The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte

An important work by Marx summarizing the experience of the French Revolution of 1848 and commenting on the coup d’état of Louis Bonaparte. Written between mid-December 1851 and March 25, and published in New York in 1852 as the first (the only) issue of the non-periodical magazine Die Revolution.

After the February Revolution of 1848, the political situation in France was in a state of flux, and socialists and petty-bourgeois Democrats (the Montagnards) and other political forces with clear interest backgrounds launched intricate struggles around their respective class interests, and the struggles, betrayals, alliances, compromises and submissions ensued one after another. On December 2, 1851, Napoleon’s nephew, Louis Bonaparte, launched a coup d’etat and assumed all powers, and on December 2, 1852, he abolished the form of the Republic and officially became emperor. This coup was like a bolt from the blue, and the people were both amazed and speechless, unable to come to a consensus. “No one can understand” this matter. In this situation, Marx wrote this work in response to an invitation from Weydemeyer’s magazine Die Revolution.

The full text of The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte is divided into seven parts with the first part being an overview, the second to the sixth parts describing the process of Louis Bonaparte’s struggle with various political forces around their respective interests and his ultimate triumph, and the seventh part being a summary of the whole text. The main contents are: First, it anatomized the nature, the features and the root cause of defeat of the February Revolution in 1848 in France. The deterioration of the socio-economic conditions and the intensification of class conflicts and struggles based on economic interests were the reason for the outbreak of the February Revolution. The February Revolution overthrew the July Monarchy, which represented the interests of the big finance capitalists, and established the Second Republic, which represented the interests of the industrial and commercial bourgeoisie and cleared the way for the further development of capitalism. Therefore, the nature of this revolution was a bourgeois revolution. But the intricate class struggle, the contrast of class forces and the immaturity of the proletariat in French society at that time determined from the outset that it did not develop along the upward line as the Revolution of 1789, but found itself “in a state of retrogressive motion”. Second, it exposed the class limitations and the hypocrisy of the bourgeoisie who feared the masses. In the bourgeois revolution against feudal absolutism, the bourgeoisie needed to gain the support of the masses of workers and peasants and was afraid of the ignorance of the masses; however, the bourgeoisie and the masses of workers and peasants do not have any common fundamental interests. Therefore, when the revolutionary struggle awakens the masses of workers and peasants to an independent consciousness of revolution and rights, the bourgeoisie will resort to bloody expropriation and repression to deal with them. Third, it elaborated the Marxist doctrine of the state and the theory of the dictatorship of the proletariat, and put forth that the proletariat must smash the old bourgeois state machinery, “the chief and fundamental point in the Marxist theory of the state.” By analyzing the historical course of development of the centralized state machinery in France since modern times, it is pointed out that successive bourgeois revolutions have not shaken the military-bureaucratic machinery that was formed during the era of autocratic monarchs, but have instead regarded it as the chief spoils of the victor. He said: “All revolutions perfected this machine instead of breaking it.” And such a military state-bureaucratic machinery was the essential condition that enabled coups d’état to take place. Therefore, the future proletarian revolution must “concentrate all their destructive power” to smash the old state machinery, and thoroughly “overthrow the bourgeoisie!” and realize “the dictatorship of the working class!”. Fourth, it examined the dualism of the peasantry. Marx held that that there is a fundamental conflict and antagonism of interests between the peasants, as the oppressed and exploited, and the bourgeoisie, as the exploiters and oppressors, and that, therefore, it is the natural revolutionary nature of the peasants to resist exploitation and oppression. But as petty proprietors, the French peasants held a deep-rooted “Napoleonic idea”, which determined their innate conservatism. Fifth, it demonstrates the importance of the proletariat to form an alliance with the peasants and become the leader of this alliance. It pointed out that the peasants must become the natural ally of the proletariat so that the proletarian revolution can “get a kind of chorus, and without this kind of chorus, its solo singing in all the peasants will inevitably become a lonely cry.” At the same time, the proletariat, as the most radical revolutionary and the product of socialized large-scale production, must become the leader of the worker-peasant alliance.

The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte is one of the most influential works in the history of Marxism. In this “work of genius”, Marx applied the analytical method of historical materialism to reveal the laws of historical movement, clarified the Marxist conception of the state and the idea of the necessity of smashing the old state machinery, and expounded the idea of the worker-peasant alliance, which made it a shining example of the use of historical materialism in the literature of Marxism to illustrate and examine historical events. It is one of the most outstanding works of scientific communism.