The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1852

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 1

Chapters 2-3

Chapters 4-5

Chapters 6-7

Key Figures

Themes

Index of Terms

Important Quotes

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Chapters 4-5Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 4 Summary

After breaking the social-democratic party, Marx narrates that Bonaparte went on to dismiss his minister Odilon Barrot “in order to declare his own name independent of the National Assembly of the party of Order” (49). With Barrot’s dismissal, the Party of Order lost any control over the government. Marx attributes this defeat to the National Assembly not reducing the number of officials subservient to the government, and failing to “let civil society and public opinion create organs of their own, independent of the governmental power” (51).

However, the “material” and “political interests” of the bourgeoisie prevented such steps. The bourgeoisie relied on funds and offices from the state while needing to use the power of the state to resist opposition from the general public. At this point, Napoleon was widely hated by the public and ignored by his own ministers. Still, Marx argues the bourgeoisie had absolute control over the government through the National Assembly: “Never did the bourgeoisie rule more absolutely, never did it display more ostentatiously the insignia of domination” (52). The fear of socialism was also used to oppose proposals for even mild, liberal, and in Marx’s view, bourgeois reforms.

Marx concludes that the bourgeoisie in charge of the Second Republic themselves created the conditions for a rise in socialism. The very nature of parliamentary government leads to people from different classes turning eventually to socialist ideas. In order to save itself from this, Marx argues that the bourgeoisie has to “be condemned along with the other classes to like political nullity” (55). In other words, to prevent itself from eventually being overthrown by the other classes, the bourgeoisie has to sacrifice political dominion and submit itself to a strong government outside its own control.

Louis Napoleon himself worked to achieve public popularity by proposing laws that financially benefited the public, such as a proposal to increase the pay of non-commissioned military officers (55-56). This was done to prop up Napoleon at the expense of the Party of Order. However, when elections were held on March 10, 1850, Paris and the army came out in support of the Montagne. This forced Napoleon to work with the Party of Order again. Then, with the law of May 31, 1850, Napoleon and the National Assembly abolished universal suffrage, making three million voters ineligible to vote (60), and shut down the “revolutionary newspaper press” (58). Marx describes the law as a “coup d’etat of the bourgeoisie” (59).

Chapter 5 Summary

Napoleon and the National Assembly clashed again over the subject of Napoleon’s salary as president. Unless the National Assembly voted to raise his salary to three million francs a year, Napoleon threatened to denounce the National Assembly for the law of May 31, 1850. This was even though, as Marx puts it, “The National Assembly had violated the sovereignty of the people with [Napoleon’s] assistance and his cognizance” (61). Napoleon rallied support from the Society of December 10th or the Decembrists. Marx describes them as a “lumpenproletariat” and the “ruined and adventurous offshoots of the bourgeoisie” (63). These became his “private army” (65). Next, Napoleon tried to win over the officers of the military. With their support, he made it so that if the National Assembly opposed his accumulation of power, then they would appear to be the “instigator of unrest in the eyes of its own class, the bourgeoisie” (68).

The National Assembly made it legal for one of its own members to be imprisoned for debt in response to the debts of the representative François Maguin, but they did not stipulate the president was also not immune to being arrested for debt. The National Assembly also could not get rid of the Decembrists, even after they were investigated for plans to assassinate the president of the National Assembly, André Dupin, and General Changarnier. However, any attempt by the National Assembly to act against Napoleon was not taken seriously. When a clash between the Party of Order and Napoleon broke out, the party “declares the republic in danger, but then, also, its fervour appears absurd and the occasion for the struggle seems a hypocritical pretext or altogether not worth fighting about” (70-71).

Once he felt his position was strong enough, Napoleon moved to dismiss the Changarnier. Marx argues that the National Assembly could have organized an army under Changarnier’s command and deposed Napoleon. They did not do so. Further emboldened, Napoleon called a new ministry filled with people who were, in Marx’s words, “pure dummies” (78). Marx argues this failure to act amounted to “surrendering the army irrevocably to the President” (74). In Marx’s view, the only thing left at the National Assembly’s disposal was “forceless principles” (75). Marx accuses them of acting under what he calls “parliamentary cretinism,” which means the party was “reduced to moving within strictly parliamentary limits” (77).

Chapters 4-5 Analysis

Here, Marx begins to discuss Napoleon more at length. This reflects the theme of The Role of the Individual in History. Throughout The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, Marx paints Napoleon as an “adventurer down on his luck” who mainly wanted to get the French to “pay his debts” (50). It fits neatly with Marx’s argument that Bonaparte himself was the “chief of the lumpenproletariat” (63), referring to the underclass of criminals and unemployed. It also builds on Marx’s implication that Napoleon III is Napoleon I repeating as “farce” (10). Marx stresses his own absurd image of Napoleon III and how much Napoleon III’s life as an exile shaped his politics.

However, by emphasizing Napoleon III as just an “old crafty roué [scoundrel]” (63), Marx also suggests Napoleon III is just a cipher, moved along by events and deeper trends. In Marx’s presentation of the history of events after the Revolution of 1848, Napoleon III represents the failures and self-defeating actions of the Party of Order specifically and the bourgeoisie in general. Napoleon III is what follows when the bourgeoisie achieves absolute power only to find that it must sacrifice its own power to preserve its property and social influence against other classes (54-55).

The bourgeoisie could not act against the threat of Napoleon, because, Marx argues, it could not “deal with the antagonism of other classes” without taking “the dangerous turn that transforms every struggle against the state power into a struggle against capitalism” (54). This is another example of The Relationship between Base and Superstructure. Marx views the failure of the Second Republic, especially the Party of Order, as part of the bourgeoisie finding itself unable to safely exercise the level of political power it had achieved.

As Marx puts it, the Second Republic failed so that “the individual bourgeois can continue to exploit the other classes and to enjoy undisturbed property, family, religion and order only on condition that their class be condemned along with the other classes to like political nullity” (55). If the Second Republic continued to exist under upper-bourgeois rule, there was the risk that the working classes and the petty bourgeoisie would have challenged it, using the same tools and language that the bourgeoisie used to fight and destroy feudalism. If that happened, the very foundations of the capitalist, bourgeois society might have been undermined.