Both Hegel and Marx portray the phase of the French Revolution popularly known as the Reign of Terror as being in some sense necessary. As we shall see, in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, the necessity concerns how this phase of the French Revolution is the logical outcome and practical expression of ‘absolute freedom’. The inadequacy of this concept of freedom becomes manifest through the attempts to affirm it made by agents who are, at least implicitly, committed to the concept of absolute freedom. In Marx’s case, the following passage from On the Jewish Question hints at the necessity of the Reign of Terror:
Of course, in periods when the political state as political state comes violently into being out of civil society and when human self-liberation [menschliche Selbstbefreiung] attempts to realize itself in the form of political self-liberation [politische[n] Selbstbefreiung], the state can and must proceed to the abolition [Aufhebung] of religion, to the destruction of religion; but only in the same way as it proceeds to the abolition of private property (by imposing a maximum, by confiscation, by progressive taxation) and the abolition of life (by the guillotine). At those times when it is particularly self-confident, political life attempts to suppress its presupposition, civil society and its elements, and to constitute itself as the real, harmonious species-life of man. But it only manages to do this in violent contradiction to the conditions of its own existence, by declaring the revolution permanent, and for that reason the political drama necessarily ends up with the restoration of religion, private property and all the elements of civil society, just as war ends with peace. (MEW 1: 357; EW 222)Footnote 1
Here, a collective attempt that is made by human beings to achieve freedom (‘human self-liberation’) takes a particular form (‘political self-liberation’) and has a particular vehicle. This vehicle is the ‘political state’ which has become confident enough to assert its independence of civil society, and that can demonstrate this independence only by engaging in such as acts as the abolition of religion. This example, which corresponds to the dechristianization that was one of the radical tendencies exhibited by the French Revolutionary state, is only one among other hostile, systematic state-directed actions, including ones aimed against private property and even human life, each of which is expressive of the absolute need of the political state to assert its independence of its material presuppositions that are found in civil society. In short, certain actions and events associated with the Reign of Terror had to happen because the political state had to adopt a purely negative stance towards civil society and its elements if it was to demonstrate its independence of them and its power over them. In its purest, most self-confident form, this attempt on the part of the political state to assert its independence and power inevitably finds practical expression in destructive acts and measures. Since, however, the political state can assert its independence and power only in this antagonistic way, it turns out to be dependent on that which it takes to be its other, namely, civil society and the private interests governing it, both in a conceptual sense and an existential one. Since the political state cannot destroy the conditions of its own meaning and existence without destroying itself, it is condemned to engage in a futile process whereby that which it seeks to abolish must constantly re-emerge, and so the revolution is declared ‘permanent’ and ‘the political drama necessarily ends up with the restoration of religion, private property and all the elements of civil society’.
Hegel and Marx can therefore be seen to share the idea that the Reign of Terror was somehow necessary, and that this necessity is ultimately to be explained in terms of an inadequate conception of political freedom. In neither case do we have a form of causal necessity, in the sense that the events that define the Reign of Terror simply had to occur, given the existence and conjunction of various causal factors, including certain features of the revolutionary movement itself, such as a distinct political culture. If it were a matter of causal necessity, Hegel and Marx would be guilty of failing to engage in the historian’s task of identifying what these causal factors were, determining their relative importance and explaining how they came to combine to produce certain effects. Instead, they have in mind a form of conceptual necessity, in the sense that fundamental concepts together with their logical and practical implications become manifest through the actions of historical actors who not only understand both themselves and the world as it ought to be in terms of these concepts, but also act consistently on the basis of this self-understanding and normative picture. Historical necessity is thereby explained in terms of conceptual necessity. At the same time, the actions and events that result from the attempt to put into practice the concepts in question demonstrate the limits of these same concepts.Footnote 2
In what follows, I examine how Hegel seeks to explain the necessity of the Reign of Terror in terms of a concept of political freedom. For Hegel, the relevant self-conception and corresponding understanding of the world as it ought to be make it impossible for the historical actors concerned to establish a practical relation to themselves, to others and to their social world which goes beyond a purely negative, antagonistic one. The primary actors in this phase of the French Revolution nevertheless act consistently, given the abstract concept of freedom that shapes their own understanding of themselves and the world. Hegel’s diagnosis of the grounds of the necessity of the Reign of Terror will then be shown to provide the basis for Marx’s critique of the political state with its equally abstract concept of freedom, which, as we have seen in the passage quoted above, finds its practical expression in the Reign of Terror in the form of the state’s futile struggle to liberate itself from its material presuppositions. At the same time, Marx will be seen to apply this critique to Hegel’s theory of the modern state, and the challenges that both he and Hegel face in providing an alternative model of freedom and its actualization will thereby become clearer. Thus, this essay aims not only to provide an account of how Hegel’s explanation of the necessity exhibited by the Reign of Terror arguably shaped Marx’s critique of the modern state, but also to show how the opposition between the political state and civil society identified both by Hegel and by Marx raises questions concerning whether and how this opposition can be overcome.
