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Labor, Alienation, and Social Classes in Hegel's Realphilosophie, (Avineri, 1971)
Labor, Alienation, and Social Classes in Hegel's Realphilosophie, (Avineri, 1971)
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SHLOMO AVINERI Labor, Alienation, and
Social Classes
in Hegel's Realphilosophie'
The two sets of lectures given by Hegel during his period at Jena and
generally known as Realphilosophie I and Realphilosophie II occupy
a unique place in the development of his system.2 Realphilosophie II,
with its far more extensive section dealing with Geistesphilosophie,
is the more important for any attempt to reconstruct the stages of
Hegel's philosophy of society and state. Rosenzweig saw in it Hegel's
first detailed attempt to describe the middle zone between the state
and prepolitical man, the zone Hegel will later call "civil society."3
Marcuse sees here Hegel's first discussion of the historical realization
of the free subject and the various spheres of integration through
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97 Labor, Alienation, and Social Classes
in Hegel's Realphilosophie
4. Herbert Marcuse, Reason and Revolution, 2nd edn. (Boston, ig60), p. 73.
5. Georg Lukacs, Der junge Hegel (Zurich and Vienna, 1948), p. 415. See
also Jean Hyppolite, Studies on Marx and Hegel, trans. John O'Neill (London,
I1969), pp. 70-92.
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98 Philosophy & Public Affairs
bining the process of man's creation of his own world and his aliena-
tion is the main theme of the Realphilosophie. Yet when Hegel has to
face the extremity of alienation-poverty-he is at a loss: poverty in
those texts is as insoluble as it is in the Philosophy of Right, where
Hegel bluntly admits that "the important question of how poverty is
to be abolished is one of the most disturbing problems which agitate
modern society"6-and leaves it at that. But despite the fact that Hegel
is as reluctant to give instruction as to what the world ought to be in
the Realphilosophie as he will later turn out to be in the Preface to the
Philosophy of Right, the Realphilosophie manages to raise a number
of crucial questions which continued to agitate nineteenth-century
thought. The text abounds in motifs anticipating Feuerbach's religious
criticism and Marx's social critique-though neither Feuerbach nor
Marx was acquainted with these texts. Yet it is these same motifs
that later appear in the Philosophy of Right and thus serve as a link
between the young Hegel and the young Marx.
The Realphilosophie deals with the philosophy of nature as well as
with the philosophy of man; but since the themes of social and politi-
cal criticism figure so prominently in any contemporary discussion of
Hegel's legacy, it seems to me appropriate to discuss at some length
those texts of Hegel where these issues are examined most extensively.
Hegel does come back to these problems in the Philosophy of Right,
but in a much more cryptic way. He sometimes uses what looks like a
code or a cipher to refer to issues settled by his earlier analysis of the
subject. Without knowing what he is referring to one sometimes can-
not fully grasp his intention.
For the purpose of this discussion a general acquaintance with the
Philosophy of Right will be assumed, and I shall keep references to it
to a minimum. It should, however, be understood that at the back-
ground of the argument the relationship to the Philosophy of Right
will always be present, though the discussion will generally limit itself
to the analysis of the Realphilosophie, and particularly to the second
section ("Geistesphilosophie") of Realphilosophie II. The parallel sec-
tion in Realphilosophie I is much shorter and more condensed, and
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99 Labor, Alienation, and Social Classes
in Hegel's Realphilosophie
since its main argument is brought out far more clearly in the later
version, the references to this earlier version will necessarily be fewer.
