The State always has the sole purpose to limit, tame, subordinate, the individual—to make him subject to some generality or other; it lasts only so long as the individual is not all in all, and it is only the clearly-marked restriction of me, my limitation, my slavery. Never does a State aim to bring in the free activity of individuals, but always that which is bound to the purpose of the State. Through the State nothing in common comes to pass either, as little as one can call a piece of cloth the common work of all the individual parts of a machine; it is rather the work of the whole machine as a unit, machine work. In the same style everything is done by the State machine too; for it moves the clockwork of the individual minds, none of which follow their own impulse. The State seeks to hinder every free activity by its censorship, its supervision, its police, and holds this hindering to be its duty, because it is in truth a duty of self-preservation. The State wants to make something out of man, therefore there live in it only made men; every one who wants to be his own self is its opponent and is nothing. "He is nothing" means as much as, The State does not make use of him, grants him no position, no office, no trade, and the like.
E. Bauer,[164] in the "Liberale Bestrebungen," II, 50, is still dreaming of a "government which, proceeding out of the people, can never stand in opposition to it." He does indeed (p. 69) himself take back the word "government": "In the republic no government at all obtains, but only an executive authority. An authority which proceeds purely and alone out of the people; which has not an independent power, independent principles, independent officers, over against the people; but which has its foundation, the fountain of its power and of its principles, in the sole, supreme authority of the State, in the people. The concept government, therefore, is not at all suitable in the people's State." But the thing remains the same. That which has "proceeded, been founded, sprung from the fountain" becomes something "independent" and, like a child delivered from the womb, enters upon opposition at once. The government, if it were nothing independent and opposing, would be nothing at all.
"In the free State there is no government," etc. (p. 94). This surely means that the people, when it is the sovereign, does not let itself be conducted by a superior authority. Is it perchance different in absolute monarchy? Is there there for the sovereign, perchance, a government standing over him? Over the sovereign, be he called prince or people, there never stands a government: that is understood of itself. But over me there will stand a government in every "State," in the absolute as well as in the republican or "free." I am as badly off in one as in the other.
The republic is nothing whatever but—absolute monarchy; for it makes no difference whether the monarch is called prince or people, both being a "majesty." Constitutionalism itself proves that nobody is able and willing to be only an instrument. The ministers domineer over their master the prince, the deputies over their master the people. Here, then, the parties at least are already free,—videlicet, the office-holders' party (so-called people's party). The prince must conform to the will of the ministers, the people dance to the pipe of the chambers. Constitutionalism is further than the republic, because it is the State in incipient dissolution.
E. Bauer denies (p. 56) that the people is a "personality" in the constitutional State; per contra, then, in the republic? Well, in the constitutional State the people is—a party, and a party is surely a "personality" if one is once resolved to talk of a "political" (p. 76) moral person anyhow. The fact is that a moral person, be it called people's party or people or even "the Lord," is in no wise a person, but a spook.
Further, E. Bauer goes on (p. 69): "guardianship is the characteristic of a government." Truly, still more that of a people and "people's State"; it is the characteristic of all dominion. A people's State, which "unites in itself all completeness of power," the "absolute master," cannot let me become powerful. And what a chimera, to be no longer willing to call the "people's officials" "servants, instruments," because they "execute the free, rational law-will of the people!" (p. 73). He thinks (p. 74): "Only by all official circles subordinating themselves to the government's views can unity be brought into the State"; but his "people's State" is to have "unity" too; how will a lack of subordination be allowable there? subordination to the—people's will.
"In the constitutional State it is the regent and his disposition that the whole structure of government rests on in the end." (Ibid., p. 130.) How would that be otherwise in the "people's State"? Shall I not there be governed by the people's disposition too, and does it make a difference for me whether I see myself kept in dependence by the prince's disposition or by the people's disposition, so-called "public opinion"? If dependence means as much as "religious relation," as E. Bauer rightly alleges, then in the people's State the people remains for me the superior power, the "majesty" (for God and prince have their proper essence in "majesty") to which I stand in religious relations.—Like the sovereign regent, the sovereign people too would be reached by no law. E. Bauer's whole attempt comes to a change of masters. Instead of wanting to make the people free, he should have had his mind on the sole realizable freedom, his own.
In the constitutional State absolutism itself has at last come in conflict with itself, as it has been shattered into a duality; the government wants to be absolute, and the people wants to be absolute. These two absolutes will wear out against each other.
E. Bauer inveighs against the determination of the regent by birth, by chance. But, when "the people" have become "the sole power in the State" (p. 132), have we not then in it a master from chance? Why, what is the people? The people has always been only the body of the government: it is many under one hat (a prince's hat) or many under one constitution. And the constitution is the—prince. Princes and peoples will persist so long as both do not collapse, i. e. fall together. If under one constitution there are many "peoples,"—e. g. in the ancient Persian monarchy and to-day,—then these "peoples" rank only as "provinces." For me the people is in any case an—accidental power, a force of nature, an enemy that I must overcome.
What is one to think of under the name of an "organized" people (ibid., p. 132)? A people "that no longer has a government," that governs itself. In which, therefore, no ego stands out prominently; a people organized by ostracism. The banishment of egos, ostracism, makes the people autocrat.