My inquiry led me to the conclusion that neither legal relations nor
political forms could be comprehended whether by themselves or on the
basis of a so-called general development of the human mind, but that on
the contrary they originate in the material conditions of life, the
totality of which Hegel, following the example of English and French
thinkers of the eighteenth century embraces within the term ‘civil
society’; that the anatomy of this civil society, however, has to be
sought in political economy. (#Marx, 1976, p. 20)

#base-superstracture