The struggle for recognition through the other, after finding its ini-
tial articulation in speech, comes up against the world of material
objects. In his earlier System der Sittlichkeit Hegel has already shown
how necessary the feeling of being separated from the objective world
is, and how through desire and its satisfaction one achieves the tran-
scendence of this separation on the immediate level.7
This need to assert oneself through the other is expressed very
clearly at the outset of the section of the Realphilosophie dealing with
the objective world. Through recognition by the other, the subject
attains universality, his existence has a meaning for subjects outside
himself: hence the transition to objective spirit, "wirklicher Geist."8
Intersubjective relations attain this universality also through the de-
vice of contract, which elevates individual will to a universal object:
"The universal is the substance of the contract."9 In breaking a con-
tract, one is injuring not only the immediate incidental subject who
happens to be the other party to it, but a universal, objective, and
social arrangement. Society, not the individual, is hurt, and punish-
ment thus expresses the general will and not merely the will of the
injured party.
The same universality appears in property. Hegel makes an initial
distinction between possession and property; this distinction follows
the traditional line, but then Hegel adds to it another aspect which
brings out the centrality of recognition in the constitution of property.
While possession pertains to my relation to the object, property sig-
nifies my relation to other subjects who recognize my possession of
that object: "The right of possession relates immediately to things, not
to a third party. Man has a right to take into possession as much as
he can as an individual. He has this right, it is implied in the concept
of being himself: through this he asserts himself over all things. But
7. G.W.F. Hegel, Schriften zur Politik und Rechtsphilosophie, ed. Georg Las-
son (Leipzig, I9I3), p. 422.
8. Realphilosophie II, p. 2IO: "Everyone wants to count for the other; it is
everyone's purpose to perceive himself in the other. Everyone is outside himself."
9. Ibid., p. 219.
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IOO Philosophy & Public Affairs
his taking into possession implies also that he excludes a third. What
is it which from this point of view binds the other? What may I take
into my possession without doing injury to a third party?"'0
It is from these considerations that Hegel derives the transsubjec-
tive, nonindividual nature of property: property pertains to the person
as recognized by others; it can never be an intrinsic quality of the
individual prior to his recognition by others. Whereas possession re-
lates to the individual, property relates to society: since possession
becomes property through the others' recognition of it as such, prop-
erty is a social attribute. Thus not an individualistic but a social prem-
ise is at the root of Hegel's concept of property, and property will
never be able to achieve in his system an independent stature. This
is significant because Hegel's description of the economic process is
taken from classical political economy, yet on the basic nature of
property he holds a totally different view. Property always remains
premised on social consensus, on consciousness, not on the mere fact
of possession.
Yet there still remains an element of accidentality in possession,
even when turned into property, since the objects of possession relate
to this or that individual in a wholly arbitrary way. It is only through
labor that "the accidentality of coming into possession is transcended
[aufgehoben]," maintains Hegel.-- By thus being central to Hegel's
views on property, labor also becomes a focus for his conception of
the self.
It has already been pointed out by several writers that Hegel owes
many of his views on labor to his early acquaintance with the writings
of Adam Smith and James Steuart.'2 Lukaics has, however, remarked
that the way labor appears in Hegel's system integrates it more pro-
foundly into speculative philosophy, for it is here "that the active prin-
io. Ibid., p. 207. Cf. Realphilosophie I, p. 240, on the transition from posses-
sion to property: "The security of my possession [becomes] the security of the
possessions of all; in my property, all have their property. My possession has
achieved the form of consciousness."
ii. Realphilosophie II, p. 217.
I2. See esp. Paul Chamley, 1conomie politique et philosophie chez Steuart et
Hegel (Paris, I963), as well as his article "Les origines de la pensee economique
de Hegel," Hegel-Studien III (Bonn, I965), pp. 225-26i. Also Lukacs, Der junge
Hegel, pp. 4I0-420; Marcuse, Reason and Revolution, pp. 76ff; Rosenzweig, Hegel
und der Staat, I, I59.
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IOI Labor, Alienation, and Social Classes
in Hegel's Realphilosophie
ciple (in German idealism, Thought, the Concept) must learn to re-
spect actuality as it is. "13 It is through the instrumentality of labor that
Hegel constructs his paradigm of a society differentiated according to
types of labor, and it is on this stratification, based on a division of
labor, that he later builds his political edifice. In this discussion of
labor Hegel comes closest to motifs to be found later in Marx, and
these motifs appear again in the Philosophy of Right in those para-
graphs (??24I-246) which seem to pose a question mark to the fun-
damental conservatism of the whole book.
