Download Marx`s Eighteenth Brumaire : Postmodern Interpretations

Marx’s
Eighteenth Brumaire
(Post)modern Interpretations
Edited by
Mark Cowling and James Martin
Pluto
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First published 2002 by Pluto Press
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Copyright © Mark Cowling and James Martin 2002;
‘The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte’, in Karl Marx: Later Political
Writings, Cambridge University Press, 1996, edited and translated by
Terrell Carver. Reproduced by permission of the translator and publisher.
The right of the individual contributors to be identified as the authors of
this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from
the British Library
ISBN 0 7453 1831 2 hardback
ISBN 0 7453 1830 4 paperback
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Marx, Karl, 1818-1883.
[Achtzehnte Brumaire des Louis Bonaparte. English]
Marx’s ‘Eighteenth Brumaire’ : (post)modern interpretations / edited
by Mark Cowling and James Martin.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0–7453–1831–2 (hardback) –– ISBN 0–7453–1830–4 (pbk.)
1. Napoleon III, Emperor of the French, 1808–1873. 2.
France––History––Coup d’état, 1851. 3. France––History––February
Revolution, 1848. 4. France––History––Second Republic, 1848–1852. I.
Title: Eighteenth Brumaire. II. Title: Marx’s ‘18th Brumaire’. III.
Cowling, Mark. IV. Martin, James, 1968– V. Carver, Terrell. VI. Title.
DC274 .M27 2002
944.07––dc21
2002008652
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Contents
Acknowledgements
1. Introduction
Mark Cowling and James Martin
Part 1
113
129
The Eighteenth Brumaire as History
5. Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte: ‘Hero’ or ‘Grotesque
Mediocrity’?
Roger Price
6. The Appeal of Bonapartism
Geoff Watkins
Part 4
19
The Eighteenth Brumaire as Discourse
3. Imagery/Writing, Imagination/Politics: Reading Marx
through the Eighteenth Brumaire
Terrell Carver
4. Performing Politics: Class, Ideology and Discourse in
Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire
James Martin
Part 3
1
The Text
2. The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
(Trans. Terrell Carver)
Karl Marx
Part 2
vii
145
163
The Autonomy of the State?
7. The Political Scene and the Politics of Representation:
Periodising Class Struggle and the State in the
Eighteenth Brumaire
Bob Jessop
8. Making Sense of the ‘Relative Autonomy’ of the State
Paul Wetherly
179
195
vi
Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire
Part 5
The Eighteenth Brumaire, Classes and Class
Struggle, Then and Now
9. The Eighteenth Brumaire and Thatcherism
Paul Blackledge
10. Marx’s Lumpenproletariat and Murray’s Underclass:
Concepts Best Abandoned?
Mark Cowling
11. Here Content Transcends Phrase: The Eighteenth Brumaire
as the Key to Understanding Marx’s Critique of Utopian
Socialism
Darren Webb
Notes on the Contributors
Index
211
228
243
258
260
Acknowledgements
The editors would like to express their thanks to the following for
their assistance in the development of this book: members of the
Marxism Specialist Group of the Political Studies Association (UK)
for their offer of contributions; Anne Beech at Pluto Press for her
enthusiasm for the project; and the staff at the British Library and at
the University of London Library (Senate House) for their help in
providing materials.
All references to Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis
Bonaparte are to the translation by Terrell Carver contained in Part 1
of this volume. This text was first published in Terrell Carver (ed.
and trans.), Karl Marx: Later Political Writings (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1996), pp. 31–127. We are grateful to Cambridge
University Press for permission to reprint it here.
Where possible, all other references to the works of Marx and
Engels are to the (so far) 47 volumes of Karl Marx–Frederick Engels.
Collected Works (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1975–). These are
referenced in the endnotes with the abbreviation C.W., followed by
volume and page numbers.
vii
1
Introduction
Mark Cowling and James Martin
On 2 December 1851, Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte – nephew of the
great Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte and, since late 1848, elected
President of the Second French Republic – announced the
dissolution of the Legislative Assembly and, with the backing of the
army, ordered the parliamentary chamber to be occupied by troops,
the leaders of the main parties arrested and placed himself in sole
charge of government. A year later he declared himself Emperor
Napoleon III, head of the Second French Empire. Bonaparte’s coup
d’état brought to an end not only the republican regime ushered in
after the revolution of 1848 but also the period of unstable, limited
‘bourgeois democratic’ government and experimentation with constitutional monarchy since the defeat of his uncle in 1815. For those
radicals and socialists who in 1848 hoped to transform the wave of
democratic revolutions into a more substantial movement for
economic and social reform, Napoleon’s coup symbolised and
underscored a demoralising defeat at the hands of popular reaction.
Karl Marx’s The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte is a bitter,
richly entertaining account of these events by one of the radicals
who had observed events at first hand. A journalist, intellectual
and self-proclaimed communist, Marx, too, had participated as a
propagandist in the events of 1848 as co-founder of the
‘Communist League’ and in his Manifesto of the Communist Party of
that year, co-written with Frederick Engels, he had encouraged
socialist revolutionaries to participate in the revolution alongside
the republican bourgeoisie in order to bring to the fore the
demands of the proletariat. The Eighteenth Brumaire, written and
published in 1852, narrated the rise and decline of the revolution
in France from the proclamation of the ‘Second Republic’ to the
coup of 1851. By contrast with the Manifesto – characterised by its
(deliberately) optimistic reading of history as a series of class
struggles leading, ultimately, to communism – the Eighteenth
Brumaire tells a more complex and less ‘progressive’ story. It is also
one of Marx’s few lengthy analyses of political history and it is
widely regarded as one of his most colourful.1 Yet within Marxist
scholarship the Eighteenth Brumaire’s novelty is often noted but the
1
2
Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire
text is rarely commented upon at any length. It is the purpose of
this volume, one hundred and fifty years after Marx’s publication,
to begin to fill that gap.
