand, his condemnation of the French revolutionary experience and his mistrust of the English parliamentary system demonstrate his reluctance to acknowledge the democratic changes that would come to dominate modern Europe.Footnote ⁵

The fact that Hegel’s writings are not immune to the political atmosphere of his day is a plausible and frequently invoked justification for his ambiguous approach to democracy. Hegel was no hermit, and his unwillingness to attack the main political tenets of the Prussian regime might indeed have been motivated, at least to a certain extent, by desires to maintain his professional and social position, to elude state censorship, and to avoid other forms of political prosecution.Footnote ⁶

Regardless of these reasons, a more interesting and more fruitful explanation can be found in the system itself, and particularly in Hegel’s complex understanding of the relationship between history and philosophy. In the preface to the Philosophy of Right, he famously states that philosophy is ‘its own time apprehended in thoughts’. As ‘the thought of the world’, philosophy comes on the scene too late to give instruction ‘as to what the world ought to be’ (PR: 16/14). Although these controversial claims should not be taken to mean that Hegel’s philosophy is merely descriptive and devoid of normative or productive value, they do suggest that philosophical ideas cannot be grasped regardless of, or in opposition to, their historical context. In Hegel’s eyes, philosophy is a historical phenomenon just as much as history itself, insofar as it contains an intrinsically rational element, is a philosophical phenomenon. Each philosophical system is ‘the organic shape that Reason has built for itself out of the material [Bauzeug] of a particular age’ (D: 88/19).

Furthermore when discussing the constitution of the modern state, Hegel argues that the question of whether monarchy is better or worse than democracy is an ‘idle question’, since a constitution is not merely a product of thought or deliberation, but the result of a long-lasting and often involuntary historical process. Inasmuch as the form of government of a given society reflects the degree of its political self-awareness—or the degree to which it has raised the notion of freedom—‘every people has the constitution appropriate to it and suitable for it’ (PR: §274R). And hence constitutional changes, when they do occur, are slow and almost imperceptible, gradually shaping a society’s cultural identity.

All of this suggests that the constitutional model developed throughout the Philosophy of Right is not to be construed in abstracto as the best form of government there is, as though such a possibility consisted in a merely utopian scenario, disconnected from the concrete ‘material’ of its particular age. Instead, Hegel’s state should be regarded as the historical-philosophical solution required for the society of his day to acknowledge and actualise the notion of freedom inherent in its immediate, and therefore still unmediated, experience of freedom. But this reading might still be interpreted in two substantially different ways: on the one hand, considering his own historical and cultural context, Hegel might have taken his definition of the modern state to stand for the highest form of freedom available. This does not mean that his system was intended as the concluding chapter in the history of political philosophy, but simply that it had exhausted the material of its own age, and that the development of new and more comprehensive philosophical solutions would necessarily entail the emergence of new historical circumstances. On the other hand, Hegel might have been aware of different and more democratic forms of freedom and yet have judged them too radical to be endorsed and implemented without some form of mediation. In this case, the Philosophy of Right should be read as a political wake up call, whose aim is to lay the historical ground for other, more daring philosophical solutions.

III. Hegel’s critique of representative democracy

The previous possibilities, which at present must be left unexplored, can be complemented by another, perhaps more decisive interpretation of what Adorno called the ‘awkwardly ideological’ nature of the Philosophy of Right (Adorno 2003: 361). Many scholars, including Marx and Adorno himself, have cogently argued that Hegel’s undemocratic solution to the issue of political sovereignty amounts to a betrayal of his own logic, and have attempted to free Hegelianism from Hegel’s historically biased account by showing that the necessary outcome of his political system is a much more robust definition of political participation.