I. Hegel on the Reign of Terror: the abstract universality of absolute freedom
Hegel turns to the Reign of Terror in the final subsection of the section of the Phenomenology of Spirit entitled ‘Self-alienated spirit. Culture’ which forms part of the chapter entitled ‘Spirit’. So, to understand Hegel’s account of the necessity of this phase of the French Revolution, we need to locate this account within the world of culture (Bildung) as he describes it. This world forms the object, or ‘ethical substance’, confronting individuals. It is a world whose ‘existence is the work of self-consciousness’, and yet at the same time it is for spirit ‘an alien [fremde] reality already present and given, a reality which has a being of its own and in which it does not recognize itself’ (PhG 320/294). On the one hand, the world of culture is a historical product of human thought and activity, and in this regard, it is the ‘work’ of the agents who produce and maintain it through their actions, and who, in so far as it is their work, can recognize themselves in it. On the other hand, the same world confronts individuals as something that already exists and is not, therefore, their own work. The world of culture is thus alien in the sense that it confronts each individual as something already present, to which his or her thoughts and actions must conform.
By the time we get to the French Revolution, however, the world confronting historical agents has in fact lost its appearance of independence. This appearance of independence concerns both the notion of a mind-independent reality which reason is unable to comprehend and the existence of time-honoured social practices and institutions that are held to possess an absolute authority which forbids any attempt to reform them, let alone to abolish them completely. Reason itself is now regarded as the highest authority and in virtue of this authority it is held to possess the absolute right to determine how the world confronting both individual and collective agents is to be organized. Consequently, such agents, who are conscious of their rational nature, set about reforming their social and political world in accordance with the demands of reason and the concept of freedom to which the notion of universal reason gives rise:
Spirit thus comes before us as absolute freedom. It is self-consciousness which grasps the fact that its certainty of itself is the essence of all the spiritual ‘masses’, or spheres, of the real as well as of the supersensible world, or conversely, that essence and actuality are consciousness’s knowledge of itself. (PhG 386/356)
The concept of freedom that underlies and explains the Reign of Terror can be classed as ‘absolute’ in the following two senses. First of all, spirit, understood as a collective rational human agent operative in history, encounters only itself in its object, with the result that there is no longer a fixed opposition between subject and object. To this extent, spirit is implicitly no longer alienated from itself, and in this way, it no longer experiences its world as something external that limits it. Secondly, and for the same reason, spirit now assumes that it will not encounter any insurmountable obstacles to its attempt to transform the world into that which it thinks it ought to be. Rather, the ‘undivided Substance of absolute freedom ascends the throne of the world without any power being able to resist it’ (PhG 387/357). In both cases, we have a negative conception of freedom, in that there is the absence of external limits and obstacles. There is also, however, another, expressive conception of freedom at work. This conception of freedom concerns the idea that the social and political world which confronts the individual ought to be the embodiment of what he or she takes him- or herself essentially to be. The freedom is ‘absolute’ in both cases because the agent’s freedom is not subject to any limitation or other qualification.
The emphasis is now firmly placed on the idea that the world of culture is the work of spirit rather than an ethical world that confronts individual and collective agents as something given that is independent of their own wills. The world of culture has thereby explicitly become the objectification of a determinate historical self-conception and its corresponding understanding of how the world ought to be, and how it can be reshaped by free, rational agents. This implies that the necessity of the Reign of Terror is to be explained in terms of how historical agents act with the conscious intention of producing a world that accords with the relevant self-conception and normative picture of the world, so as to make the ethical world confronting them into one that is genuinely their world. We must therefore turn to the relevant self-conception and normative picture that find practical expression in the Reign of Terror, and to look at how the historical agents who possess this self-conception and are committed to this normative picture seek to actualize them.