In the remainder of this Introduction we shall give a brief
summary of the content of the Eighteenth Brumaire and then discuss
its themes in relation to the concerns of later Marxists and the
Marxist tradition generally. Finally we offer a brief overview of the
content of the chapters that follow.
MARX’S EIGHTEENTH BRUMAIRE: THE TEXT
The text of the Eighteenth Brumaire (reprinted after this Introduction
in a new translation) is a challenge even for those familiar with
Marx’s work. Its focus is the transformation of a revolution against
a constitutional monarchy (the ‘July Monarchy’ of Louis XV),
through a series of internal disputes between the political groups
involved, until the dissolution of the Second Republic by Bonaparte’s
coup. In this respect, the distance between us and the characters and
events in question makes the Eighteenth Brumaire an unfamiliar, and
consequently rather burdensome, read. Yet the text is more than a
description of events. It is also a reflection, amongst other things,
on the nature of revolutions, political leadership and class struggle.
In this respect, too, Marxists might find the text less instructive than
Marx’s more theoretical works since these political issues are
presented in the form of a concrete set of circumstances whose
‘universal’ relevance is at best uncertain. Finally, for those
accustomed to reading Marx’s philosophical studies or his critical
engagement with political economy, the Eighteenth Brumaire will
seem a curiously unscientific commentary, replete with undeclared
normative assumptions and personal invective, richly figurative
language and with no evident purpose other than of recounting the
events and ridiculing the characters under examination.
Yet if the Eighteenth Brumaire is a challenge to read, it is not
because it lacks substance as a work of political commentary. For all
its difficulties as a text, it remains fascinating and provocative for
Marxists and non-Marxists alike. Before we consider some of the
themes that can be said to ‘derive’ from the Eighteenth Brumaire let
us first consider its contents as a commentary on events.
Marx takes under examination the period from February 1848 to
December 1851. He divides this period into three separate phases,
in which different alliances of classes and groupings ruled.
Introduction
3
In the first phase (the February Period), King Louis Philippe, whose
rule Marx identifies with the finance aristocracy, was overthrown by
a broad coalition. It comprised:
• large landowners: these were Legitimists (supporters of a
restoration of the Bourbons) and not Orléanists, and had been
excluded from power under the July Monarchy
• republican bourgeoisie: this social category simply comprised
members of the bourgeoisie who were anti-monarchist
• manufacturing bourgeoisie: interested in cheap government
and thus endangered by the rule of the finance aristocracy
• democratic-republican petty bourgeoisie: horrified at the
corruption of the finance aristocracy
• peasantry: also horrified at the extravagance of the finance
aristocracy in stark contrast to its own poverty following crop
failure and potato blight in 1845–47
• the proletariat: revolted because it identified the rule of finance
aristocracy with that of capital.
This alliance was modified by the elimination of the proletariat as a
political force, first through their immediate diversion to the Hotel
de Ville, where they formed a parallel and impotent government,
and second through the manoeuvring of the proletariat into a badly
organised revolt in June 1848, the failure of which ensured they
would play little part in subsequent events. These manoeuvres were
carried out by the reigning social category, the republican
bourgeoisie.
The second phase was brought on by the decline of the republican
bourgeoisie, seen in the election of Bonaparte to the Presidency on
10 December 1848. This was achieved by an electoral alliance of:
• the peasantry, voting against the taxes the ‘proletarian’
republican government had lain on them
• the petty bourgeoisie, voting against the abolition of the
progressive tax, by which the bourgeois republicans had hoped
to gain the support of the big bourgeoisie; and also voting
against Cavaignac, who had put down the June revolt
• the big bourgeoisie, who were voting for a restoration of the
monarchy (the election of Bonaparte being seen as a step in
this direction)
• the army, a social category seeking money
• the proletariat, who were voting against Cavaignac.
4
Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire
The result of this alliance was the rise of the Party of Order as the
ruling alliance: the Party of Order was the royalist parliamentary
party representing the unity of the two bourgeois factions, the large
landowners who had ruled under the Restoration and were therefore
Legitimists, and the Orléanists, the finance aristocracy who had
ruled under the July monarchy. Their rule was paradoxically only
possible within the framework of the parliamentary republic and
against the background of indefinite postponement of the
Restoration. When parliament was recessed in 1850 and 1851, when
there seemed a real prospect of restoration, or when Bonaparte
dangled the possibility of a ministry representing one faction only,
the two factions split up again.
The third phase was the one which brought Bonaparte to power.
Besides Bonaparte’s manoeuvrings to split the Party of Order into
fractions it disintegrated through the desertion of individual
members, through a fear of struggle and to safeguard their posts;
and, as a result of this, from the necessity of an alliance with the
pure republicans and the Montaigne against Bonaparte and the army
– which put the remnants of the Party of Order in worse odour with
their erstwhile supporters. This disintegration paved the way for the
coup which brought Bonaparte to power.
The alliance behind Bonaparte were:
• finance capital, because Bonaparte represented their interest in
state debt, and because he represented stability against the disintegration of the Party of Order
• the Legitimist landed aristocracy, which had effectively merged
its interests with the finance aristocracy
• the industrial bourgeoisie, concerned with public order to
secure good trading conditions, but not in a sufficiently
developed condition to make a bid for power on its own (parliamentary struggles were seen as a threat to good trading
conditions)
• the lumpenproletariat (bribed)
• the state officials and the army (interested in the expansion of
the state).
The tone of Marx’s analysis is set by the remarks he makes at the
start of the Eighteenth Brumaire concerning bourgeois revolutions and
these remarks make the text more than simply a ‘neutral’ telling of
history. Marx suggests that revolutions inevitably are enacted in the
Introduction
5
guise of earlier, classic moments in history. The English Civil War
made reference to the Old Testament, the French Revolution of 1789
referenced the Roman Republic, and the 1848 revolution made
reference to the French Revolution. It is precisely these guises or
‘spirits of the past’ to which Marx is referring when he remarks that
‘Traditions from all the dead generations weigh like a nightmare on
the brain of the living.’ That is, agents in the present are compelled,
and yet simultaneously restricted, by the imagery and symbols of
the past when they come to fulfil some historic task. In this instance,
however, Marx claims the reference to tradition resembles ‘farce’.
