On one hand almost invariably when ever communism is brought up, someone has to blame Hegel. Not that he was a communist, but clearly a capitalist. See his Philosophy of Right and his views about private property. But the reason he gets blamed is because the individual gets meaning only by being part of a larger group. However there is no freedom for the individual without the state.
However I think he was trying to get to freedom for the individual without the craziness and reign of terror of the French Revolution. And in fact looking at the kings of Prussia during that period do show them on the side of a liberal Constitution.
What the situation in Germany was lacking I think was people like Alexander Hamilton and James Madison whose forte was how to frame a political question and how to answer it with a just Constitution. That simply was not the forte of Hegel nor Kant.
See Walter Kaufman on Hegel.
I would suggest to blame Marx and Communism all you want, but leave Hegel alone. In fact. it could be that allowing the communists to hijack Hegel, is what gave them the small amount of credibility that they had. After all it could not have been simple to convince the average peasant in a Russian village that the success of the more well to do peasants was all because they had stolen it from the less successful.Just the opposite --to anyone living in a village or small Russian town it is clear where the prosperity comes from--the few smart peasants that bring in all the business..It is always just the few who are the big producers. So the Marxists had to use word play to convince the poor peasants to murder the wealthy peasant and steal his property and rape his daughters, and do it in name of social justice.
[Is it possible, I might suggest that communists took a hitch hiked with Hegel on some issues because he was the best thing out there?]