Labor first appears in the Realphilosophie as an indication of man's
growing awareness of his confrontation with and differentiation from
nature. We have already seen how the establishment of property in-
stitutionalizes man's relations to other human beings through its inte-
gration and incorporation of the objective world into consciousness:
nature becomes part of the natural history of man. In a parallel way
labor is the transformation of the appetites from an initially annihila-
tive to a constructive relationship with the objective world. Whereas
primitive man, like the animals, consumes nature and destroys the
object, labor holds up to man an object to be desired not through
negation but through creation.14
Hegel's achievement in describing the movement of labor has a
double edge: on one hand, he shows how labor is necessarily con-
nected with alienation. Alienation to Hegel is not a marginal aspect of
labor which can be rectified or reformed. It is fundamental to and im-
manent in the structure of society; it cannot be dispensed with, and
the conditions of alienation and misery cannot be abolished within the
existing society. While thus closing the door on any rosy belief in easy
reforming solutions, Hegel's radical criticism of labor in society does
not, on the other hand, result in any radical call for activism or rebel-
lion: his insights into modern society call for an integration of this
experience through political mediation, not through radical upheaval
and disruption.
This vision of the workings of modern society comes to Hegel not
through any empirical study of social and economic conditions in his
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I02 Philosophy & Public Affairs
15. This aspect of Hegel was realized very early on by Marx in his Economic-
Philosophical Manuscripts, where he says: "Hegel's standpoint is that of modern
political economy. He conceives labor as the essence, the self-confirming essence
of man." Yet because Marx bases his resume of Hegel on the Phenomenology,
and because the Realphilosophie remained unknown to him, he ends up with a
faulty conclusion: "He [Hegel] observes only the positive side of labor, not its
negative side." See Karl Marx, Early Writings, trans. T. B. Bottomore (London,
I963), p. 203.
i6. Realphilosophie II, p. 2I8.
I 7. Ibid., p. 2I 7.
I8. Ibid., p. 2I3.
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I03 Labor, Alienation, and Social Classes
in Hegel's Realphilosophie
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104 Philosophy & Public Affairs
encompassing spirit, who rules over a wide range and masters it. He
has no concrete work: his power is in analysis, in abstraction, in the
breaking up of the concrete into many abstract aspects. ,21
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105 Labor, Alienation, and Social Classes
in Hegel's Realphilosophie
ness, i.e., labor; the abstract nature of labor, together with the division
of labor, make him totally alien to this objective world. Hence Hegel
comes to be troubled by the real conditions of factory labor, and his
general anthropology of labor becomes social analysis. Referring to
examples given by Adam Smith, Hegel says:
This analysis thus makes Hegel into one of the earliest radical crit-
ics of the modern industrial system. He goes on to point out the neces-
sary link between the emergence of machinery and the intensification
of alienation, and here again he takes a middle position between the
idealizers of the machine and the machine-smashers: while recogniz-
ing the alienation caused by the introduction of the machine, he sees
it as a necessary element in the anthropological determination of mod-
ern society based on ever-increasing production. Originally, Hegel con-
tends, tools were simply the mediation between man and his external
world;25 as such, they always remain a passive object in the hands of
the producer. But
In the same way, [the worker] becomes through the work of the
machine more and more machinelike, dull, spiritless. The spiritual
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i o6 Philosophy & Public Affairs
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I07 Labor, Alienation, and Social Classes
in Hegel's Realphilosophie
27. Realphilosophie I, pp. 239-240. Cf. II, pp. 215-2i6. Again the parallel with
Marx's fragment on "Money" (Early Writings, pp. I8g-I94) is very close.
28. Realphilosophie II, p. 257; cf. p. 232: "A mass of the population is con-
demned to stupefying, unhealthy, and precarious labor in factories, manufac-
tures, mines, etc."