Marx’s analysis then proceeds in this tenor, sarcastically deriding the
failure of the agents to live up to the fanciful imagery and phrases
deployed to justify their actions. Throughout the text Marx exposes
the limitations of bourgeois and royalist forces, alerting the reader,
on the one hand, to the class interests often (though not always) at
work behind the shifting alliances and petty intrigue of politics and,
on the other, the unrealistic or reactionary delusions motivating
others. Unlike earlier bourgeois revolutions, where the invocation
of the past served to undermine aspects of the feudal order and
promote a whole new conception of society, the 1848 revolution
simply couldn’t fulfil its promise. Bonaparte’s coup was final evidence
of a bourgeoisie forced to backtrack on its political ambitions for fear
of its own success.
If the Eighteenth Brumaire is written as an account of a revolution
that declined into farce, nevertheless Marx makes one reference to a
point of principle that can be understood as classically ‘Marxist’ –
namely, the distinction between an economic base and an ideological
and political superstructure. Towards the start of the third section of
the text Marx reminds the reader that ‘On the different forms of
property, the social conditions of existence, arises an entire superstructure of different and peculiarly formed sentiments, delusions,
modes of thought and outlooks on life.’2 Classes build upon the
‘material foundations’ of these property relations but it is their
interests at that level that ultimately motivate them. We are advised
not to be taken in by the ‘fine words and aspirations’ of political
forces but to look to ‘their real interests’ as an explanation for their
behaviour. The same point will be made at slightly greater length in
Marx’s ‘Preface’ of 1859 to A Contribution to the Critique of Political
Economy. Here, however, the point is made in passing, positioned a
good way through the text rather than at the start. Yet its presence
serves to remind us that Marx was not simply engaging in pure
6
Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire
sarcasm and denunciation (something he was quite good at).
Although it is not presented as such, Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire
might be conceived as an example of the application of theoretical
principle to the analysis of concrete political history. The theoretical
principle in question is the ‘materialistic conception of history’ or
‘historical materialism’ that he and Engels worked out in the mid1840s and which is given fullest expression in the jointly authored
but unpublished German Ideology of 1845–46. Yet before we rush to
classify the Eighteenth Brumaire as a direct application of principle to
practice, we should alert ourselves to the fact that at no point does
Marx actually claim this work builds on a theory of historical
materialism, and its location in the text suggests that this is not his
priority. Even if it was, closer analysis makes it evident that Marx is
not applying the principle in any strict sense. There is a considerable
degree of autonomy and independent effect granted to ideas,
ideologies and other such elements of the ‘superstructure’. This is,
perhaps, inevitable given that the interests of the propertied classes
could find expression in at least three groupings, the two rival royalist
factions of Legitimists and Orléanists, loyal to different branches of
the French royal family whose smooth pattern of primogeniture had
been shattered by the Revolution of 1789, and those who aspired to
revive the rule of the Empire of the first Napoleon Bonaparte.
Thus the text of the Eighteenth Brumaire is a complex, fascinating
commentary upon political events. But what is its importance for
the Marxist tradition? We can only offer tentative suggestions here
by highlighting the ‘themes’ that have engaged later Marxists and
which inform the contributions to this volume.
THE EIGHTEENTH BRUMAIRE AS HISTORY
If the Eighteenth Brumaire was an extended attempt by Marx to write
history, the immediate question for a new reader is whether his
account of the rise of Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte III was any good by
the standards of subsequent historians. Was he involved in gross
distortions or gross ignorance?
The general verdict is that Marx makes quite a respectable job of
narrating and explaining this episode. The main criticisms made by
historians have to do with the role of the proletariat. Marx aims to
identify proletarian support for Napoleon as support by the lumpenproletariat, or as a negative vote against General Cavaignac, who had
put down the June insurrection. In fact proletarian support for
Bonaparte was considerably more substantial than Marx allows. In
Introduction
7
turn this allows Marx to present Bonaparte as a buffoon and a
swindler, playing down his positive appeal on the basis of the
Napoleonic legend and as a potential moderniser.3
POLITICS, CLASS AND THE EIGHTEENTH BRUMAIRE
The Eighteenth Brumaire focuses upon an area of social life that the
Marxist tradition is typically considered to have neglected, namely:
politics. Marxism, it is widely thought, embodies above all a theory
of history and social change. History, Marx suggests in the 1859
‘Preface’, is the movement produced by the contradiction between
the ‘forces’ and ‘relations of production’. Politics, in this schema, is
relegated to a secondary status, an effect of this wider logic in which
modes of production form and then succumb to their own internal
contradictions, to be replaced by new modes of production.
However, Marx and Engels also argue, in the Manifesto, that history
is ‘the history of class struggles’, a perpetual, if often disguised,
conflict between economic classes. In its interpretation of society
and history the Marxist tradition has moved between these poles of
‘structural determination’ by overarching historical ‘laws’ and a more
open-ended account of classes in struggle. Whereas the first
approach emphasises the general limits to thought and action set by
economic conditions, the second emphasises the role of political
agents (ultimately, economic classes) in historical change. It is this
latter account of historical change that occupies Marx in the
Eighteenth Brumaire. Its central concerns are classes as political agents.
Unlike the Manifesto, as we have already suggested, the kind of
struggle that Marx narrates in the Eighteenth Brumaire is not a
triumphant march through history but a more complex process of
advance and retreat in which economic classes are not always the
principal agents.
