Hegel’s diatribe against
the liberal State – delivered obliquely by reference to the Roman State under
the emperors in The Philosophy of History–
is perhaps as impassioned as it is devastating:
We observed the
Romans proceeding from the principle of abstract
Subjectivity,
which now realizes itself as Personality in the
recognition of
Private Right. Private Right, viz., is this, that
the social unit as
such enjoys consideration in the state, in the
reality which he
gives to himself — viz., in property.
There is nothing
wrong with Subjectivity, says Hegel here. But Subjectivity cannot be “abstract”;
it cannot, that is, assume a Personality
that stands against the State even as
the State is necessarily the political expression of not just human society,
but of human society as an ineradicable aspect of human being. “Extra Ecclesiam, nulla salus” was the
Scholastic saying encapsulating this very thought: there is no safety, indeed
no life is possible, outside of the Church – and by “Church” here we understand
the State. The individual taken abstractly, outside of its “sociality” realised
in the State, is only an empty, phantomatic abstraction.
Such a condition is Roman life at this
epoch: on the one
side, Fate and the abstract universality of
sovereignty; on the
other, the individual abstraction. “Person,”
which involves the
recognition of the independent dignity of the
social unit — not
[G.W.F. Hegel, The Philosophy of History,
336]
on the ground of the display of the life which he
possesses — in
his complete individuality — but as the abstract individuum.
For the State is the
“objective” being of Subjectivity: the State allows the individual to realise
its individuality fully – its “complete
individuality” - because no individuality is complete outside the State. Equally, a State that fails to objectify, to
realise, to make real, the incipient sociality of individuals – such a State is
a non-State, it is tyranny or anarchy,
not a democracy, as the Greek philosophers had realised early in the story of
our civilisation.
It is the pride of the social units to enjoy
absolute importance
as private persons; for the Ego is thus enabled to
assert
unbounded claims; but the substantial interest thus
comprehended — the meum — is only of a
superficial kind, and
the development of private right, which this high
principle
introduced, involved the decay of political life.
But a State made up
of abstract Subjectivities, made up purportedly, in law alone, of isolated
individuals, of “private persons”–
such a State already abdicates ab initio
all claims to being “the living political
body”, that is to say, the political realisation of the individualities of
its members:
The living political body —
that Roman feeling which animated it as its soul — is
now
brought back to the isolation of a lifeless Private
Right. As, when
the physical body suffers dissolution, each point
gains a life of
its own, but which is only the miserable life of
worms; so the
political organism is here dissolved into atoms —
viz., private
persons.
Liberalism, which is the political ideology
of capitalism and its bourgeoisie, rests entirely on the notion of a society of
“individuals” whose existence is dissected into private property, on one side,
and personality (opinions, beliefs, “life-style”), on the other. The
interaction of these “individuals” is made possible, so far as private property
is concerned, by the exchange of goods and services through the market
mechanism – and, so far as personalities go, by the public sphere of “life-styles”
and the pursuit of a myriad “rights” and “isms” (animal rights,
environmentalism, feminism, gay rights, transgender rights, animal rights,
refugee rights, right to housing, right to work and so on ad infinitum). The cohesion of this “society of individuals” is ensured
and guaranteed by the liberal State which is the product of a social contract
between individuals inter se (between
themselves) whereby the function of
the State is to keep separate the private sphere of the exchange of goods and
services between individuals from any interference on the part of the public
sphere. And the powers of the State
must be kept to the minimum necessary to ensure the independence of the private
sphere from any such possible interference from the public sphere.
A necessary corollary of this premise is
that the State must remain “neutral” with regard to the social contract, that
is, to the private rights entered into by the individuals collectively and inter se in erecting the State as the
arbiter of their private property by guaranteeing their possessive rights.
Again, this “neutrality” of the liberal State with regard to the enforcement of
private rights between individuals can be assured if and only if there is a
rational scientific basis on which the exchange of goods and services between
individuals in the private sphere can be guaranteed to maximize their
individual welfares.
Hence, the Political existence of the State
can be legitimized only through the possibility of a scientific operation of
the private sphere – that is to say, only through the possibility of a
scientific Economy by means of which the State can orient and legitimize its
enforcement of private property rights as well as the non-interference of the
public sphere with the private sphere. This is the essence of the “science” of Political Economy. The liberal State is
founded on possessive individualism – and Political Economy enables it to
become a State of Law or a “negative State” whose function and powers are
confined to ensuring the separation
of the private economic sphere from the public political sphere.
The foundations of the liberal State
therefore rest, first, on the legitimacy
of private property rights; second, on the possibility
of a scientific determination of the exchange of these private property rights
between individual owners; third, on the recognition
on the part of individuals that are party to the social contract that such a
scientific determination exists, and finally on their agreement that it can be administered scientifically by the liberal
State without any political interference from the public sphere. Thus, the
scientisation of the economy is a condition for the neutrality of the State.
But this scientisation is still entirely dependent on the agreement on the part
of individuals that not only such a science of economics is possible but also
that individuals are sufficiently rational to accept this scientisation as a
way of maximizing their self-interest or individual welfare or private
property. Yet here the notion of self-interest – which is egoistic, selfish and
therefore irrational - clearly comes into conflict with the notion of science –
which is by definition rational in the sense that it appeals to an “interest”
that goes beyond self-interest!
It follows that the neutrality of the State
and the scientisation of the private sphere – of the Economy – requires the
conscious supersession on the part of individuals of their individual
self-interest and egoism in favour of the adoption of rational-scientific
measures to direct the Economy. Yet, such a rational recognition is itself
ineluctably and incontestably an exquisitely “political” choice that is
entirely independent of any “scientific” discourse and certainly independent of
the private sphere of economic self-interest. Therefore, such an agreement can
originate in and derive from the public sphere alone – from the political
sphere of beliefs and opinions, of culture and “life-style” – and not just from
the “rational-scientific” sphere that presumably governs the private sphere.
But here the insuperable difficulty arises
that it is impossible to see how a “society” of selfish individuals can ever
give rise to one of rational individuals. Indeed, it is far more likely instead
that – far from agreeing on a scientific and rational conduct of the neutral
State – the egoistic, self-interested individuals of a liberal society will rather
manipulate the public sphere – the Political – in a way that “privatizes” the
beliefs and opinions, the culture and the life-styles, in an endless pursuit of
“rights” that far from converging toward a political consensus will diverge
into a maelstrom of irreconcilable conflicts! And that is precisely what we are
witnessing now with the spread of what we have dubbed “savage capitalism”.
It follows therefore that the hermetic
separation of the private sphere – the sphere of private property and private
rights, of the Economy – will contaminate the sphere of public opinion, pushing
it into a virulent pursuit of private claims that quickly and inevitably lead
to the disintegration of the State and of the polity, of the society. This is
why even Kant – who certainly shared the liberal creed – referred to
bourgeois-capitalist society as the “ungesellige
Gesellschaft” – “unsociable society”, a contradiction in terms in which
private interests lead to the dissolution of the body politic. It is why
Schopenhauer – the philosopher of philistine individualism par excellence - thought it was sheer madness to think that the
liberal State, or any State at all, could ever be founded on a “social contract”
rather than be pure Police. But a
State that has become so “negative” that its sole function is to protect “private
rights” – such a State must perforce earn Hegel’s scathing and apocalyptic
condemnation:
The living political body… is now
brought back to the isolation of a lifeless Private
Right. As, when
the physical body suffers dissolution, each point
gains a life of
its own, but which is only the miserable life of
worms; so the
political organism is here dissolved into atoms —
viz., private
persons.
Life
under the liberal State has become just that: “the miserable life of worms”.
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