29. Ibid., p. 238. The last sentence refers already to Hegel's justification of
property taxes, and Hegel goes on to say that "the inequality of property causes
it to be accepted on the condition that high taxes are imposed."
30. Ibid., p. 231-232. The slightly censorious tone evokes echoes of Rousseau.
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io8 Philosophy & Public Affairs
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0og Labor, Alienation, and Social Classes
in Hegel's Realphilosophie
of wealth and poverty, this need and necessity, turn into the utmost
tearing up [Zerrissenheit] of the will, an inner indignation [Em-
pbrung] and hatred.32
Government comes onto the scene and has to see to it that every
sphere is preserved.... [It has to look for] ways out, for channels
to sell the product abroad, though this makes it more difficult, since
it is to the detriment of the others. [But] freedom of commerce re-
mains necessary, interference must be as inconspicuous as possible,
for this is the sphere of arbitrariness [Willktir]. The appearance of
power must be prevented, and one should not try to save that which
cannot be saved, but try to employ the remaining classes in another
way. Government is the universal overseer; the individual is buried
in the particular. The [particular] occupation will admittedly be
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iIo Philosophy & Public Affairs
33. Realphilosophie II, p. 233. Luk'acs misses the whole point about the com-
plex place of the state in Hegel's system when he dismisses this minimalist view
of governmental intervention in Hegel as one of his "illusions" (Der junge Hegel,
p. 423).
34. Realphilosophie II, p. 234.
35. Ibid., pp. 248-249.
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III Labor, Alienation, and Social Classes
in Hegel's Realphilosophie
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112 Philosophy & Public Affairs
were from its present usage, can be at least partly cleared up when
we recall that for Hegel Polizei comes "from politeia, public life and
rule, the action of the whole itself."40 This public authority is neces-
sary because in caring for himself alone and enjoying the quiet bliss
of his property rights, the individual may hurt another by simply dis-
regarding the impact his own actions may have on the life of another.
An element of List der Vernunft comes into the picture when Hegel
describes how the state is willed by the individuals for their own self-
preservation and better protection, while it also represents an actual-
ity transcending this interest: "The general form is this turning of the
individual into a universal and the becoming of the universal. But it
is not a blind necessity, but one mediated through knowing. In other
words, each is an end to himself, i.e., the end is the motive, each indi-
vidual is immediately the cause. It is his interest that drives him [to
the state], but it is likewise the universal which has validity, is the
middle, allies him with his particularity and actuality. "41
The state is the transcendence of the individual in the universality
of the law; the externalization of the will makes the individual into a
person because only in this way does he achieve actuality for the other.
This universal power is the commonwealth, where the actions of the
individual, because they can impinge on the lives of everyone else,
achieve objective, universal substance.42
The fact that the state is both instrumental and immanent is rep-
resented in the individual by his dual role as a particular being and
a universal one. In one of his most pointed expressions of this idea,
which prefigures his own mature thought as well as Marx's later argu-
ment against it, Hegel says that man is both a member of civil society
and a citizen of the state and has to strike a balance between these
two aspects of his existence: "Both individualities are the same. The
[individual] takes care of himself and his family, works, signs con-
tracts, etc., and at the same time he also works for the universal and has
it as an end. From the first viewpoint he is called bourgeois, from the
second citoyen."43
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I13 Labor, Alienation, and Social Classes
in Hegel's Realphilosophie
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I I 4 Philosophy & Public Affairs
The estate of immediate trust and raw concrete labor is the peas-
antry.... The peasantry is thus this trust lacking in individuality,
having its individuality in the unconscious individual, the earth. As
for labor, [the peasant's] work does not have the form of abstract
labor: he takes care, more or less, of almost all his needs.... The
interrelationship between his purpose and its realization is uncon-
scious, natural. He ploughs, sows, but it is God who ordains that it
will thrive; it is the seasons and his trust that [ensure] that it will
become by itself what he had put into the ground. The activity is
underground. He pays taxes and tributes because that's how it is;
these fields and cottages have been situated in such a way from
time immemorial; that's how it is, and that's all....
