NOTES 69 property relation and is a reflection of the General Will of the property owners. In no case is the state neutral between property owners and non-owners. Further, ihc state maintains the political-economic status quo through the exercise of its various organs of administration—the army, the police, the bureaucracy, in one word, the government. This government can appear in many forms within the same kinds of states—democratic, autocratic, monarchical, plutocratic, aristocratic, and so on—but the nature of the state itself remains the same, as it always reflects the mode of production, the ownership of property, and is an expression of the General Will of the property owners. No one component of the state—army, police, bureaucracy or parliament—can be the same as the state itself, nor do all of them put together as components add up to the full implications of ihc state. The components need not necessarily reflect the existing property relations, the prevalent mode of production, but as organs of the state they have to perform the functions which the state has, for protecting the status quo. Philosophy had fulfilled its function with Hegel when it had described the existing status quo in its totality, if only from an idealist point; Marx realized the fact that what had been described was the status quo and came to the conclusion: ^Philosophers have interpreted the world in many ways, the point is to change it." ARVIND N DAS 1 John Plemnatz, Man and Society, London 1963, Vol I, p 18. 2 C B Macpherson, The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism, Oxford 1964. 8 By Marx is meant Marx and Engels.