The Philosophical Theory of the State

by Bernard Bosanquet

Thus, the world of Bourgeois Society—a world, on the whole, of cash nexus and mere protection by the State—has a structure or tendency of its own which brings it back by necessary steps to connection with the State proper or explicit and determinate social unity. It is, we must observe, posterior to the State in time. It is only within the State proper, and resting on its solid power, that such a world as that of Bourgeois Society could arise or be conceivable. Its priority to the State is, like that of the family, the priority of comparative narrowness or simplicity, of dealing with fewer factors, and of representing human nature in a more special, though necessary, aspect. And for this very reason it could not exist by itself. It has not the many-sided vitality indispensable to anything which is to hold its own in the actual world.

The working of the Bourgeois Society, then, exhibits an inevitable connection with the State proper, and, so to speak, leads up to it.

In the first place, the economic world implies the administration of justice. In this, as involving a developed system of civilised law, there is an advance on the “letter of the law” in its crudest and most barbarous acceptation. The system of law of a modern State is, and still more ought to be, [1] a fairly reasonable and intelligible definition of the rights and relations of persons. By this determination the economic system of particular wants and services enters upon a first {277} approximation, as it were, to a unity of principle. The law only professes, indeed, to protect property and exchange, but in doing so it unavoidably recognises that the particular want has a general bearing; for the developed system of law only comes into existence to enable wants to be supplied, and takes its definite shape according to the system of wants. We may illustrate this first approximation to universality, which law confers upon the particulars of private interest, by a suggestive view which M. Durkheim has propounded. [2] He has pointed out that the current formula for social change, “from status to contract,” has a subtler significance than is apt to be recognised. For contract is not really indeterminate, as if it arose in vacuo without a precedent. It runs in forms determined by social experience through law and custom; and thus the law, which professedly aims at protecting property and exchange, necessarily regulates them by the modes in which it chooses to protect them.

[1] Hegel pleads strongly for codification.

[2] De la Division du Travail Social, 225 ff.

A more intimate relation to the State proper—to a definite principle, as we might say, of common good—grows out of the interests of Bourgeois Society which take the shape of what a German calls “Police and Corporation,” i.e. State regulation and Trade Societies.

The basis of State regulation is the emergence of aspects of common interest in the system of particular interests. The region of particular interests (supply and demand) has an accidental side, and the State has a right and a duty to protect the general good against accidental {278} hindrances. On the whole, no doubt, the right relation between producer and consumer arises of itself, but miscarriages may occur which call for interference on behalf of the explicit [1] principle of the general good. The general possibility of the individual’s obtaining what he wants is a public interest, and the State has a right to intervene with this end in view, both by execution of necessary public works, by sanitary inspection and the like, and by inspection and control of fraud in the case of necessary commodities offered for sale to the general public. For the public offer of goods in daily use is not a purely private concern, but a matter of the general interest. If indeed there was complete official regulation, there would be a risk of getting work like the Pyramids, that represented no private want at all; but yet, in the system of private wants, there is a public interest that demands vigilance.

[1] The explicit idea of common good always belongs in Hegel to the State proper.

A similar approximation of Bourgeois Society to the State is constituted by the “Corporation,” which rests on the facts of class. Every member of the Bourgeois Society belongs by his vocation to a class, and this breaking up into classes is a consequence of the division of labour which prevails in the economic sphere, disguising the common good as private interest or necessity. But in the formation of classes society begins as it were to recover from the dispersion which private interest has occasioned. As a member of his class [1] or {279} “estate,” the citizen acquires solidarity with his fellows, and his particular interest becomes ipso facto a common one. As a member of the class, again, he is, or ought to be, a member of his “trade society” or “corporation.” In this he finds his honour or recognition, [2] a definite standard of life (apart from which he is apt to assert himself by aimless extravagance, for want of a recognised respectability), a standard of work, insurance against misfortune, and (as a candidate for admission) the means of technical education.

[1] The term “Stände” it must be remembered, has for a German the association of elements of the representative assembly; “états”, estates of the realm.