Concrete labor is elemental, substantial subsistence. In war, this
estate makes up the raw mass.45
45. Ibid., pp. 254-255. In the Philosophy of Right Hegel includes in the "agri-
cultural class" both the peasantry and the nobility, and there thus emerges a
slight idealization of the virtues of agricultural life which is totally lacking here.
Here it is only the peasantry that is being described, and the similarity to Marx's
judgment on the "idiocy of village life" and the basically asocial mode of pro-
duction of the peasantry is again striking.
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II5 Labor, Alienation, and Social Classes
in Hegel's Realphilosophie
The object itself is being divided into two: the particular thing, the
object of commerce, and the abstract, money-a great invention. All
needs are reduced to this unity. The object of need has become a
mere image, unusable. The object is here something that has mean-
ing purely according to its value, not for itself, not in relation to the
need.... A person is real to the extent that he has money.... The
formal principle of reason is to be found here-it is the abstraction
from all particularity, character, historicity, etc. of the individual.
The disposition [of the businessman] is this harshness of spirit,
wherein the particular, now completely alienated, does not count
anymore. [There exist] only strict rights. The bill of exchange must
be honored-he himself may be destroyed-his family, welfare, life,
etc. may go to pieces-total lack of mercy.... 748
Again, what stands out here is not only the striking similarity to
Marx, but the fact that no radical call for action follows this harsh
analysis: the nature of modern society is grasped with an amazing
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ii 6 Philosophy & Public Affairs
lucidity given the period in which these texts were written. But all is
being incorporated within the integrative functions of the state. No
rebellion, or deviation.
The integration is carried out through the mediation of the universal
class: "The public estate works for the state. . . . Its disposition of
mind is the fulfillment of its duty."49 The business class expresses al-
ready a sort of universality-the universality of the market-but it is
still abstract. Universality becomes concrete only in the class of public
servants who represent "the intervention of the universal into all par-
ticularity"; the civil servant is likened to the arteries and the nerves
that run through the body though they are not, of course, identical
with it.50
The universal class is at the apex of the social pyramid not only
because of its universal intentionality, but also because it is the only
class of society whose objective is knowledge itself, not nature, arti-
facts, or abstraction, as is the case with all other classes. The specific
academic background of the German bureaucratic tradition is very
much in evidence in this concept of the universal class as an educated
estate, including not only civil servants in the narrow sense but also
teachers, doctors, lawyers: "This pure knowledge has to be realized,
has to give a content to itself out of itself, a free content, which is at
the same time also an uninterested object. . . . This is science gen-
erally. Spirit has here an object with which it deals without relating
to appetite and need. It is fulfilled thought, intelligence that knows
itself."5'
This concept of science as noninstrumental knowledge, knowledge
knowing itself, then enables Hegel to relate the state to the realms of
art, religion, and philosophy, which are beyond objective spirit but
need the state for their proper functioning. In the universal class,
this is already hinted at, and thus Hegel can close his discussion of the
estates and the state and move on to these spheres-exactly as he closes
the Philosophy of Right moving in this direction.