Self-consciousness (or spirit) is said at this stage to encounter itself in its object in the form of a general (or universal) will: ‘the world is for it simply its own will, and this is a general [allgemeiner] will’ (PhG 386/356–57). What, though, is this general will with which spirit identifies itself and which, given that spirit is now conscious of itself, forms the object of its conception of what it itself essentially is? And how exactly can this general will form part of an historical agent’s self-conception and understanding of how the world ought to be? One way of explaining these matters is to view the general will as the will of each and every individual regarded as a free and equal citizen, and to oppose the general will to the particular will that each individual possesses as a private person or as the member of a corporate body. As the bearer of a general will from which all particular differences (e.g., private interests, social roles and class membership) have been abstracted, the individual becomes that which Hegel terms ‘pure personality’,Footnote 3 and he or she is thereby able to make the general interest alone the object of his or her willing.Footnote 4 Given this purely formal conception of the self and the general will, the object of the will (that is, the general interest viewed as an ideal that is to be realized in the world by means of conscious human agency) must itself be purely formal and general in character. Hegel identifies this object specifically with law and thus with the ‘work’ that consists in the making of laws:
In this absolute freedom, therefore, all estates [Stände] which are the spiritual spheres into which the whole is articulated are abolished; the individual consciousness that belonged to any such sphere, and willed and fulfilled itself in it, has put aside its limitation; its purpose is the general purpose [der allgemeine Zweck], its language universal law [das allgemeine Gesetz], its work the universal work [das allgemeine Werk]. (PhG 387/357; translation modified)
Both the subject (that is, the ‘pure personality’ of each individual with his or her general will) and the object (that is, the general will once it is viewed as something to be realized in the world by means of law) are products of thought. This is because each of them is produced through the mental and volitional acts of abstracting from all that is merely particular and willing an object that all free and rational agents can thereby be thought to have in common despite all their differences. In the case of the general will qua object of the will, the following question then arises: under what conditions can this concept be realized in the world so as to become something objective in the sense of existing in the world? As we have just seen, Hegel’s initial answer to this question is that this end can be realized through the creation of laws that are truly general in character and thus possess universal applicability in virtue of how they abstract from all differences between individuals, as is required of rational law. Knowledge of the content of the general will is for this reason to be identified with knowledge of the appropriate content of such laws. What is more, each citizen enjoys direct access to this content in so far as he or she exercises the capacity to abstract from all that differentiates him or her from others with the intention of discovering a purely formal content that applies to all. In this situation, there is no longer any opposition between ‘individual’ consciousness and will and the ‘universal’ consciousness and will (PhG 387/357–58).
Given the stage that spirit has reached, the realization of the concept of the general will must be the result of the agency of each and every individual qua possessor of a general will from which everything particular has been abstracted. In other words, the laws must exhibit universal derivation—that is to say, they must directly derive from the will of all citizens—as well as universal applicability. For only then will the condition be met that each agent is able to recognize the world confronting it as its world. Each citizen will encounter him- or herself in this world because he or she has directly played a role in producing it and producing it in such a way that this world is expressive of that which he or she takes him- or herself essentially to be. This requires that each and every citizen, as the possessor of a general will, actually intends the realization of the general will, which is possible only if he or she really does abstract from all private or corporate interests and wills an end that is valid for, and intended by, all citizens. This requirement helps explain Hegel’s claim that the concept of absolute freedom ‘comes into existence in such a way that each individual consciousness raises itself out of its allotted sphere, no longer finds its essence and its work in this particular mass, but grasps itself as the concept of will, grasps all masses as the essence of this will, and therefore can only realize itself in a work which is a work of the whole’ (PhG 387/357; translation modified).
On the basis of the requirements of absolute freedom, Hegel introduces the idea that the realization of this concept of freedom demands a form of popular sovereignty whereby each and every citizen directly makes the laws to which he or she is subject. Representation is therefore excluded.Footnote 5 Rather, the law must be a direct product of each individual’s own will in so far as this will itself is an instance of the general will that unites the individual with others as citizens, and which finds expression in law:
[T]his will is not the empty thought of will which consists in silent assent, or assent by a representative, but a real general will, the will of all individuals as such. For will is in itself the consciousness of personality, or of each, and it is as this genuine actual will that it ought to be, as the self-conscious essence of each and every personality, so that each, undivided from the whole, always does everything, and what appears as done by the whole is the direct and conscious deed of each. (PhG 386–67/357)
Neither by the mere idea [Vorstellung] of obedience to self-given laws which would assign to it only a part of the whole, nor by its being represented in law-making and universal action, does self-consciousness let itself be cheated out of reality, the reality of itself making the law and accomplishing, not an individual [einzelnes] work, but the universal work itself. For where the self is merely represented and is present only as an idea [vorgestellt ist], there it is not actual; where it is represented by proxy, it is not. (PhG 389/359; translation modified)
Law is, then, to be understood as ‘the universal work’ in which the concept of absolute freedom finds its realization. Rational law is an object of the will that is, by its very nature, purely general in character, in that it requires abstracting from all differences between legal subjects so as to apply to all of them without exception.Footnote 6 In being actively and directly involved in making law, individuals intend the general interest which forms the object of the general will that each and every individual comes to possess through the exercise of the capacity to engage in the mental and volitional acts of abstracting from all private interests and identities in his or her own case.Footnote 7
This demand that each and every citizen directly take part in the legislative activity of a republic in which the general will finds adequate expression in the form of law highlights the following conditions of absolute freedom and its realization:
(1) The will of the individual must itself be the general will, by which is meant a will whose object is the general interest that finds expression in the laws of the republic, laws that are universal in terms of both applicability and derivation.
(2) An individual must be able to recognize the legal form of the world that confronts him or her as his or her own work qua active citizen, as opposed to an alien world in the sense of a world which he or she passively accepts without being able to identify him- or herself with it. This world must instead be understood as something that he or she actively shapes in a way that accords with the self-conception and the normative picture to which he or she is committed.
