The entire problem with this conversation is that "liberal" has become an overloaded term. The concept was originally anti-feudal so the context of "private property" was very different from the industrial context Marx would eventually add. You can see this in the US and French revolutionary writers who are clearly more focused on the idea of "just laws" being a product of political self determination which requires individual liberty. And now we have modern liberal progressives who have extended that idea to a kind of radical inclusivity, and modern leftists who even got as far as suggesting it is a critical aspect of the post scarcity state.

But Hegel is controversial for a reason. *Elements of the Philosophy of Right* is filled with equivocation and even Hegel's personal grudges. Also I do not recall the conclusion being that free men inevitably create autocracy. I recall it being more like "I haven't figured out what comes next for the state "