ABSTRACT
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and Karl Marx shared an ardent belief in the inherent rationality and liberating potential of government. This chapter assess the status of the Hegelian vision of the state; and considers Hegel’s central propositions about political power. Lack of enthusiasm for Hegel’s theory of the state is understandable, given the ambivalence even committed Hegelians feel about the politics of the Philosophy of Right. Hegel saw great danger, as well as triviality, in the parliamentary power to determine the budget. Hegel argued that in Germany, for example, the conversion of royal “private property” into “public property” occurred “without any struggle or opposition.” Hegel’s concept of the universal class, and Marx’s focus on the Factory Inspectorate in Capital, point to a peculiar absence in scholarship on government, an absence only recently addressed by Skocpol and other state theorists. An external state is a political administration relatively identical with civil society; it resembles Marx’s notion of a capitalist-dominated government.
