# Quote — Karl Marx, The German Ideology

> In civil law the existing property relationships are declared to be the result of the general will. The jus utendi et abutendi itself asserts on the one hand the fact that private property has become entirely independent of the community, and on the other the illusion that private property itself is based solely on the private will, the arbitrary disposal.

- Author: [Karl Marx](https://www.leafyquotes.com/karl-marx.md)
- Book: [The German Ideology](https://www.leafyquotes.com/karl-marx/the-german-ideology.md)
- Page: 188
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Karl_Marx#The_German_Ideology_(1845-1846)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Topics: [society](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/society.md)
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/karl-marx/the-german-ideology/in-civil-law

## More from this book

> It is in fact not the consciousness dominating life but the very life dominating consciousness.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/karl-marx/the-german-ideology/it-is-in-fact.md)

> Language comes into being, like consciousness, from the basic need, from the scantiest intercourse with other human.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/karl-marx/the-german-ideology/language-comes-into.md)

> Thus, while the refugee serfs only wished to be free to develop and assert those conditions of existence which were already there, and hence, in the end, only arrived at free labour, the proletarians, if they are to assert themselves as individuals, will have to abolish the very condition of their existence hitherto (which has, moreover, been that of all society up to the present), namely, labour. Thus they find themselves directly opposed to the form in which, hitherto, the individuals, of which society consists, have given themselves collective expression, that is, the State. In order, therefore, to assert themselves as individuals, they must overthrow the State.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/karl-marx/the-german-ideology/thus-while-the.md)

Topics: [politics](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/politics.md), [work](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/work.md)