The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte

“Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all the dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living.”

This is essentially a thesis statement of Marx’s own philosophical view of The Role of the Individual in History. Individuals may have an impact on events, but even when they have an influence, they are bound to the past and to ongoing social and economic trends and circumstances.

“During the June days all classes and parties had united in the party of Order against the proletarian class as the party of Anarchy, of Socialism, of Communism. They had ‘saved’ society from ‘the enemies of society.’”

Marx notes throughout The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte that accusations of socialism, anarchy, and radicalism were used to discredit working-class revolutionaries, aiding The Bourgeoisie and the Rise of Authoritarianism. Eventually, such accusations would be employed against the bourgeois opponents of Napoleon III themselves (53).

“Such was the Constitution of 1848, which on December 2, 1851, was not overthrown by a head, but fell at the touch of a mere hat; this hat, to be sure, was a three-cornered Napoleonic hat.”

Marx attributes the downfall of the Second Republic to flaws built into the republic’s own constitution. In this case, Marx sees a fatal weakness in how the Second Republic’s constitution gave significant power to the president and little power to the National Assembly.

“They regarded [Louis Napoleon] simply as their dupe.”

Another problem is that Louis Napoleon’s political rivals underestimated him. However, Marx himself presents Louis Napoleon as the “farce” (10) version of his famous uncle, Napoleon I. Still, Marx does admit Louis Napoleon was bold enough to gain military support and to manipulate the Party of Order.

“The revolution itself paralyses its own bearers and endows only its adversaries with passionate forcefulness.”

In this passage, Marx is referring to the failures of the February Revolution or the Revolution of 1848. The bourgeoisie took control of this revolution, only to fail to act against Louis Napoleon, empowering him and his supporters.

“What kept the two factions [Orleanists and Legitimists] apart, therefore, was not any so-called principles, it was their material conditions of existence, two different kinds of property, it was the old contrast between town and country, the rivalry between capital and landed property.”

This is the most detailed explanation of The Relationship between Base and Superstructure in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. Namely, here Marx argues that the squabble over the French throne by the supporters of the two branches of the French royal family, the Bourbons and the Orleans, really represented economic and social divisions within the bourgeoisie itself.

“No party exaggerates its means more than the democratic, none deludes itself more light-mindedly over the situation.” 

Here Marx summarizes the situation of the Party of Order. They both overestimate their own influence and underestimate the crises facing them. Marx implies here that this is a characteristic of any political party within a democratic system.

“As often as the confused noise of parliament grew silent during these recesses and its body dissolved in the nation, it became unmistakably clear that only one thing was still wanting to complete the true form of this republic: to make the former’s recess permanent and replace the latter’s inscription: Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité by the unambiguous words: Infantry, Calvary, Artillery!” 

Marx again shares his view that Napoleon III was basically a military dictator instead of a traditional monarchical figure. The transition from the Second Republic to the reign of Napoleon III was essentially one from a democracy to rule under military force.

“Thus the French bourgeoisie was compelled by its class position to annihilate, on the one hand, the vital conditions of all parliamentary power, and therefore, likewise, of its own, and to render irresistible, on the other hand, the executive power hostile to it.”

Another way Marx uses his theory of The Relationship between Base and Superstructure is to explain why the Second Republic failed. For Marx, it was not simply because of problems with the Constitution or because of Napoleon III’s own actions leading up to his coup. Instead, it is because the bourgeoisie found that its control over the Second Republic led to potential “class struggle” that threatened the bourgeoisie’s property, forcing it to relinquish political control (40).

“Whether it was a question of the right of petition or the tax on wine, freedom of the press or free trade, the clubs or the municipal charter, protection of personal liberty or regulation of the state budget, the watchword constantly recurs, the theme remains always the same, the verdict is ever ready and invariably reads: ‘Socialism!’”

In the early days of the Revolution of 1848 or the February Revolution, proletariat revolutionaries were accused of being socialists or Communists. Marx suggests this accusation was often used regardless of what the people called “socialists” actually stood for. These fears of working-class revolution in turn enabled The Bourgeoisie and the Rise of Authoritarianism.

“Thus, by stigmatising as ‘socialistic’ what it had previously extolled as ‘liberal,’ the bourgeoisie confesses that its own interests dictate that it should be delivered from the danger of its own rule.”

Marx here argues that this is one of the reasons why the bourgeoisie backed down from holding political power in the Second Republic: The same rhetoric used against proletariat activists became used against the bourgeoisie themselves.

“A long life of adventurous vagabondage had endowed him with the most developed antennae for feeling out the weak moments when he might squeeze money from his bourgeois.”

Marx argues that the fall of the Second Republic was due to broader economic and social forces. However, he does focus on Napoleon III’s shady past traveling around Europe and the Americas and launching failed coups against the French government, thereby exploring The Role of the Individual in History.

“The parliamentary storm becomes a storm in a teacup, the fight becomes an intrigue, the conflict a scandal.”