Karl-Heinz Ilting has called attention to the unwarranted inversion of Hegel’s usual dialectical scheme in his exposition of stately powers (Ilting Reference Ilting1976: 105ff.). Instead of starting with the universal element of civil society (thesis), proceeding to the particular medium of government (antithesis) and subsuming both of them under the singular element of sovereignty (synthesis), which might very well be embodied by a democratically elected ruler, Hegel begins with the immediate affirmation of the hereditary power of the monarch and moves down the hierarchical ladder. The synthetic nature of sovereignty is not deduced but presupposed, and the power of the other elements of the state is no longer dialectically necessary. This inversion was emphatically rejected in Marx’s critique of the Philosophy of Right, where monarchy is defined as ‘democracy in contradiction with itself’. Whereas ‘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’ (Marx Reference Marx2009: 29).

Bruce Gilbert, who also quotes the previous passage, has recently attempted to bring out the democratic core of Hegel’s system by reconstructing his theory of political representation (Gilbert Reference Gilbert2013: 186–282). His starting point is Marx’s denunciation of the naïveté of Hegel’s constitutional scheme, which the growth of capitalism would prove disconcertingly accurate. According to Hegel, ‘sovereignty working on the middle class from above, and rights of corporations working on it from below, are the institutions which effectually prevent it from acquiring the isolated position of an aristocracy and using its education and skill as means to arbitrary domination’ (PR: §297). But since democratic representation reaches only as far as the corporation, this bidirectional scheme is still vulnerable to the inequality and injustice it seeks to contain. With the quick demise of corporations and the expansion of liberal capitalism and its ruthless logic of accumulation, profit and exploitation, the inadequacy of Hegel’s constitutional architecture would soon become apparent, and his universal web of recognition would relapse into atomism and social injustice.

But if Hegel was aware, perhaps more than any of his contemporaries, of the importance of an organically articulated polity, in which everyone’s rights are necessarily dependent on the active recognition of the rights of others, why was he so wary of more inclusive forms of political representation? Apart from the strictly historical reasons for his endorsement of a constitutional monarchy, Hegel also had philosophical reasons for rejecting the universal principle of popular suffrage. Long before the publication of the Philosophy of Right, his views on political Repräsentation were summed up in a short essay dating from 1798 and advocating a reform of the municipal constitution of his native town, Württermberg. Although the essay’s very title claimed that ‘the magistrates must be elected by the citizens’ (Daß die Magistrate von den Bürgern gewählt werden müssen), Hegel was already convinced that the latter cannot be considered actual political agents as long as they are incapable of rising above ‘their own small interest’ (M: 3/270). The people as such, prior to the concrete element of communal life, are a merely abstract entity, which must be rendered actual through the mediation of collective social structures. Yet despite Hegel’s acknowledgement of the undemocratic nature of Württemberg’s constitution, and even though the main principles of his corporate doctrine are already present in this early essay, the constitutional reform he advocates comes down to placing the right to vote ‘in the hands of a body of enlightened and upright men’ (M: 5/273) whose mode of election is left undetermined.

In the Philosophy of Right, Hegel’s critique of representative democracy is backed by an even stronger insistence on the foundational role of political mediation. The principle of popular suffrage, he argues, assumes that ‘everyone knows from the start what is best for the state’ (PR: §315A), which means that the individual act of voting is merely the direct materialisation of an abstract political standpoint. True political consciousness, on the other hand, requires that one’s immediate or abstract standpoint be confronted with, and ultimately shaped by, the standpoints of others. And this can only happen within the collective element of corporate life.

For Hegel, there is no political consciousness without mutual recognition. And popular suffrage, extended to the entire political sphere, is in many ways the direct translation of the atomism taken for granted by social contract theories. Each citizen, instead of being an ‘I that is We’, becomes a discrete unit who, added to other discrete units, forms a global but merely arithmetical ‘We’. In this ‘a-social’ or ‘pre-social’ mode, the people are a mere aggregate, ‘a formless mass whose commotion and activity can therefore only be elementary, irrational, wild and frightful’ (PR: §303R). It was precisely to overcome this irrationality, as we have seen, that Hegel devised a system of Estates assemblies wherein political representation is dependent on corporate affiliation. In his constitutional model, the political process is from the very start a recognitional process, grounded on two democratic pillars, namely the mutual recognition of corporate members, which leads to the election of the deputies of the Lower House, and the public debates held therein, which allow the citizens to follow and survey the deputies’ decisions.