This raises an issue about which there is some disagreement
between the authors in this collection. One obvious traditional
Marxist approach to the Eighteenth Brumaire is to see it as an attempt
to develop a more subtle analysis of classes than that found in the
Manifesto:
Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses, however, this
distinctive feature: it has simplified the class antagonisms. Society
as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile
camps, into two great classes directly facing each other:
Bourgeoisie and Proletariat.4
8
Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire
Faced with a real society Marx recognised a whole series of groupings
beyond these, and subdivisions within them. In the above series of
alliances we find not merely the proletariat and the bourgeoisie but
also large landowners, the finance aristocracy, the manufacturing
bourgeoisie, the petty bourgeoisie, the peasantry and the lumpenproletariat. In addition we find groupings united at least in the first
instance by their ideas, such as the republican bourgeoisie and the
democratic-republican petty bourgeoisie, and by economic interests
which are not class interests, such as the army or state officials.
Plainly, too, classes do not simply represent themselves; their
members need to form political parties such as the Party of Order,
which may disintegrate for various reasons. We are looking at
something much more complex than a two class model.
One way forward from the text, then, is to scrutinise the classes
and groupings Marx recognises to see whether they are coherent and
whether a better analysis could be produced. Thus one could look
forward from Marx’s account of the French smallholding peasantry
as being like ‘potatoes in a sack’ – living in similar conditions but
not really forming a proper class because they had very limited
means of communication with each other and no proper political
representation.5 At least two issues arise. What exactly counts as a
proper class? Could members of a more developed peasantry, for
example, see themselves as a class because they had established a
party and a body of ideology, but be seen by someone else as still
underdeveloped? The second issue is one that was subsequently
central to the Leninist branch of Marxism. Could all French peasants
really be seen as the same? Did forms of land tenure vary, and if so
how would one make sense of that? Were some peasants tending to
turn into capitalist farmers, whilst others were sinking into the
proletariat? Marx’s own main discussion of the peasantry is an
abstract and implied one in ‘The Genesis of the Capitalist Farmer’ in
Capital Vol. I and ‘The Genesis of Capitalist Ground Rent’ in Vol. III,
Ch. XLVII. One could move on from this to look at Lenin’s writings
on the peasantry, notably The Development of Capitalism in Russia and
his gradual development of a rural programme, notably in Two
Tactics of Social Democracy in the Democratic Revolution. This would
lead into a study of what actually happened in the Russian
revolution, with the acceptance of the Socialist Revolutionaries’
peasant programme in 1917, the splitting of the village in War
Communism, the encouragement of rural enterprise in the period
of the New Economic Policy and the treatment of the kulaks, the
Introduction
9
peasants who had again started to become capitalist farmers, during
collectivisation. The analysis of class divisions amongst the
peasantry was also central to the revolutions in other countries such
as China and Vietnam.6 In the classical Western Marxist tradition
Marx’s writing on the peasantry was followed up by Karl Kautsky.7
A similar approach could be taken with other classes. One could
ask whether large landowners and the finance aristocracy shared the
same fundamental interests as the capitalist class, and what should
be seen as the main subdivisions amongst capitalists – industrial,
financial and commercial, perhaps. Beyond this lies the question of
other groupings. Is the lumpenproletariat to be seen as a class? Is the
analysis of it in the Eighteenth Brumaire a good foundation for further
work? (Mark Cowling in this volume argues that it is not.) What
should we think of Marx adding social categories held together
mainly by ideas, such as the republican bourgeoisie or the democraticrepublican petty bourgeoisie to his account? Isn’t this a deviation
from his programme of reducing political groupings to class interests?
And aren’t there similar problems with state officials and the army,
held together with economic interests but not class interests?
It has to be said that the analysis of class generally and the more
specific Marxist analysis of class has become less fashionable in
recent years. One standard explanation is that class conflict has not
been acute in Europe since the Second World War; armed conflicts
have been ethnic. Further, the working class in the sense of people
who depend on labour for their living remains very large, but is
extremely diverse, and parts of it are very affluent (hence a large
Marxist literature on the ‘new middle class’ of technical and state
personnel and supervisors). Finally, the rise of second wave feminism
has added a further significant division that Marxism was not
designed to explain, and which has complicated class relationships
as many women have become members of the ‘new middle class’ in
their own right.8
An alternative approach is the one hinted at above, and developed
in the contributions from Carver and Martin to this volume, which
might be termed the postmodernist approach. This emphasises that
politics is constituted through language, and that class and group
interests by no means translate readily into political or ideological
representation. Thus beneath the deceptions of self and others
mentioned above there will certainly lie material interests, but there
is no ready way to reduce representation to material interest. The
10
Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire
Eighteenth Brumaire is certainly one of the places Marx comes closest
to postmodernism.
A final comment on the question of politics. A commonplace
judgement on Marx is that he failed to foresee the rise of functioning
democracies. These may not be perfect, but the advanced capitalist
world is now ruled by systems where parties may freely organise, the
results of elections are basically respected by the military and the
civil service, and changes of government on the basis of elections
make some difference. Marx had little experience of such societies,
and the revolutions that occurred across Europe in 1848 were disappointing for democrats. His cynicism about electoral democracy
must have been greatly encouraged by French politics from 1848 to
the triumph of Bonaparte.
THE EIGHTEENTH BRUMAIRE AND THE STATE
In the Communist Manifesto Marx and Engels describe the state as a
‘committee for organising the common affairs of the bourgeoisie’.9
In the Eighteenth Brumaire it is plain that something much more
complex is going on. At minimum, as we saw above, there were three
candidates for the ruling group which would represent the
bourgeoisie. But Marx argues that there is something special about
France, where ‘the state restricts, controls, regulates, oversees and
supervises civil life … where through the most extraordinary centralisation this parasite acquires an all-knowing pervasiveness ...’.10
To do this it uses more than half a million civil servants. The ‘material
interests of the French bourgeoisie are intertwined in the most
intimate way’ with the maintenance of the machinery of state; they
need it to repress other classes and they benefit directly from
connections with the bureaucracy. For this reason ‘the French
bourgeoisie was compelled by its class position both to negate the
conditions of existence of any parliamentary power, including its
own, and to make the power of the executive, its adversary, irresistible’.11 It thus decried any popular agitation as ‘socialistic’.12 The
upshot of this, of course, was that the bourgeoisie went along with,
and benefited from, Bonaparte’s coup.