For Hegel, the attempt to realize the concept of absolute freedom in a way that meets both conditions necessarily generates what can be described as a problem of agency which manifests itself in the destructive acts associated with the Reign of Terror. This problem of agency concerns the logical structure of any act of willing, including ones that are performed by citizens with the intention of giving expression to their general wills in the form of law:
Before the universal can perform a deed it must concentrate itself into the One of individuality [Individualität] and put at the head an individual [einzelnes] self-consciousness; for the universal will is only an actual will in a self, which is a One [das Eines ist]. But thereby all other individuals [Einzelne[n]] are excluded from the entirety of this deed and have only a limited share in it, so that the deed would not be a deed of the actual universal self-consciousness. Universal freedom, therefore, can produce neither a positive work nor a deed; there is left for it only negative action; it is merely the fury of destruction. (PhG 389/359)
This problem of agency can be analysed into the following four key stages:
(1) The general will must be actualized by each citizen qua the possessor of a general will, for otherwise (i) it would not be an actual general will and (ii) the agent in question would not be able to recognize the object (i.e., the law that expresses the general will or, more fundamentally, the legislative act that produces this law) as its work.
(2) The actualization of the general will can be achieved, however, only by means of acts performed by individuals who in virtue of their particular characteristics are singular entities distinct from other such entities. These individuals nevertheless claim that their object is the general interest, as opposed to the private or corporate interests connected with their particular circumstances and identities. From this it follows that other individuals will necessarily be excluded from playing an active part in the actualization of the general will.
(3) Thus, although the condition that what is willed is the general interest that forms the object of the general will might be satisfied, the demand that each and every individual be directly involved in the act of realizing the general will cannot also be satisfied.
(4) Therefore, in violation of (1) above, some individuals will not be able to recognize the laws that embody the general will as their own work, as is required by the concept of absolute freedom, which is integral to their self-conception and to the normative picture of the world to which they are committed.
This problem cannot be regarded as merely a practical issue concerning the conditions of the establishment of a stable and workable political community with an effective sovereign power and government, since this type of difficulty would not be sufficient to explain the element of logical or conceptual necessity.Footnote 8 Rather, an element of contingency would remain, because the possibility of discovering ways of meeting the conditions of the realization of absolute freedom identified above cannot be ruled out a priori, given that it is at least logically possible that human beings could at some point in the future discover or invent the means of satisfying these conditions that were unavailable or by no means obvious to earlier generations. The problem instead concerns an opposition between the logical category of abstract universality and the logical category of individuality or singularity (Einzelnheit). This opposition falls within practical self-consciousness as such, and it cannot be resolved at the level of absolute freedom because to renounce the self-conception and normative picture of the world that are essential to this concept of freedom would amount to the adoption of a different concept of freedom. The opposition between abstract universality and individuality cannot, therefore, be overcome so long as absolute freedom provides the standard in accordance with which thoughts, actions, society and politics are judged. This becomes explicit to consciousness itself in the Reign of Terror, when the attempt to actualize this concept of freedom assumes the form of the purely negative act of destroying anything determinate, including individual human beings, on the grounds of its incompatibility with the general will.
Hegel himself describes this opposition in terms of a ‘simple, inflexible cold universality’, on the one hand, and ‘the discrete, absolute hard rigidity and self-willed atomism of actual self-consciousness’, on the other (PhG 389–90/359). This opposition between abstract universality and determinate individuality is found, moreover, not only within the revolutionary world qua shape of spirit (e.g., between virtuous citizens who act in accordance with the general will and enemies of the people who act from private interest), but also within the consciousness of each individual. This is because each individual has a particular, determinate set of needs and a particular, determinate identity and he or she is in this respect not a citizen in the sense of an agent viewed in abstraction from all private or corporate interests and any features which define this agent as this individual rather than that one or as the member of one particular social group, which is itself an individual entity distinct from other such entities, rather than another one. Given how the opposition between universality and individuality concerns the self-conception of the true citizen who wills the general interest and the legal person who is the subject of the laws which give formal expression to the general will, the attempt to assert the authority and the power of the universal, and thereby actualize the concept of absolute freedom, will necessarily result in actions of a certain type. Absolute freedom finds its ultimate expression in the act of attempting to annihilate other human beings who view themselves as abstract persons—and in this sense that which is negated is itself something purely abstract—but who appear to others as determinate individuals with their own particular interests and identities, and thus stand opposed to the general will of absolute freedom:
The relation … of these two, since each exists indivisibly and absolutely for itself, and thus cannot dispose of a middle term which would link them together, is one of wholly unmediated pure negation, a negation, moreover, of the individual as a being existing in the universal. The sole work and deed of universal freedom is therefore death, a death too which has no inner significance or filling, for what is negated is the empty point of the absolutely free self. It is thus the coldest and meanest of all deaths, with no more significance than cutting off a head of cabbage or swallowing a mouthful of water. (PhG 390/360)
Hegel can be seen, then, to employ the Reign of Terror as a means of demonstrating the logical failure of a particular concept of freedom with its corresponding conception of the self and normative picture of the world. At the same time, he attempts to demonstrate the historical necessity of the events connected with this phase of the French Revolution by showing how they must be viewed as the inevitable outcome of this concept of freedom with its corresponding self-conception and normative picture of the world. The Reign of Terror thereby reveals to consciousness what absolute freedom essentially is, namely, an inadequate concept of freedom, by making manifest its logical implications in so far as they find expression in the actions of historical actors who are committed to this concept of freedom and act consistently on the basis of it: ‘In this its characteristic work, absolute freedom becomes explicitly objective to itself, and self-consciousness learns what absolute freedom in effect is’ (PhG 391/360–61). Nowhere does Hegel imply that the revolutionaries were not in fact committed to the concept of absolute freedom together with the self-conception and normative picture of the world connected with this concept. Indeed, the necessity of the connection between the concept of absolute freedom and the Reign of Terror depends on the agents concerned demonstrating a genuine commitment to this concept by seeking to actualize it through their actions. The revolutionaries can therefore be said to act rationally in the sense of acting in a self-consistent way, that is to say, in accordance with the fundamental concept that informs their understanding of themselves and how the world ought to be.
