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KARL MARX: A BIOGRAPHYtransferred to a particular individual or class, which thus represented the
illusory universality of modern political life.
Finally Marx dealt with Hegel's discussion of legislative power and
particularly the Prussian Estates which, according to Hegel, constituted
a synthesis between the state and civil society. Marx objected that such a
view in fact presupposed the separation of the state and civil society -
regarding them as entities to be reconciled, and therein lay the whole
problem since 'the separation of the political state from civil society
appears necessarily as a separation of political man - the citizen - from
civil society, from his own actual empirical reality'.^25 In order to give
himself a historical perspective from which to criticise Hegel, during the
summer of 1843 Marx had not only immersed himself in the political
theories of Machiavelli, Montesquieu and Rousseau; he also took extensive
notes on recent French, English, American and even Swedish history, and
wrote a chronological table of the period A.D. 600-158 9 that covered
eighty pages. These readings led Marx to the conclusion that the French
Revolution had completely destroyed any political significance that the
Estates enjoyed in the Middle Ages: Hegel's idea of their being adequate
representatives of civil society was archaic and indicative of German
underdevelopment. Hegel's conceptual framework was based on the ideas
of the French Revolution, but his solutions were still medieval; this was
a mark of how far the political situation in Germany was retarded when
compared with German philosophy. Indeed, the only Estate in the medi-
eval sense of the word that still remained was the bureaucracy itself. The
enormous increase in social mobility had rendered obsolete the Old
Estates as originally differentiated in terms of need and work. 'The only
general difference, superficial and formal, is merely that between country
and town. But in society itself, differences developed in spheres that were
constantly in movement with arbitrariness as their principle. Money and
education are the main distinguishing characteristics.'^26 Marx broke off
here, noting that the proper place to discuss this would be in later sections
(never written) on Hegel's conception of civil society. He did, however,
go on to say, in a remark that foreshadowed the future importance of
the proletariat in his thought, that the most characteristic thing about
contemporary civil society was precisely that 'the property-less, the class
that stands in immediate need of work, the class of physical labour,
formed not so much a class of civil society as the basis on which society's
components rest and move'.^27 Marx summarised his objection to Hegel,
as follows: 'As soon as civil estates as such become political estates, then
there is no need of mediation, and as soon as mediation is necessary, they
are no longer political... Hegel wishes to preserve the medieval system
of estates but in the modern context of legislative power; and he wants