This analysis raises several questions. Are all states parasites on
society? Is this true of all state functions including road repairing or
weather forecasting? Is there something special about the French
state? Is the autonomy achieved by the French state from French
society at all typical – should we be thinking in terms of a new idea
of Bonapartism in which the state achieves a degree of autonomy
Introduction
11
from society?13 Was Bonaparte simply representing his own interests
and those of his cronies, or was he representing a particular class
interest or range of class interests? All these matters have subsequently been debated at length, and the chapters in this volume
from Jessop and Wetherly give some introduction to the extensive
literature generated.
THE CHAPTERS
The individual contributions to the book are preceded in Part I by
Terrell Carver’s new translation of Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire first
published by Cambridge University Press.14 The great merit of this
version is its accessibility, especially when compared to earlier, rather
stodgy and dated translations. As well as modernising its language,
Carver has included textual clarifications of certain details (such as
dates) in square brackets. The reader should find this text a much
smoother and more enjoyable read than earlier versions.
Part 2 takes as its theme broadly ‘postmodern’ readings of Marx’s
Eighteenth Brumaire focusing in particular on the relation between its
language and the politics it promotes. In Chapter 3 Carver investigates the text and considers how we might unravel its various
meanings today. Drawing attention to its extravagant imagery and
terminology Carver argues against ‘stripping away’ the metaphors
and irony to find an analysis that fits with traditional preconceptions about Marx and Marxism’s purported ‘scientific’ claims. The
style of Marx’s work is itself part of its force: dramatic imagery and
figurative language are not incidental to the text, they are
fundamental. The Eighteenth Brumaire, he suggests, ought not to be
viewed as a strictly sociological or historical analysis but as a political
intervention in its own right. Understood that way Marx’s own,
frequent deviations in the text from a linear or deterministic view
of history and politics begin to make sense.
In Chapter 4 James Martin draws parallels between Marx’s text and
recent developments in ‘post-Marxist’ political theory. Taking his cue
from Marx’s theatrical metaphors and imagery, he argues that there
is in the Eighteenth Brumaire the basis of an understanding of politics
as a ‘performative’ activity in Austin’s sense of a statement that
produces, or acts out, what it states. Political struggle is conceived
as, at least in part, a contest over meanings and not just over preconstituted ‘material’ interests. Martin summarises the way in which
the notion of ‘performativity’ is central to the work of three major
political theorists: Judith Butler, Slavoj Zizek and Ernesto Laclau. He
12
Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire
points out that disenchantment with Marxist uses of categories such
as ‘class’ and ‘ideology’ have led to a growing concern with ‘identity’
and ‘discourse’. These developments, he argues, should not be
conceived as a retreat from radical politics but – given their early
presence in Marx’s own work – as an effort to deepen our comprehension of and involvement in political struggles.
The character and historical significance of Louis-Napoleon
Bonaparte is the topic of Part 3. In Chapter 5 Roger Price aims to
assess Marx’s understanding of Bonaparte. Filling out the
background to the events of 1848–51, Price highlights the difficulty
that the political conflicts and Bonaparte’s emergence as a popular
figure had for Marx’s class-based interpretation of history. Indeed,
Marx and Engels underestimated the widespread appeal of Napoleon
and his ability to combine the demand for ‘order’ with a degree of
popular legitimacy. Driven by a powerful sense of personal destiny,
Bonaparte – who ruled until 1870 – showed rather more political
acumen than his detractors were ever prepared to admit.
In Chapter 6 Geoff Watkins also draws attention to the peculiar
appeal of Bonaparte. Like Price, he underlines Marx’s failure to grasp
how Louis-Napoleon skilfully exploited French attachment to the
‘Bonaparte legend’. Bonaparte’s rise to power was prefigured by his
own efforts in the 1840s to re-engage the myth of his uncle as the
symbol of the revolutionary ideals of equality, liberty and, at the
same time, order and stability. In exploiting this legend, Bonaparte
projected himself as heir to a tradition that stood above the
divisions of French politics and as the incarnation of values that
transcended divided loyalties. Bonaparte’s manipulation of symbols,
suggests Watkins, reveals an understanding of mass politics that
Marx simply missed.
Part 4 concerns the theory of the capitalist state and its purported
‘autonomy’ from the relations of production. In Chapter 7, Bob
Jessop reads the Eighteenth Brumaire as a complex, multilayered
account of the political and historical conjuncture; it is undoubtedly
a text in which class politics and the state are figured in a variety of
ways. Jessop outlines his view of Marx’s own ‘periodisation’ of the
overlapping ‘time horizons’ of 1848–51. In Marx’s narrative, he
argues, neither class struggle nor the state can be easily aligned to
any single historical trajectory, for each modifies the other, has its
own specific logic and has unintended effects that cannot be
foreseen. The institutional separation of the state from the relations
Introduction
13
of production that is typical under capitalism therefore allows for a
wide variety of ‘strategic and tactical possibilities’.
In Chapter 8 Wetherly takes issue with the concept of the state’s
‘relative autonomy’ which has been criticised as ‘redundant’ by
Jessop. Starting from Marx’s various, sometimes contrasting,
conceptions of the state as both a class instrument and as
autonomous from class control, Wetherly argues that the idea of
relative autonomy remains plausible for Marxist theory. He
summarises Jessop’s critique and preferred alternative: namely, a
‘strategic-relational’ theory which looks to the ‘contingent’
connections between the state and capitalist economy. Against this
Wetherly argues that relative autonomy can be retained as part of a
theory of the general tendency of the state and economy to
‘correspond’.