Regarding the first of these pillars, Hegel envisages the act of voting not as the affirmation of an individual position, but as the result of a social process. When citizens vote as the members of an undifferentiated crowd, although they may profess their commitment to the common good, what is really at stake for them is their own self-interest, immediately contrasted with the self-interest of others.Footnote ⁷ Conversely, when they vote as the members of a corporation, their appreciation of the communal implications of their choices is much greater and their standpoint is no longer that of mere atoms. Moreover, in Hegel’s system, citizens are not called upon to elect a universal governing body, abstractly concerned with the welfare of society as a whole, but a group of deputies representing each particular branch of society, and whose activities and merits can be assessed much more directly.

Secondly, Hegel’s public assemblies are the arena where the representatives of each branch of society debate with one another and strive to accommodate their different interests. It is also the place where society in general becomes acquainted with the work and importance of each professional sphere. Of course one may praise Hegel’s concern for political pluralism and still maintain that public debates are not incompatible with popular elections, and that the collective discussion of political ideas can play an equally, if not more important role in a society that embraces the principle of universal suffrage. But Hegel’s main point is that these debates, unlike the ones held in a national assembly, are directly anchored on a collective history of social and professional recognition. The deputies do not speak as representatives of the people in general, but as spokesmen of concrete social organisms, whose interests they were called to defend.

For all of these reasons, Hegel regards the endorsement of mass elections as a step back rather than a step forward in the dialectical path towards the actualisation of freedom:

In addition to this main objection, Hegel also contends that in large states, since ‘the casting of a single vote is of no significance where there is a multitude of electors’ (PR: §311R), popular suffrage will inevitably promote indifference or, what is worse, the instrumentalisation of the general will on the part of a political minority. And this disjunction leads back to the two main dangers Hegel sought to avoid: either a relapse into the egotistical freedom of civil society or the rise of an authoritarian regime where freedom and pluralism are abrogated.

IV. Beyond Hegel

In the previous pages, I have attempted to dispel some of the misunderstandings still associated with Hegel’s ethical and political thought. On the one hand, I have argued that Hegel’s emphasis on the notion of freedom does not make him an advocate of political liberalism. On the contrary: one of his main philosophical concerns was precisely to expose the ‘system of atomism’ underlying social contract theories and liberal accounts of freedom. On the other hand, I have shown that Hegel’s theory of the modern state, although failing to put forth a fully democratic constitutional solution, is by no means opposed to social justice or political pluralism. Once again, quite the contrary is true: Hegel’s political system is based on the idea that freedom is a product of social recognition, and that the actualisation of one’s rights is necessarily dependent on the recognition of other people’s rights.

Although the state, according to Hegel, is the ultimate embodiment of human freedom, it is by no means an absolute or blind authority, opposed to difference and particularity. In fact, one of the most interesting insights of Hegel’s entire political doctrine is precisely his acute consciousness of the importance of political mediation, and his philosophical plea for a decentralised form of governance. This is the main reason for his insistence on the importance of corporations and Estates, as well as the main source of his profound mistrust of representative democracy. In Hegel’s eyes, when citizens engage as mere individuals in the universal affairs of the state, ‘the democratic element [is put] without any rational form into the organism of the state’, whereas ‘it is only in virtue of the possession of such a form that the state is an organism at all’ (PR: §308R).

It is true that Hegel’s awareness of the dangers posed by direct political representation led him to disregard other, equally glaring sources of irrationality and injustice. In his constitutional solution, the premium placed on mediation entails a serious limitation of political pluralism and participation. Although corporate members are entitled to elect their representatives, not all deputies of Hegel’s Estates are freely elected. Furthermore, all of them answer to a governing body whose members are appointed by the executive and sovereign powers, and whose actions are subject to the ultimate approval of a hereditarily appointed ruler. But regardless of all that is questionable and out-dated in Hegel’s system, the study of his writings should not be reduced, in my view, to the scholarly concern of passing judgement on his positions, or establishing whether his political doctrines are to be commended or condemned. What matters most is what can be learned, today, from Hegel’s ideas, and how they can help improve the quality of contemporary political institutions.