Does Hegel succeed in demonstrating the necessity of the Reign of Terror on the basis of the concept of absolute freedom? One reason for doubting this concerns the second step of the argument identified earlier. This consists in the claim that the actualization of the general will can only be achieved through the actions of individuals who thereby necessarily exclude others from the act of actualizing the general will. Hegel shifts the discussion from the idea that absolute freedom requires direct engagement in the act of making laws to the idea that it requires direct engagement in executive activity when he speaks of the government (Regierung) as ‘the self-appointed point or the individuality [Individualität] of the general will’ (PhG 390/360; translation modified). Even in a passage that I have already analysed such a move can be detected, when Hegel claims that ‘[b]efore the universal can perform a deed it must … put at the head [an die Spitze stellen] an individual self-consciousness’ (PhG 389/359), and even earlier he speaks not only of making laws but also of acts of state (Staatsaktionen) (PhG 388/358). In both cases, we appear to have exercises of executive power rather than legislative power. Even if it is granted that the actualization of the general will with regard to its execution does indeed require some kind of functional division of labour and determinate institutional framework,Footnote 9 it is not self-evident that such a requirement equally applies to its actualization by means of legislative acts, notwithstanding the considerable practical difficulties surrounding the identification of particular mechanisms that would allow each and every citizen to be actively involved in the legislative process. For there is nothing in principle to rule out a situation in which all citizens engage in the process of proposing laws and then voting upon them with the aim of arriving at laws which each and every one of them can endorse as expressions of the general will which is their own will in so far as they abstract from all their merely particular interests and identities. To appeal to purely empirical considerations here would conflict with how Hegel seeks to explain the necessity of the Reign of Terror in terms of a logical or conceptual necessity.
As we have seen, Hegel identifies direct involvement in the making of law as sufficient when it comes to meeting the essential conditions of the actualization of the concept of absolute freedom. First of all, individuals may directly intend the general interest which forms the object of the general will that they themselves implicitly possess in virtue of their capacity to abstract from all particular interests and identities. Secondly, their direct participation in the making of laws that embody the general will may enable them to recognize the ethical world that confronts them as their own work. If direct involvement in the legislative process can potentially satisfy these conditions of the actualization of the concept of absolute freedom, why should direct involvement in government also be necessary? Could one not argue that the form of government is a secondary matter that pertains to the application of law, and that direct participation in executive matters is therefore not strictly required by the concept of absolute freedom and the demands associated with it?Footnote 10
One response to this type of objection might be to appeal to Hegel’s account of the concept of the will and how he links it to the Reign of Terror in a remark that was appended to the paragraph of his later Elements of the Philosophy of Right in which he describes the first moment of the concept of the will, that of ‘the limitless infinity of absolute abstraction or universality’ (PR §5).Footnote 11 Hegel here speaks of the ‘absolute possibility of abstracting from every determination in which I find myself or which I have posited in myself, the flight from every content as a limitation’ (PR §5R). As we have seen, the possibility of performing such an act of abstraction is a fundamental condition of achieving the conception of oneself as not only a legal subject (or ‘person’), but also a citizen with a general will. It is not surprising, therefore, that Hegel should seek to establish a connection between the attempt to actualize this ‘negative’ freedom or ‘freedom of the void’ and the Reign of Terror:
[I]f it turns to actuality, it becomes in the realm of … politics … the fanaticism of destruction, demolishing the whole existing social order, eliminating all individuals regarded as suspect by a given order, and annihilating any organization which attempts to rise up anew. Only in destroying something does this negative will have a feeling of its own existence. It may well believe that it wills some positive condition, for instance the condition of universal equality…but it does not in fact will the positive actuality of this condition, for this at once gives rise to some kind of order, a particularization both of institutions and of individuals; but it is precisely through the annihilation of particularity and of objective determination that the self-consciousness of this negative freedom arises. Thus, whatever such freedom believes that it wills can in itself be no more than an abstract representation, and its actualization can only be the fury of destruction. (PR §5R)