The question of Marx’s analysis of class politics and its contemporary relevance is the topic of Part 5. In Chapter 9, Paul Blackledge
draws parallels between the defeat of the working class following the
revolutions of 1848 and the experience of ‘Thatcherism’ in the UK
in the 1980s. Surveying the interpretations of Thatcherism by those
on the left (such as Stuart Hall and Bob Jessop) who had openly
renounced a crude class-reductionism in favour of a more complex
picture of the conjuncture, Blackledge argues that working class
agency was typically removed altogether from their analyses. As a
result, it became impossible to imagine the revival of working class
politics and socialism after Thatcher. However, he continues, writers
in The Socialist Register and elsewhere did succeed in rejecting reductionism without losing sight of class politics and their analyses
remain relevant today.
In Chapter 10 Mark Cowling discusses Marx’s concept of the
lumpenproletariat, which plays a major role in the Eighteenth
Brumaire. He argues that it is not coherently defined, and that it
would not make sense to undertake research based on Marx’s
concept. The lumpenproletariat functions in the Eighteenth Brumaire
as a whipping boy, brought out for criticism whenever the
proletariat, or parts of it, fails to fulfil its revolutionary destiny. The
evidence that the lumpenproletariat, to the extent it has any reality,
is a tool of the right, is also weak. Cowling then goes on to discuss
the concept of the underclass in the recent work of Charles Murray.
Seen by Murray as idle thieving bastards this group is a close approximation to the lumpenproletariat. Cowling argues that this concept
functions in Murray as a way of blaming the unemployed victims of
14
Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire
right wing government policies and global capitalism, but that some
questions raised by Murray require socialist answers.
In Chapter 11 Darren Webb draws attention to the critique of
‘utopian socialism’ at work in the Eighteenth Brumaire. This, he
argues, underscores Marx’s view of class politics as based on a proper
awareness of ‘material conditions’. The critique of the utopians was
central to Marx’s socialism because it underscored his argument that
politics must reason from a realistic analysis of social relations and
not merely from fantasies of a ‘better world’. In the Eighteenth
Brumaire this point is made clear in Marx’s claim that the class
‘content’ of the revolutions of the nineteenth century ‘transcends’
the heroic ‘phrases’ through which the bourgeoisie justifies its
actions. Such phrases conceal the real interests beneath the surface
of political struggle. However, argues Webb, for Marx working class
emancipation must supersede ‘fantastic abstractions’ if it is to be
successful. Being properly grounded in the present, he suggests,
continues to distinguish Marx’s analysis of politics from others on
the left.
NOTES
1. Aside from a vast number of short analyses and commentaries on
political events across the world written throughout his life, Marx wrote
lengthy studies only on French politics. See his earlier survey of events
before Bonaparte’s coup, The Class Struggles in France, 1848 to 1850, C.W.,
Vol. 10, and his later analysis of the Paris Commune, The Civil War in
France, C.W., Vol. 22.
2. Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, this volume, p. 43.
3. See the chapters by Price and Watkins in this volume.
4. Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party, C.W.,
Vol. 6, p. 485.
5. Marx, Eighteenth Brumaire, pp. 100–1.
6. Apart from the works by Lenin mentioned in the text this discussion
could be followed up in Athar Hussain, Marxism and the Agrarian
Question, Vol. 2, Russian Marxism and the Peasantry, 1861–1930 (London:
Macmillan, 1981).
7. See Karl Kautsky, The Agrarian Question, trans. Peter Burgess, 2 Vols
(London: Zwan, 1988). For further discussion see Athar Hussain, Marxism
and the Agrarian Question, Vol. 1, German Social Democracy and the
Peasantry, 1890–1907 (London: Macmillan, 1981).
8. As might be expected there is a large literature in this area. Works of
interest include overviews such as Tom Bottomore, Classes in Modern
Society, 2nd edn (London: HarperCollins, 1991); Ralf Dahrendorf, Class
and Class Conflict in Industrial Society (London: Routledge and Kegan
Paul, 1959); and John Westergaard, Class in a Capitalist Society (Harmondsworth: Pelican, 1975). The earliest major critique is Bernstein’s
Introduction
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15
assertion of the persistence of the petty bourgeoisie in Eduard Bernstein,
The Preconditions of Socialism, ed. and trans. Henry Tudor (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1993). Nicos Poulantzas’ important attempt
to apply the concept to modern societies is in Nicos Poulantzas, Political
Power and Social Classes (London: New Left Books, 1973); Nicos
Poulantzas, Classes in Contemporary Capitalism (London: Verso, 1978)
and further discussion much of which takes Poulantzas as a major
starting point, e.g. Guglielmo Carchedi, On the Economic Identification of
Social Classes (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1977); Guglielmo
Carchedi, Problems in Class Analysis (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul,
1983); Eric O. Wright, Class, Crisis and the State (London: New Left Books,
1978). More critical and sceptical accounts include Barry Hindess, Politics
and Class Analysis (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1987); Frank Parkin, Marxism
and Class Theory – A Bourgeois Critique (London: Tavistock, 1979); Michael
Savage, Class Analysis and Social Transformation (Buckingham: Open
University Press, 2000); Jan Pakulski and Malcolm Waters, The Death of
Class (London: Sage, 1995). For one attempt to make sense of the relationship between gender and class see Mark Cowling, ‘Femininities: a
way of linking Feminism and Socialism’ in Mark Cowling and Paul
Reynolds (eds), Marxism, the Millennium and Beyond (Basingstoke:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2000).
Marx and Engels, Manifesto, p. 486.
Marx, Eighteenth Brumaire, p. 53.
Ibid., p. 54.
Ibid., p. 56.
