The Concept Of Individualism In Hegel

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The State must reflect the civil society. The two are, in Hegel, elements of the objective spirit meant to coincide in the higher unity of the ethical world. Marx perceives only their separation, and the domination of the first over the second. That is why he (wrongfully) accuses Hegel to have adhered to the economic liberalism of Adam Smith and David Ricardo, promoting, thus, the individualism and a spurious type of private property. Instead, he chooses to promote the mutual recognition (similar, in fact, with Hegel’s conception). It is not wrong to we say, by adhering to Norman Levine's explanation, that Marx borrows from Hegel the form of the concept of civil society, but changes its content . And he does so–we would like to add–by leaving…show more content…
However, the last must not be understood in its incomplete meaning from the first (abstract) moments, but in the light of the intersubjectivity supposed by the concept of spirit. In this superior moment, consciousness is no longer driven by the basic desire to “consume” the environment and no longer needs a fierce battle with its alterity for being able to recognise its own individuality. Based on laws, it can determine itself in order to accede to its true form which includes both opposites: the isolated (and therefore, abstract) individual and his negative (the other consciousness). The civil society, now understood as the spirit (or, more correctly, having reached the level at which it actualises its potential spirituality, inherent to its concept) is no longer a crowd of separate individuals, but gradually develops the connections between them. It becomes a family, then a community of families in mutual recognition. Afterwards, it exceeds the moment of morality (in which the units are separated and only for-themselves), moving toward Sittlichkeit (when they are unified, fulfilling their in-selves). All of these prove that the reconfiguration, undertaken by Marx, of the notion of civil society cannot be considered as a valid criticism of Hegel's philosophy. However, it can work in parallel, as a homonym notion which is based on other principles and has different…show more content…
All the slave’s labour appears as unpaid labour. In the wage-labour, on the contrary, even surplus labour, or unpaid labour, appear as paid. There the property-relation conceals the labour of the slave for himself; here the money-relation conceals the unrequited labour of the wage-labourer. (…) This phenomenal form, which makes the actual relation invisible, and, indeed, shows the direct opposite of that relation, form the basis of all the juridical notions of both labourers and capitalist, of all mystifications of the capitalistic mode of production, of all its illusions as to liberty, of all apologetic shifts of the vulgar
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