A consideration of Kunst, Religion, and Wissenschaft is outside the
scope of this discussion. Suffice it to say that in the Realphilosophie,
just as in Hegel's later writings, the edifice of the state is simply an
infrastructure for absolute spirit-never an end in itself. For the pur-
49. Ibid., p. 259. 50. Ibid., p. 257. 5I. Ibid., p. 260.
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117 Labor, Alienation, and Social Classes
in Hegel's Realphilosophie
pose of our analysis, however, a crucial point must be raised, and this
has to do with what appears as a gap between Hegel's discussion of the
workings of modern society and the kind of integrated solution he en-
visages for this society through the system of estates. Pointing to the
French Revolution, Hegel incorporates it into his system here in the
same dialectical way in which he deals with it in the Phenomenology
and elsewhere. It is the integrative side of the Revolution that he ac-
cepts, while rejecting what he calls its negativity and abstractness. In
a footnote Hegel remarks that the French Revolution did indeed abol-
lish class privileges, but "the abolition of class differentiation is mere
empty talk."52
This is significant, for the society Hegel describes in the Realphilos-
ophie is post-1789 society. The aristocracy is not mentioned-contrary
to the Rechtsphilosophie, where it appears as the upper crust of "the
agricultural class." While emphasizing that the privileges of the aris-
tocracy as to taxation, etc. have to be abolished,53 Hegel sticks to the
necessity of meting out different treatment to different classes. He
even suggests, for example, a different, rougher and more immediate,
penal code for the peasantry as compared to the middle class; taxes
should rest primarily on the burgher class, commercial law should ap-
ply in all its severity to the business class only, and even marriage laws
should be modified when applied to different estates.54
Yet while Hegel thus tries to give each estate its due place in the
hierarchy of consciousness, the system of estates seems to exclude the
class of people who are at the root of commodity production. Had he
not described the conditions of life of the worker in civil society, it
would have been beside the point to ask him for a solution to his prob-
lem. But once Hegel did grasp, and with so much insight, the social
implications of commodity production, the complete absence of this
class of people in his integrated system of social estates is a serious
52. Ibid.
53. Realphilosophie II, p. 238: "An aristocracy that does not pay taxes runs
the great risk of losing violently."
54. Ibid., p. 258. The reference to different marriage laws is probably intended
to mean that the system of inheritance, which is part of marriage law, should be
different when applied to landed property as against movable property. In the
Philosophy of Right Hegel similarly advocates primogeniture for the landed
gentry.
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ii8 Philosophy & Public Affairs
defect: for Hegel's social system includes the peasants, the Biirgerstand
and the Kaufmannstand, the civil service; but nowhere does the worker
appear as being integrated into the social system.
Lukacs attributes the fact that Hegel saw the central figure of com-
modity-producing society in the businessman, rather than the captain
of industry, to the limitations of his age. For Lukacs this proves that
Hegel's views of civil society are yet crude and undeveloped.55 This
criticism seems to make sense, yet one wonders whether it is as cogent
as it sounds; at least, from our present vantage point we can perhaps
see Hegel's description as having more relevance than Lukacs credits
it with. The captain of industry, the traditional entrepreneur, turned
out, after all, to be a phenomenon of relatively short duration. With
the extension of the market, the traditional industrialist is almost com-
pletely disappearing, while it is the businessman who remains at the
center of the commodity-producing society, though it may be the cor-
porate rather than the traditional private businessman. Here Hegel's
insight, basing the nature of modern society far more on the organi-
zation of exchange than of pure production, is perhaps more profound
than that of Marx (and Luk'acs).
But Hegel's failure to integrate the worker-whom he had discovered
earlier in the manufacture and the factory-into his system of estates
is a failure of far greater magnitude. It reappears in the Philosophy of
Right, where, after discussing pauperization and the failure of civil
society to integrate the poor into the industrial system, Hegel leaves
poverty an open question, without suggesting any solution. Both in the
Realphilosophie and the Philosophy of Right, the worker remains for
Hegel in civil society, but not of civil society.
Thus Hegel's imposing synthesis of a radical critique of modern
society with a system of integration through consciousness is left with
a serious flaw at its center. Hegel's political solution in the Realphilos-
ophie is the same as in the Philosophy of Right. He sees in the monarch
the focal point of subjective liberty, which he raises to be the principle
of the modern age: in the monarchy, subjectivity is represented and
vindicated.56 Again, there is no way to confront a later, monarchist
Hegel with an earlier, radical one: in I805, as i8i8, monarchy is
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II9 Labor, Alienation, and Social Classes
in Hegel's Realphilosophie
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