One Marxist author who makes considerable use of the concept of
Bonapartism is Trotsky. His concept looks back to the great Bonaparte,
but includes Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte III, and has refinements such as
‘Bonapartism of the epoch of imperialist decline, which is qualitatively
different from Bonapartism of the epoch of bourgeois rise’, and ‘half, or
pre-Bonapartist’ regimes. Trotsky finds variants of Bonapartism in, at
least, the USSR, Germany in the years leading up to the Hitler regime,
pre-Fascist Italy and France. The exact definition, scope and validity of
his concept is clearly a study in its own right (see, for example, ‘The
Workers’ State, Thermidor and Bonapartism’, ‘German Bonapartism’, ‘A
Program of Action for France (1934)’ and ‘Bonapartism, Fascism and
War’, all in the Trotsky Internet Archive, <http://www.marxists.org/
archive/trotsky>).
See Terrell Carver (trans. and ed.), Marx: Later Political Writings
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 31–127.
Part 1
The Text
2
The Eighteenth Brumaire of
Louis Bonaparte
(Trans. Terrell Carver)
Karl Marx
I
Hegel observes somewhere that all the great events and characters
of world history occur twice, so to speak. He forgot to add: the first
time as high tragedy, the second time as low farce. Caussidière after
Danton, Louis Blanc after Robespierre, the montagne [democratic
socialists] of 1848–51 after the montagne [Jacobin democrats] of
1793–5, and then the London constable [Louis Bonaparte], with a
dozen of the best debt-ridden lieutenants, after the little corporal
[Napoleon Bonaparte], with his roundtable of military marshals! The
eighteenth Brumaire of the fool after the eighteenth Brumaire of the
genius! And there is the same cartoon-quality in the circumstances
surrounding the second imprint of the eighteenth Brumaire. The first
time France was on the verge of bankruptcy, this time Bonaparte is
on the brink of debtors’ prison; then the coalition of the great
powers was on the borders – now there is the coalition of RugeDarasz in England, of Kinkel-Brentano in America; then there was a
St. Bernard [Pass] to be surmounted [when Napoleon defeated the
Austrians in 1800], now a company of policemen to be dispatched
across the Jura [Mountains to demand republican refugees from the
Swiss]; then there was a [Battle of] Marengo to be won and a lot
more, now there is a Grand Cross of the Order of St. Andrew [from
the Tsar] to be gained and the esteem of the Berlin [newspaper]
National-Zeitung to be lost.
Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they
please in circumstances they choose for themselves; rather they
make it in present circumstances, given and inherited. Tradition
from all the dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brain
of the living. And just when they appear to be revolutionising
themselves and their circumstances, in creating something unprecedented, in just such epochs of revolutionary crisis, that is when they
nervously summon up the spirits of the past, borrowing from them
their names, marching orders, uniforms, in order to enact new scenes
19
20
Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire
in world history, but in this time-honoured guise and with this
borrowed language. Thus Luther masqueraded as the Apostle Paul,
the [French] revolution of 1789–1814 draped itself alternately as
Roman republic and Roman empire, and the revolution of 1848
could come up with nothing better than to parody 1789 at one
point, the revolutionary inheritance of 1793–5 at another. Likewise
a beginner studying a new language always translates it back into
his mother tongue; but only when he can use it without referring
back, and thus forsake his native language for the new, only then
has he entered into the spirit of the new language, and gained the
ability to speak it fluently.
Examination of this world-historical invocation of the dead
reveals a further striking distinction. Camille Desmoulins, Danton,
Robespierre, Saint-Just, Napoleon – these heroes of the former French
revolution, as well as the political parties and massed crowds alike –
accomplished the business of the day in Roman costumes and with
Roman phrases: the unfettering and establishing of modern bourgeois
society. The first [of these heroes] harrowed up the feudal ground
and mowed down the feudal heads sprouting there. The last [of
these, Napoleon] created within France the conditions in which free
competition could be developed, land sales from estates could be
exploited, the unfettered industrial productive power of the nation
could be utilised; and beyond French borders he swept away feudal
institutions in every direction, and as far as was necessary to provide
an appropriate up-to-date environment on the Continent for French
bourgeois society. Once the new social formation was established,
the antediluvian colossi, and along with them the resurrected
Romans – the Brutuses, the Gracchuses, the Publicolas, the tribunes,
the senators and Caesar himself – all vanished. Amidst a dreary
realism bourgeois society produced its true interpreters and
spokesmen in the Say’s, Cousin’s, Royer-Collard’s, Benjamin
Constant’s and Guizot’s; its real commanders were in the counting
houses, and the fat-head Louis XVIII was its political chief. Wholly
absorbed in the production of wealth and in peaceful competitive
struggle, it could no longer comprehend that the spectres of Roman
times had kept watch over its cradle. But unheroic as bourgeois
society is, it nevertheless required heroism, sacrifice, terror, civil war
and national conflict to bring it into the world. And in the strict
classical traditions of the Roman republic its gladiators found the
ideals and art forms, the self-deceptions that they needed, in order
to hide from themselves the constrained, bourgeois character of their
The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
21
struggles, and to keep themselves emotionally at the level of high
historical tragedy. Thus at another stage of development, a century
earlier, Cromwell and the English had borrowed Old Testament
language, passions and delusions for their bourgeois revolution.
When that goal was actually attained, when the bourgeois transformation of English society was complete, [the prosaic empiricist]
Locke supplanted [the sorrowful prophet] Habakkuk.
Thus the resurrection of the dead in those revolutions served to
glorify new struggles, not to parody the old; to magnify fantastically
the given task, not to evade a real resolution; to recover the spirit of
revolution, not to relaunch its spectre.
