the ethnological notebooks of karl marx - Marxists Internet Archive

public, the subjective has not internalized the objective, nor has thepublic and objective interest brought about the externalization of thesubjective and private.The doctrine of the State set forth by Marx is in opposition to that ofthe Analytical School of John Austin and to the Historical School ofMaine. Marx did not undertake a critique of the theory of Hobbes, whichunderlay that of Bentham and Austin. The critique of the Austinian (andby implication Benthamist) doctrine of the State is that Austin held theState to be unrelated to society, presupposed a priori; as such it is outsidethe development of society. On the contrary, Marx held the State to be asocial institution which would disappear when society had reached a newstage (See Marx, Critique of Gotha Program, sect. 4; Drafts of ZasulichCorrespondence).On the one hand, the notion of the freedom of the individual in civilizedsociety was counterposed by Hegel to that of the positive freedomof primitive man by Rousseau.121 On the other, the doctrine of theorigin of civilized society out of the communal life was counterposed tothe doctrine of the social contract, according to which Hobbes, Spinoza,Locke, Pufendorf, Hume and Rousseau posited the individual as existingprior to society, and society as dependent for its foundation on theaccord between individuals. But society, to the extent that it is mentionedat all in the latter doctrine, was an abstraction of the conditions requiredfor the formation of the State, hence as an abstraction of the State. Societyin the civilized state was taken primarily as political society, and theattention was withdrawn from social institutions other than those whichled to the establishment of the State or were necessary to its functioning.The doctrine of the social contract posited at the same time an abstractionof man which had the force of law in particular societies; the abstraction ishis reason and will, which made him a direct contracting party to theformation of the State. If according to Hobbes fear of pain is the forcewhich drives man to form political society, then man is rational in themeasures that he takes for its avoidance. Other determinants of societyand of man were subordinated to those which culminated in the State,whereby reason and will were abstracted from their social contexts, andmade up, at the same time, the abstract representation or composition ofthe human being.The philosophy of the social contract was at once an extreme individualismand the abstraction of the State from society for the purpose ofpolitical construction, for of all the social institutions the State is themost specifically directive of man and society; the conception of theState is such that society is thereby subjected to the human decisive power,or will. Hume, Rousseau and Kant who altered the doctrine of the socialcontract, and of the law of nature which it presupposed, did not developan empirical science of man. Although their alterations were made in the69