The+Eighteenth+Brumaire+of+Louis+Bonaparte

SIS 705 Class Notes: __The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte__ by Karl Marx (1852) Historical Background - Following the Revolution of 1789, France adopted a new calendar which replaced the old months and days with more “republican” ones. The 18th day of Brumaire (aka. November 9th) refers to the day in 1799 when Napoleon I seized control of the French state. Marx's essay, however, is not about this revolution but about the events of 1848-51. In 1848 Louis Philippe, the last king of France, was overthrown and replaced by a republic. Louis Napoleon (nephew of Napoleon I) was elected president. Although Louis Napoleon was supposed to only serve one term in office, in 1851 he carried out a //coup d'etat// and made himself Emperor Napoleon III, thus once again restoring a form of monarchy in France. Marx's critique - Marx begins by contrasting the events of 1848-51 with those of the revolution in 1789. He adopts Hegel's maxim that “all great, world-historical facts and personages occur … twice.” (p. 41) According to Marx, this second revolution was only a farce compared to the first. The same can be said for Louis Napoleon with regards to his more famous uncle. Although Marx is highly critical of the events in 1848-51 France, seeing it simply as a bourgeois monarchy being replaced by a bourgeois republic, his broader critique is of a bourgeois revolutions in general. In Marx’s view, bourgeois revolutions (such as England 1688, USA 1776 and France 1789 & 1848) attain their zeniths quickly, but in the end are short-lived. His primary examples are of the revolutions in France, which claimed to bring about republicanism, but in both cases simply ended up replacing a king with an emperor. Although Marx is critical of bourgeois revolutions, in his Hegelian view of history, they are necessary to bring about the next stage of history, which will culminate in the proletarian revolution. Marx contrasts the rapid, yet ephemeral nature of bourgeois revolutions with the slow process that constitutes a proletarian revolution. These proletarian revolutions: “criticise themselves constantly, interrupt themselves continually in their own course, come back to the apparently accomplished in order to begin it afresh, deride with unmerciful thoroughness the inadequacies, weaknesses and paltrinesses of their first attempts, seem to throw down their adversary only in order that he may draw new strength from the earth and rise again more gigantic before them, recoil ever and anon from the indefinite prodigiousness of their own aims, until the situation has been created which makes all turning back impossible ….” (p. 44) Discussion points - With the aid of more than a century and a half of history, we are better able to assess Marx's analysis of bourgeois vs. proletarian revolutions. In Marx's day there had not yet been a successful proletarian revolution. Today we can assess a number of them, most importantly Russia 1917 and China 1949. Does Marx's analysis stand up? I think that rather than striking differences between these Marxist revolutions and earlier bourgeois revolutions (such as 1848-51), these revolutions are somewhat similar (at least in their outcomes). Marx is critical of bourgeois revolutions for being short-lived and descending into autocracy. While this is certainly often the case, some bourgeois revolutions have (eventually) evolved in more democratic regimes over long periods of time (ie. England and the USA). [1] Conversely all Marxist proletarian revolutions to date have lead to the establishment of authoritarian regimes, often in very short order.

[1] Of course these regimes are capitalist, which Marx would still view as being exploitative.