This passage can be read in such a way that the problem appears ultimately to boil down to the inadequacy of a concept of freedom that cannot tolerate any form of differentiation whatsoever, whether it be at the level of the individual or at the level of the political community as a whole. Yet such differentiation is required by the idea of clearly defined institutional structures and roles, including those associated with representative government, and by the idea of individuals as the bearers of particular social identities that are defined in functional terms with reference to the institutions and roles of a determinate political community (Stern Reference Stern2013: 184–90). The idea that absolute freedom requires the abolition of such differentiation and is incompatible with it is certainly present in the Phenomenology of Spirit as well. As we have seen, Hegel’s presentation of the necessity of the Reign of Terror in this work can be understood more fundamentally to involve a demonstration of how the will cannot achieve a determinate existence through the direct participation of each and every citizen in the making of laws that embody the general will, whereas the possibility of a division of the powers of the state or any functional division of labour in society is a secondary issue. Unless Hegel is able to show that direct participation in the legislative process, if not in government, cannot satisfy the conditions of the actualization of the concept of absolute freedom without excluding others from playing an active role in the same process, he cannot be said to demonstrate that the concept of absolute freedom excludes the possibility of any differentiation whatsoever. This is because the laws enacted would themselves be determinate, in the sense that each of them states a specific requirement not to do or to do one thing rather than another one, and thereby gives rise to a determinate obligation, despite being formal in virtue of its universal applicability. The laws would then represent a way in which absolute freedom makes itself ‘into an object and into an enduring being’ (PhG 388/358). What is more, direct participation in the making of laws would allow for the actualization of a self-conception distinct from other ones, namely, that of an active citizen. This self-conception and the formal character of law might still be said to entail a lack of adequate determinacy and overcoming this lack of determinacy might then be said to require an alternative concept of freedom. Yet this is a weaker claim than the one that the concept of absolute freedom is incompatible with any form of legal or political determinacy whatsoever. Hegel arguably overstates his case, then, when he claims that, in a logical sense (‘it follows from this [[e]s folgt daraus]’), the form of consciousness that he identifies with the concept of absolute freedom ‘cannot achieve anything positive, either universal works of language or of reality, either of laws and general institutions of conscious freedom, or of deeds and works of a freedom that wills them’ (PhG 388/358).
Leaving aside such potential problems, I now want to show that Hegel’s account of the underlying opposition between universality and individuality (or particularity in the passage from his Philosophy of Right quoted above) explains why the necessity of the Reign of Terror is taken up by Marx in the form of the opposition between an abstract ‘universal’ self, which he associates with the general will of the political state, and an individual self with a determinate social identity, whose object is its own particular interests. Marx does this with the aim of demonstrating how both this self and the modern state are manifestations of an alienated form of life whose roots lie in the separation of the political state and civil society and the opposition between them. As we have seen, this separation and opposition for Marx finds its purest and thus most radical logical and practical expression in the Reign of Terror, when the political state seeks to assert its independence of, and power over, civil society. Moreover, Marx helps make sense of Hegel’s claim concerning the type of freedom to which absolute freedom belongs that ‘[o]nly in destroying something does this negative will have a feeling of its own existence’ (PR §5R). The way in which Marx makes sense of this claim generates, however, a puzzle concerning the historical necessity of the Reign of Terror. My discussion of this puzzle will help clarify what is most at stake in Marx’s critique of Hegel’s theory of the modern state.
II. Marx’s critique of the modern state
In On the Jewish Question, Marx describes the state that has emancipated itself from religion, that is, the modern state that emerged with the French Revolution, as one that ‘abolishes [hebt … auf] distinctions based on birth, rank [Stand], education and occupation when it declares birth, rank, education and occupation to be non-political distinctions, when it proclaims that every member of the people is an equal participant in popular sovereignty regardless of these distinctions’ (MEW 1: 354; EW 219). By means of this abolition of all natural and social distinctions, which consists in treating such distinctions as politically irrelevant, the individual becomes ‘simply abstract, artificial man, man as an allegorical, moral person’, in contrast to ‘the real man, homme as distinct from citoyen…man in his sensuous, individual and immediate existence’ (MEW 1: 369–70; EW 234; translation modified). In other words, the act of abstracting from all natural and social features or qualities that serve to distinguish one human being from another human being produces the artificial entity designated by the term ‘citizen’. On a practical level, the abolition of all natural and social distinctions requires a political revolution through which the political state’s independence of society is established. This is a state that has ‘necessarily destroyed all the estates [Stände], corporations, guilds and privileges which expressed the separation of the people from its community [Gemeinwesen]’ (MEW 1: 368; EW 232; emphasis added and translation modified). As we already know, the French revolutionary state during the Reign of Terror represents the purest and most consistent expression of an attempt on the part of the state to assert its independence of society.
