Is it really a thing? Or is it an illusion?

He begins this section that the private property was once the movable property (ex. Slaves). Property also evolves along the way as our economy grows and our practice changes ("feudal landed property, corporative movable property, capital invested in manufacture, and the modern capital in big industry and universal competition" p.79). With this in mind, if we link these kinds of property in connection to the state, we would find that the "the state has become a separate entity, beside and outside civil society" (p.80). From Marx's POV, the state has gradually become the ruled by the bourgeois ("the individuals of a ruling class assert their common interests" p.80).Marx also seems to be arguing that within the state, law has become a tool for the ruling class, and that it only has "just as little as an independent history as religion" (p.81). The most typical Marxist point he draws here is that THE POWERFUL RULES, and that they set the rules of the game (according to their interest) for the less powerful to follow. The evidence he finds is the illusion created where law is based on the free will.

As the result of the will, jus abutendi explains the relationship between people and civil law; it is "the right of using and consuming (also abusing)" (81), a kind of private property where people have the right to (even) dispose it at will. Within this illusion, it "reduces law to mere will" and only becomes a “true property” when it is in transition from one owner to another (81). Because one does not gain any economic values from these “true property”, one has the option to abuse it (and not let others have it), or dispose it (which would then pass the ownership of a “thing” to another).

Moreover, Marx notes that “this juridical illusion… leads… to the position that a man may have a legal title to a thing without really having the thing” (81). Even though the new owner has the jus abutendi after the transition, if the new owner does not have enough capital to cultivate this new “thing” that they gain, it would be useless. One of the obvious examples we can see in US history is when African-Americans were first liberated from being slaves, but then later found themselves being segregated within the society. First, they were liberated (from the Emancipation Proclamation) as if they have legal title to freedom, but the question is, were they really free? Do they really have the thing, namely freedom? Did they really have enough “capital” to “cultivate” this freedom they have (note that some even remain with their owner in the field because they realize they have no capital at all)? Even after Civil Rights, many often blame African-Americans that they do not work hard enough to “cultivate” this freedom they have gain throughout history. Perhaps this juridical illusion still exists today in many aspects in our life, but many might think differently about this nowadays.