During the last two centuries, most Western societies have come to embrace the principles of universal suffrage and the separation of powers. Hegel’s corporations evolved into mass political parties and his Estates were replaced by national assemblies with ample legislative authority. Meanwhile, the growth of liberal capitalism has raised the individualist logic of civil society to new heights. In the last few decades, the Western political sphere has been gradually besieged by the libertarianism of free market economics. The imperatives of consumerism and competition have led to a resurgence of social atomism and to the definitive demise of Hegel’s ‘spiritual’ ideal, exemplarily illustrated by one of Margaret Thatcher’s best-known aphorisms: ‘there is no such thing’ as society, but only ‘individual men and women’ (Thatcher Reference Thatcher1987).

In light of these changes, the very idea of political representation was transformed, and a critical reassessment of the scope and nature of representative democracy is as relevant today as it was two hundred years ago. Indeed, Hegel’s claim that mass elections generate indifference and alienation might be complemented by a contemporary survey of similar political symptoms: the steady rise of abstention, the increasing populism of televised electioneering, the overlapping worlds of politics, finance and entertainment or the collective phenomenon to which Thomas Piketty recently referred as ‘affinity fraud’,Footnote ⁸ which leads vast crowds of electors to vote against their personal interests. All of these phenomena speak to the actuality of Hegel’s insistence on the importance of political mediation. However, they also speak to the need to revise Hegel’s original approach, in view of a stronger and more robust account of freedom and social justice.

Once it is accepted—as I think it should be—that universal suffrage is not inconsistent with, but indeed necessary to, the full development of Hegel’s dialectical account of freedom, then the actuality of his political project becomes more apparent. The main challenge of a neo-Hegelian theory of political participation becomes that of harmonising the principle of universal elections with new and more active forms of political engagement. Yet Hegel would probably reject the view that political indifference and alienation can be averted by the large-scale embrace of direct democracy, primary elections or others forms of ‘horizontal’ participation. While it is true that party politics are often obscure and elitist, the alleged openness of horizontal solutions is often achieved at the price of more political atomism. Left to their own devices, disconnected from a wider web of recognition and mediation, individual electors are led to focus exclusively on their personal interests. As a result, they become more vulnerable to the fluctuations of an increasingly populist, financially-driven and media-controlled political environment.

Hegel’s solution, as we have seen, consists in a hierarchical system of political representation where private and communal interests are synthesized at the intermediate stage of corporate affiliation. But although corporations play a decisive role in this scheme, their definition is brief and leaves room for a number of conceptual and concrete ambiguities, liable to undermine the contemporary relevance of Hegel’s views. Although I cannot go into detail here, I will focus briefly on some of these ambiguities, which for practical reasons I will reduce to two main kinds.

The first one relates to Hegel’s characterization of corporations as professional associations. If corporate membership hinges on the stability of one’s professional activity, one’s right to political participation is not always guaranteed. Hegel distinguishes the workers who rely on their corporation ‘for the whole range and universality of [their] particular livelihood’ from ‘day labourers’ (Tagelöhner) and other casual workers, ‘prepared to undertake casual employment on a single occasion’ (PR: §252). The precariousness of the latter’s professional situation prevents them from enjoying the benefits of corporate association and constitutes therefore a vehicle for social and political exclusion. At best, they will find it harder to secure a regular income; at worst, they will join the disenfranchised ‘rabble’ which Hegel regards as a necessary subproduct of civil society.

If this diagnosis is brought up to date, and corporations are interpreted as modern labour unions, then their power to foster political recognition is even more uncertain. In an increasingly globalised economy, the liberalisation of labour relations and the rise in production and services offshoring have led to a surge in precarious work and to new forms of political and social segregation.