The state, whose object is alleged to be one of universal concern, is thereby detached from the private and corporate interests governing society. What is more, individuals themselves undergo a division which represents a form of self-alienation, because as citizens they are required to conceive of themselves as lacking private or corporate identities and interests, whereas these identities and interests are what make them determinate individuals who are distinct from other individuals. This reduces the individual to the egoistic human being who is motivated by private or corporate interests, and to the possessor of certain ‘rights of man’. These rights establish the boundaries of the freedom enjoyed by each ‘isolated monad who is withdrawn into himself’ and is concerned only with his material needs, with the result that each individual encounters in the form of others a limit to his or her freedom as opposed to the realization of this freedom (MEW 1: 364–65; EW 229–30). Thus, ‘the perfection [Vollendung] of the idealism of the state was at the same time the perfection of the materialism of civil society’ (MEW 1: 368–69; EW 233).
As with Hegel’s account of the necessity of the Reign of Terror, we are presented with an absolute opposition between that which is held to be purely universal and that which is individual in virtue of its possession of particular features, qualities and interests that characterize it as a determinate entity distinct from other such entities. This opposition between abstract universality and individuality is present both within the modern state viewed as a whole in the form of the opposition between the political state and civil society and within the consciousness of each agent in the form of the opposition between the citizen and the human being. Given the absolute nature of this opposition in both its forms, the political state’s attempts to assert the authority of abstract universality and the state’s independence of civil society will necessarily take the form of coercive measures in the face of private interests and identities, even if these measures need not in each and every case acquire the shape of political terror. This is because it ‘experiences itself as political state and asserts its universality’ only in opposition to the elements that characterize and determine civil society (MEW 1: 354; EW 219).
One way of interpreting this claim concerns how the end or object of the political state is a purely formal one that purports to be universal (that is, the common or general interest), and how it must nevertheless find its material content in civil society. The political state asserts itself in relation to this content that it itself lacks by organizing the material provided by civil society, in the sense of making this content conform to requirements that, in virtue of their generality, are compatible with purely formal ends. In short, the political state seeks to make the material content conform to the legal form that it has established by means of its legislative activity. This betrays the following contradiction within the modern state that finds its purest practical expression in the revolutionary world view. On the one hand, the political state is meant to have as its end something higher than the particular ends and interests of civil society, namely, the common good or interest. On the other hand, lacking any determinate content of its own, the function of the political state is reduced to the end of guaranteeing the security and rights of the legal person of civil society. In this way, the state turns itself into an instrument of civil society and subordinates itself to its ends. This contradiction, which the revolutionary state seeks to avoid by engaging in a futile attempt to demonstrate its independence of civil society, can be detected in the following passage: ‘the human right [Menschenrecht] of freedom ceases to be a right as soon as it comes into conflict with political life, whereas in theory political life is simply the guarantee of the rights of man, the rights of individual man, and should be abandoned as soon as it contradicts its purpose [Zweck[e]], these rights of man’ (MEW 1: 367; EW 231; translation modified). In short, that which is in theory meant to be the highest end of human activity and endeavour, that is, political life, is in practice reduced to the means of guaranteeing the freedom of isolated individuals together with the particular ends and identities that characterize civil society.
We are now in a position to understand why Marx claims that political life necessarily seeks to suppress its own presuppositions, which are found in civil society, with the aim of making itself the actual ‘species-life’ of human beings, but that in so doing it enters into ‘violent contradiction to the conditions of its own existence, by declaring the revolution permanent’ (MEW 1: 357; EW 222). The political state can assert its independence of civil society only by suppressing the particular interests and identities that characterize the latter, whereas these same interests and identities provide the political state with its material content. The political state’s attempt to assert its independence and authority will therefore necessarily manifest itself in an ultimately futile attempt to suppress its material conditions, which must exist and continually re-emerge if the political state is to possess anything more than a purely formal, character. In this way, the political state remains dependent on that which it seeks to suppress or even destroy altogether. As Marx himself puts it, ‘[i]f the modern state desired to abolish [aufheben] the impotence of its administration it would have to abolish contemporary private life. And to abolish private life it would have to abolish itself, since it exists only as the antithesis of private life’ (MEW 1: 402; EW 412). This became evident during the Reign of Terror, because here certain key historical actors consistently acted in accordance with their formal understanding of both themselves as citizens and how the world ought to be. Marx is claiming, I would argue, that although the Reign of Terror constitutes the purest and most consistent expression of the opposition between the political state and civil society, this opposition and the tensions that it produces are features of the modern state as such. This is evident from his assessment of the achievements of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right.