There were a number of internal conflicts over the course of the existence of the Second Republic, like the debate over constitutional reform or the conflict between the Montagne and the Party of Order. Marx suggests here that the seriousness of such conflicts was constantly underestimated.

“By repulsing the army, which places itself in the person of Changarnier at its disposal, and so surrendering the army irrevocably to the President, the party of Order declares that the bourgeoisie has forfeited its vocation to rule.”

There are several ways that Marx sees the bourgeoisie as relinquishing their political power. However, a major way the Second Republic failed was that it let Napoleon III take control of the military by dismissing General Changarnier. At the same time, the Party of Order refused to use the military to depose Napoleon III, even though it had the power to do so.

“[The Party of Order] were therefore reduced to moving within strictly parliamentary limits. And it took that peculiar malady which since 1848 has raged all over the Continent, parliamentary cretinism, which holds those infected by it fast in an imaginary world and robs them of all sense, all memory, all understanding of the rude external world.”

The result of the Party of Order failing to act decisively against Louis Napoleon is that they weakened the National Assembly even further. Like other legislative assemblies across Europe during the revolutions of 1848, the Second Republic’s National Assembly limited how much it could do just by failing to act boldly when it had the opportunity.

“The parliamentary republic was more than the neutral territory on which the two factions of the French bourgeoisie, Legitimists and Orleanists, large landed property and industry, could dwell side by side with equality of rights. It was the unavoidable condition of their common rule, the sole form of state in which their general class interest subjected to itself at the same time both the claims of their particular factions and all the remaining classes of society.”

In this passage, Marx returns to his theory of The Relationship between Base and Superstructure. Political structures and agendas are shaped by class interests, according to this theory. As Marx argues elsewhere, the bourgeoisie abandon their control over the Second Republic because having a monopoly over political power actually comes to threaten their class interest and their social power (55).

“The real fusion of the Restoration and the July Monarchy was the parliamentary republic, in which Orleanist and Legitimist colors were obliterated and the various species of bourgeois disappeared in the bourgeois as such, in the bourgeois genus.”

Further drawing upon the theory of The Relationship between Base and Superstructure, Marx argues that the Second Republic represented the French upper bourgeoisie as a whole. By uniting two different royalist factions, it also united both landowners and bankers.

“The party of Order proved by its decision on revision that it knew neither how to rule nor how to serve; neither how to live nor how to die; neither how to suffer the republic nor how to overthrow it; neither how to uphold the Constitution nor how to throw it overboard; neither how to cooperate with the President nor how to break with him.”

For Marx, the crisis that would eventually lead to the collapse of the Second Republic was the debate over reforming the constitution. The National Assembly proved that it was unable to take the initiative, leaving Louis Napoleon to fill the void.

“[The Party of Order] declared unequivocally that it longed to get rid of its own political rule in order to get rid of the troubles and dangers of ruling.”

Marx views the total failure of the National Assembly to act on the question of constitutional reform as demonstrating his theory of The Relationship between Base and Superstructure. In this case, it shows how the Party of Order was acting according to the desire of the bourgeoisie to save their class and material interests by giving up political supremacy.

“The National Assembly had become incapable of transacting business. Its atomic constituents were no longer held together by any force of cohesion; it had drawn its last breath, it was dead.”

The strength of the National Assembly, according to Marx, was that it represented the unification of the two main factions of the upper bourgeoisie, financiers and landowners. Once that union failed and the bourgeoisie lost the desire to maintain political power, the National Assembly and the Second Republic as a whole was doomed.

“The French bourgeoisie balked at the domination of the working proletariat; it has brought the lumpenproletariat to domination, with the chief of the Society of December 10 at the head.”

Marx argues here that a key reason why Napoleon III came to power was because the bourgeoisie had no desire to relinquish power to the proletariat or the working class. A government ruled by the proletariat would represent a threat to the bourgeoisie’s class interests. The bourgeoisie’s determination to safeguard its interests through ceding control to a strong dictatorial government reflects the theme of The Bourgeoisie and the Rise of Authoritarianism.

“France […] seems to have escaped the despotism of a class only to fall back beneath the despotism of an individual, and, what is more, beneath the authority of an individual without authority. The struggle seems to be settled in such a way that all classes, equally impotent and equally mute, fall on their knees before the rifle butt.”

Marx views Napoleon III’s government as relying on both military strength and legitimacy from religion (13). Marx therefore presents Napoleon III’s government as a more primitive form of government, although at the same time he argues that Napoleon III depends on a strong bureaucratic government independent of any class or segment of society (104).

“Just as the Bourbons were the dynasty of big landed property and just as the Orleans were the dynasty of money, so the Bonapartes are the dynasty of the peasants, that is, the mass of the French people.”

According to Marx’s theory of The Relationship between Base and Superstructure, Napoleon III’s dynasty also stands for a specific faction within a class. For the Bonapartes, they represent the interests of peasants or, specifically, landowning peasants.