Well this is really ABC isn't it? Hegel's critique concerns the contradictions within what he called relative ethical life, which he saw as corresponding to bourgeois property relations. In marxism this appears as the contradiction between formal equlaity and substantive equality. Why is this not good enough, because it alienates us to the core of our being, i.e. from what makes us human, namely our species bond with our fellow human beings. This alienation creates cynicism, despair, outsiders, meaninglessness, etc. (That's before we get onto starvation, disease, etc.) The whole of modern literature from Kafka to Coetzee screams about this. The idea that we have developed the most rational system of governance, implied in Justin's quote above, is frightening in its "end of history" type of sentiment. The view from a suit? Tahir