In the introduction to his uncompleted critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, Marx claims that the ‘German philosophy of right and the state’ (die deutsche Rechts- und Staatsphilosophie) comprehends what other nations, in particular the French, have already achieved practically. Thus, it reflects modern developments in a way that actual political conditions in Germany, given their backwardness, are unable to do (MEW 1: 383; EW 249). This philosophical comprehension of the modern state may therefore serve as the object for future criticism of this state whose ultimate aim is the abolition of the state by means of social revolution:
The criticism of the German philosophy of the state and right, which received its most consistent, thorough and final formulation from Hegel, is both…a critical analysis of the modern state and of the reality connected with it and a decisive negation of all previous forms of political and juridical consciousness in Germany, whose most refined and universal expression, elevated to the level of a science, is precisely the speculative philosophy of right. (MEW 1: 384; EW 250; translation modified)
This assessment of the achievements and critical potential of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right can be understood in the light of the opposition between abstract universality and determinate individuality which is described as defining the modern state in On the Jewish Question, and which is also key to Hegel’s account of the necessity of the Reign of Terror. From this, however, the following puzzle emerges: if the opposition between abstract universality and determinate individuality is a defining feature of the modern state as such, and if, moreover, permanent revolution and political terror are logical outcomes of this opposition, why is the state that emerged from the French Revolution not the site of political terror and permanent revolution?
I think that the answer to this question is to be found in Marx’s unfinished critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right. On the one hand, Marx seeks to bring out how Hegel’s Philosophy of Right gives expression to the absolute opposition between civil society and the political state which itself reflects an opposition between abstract universality and determinate individuality (or particularity) (MEW 1: 275–84; EW 137–46). On the other hand, Marx also highlights how Hegel’s attempt to overcome this opposition appeals to the existence of institutions that are unable to perform the mediating function that he assigns to them and represent pre-modern elements that have been abstracted from the historical context in which they performed an intelligible role, so that there is the uncritical interpretation of an older world view in terms of a new one (MEW 1: 287; EW 149). One example concerns the legislative function performed by various estates made up of representatives of different social groups, each of which is characterized by a shared identity that derives as much, if not more so, from a shared form of life and outlook than from common socio-economic conditions of life. The way in which the legislature is composed of different estates is designed to root the political state in the concrete and material spheres of the family and civil society (PR §§302–3), so as to overcome the opposition between abstract universality and determinate individuality at the level of the political state. Marx objects that Hegel thereby introduces class distinctions, and thus particular interests, at the level of the political state, whereas it is precisely its being beyond all such distinctions and interests that is meant to constitute the essence of the political state, and so the idea of the unity of the political state turns out to be an illusion and a piece of mere ‘romanticism’ (Romantik) (MEW 1: 297–98; EW 160–61). However, to recognize this illusion Hegel would have needed to grasp that with the French Revolution the estates have been reduced to social classes whose differences are held to lack any political significance. Rather, they instead concern only the private sphere, with the result that the separation of political life and civil society is completed (vollendet) (MEW 1: 284; EW 146).
This attempt to overcome the opposition between civil society and the political state provides Marx with some ammunition for the claim that ‘the status quo of German political thought [Staatswissen] is an expression of the imperfection [Unvollendung] of the modern state, the damaged condition of the flesh itself’ (MEW 1: 385; EW 250–51). Marx’s own solution is to abolish the distinction between civil society and the political state altogether, as opposed to preserving these distinct spheres within an articulated whole within which they are reconciled. This is to be done by abolishing the political state and incorporating the desire for a communal form of life within the material sphere, so that this sphere in turn loses its character of a society made up of individuals who cooperate with each other on the basis of self-interest alone. Rather, social cooperation becomes both the expression and the fulfilment of the human being’s communal nature or ‘species-life’ (MEW 40: 538–39; EW 350–51).
The abolition of the distinction between civil society and the state in communist society entails the dissolution of any determinate roles and identities that depend on this distinction and the independence of the spheres in question. Does this mean that Marx is guilty of the kind of abstract notion of freedom that for Hegel explains the necessity of the Reign of Terror? Although this issue requires more attention than I can give it here, the abolition of forms of social and political articulation that rely on largely constant and rigid distinctions, such as that between one class and another one or between fixed roles in the division of labour, does not entail the absence of any form of social articulation whatsoever. For a start, even in communist society production will have to be organized effectively if its members’ material needs are to be met, and this will require structuring the production process and individuals performing specific functions within this same process. Yet the type of organization in question does not exclude the possibility of shifting as opposed to fixed roles. For example, the same individual may play a determinate role in the production process (e.g., operating a machine) while at the same time playing his or her part in determining how this process is organized. Thus, the particular form that social cooperation takes at any given time and the individual’s role within the production process are not something fixed to which he or she must simply accommodate him- or herself.Footnote 12 Rather, the structure of society would be both determinate and fluid in terms of its form. On the one hand, individuals will engage in the act of determining the precise form that communal life takes, and this will allow for variation both in terms of the structure of society and each individual’s role within it. On the other hand, communal life will at each stage possess a determinate form, even if not the same one and certainly not an abstract legal form that requires the existence of a state that is viewed as independent of society and its interests, whereas it is, in fact, dependent on society for its material content.
