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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Discussion Questions

Chapters 6-7Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 6 Summary

The National Assembly debated the question of whether or not the constitution should be reformed. Napoleon’s supporters, the Bonapartists, pushed to abolish Article 45 of the French Constitution, which prevented a president from being reelected for a second term. The conflict over constitutional reform was worsened by the fact that the Legitimists and Orleanists had split again, preventing them from simply reestablishing the monarchy. The two factions could not agree to a compromise where the childless Legitimist claimant to the French throne, Henri V, would name the Orleanist claimant, Louis-Philippe II, as his heir.

However, Marx views this struggle as not really being about the rival royal dynasties themselves, but about “their general class interests” (82). Specifically, it was the clash between those who controlled property, represented by the Legitimists, and the financial class, represented by the Orleanists. Marx argues that the failure to reach a compromise over dynastic rights “destroyed their parliamentary fusion” (85), meaning the actual important compromise between their material interests.

Since the two factions of the Party of Order failed to work with each other on the issue of constitutional revision, their own bourgeois supporters in the public turned against them. The international press and international bankers saw Napoleon’s actions as a “victory of order” (89), even though his political actions were causing political disorder. As Marx sarcastically notes, the bourgeoisie blamed the National Assembly when trade was bad. When trade was good, they believed the National Assembly was a threat to that good trade (90). By 1851, there was stagnation in French trade caused by industrial “overproduction” in England.

Taking advantage of the economic and political situation, Louis Napoleon had decided to take over the government through a coup. His first step was to call for the restoration of universal suffrage. An amendment to change the elections law to reduce the amount of time a citizen had to reside in an area to be eligible to vote was defeated by one vote. For Marx, this proves that “the National Assembly had become incapable of transacting business” (97). On December 3, Napoleon fully acted. He had the leaders of his opposition arrested and placed placards around Paris declaring the restoration of universal suffrage and the dissolving of the National Assembly.

Chapter 7 Summary

Marx describes the rise of Emperor Napoleon III as the “lumpenproletariat” coming to “domination” (101). He notes the irony that everything the bourgeoisie did to crush the proletariat—shutting down their newspapers and disbanding their political assemblies—has now happened to the bourgeoisie under Napoleon III. Violent resistance from the proletariat on December 4 had “intimidated” (103) Napoleon into restoring secret ballots. The bourgeoisie and épicier (grocer) class who encouraged the proletariat to resist were satisfied with this change, effectively ending any serious resistance to Napoleon III from the streets.

Marx writes that Napoleon III’s government began essentially as a military dictatorship. In Marx’s words, “all classes, equally impotent and equally mute, fall on their knees before the rifle butt” (103). However, Napoleon III’s government evolved into a powerful, centralized state run by “agents of governmental power” (104). In the past, Marx argues, strong, centralized states were used as tools by the ruling class. With Napoleon III, the state exists as something “completely independent” and is headed by “an adventurer blown in from abroad, raised on the shield by a drunken soldiery, which has been bought with liquor and sausages, and which he must continually ply with sausage anew” (105).

At the same time, Marx suggests the Bonapartes do represent a class. They are “the dynasty of the peasants, that is, the mass of the French people” (105). It was this peasantry that helped Napoleon III win the December 1851 elections that made him emperor and finally and truly abolished the Second Republic. Marx argues the peasantry, especially the small-holding peasants, supported Napoleon III because “their mode of production” (106), meaning the fact they lived as farmers and village artisans, caused them to be isolated from each other and from other classes. Due to this isolation, instead of looking for representation in a government body, they instead looked for a “master” with “unlimited governmental power that protects them against the other classes and sends them rain and sunshine from above” (106).

The part of the peasantry that had been radicalized had been “repressed” (107) by the bourgeoisie under the Second Republic. Napoleon III also appealed to the desire of peasants to gain property, which had happened under Napoleon I. However, this is not a perfect source of support for Napoleon III. Marx describes how a consequence of Napoleon I’s land reform was that French peasants experienced more poverty and a decline in the quality of agriculture. This was because, Marx argues, Napoleon I’s land reform had opened up the expansion of industry into towns. Napoleon I had tried to resolve this by creating an “artificial caste” of government employees, an “idée napoléonienne” (Napoleonic idea) that Napoleon III would also adapt (111).

Other Napoleonic ideas are the use of the clergy by the government. However, this inevitably leads to the clergy becoming seen as the “anointed bloodhound of the earthly police” (111). Finally, the last of the Napoleonic ideas that Marx discusses is the army and how it was used to promote and glorify the peasants who joined it. Marx views Napoleon III’s government as a historical development that will lead to a clash between small-holding and centralized government power. As the growing state continues to undermine small land-holders, the government starts to harm itself.

Another paradox Marx sees is that Napoleon III will have to rely on the bourgeoisie even though he has destroyed its power (113). Another challenge is that Napoleon III “cannot give to one class without taking from another” (114). For example, Napoleon III cannot have mortgage banks help the peasants buy property without also harming the capitalists running the banks. Instead, Napoleon III is forced to rely on paid cronies in the government and the military. As a result, Napoleon III only makes the government of France look “at once loathsome and ridiculous” (116).

Chapters 6-7 Analysis

It is important to note that Marx argues in these and other chapters that Napoleon III is more like, in modern terms, a military dictator than a traditional monarch. This is key to understanding what Marx means by The Bourgeoisie and the Rise of Authoritarianism. Already Marx noted that Napoleon III would rule through military force (13). Napoleon III’s rise to power depended on not just the failure of the National Assembly to act as a united body, but Napoleon’s own use of the Society of December 10th, which amounted to a “private army” (65). Once Napoleon began to achieve power, he managed to coerce through money the French military itself (105).

At least even the monarchies of the past, up to the government of Louis-Philippe, relied on public support from outside the military and had made “concessions” to certain segments of the public. When Marx describes the government of Napoleon III, on the other hand, he describes it in terms reminiscent of a modern dictatorship, both in terms of how it depends on coercion through the might of the military and how it has created a strong government that can act without the consent of even the more influential members of the public (113). Marx describes Napoleon III’s government as an “enormous bureaucratic and military organization […] with its vast and ingenious state machinery” (104). Overall, it is a regime that tries to appeal to all sectors of society. However, it cannot be held accountable by any part of the general public, something that was not true for the monarchy of Louis-Philippe and perhaps even the monarchy that existed before the revolution of 1789.

Even with the centralized power at his command, Marx suggests that Napoleon III is doomed, even though he was writing in 1852, just one year after the coup that brought Napoleon III to power. This is according to Marx’s own ideas of The Relationship between Base and Superstructure. Marx argues that the support the Bonapartist dynasty enjoys from land-owning peasants cannot last. The peasants may look at Napoleon III as a benefactor. However, Marx suggests that such an attitude may change as capitalism and industry expand into France’s rural areas and jeopardize their ownership of land, and Napoleon III’s government will inevitably side with the forces of bourgeois capitalism (108-10).

Even though Marx argues that Napoleon III destroyed the Second Republic—which represented the absolute rule of the bourgeoisie—for his own government, Napoleon III still claims to be protecting the interests and values of the middle class. For Marx, Napoleon III is simultaneously the “adversary of the literary and political power of the middle class” and the “representative of the middle class” (112-13). At the same time, he claims to work toward the interests of all classes, which Marx suggests is impossible (114). The base under Napoleon III’s government is still the capitalist mode of production, which Napoleon III is protecting by suppressing class conflict. However, Marx argues that eventually Napoleon III will be overcome by the “contradictory demands of his situation” (116).