The Political Institutions and Theories of the Hindus: A Study in Comparative Politics c6.s1.4

c6.s1.4

Naturally, therefore, the “monistic” theory of the omnipotent state, such as was conceived by philosophers from Bodin and Hobbes to Austin and Hegel, is being found to be too palpably inadequate¹ to explain the *Realpolitik* of numerous *de facto* sovereign *samûhas* or corporations that flourish within the body politic. A radical *critique* of the classical school of sovereignty is being sought in Duguit's *Les Transformations du Droit Public*. The actual federalization or pluralization of authority, i. e. the multiplicity of *imperia in imperio* in the alleged unitary state-systems of today is tending to "discredit" the state itself as an instrument of social well-being.¹ Nay, while the Lenins and Liebknechtites are *but* seeking to abolish property in order to usher in a new socio-economic order, in the enthusiasm of recent legal thought in France the state has *already* ceased to exist. And to crown all, the almost Messianic Bolshevism of November 1917, especially such as it has operated in international diplomacy and in the formulation of policy towards subject races and colonies,² quixotic although it may appear from the Bastille of orthodox politics, has pushed into the limbo of oblivion the messages of 1776, 1789 and 1848. Altogether, a momentous *yugântara* or transformation of the time-spirit is on in political *Weltanschauung*.