Classical Political Economy Sifted Through Dialectical Reason: The Hegelian rereading

This article examines the analysis of the economic system developed by Hegel in the Elements of the Philosophy of Right. It shows how this analysis amounts not to a reworking and development of the theses of classical political economy, but rather to their dialectical reinterpretation. This particular logic of apprehension grounds the specificity of the Hegelian view of the economic sphere and its irreducibility to classical theses. The article explains how this particular logic of apprehension leads Hegel to bring to the foreground the insufficiencies of the market-based mode of coordination of individual destinies, as well as the necessity that this mode of coordination be surpassed both by and in the rational state. The article, then, focuses on the specificity of the articulation that Hegel conceives between civil society and the state. It shows how Hegel, surpassing the liberalism-state interventionism opposition, sketches an institutional device ensuring the advent of an ethical economy