This problem is further aggravated by the rapid technological transformation of today’s work practices. Hegel anticipates this issue by speaking of a work that is ‘more and more mechanical’, eventually allowing the human being ‘to step aside and let a machine take his place’ (PR: §198). This reference strikes the modern reader as both visionary and inordinately brief: despite the obvious actuality of Hegel’s description, it is not clear whether or how corporations are meant to tackle this issue, let alone the recent increase in computerised labour and the related phenomenon of technological unemployment.Footnote ⁹

All of these issues suggest that Hegel’s corporate doctrine would benefit from a more comprehensive approach to the political significance of labour and labour relations. If corporations are to be more than professional guilds or lobbies, their focus must move beyond the specific situation of their members. Today—even more than in Hegel’s day—the power to promote a truly inclusive web of political participation is directly dependent on the power to criticize and transform the very factors which prevent corporate affiliation and professional stability. The quality of one’s labour is increasingly dependent on the problem of labour in general and can hardly be dissociated from the political challenges posed by unemployment, deregulation, precariousness, geographical dispersion and technological innovation. These challenges call for an increase in the scope of Hegel’s description, and for a definition of corporation that is able to encompass the political action of different kinds of collectivities—including political parties, labour unions, academic organizations, discussion groups and civil associations.

This first issue leads to the second main ambiguity in Hegel’s solution, which relates to the economic role played by corporations. Although Hegel seems to regard the principle of free market economy as a necessary condition for the actualisation of freedom, he is aware that civil society and its ‘system of needs’ are primarily dependent on the liberal logic of individual satisfaction. But even though corporations are meant to counter this logic, Hegel is not clear on how they are supposed to affect or be affected by the laws of the market. Following Birger Priddat’s classic study of Hegel’s economic thought, Lisa Herzog and Hans-Christoph Schmidt am Busch have recently highlighted this fundamental ambiguity. On the one hand, corporations are supposed to regulate the labour market and to monitor the nature and amount of goods and services produced and marketed by each professional branch. On the other hand, they are placed within an economic environment in which all participants, including non-members, are free to compete with one another (Buchwalter Reference Buchwalter2015: 152f; Schmidt am Busch Reference Schmidt am Busch2002: 139ff.). This ambiguity has a direct bearing on the present discussion inasmuch as the degree of each citizen’s political participation hinges on his or her professional success, which depends in turn on the ability to market the products of his or her labour. The dialectical correlation linking unemployment, poverty and political disenfranchisement is also at work in the other end of the social spectrum, where professional recognition is usually linked to material wealth and political influence.

Considering this interdependence, a truly ethical society is one in which all members are granted equal access to the resources required for the fulfilment of their professional and political aspirations. For this to happen, however, corporations cannot be reduced either to particular interest groups or to competing economic agents. If the sole aim of corporate members is to increase their market share and to push their own political agenda, then their activity will end up promoting the kind of atomism Hegel sought to overcome. If corporate regulation is overshadowed by the principle of free competition, and if the market is simply left to its own devices, then atomism and inequality are bound to take over.

These and other related risks call for a political regulation of the economic sphere, capable of subsuming selfish aims under collective ones. Yet I believe it is possible to regard Hegel’s theory of political recognition as the starting point of a more ambitious political solution, grounded not merely in the idea of regulation, but in the actual democratization of the economic realm. Among recent contributions in this direction, it is worth highlighting Bruce Gilbert’s assessment of the historical and economic legacy of Hegel’s corporations. On his view, Hegel’s corporate ideal is best served by a form of socialist democracy in which privately owned companies and industries are (partially) replaced by worker-managed co-operatives. In this model, democracy is extended to the sphere of economic production and workers are invited to take an active part in the decisions that shape their professional activity (Gilbert Reference Gilbert2013: 240ff.).

This reading is particularly interesting in that it engages Hegel with recent efforts to overcome the limitations of representative democracy. As soon as one recognizes that Hegel’s idea of freedom is irreducible to the traditional framework of social democracy, based on the combination of free market economy and state regulation, his views emerge as a surprisingly fertile ground for the reinvention of traditional socialism, in line with the political propositions of authors such as Alec Nove (Reference Nove1991), John Roemer (Reference Roemer1994), David Schweikhart (Reference Schweikart2011) or Richard D. Wolff (Reference Wolff2012).