1. These paragraphs are to be found in the section of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right entitled ‘The State’.
2. The term ‘civil society’ is used to designate the sphere of economic life, in which the individual’s relations with others are governed by selfish needs and individual interests. Hence it is a sphere of conflict.
3. Knox’s addition.
4. Evidently an error: ‘mechanical’ or ‘inorganic’ is presumably intended.
5. The prison of the Inquisition in Madrid.
8. Nature, body, corporeality.
9. Personified sovereignty.
10. Literally a ‘moral person’ [moralische Person], but Knox quotes: ‘Natural persons are such as the God of nature formed us. Artificial are such as created and devised by human laws for the purpose of society and government, which are called corporations or bodies politic’ (Blackstone, Commentaries, Vol. I, p. 123).
11. The people.
12. War of all against all.
13. Hegel uses the term ‘corporation’ for a range of organizations, similar to guilds, through which trades, professions etc organize their activities, defend their interests vis-à-vis the state and make their representations to the legislative bodies of the state.
14. See above, pp. 101–2.
15. That is, the bureaucracy, Hegel’s ‘universal class’ (der allgemeine Stand). Hegel argues that the bureaucracy is a particular class but that its aims are identical with the universal aims of the state (see below, p. 135, §303).
16. German editors’ addition.
17. See below, pp. 119–20.
18. Marx crossed out the following: ‘… so that in democracy, accordingly, the legislature does not decide the organization of the whole…’ [Note by MEGA editor]
19. Constituent assembly and constituted assembly.
20. An ‘estate’ (Stand) is an order or class of men in civil society which is distinguished by trade, profession, status, etc. In the sphere of political society ‘Estates’ (Stände) is a term used to designate that body which in the field of legislation represents the various particular interests of civil society.
21. Knox’s addition.
24. Knox’s additions.
25. Principal.
26. Marx refers here to sheets of his manuscript. Here, pp. 88–91 and 105–9.
27. Knox’s addition.
30. The term ‘proletariat’ does not yet figure in the Critique, but this passage foreshadows Marx’s imminent discovery in the Introduction of the proletariat as ‘universal class’ (see below, pp. 255–7).
31. Following the Lieber and Furth edition (Stuttgart, 1962). MEW has ‘middle term’ (Mitte) in place of ‘extreme’.
32. Marx quotes the German translation, which re-translated reads: ‘I am the lion, and am not the lion, but Snug’.
33. The ass in question is said to have been unable to choose between two bundles of hay and so starved to death.
34. Primogeniture is that system whereby a noble family’s first-born inherits intact the family’s entire landed property. Hegel considered that primogeniture stabilized wealth, protecting it from the fluctuations of the business world. It therefore worked in the interests of social and political unity by giving members of the landowning class independence from government and people, and protection from personal extravagance. The members of this class were hence, according to Hegel, public-spirited and politically disinterested.
35. Right to use and abuse
36. The manuscript ends here on page 4 of the printer’s sheet numbered xl by Marx. At the top of the first page of the following sheet, which is otherwise empty, Marx wrote:Table of ContentsConcerning Hegel’s Transition and Explication