Works of Karl Marx 1843

Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right


Written: 1843-44;
Source: Marx’s Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right (1843);
Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 1970. Ed. Joseph O’Malley;
Translated: Annette Jolin and Joseph O’Malley;
Transcribed: Andy Blunden;
HTML Markup: Andy Blunden and Brian Baggins (2000).


Introduction (1844)

Part 1: The State §§ 261 - 271

a. Private Right vis-à-vis the State
b. The State as Manifestation of Idea or product of man
c. The Political Sentiment
d. Analysis

Part 2. The Constitution §§ 272 - 286

a. The Crown
b. Subjects and Predicates
c. Democracy
d. Résumé of Hegel's development of the Crown

Part 3. The Executive §§ 287 - 297

a. The Bureaucracy
b. Separation of the state and civil society
c. Executive 'subsuming' the individual and particular under the universal

Part 4: The Legislature §§ 298 - 303

a. The Legislature
b. The Estates
c. Hegel presents what is as the essence of the state.
d. In Middle Ages the classes of civil society and the political classes were identical.

Part 5: The Estates §§ 304 - 307

a. Hegel deduces birthright from the Absolute Idea
b. Hegel’s Mediations
c. Real extremes would be Pole and non-Pole
d. The Agricultural Class
e. “The state is the actuality of the ethical Idea”
f. The Romans and Private Property

Part 6: Civil Society and the Estates §§ 308 - 313

a. Civil Society and the Estates
b. Individuals conceived as Abstractions
c. Hegel does not allow society to become the actually determining thing