The period 1848 to 1851 saw only the spectre of the old revolution
on the move, from Marrast, Républicain en gants jaunes, who
disguised himself as the old [Jean Sylvain] Bailly [the revolutionary
liberal guillotined in 1793], to the adventurer [Louis Bonaparte], who
covers his low and repulsive visage with the iron death mask of
Napoleon. A whole people, believing itself to have acquired a
powerful revolutionary thrust, is suddenly forced back into a defunct
era; and so that there is no mistake about the reversion, the old dates
rise again, the old chronology, the old names, the old edicts, which
had long declined to mere antiquarian interest, and the old functionaries, who had seemed long decayed. The nation is like the mad
Englishman in Bedlam [asylum] who thinks he is living in the time
of the pharaohs and complains every day how hard it is to work in
the Ethiopian gold mines, immured in a subterranean prison, a
flickering lamp fixed to his head, behind him the overseer with his
long whip, and at the exits a mass of barbarian mercenaries who can
understand neither the slave labourers in the mines nor one another,
since they have no common language. ‘And all this is demanded of
me’ – sighs the mad Englishman – ‘me, the freeborn Briton, in order
to extract gold for the ancient pharaohs.’ ‘In order to pay the debts
of the Bonapartes’ – sighs the French nation. The Englishman, so
long as his mind was working, could not rid himself of his obsession
with gold mining. The French, so long as they made revolutions,
could not rid themselves of the memory of Napoleon, as was demonstrated by the [presidential] election of 10 December [1848]. Out of
the perils of revolution they yearned for the fleshpots of Egypt, and
the [coup d’état of the] second of December [1851] was the answer.
Not only do they have the caricature of the old Napoleon, they have
caricatured the old Napoleon himself as he must have looked in the
middle of the nineteenth century.
22
Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire
The social revolution of the nineteenth century cannot create its
poetry from the past but only from the future. It cannot begin till it
has stripped off all superstition from the past. Previous revolutions
required recollections of world history in order to dull themselves
to their own content. The revolution of the nineteenth century must
let the dead bury the dead in order to realise its own content. There
phrase transcended content, here content transcends phrase.
The February revolution [of 1848] was a surprise attack, an ambush
of the old society, and the people proclaimed this unexpected coup
a world-historical deed inaugurating a new epoch. Then on the
second of December [1851] the February revolution is conjured away
by the stroke of a cheat, and now what seems to have been
overthrown is not the monarchy so much as the liberal concessions
wrung from it over centuries of struggle. Instead of society gaining
for itself a new content, it seems that the state has merely reverted
to its oldest form, to the shameless, bare-faced rule of sword and
cross. So in answer to the coup de main of February 1848 we have the
coup de tête of December 1851. Quickly won, quickly lost. Meanwhile
the intervening years did not go to waste. During the period 1848 to
1851 French society learnt the lessons of experience – to be sure in
a foreshortened, revolutionary way – that would otherwise have
preceded the February revolution in its normal or textbook
development, so to speak, if it were ever to do more than ripple the
surface. Society now seems to have fallen back behind its starting
point; in fact it had first to create for itself the revolutionary starting
point, the situation, the relationships, the exclusive conditions for
the development of a real modern revolution.
Bourgeois revolutions, such as those of the eighteenth century,
storm along from strength to strength; their dramatic effects outdo
one another, people and events seem to have a jewel-like sparkle,
ecstasy is the feeling of the day; but they are short lived, quickly
attaining their zenith, and a lengthy hangover grips society before
it soberly absorbs the resulting lessons of such Sturm und Drang. By
contrast proletarian revolutions, such as those of the nineteenth
century, engage in perpetual self-criticism, always stopping in their
own tracks; they return to what is apparently complete in order to
begin it anew, and deride with savage brutality the inadequacies,
weak points and pitiful aspects of their first attempts; they seem to
strike down their adversary, only to have him draw new powers from
the earth and rise against them once more with the strength of a
giant; again and again they draw back from the prodigious scope of
The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
23
their own aims, until a situation is created which makes impossible
any reversion, and circumstances themselves cry out:
Hic Rhodus, hic salta!
Hier ist die Rose, hier tanze!
[There’s no time like the present!]
Moreover any competent observer, even if he had not followed all
the French developments step by step, must have known that the
revolution was in for an unprecedented humiliation. It sufficed to
hear the self-satisfied yelps of victory as ‘distinguished’ democrats
congratulated each other on the benefits to follow the 9th of May
1852 [when President Louis Bonaparte’s presidency, constitutionally
limited to one term, would have lapsed]. In their heads that day had
become an obsession, a fundamentalist dogma, like the day Christ
reappears and a reign of a thousand years commences, as in the
heads of the chiliasts. As always the feeble found refuge in a belief in
miracles, believing that the enemy has been vanquished when they
have only conjured it away in a fantasy, sacrificing any understanding of the present to an ineffectual glorification of the future in store
for them, and of deeds that they had in their hearts but did not want
to bring to fruition just yet. They are the heroes who try to deny
their proven incompetence by offering each other sympathy and
banding together; they packed up their things, donned their laurel
wreaths in advance of the games, and busied themselves on the
financial exchanges with selling off piecemeal the republics for
which they had already taken care, in their quiet and unassuming
way, to nominate the government. The second of December [1851]
struck them like a bolt from the blue, and the peoples that were
willing enough to allow their innermost fears – in an era of cowardly
dejection – to be assuaged by the most vociferous loudmouths will
perhaps have convinced themselves that cackling geese can no
longer save the Capitol.
The constitution, the national assembly, the dynastic parties, the
blue [right-wing] and the red [left-wing] republicans, the heroes of
[the Algerian wars in] Africa, the thunder from the grandstand, the
sheet-lightning of the daily press, all the literature, political names
and intellectual reputations, the civil law and the penal code, liberty,
equality and fraternity, and the ninth of May 1852 – all that has
magically vanished under the spell of a man whom even his enemies
would deny was a sorcerer. Universal manhood suffrage seems to
24
Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire
have lasted just long enough to make its own testament in the eyes
of the world and to declare in the very name of the people: ‘What’s
worth building is worth demolishing’ [Goethe, Faust, I].
It is not enough to say, as the French do, that their nation has
been taken unawares. A nation like a woman is not forgiven the
unguarded hour in which the first rake that tries can take her by
force. The riddle will not be solved by mere phrases that merely state
it in other terms. What needs to be explained is how a nation of 36
millions can be taken unawares by three common con-men [Louis
Bonaparte, the duc de Morny his half-brother, and the Minister of
Justice Rouher] and marched off unresisting into captivity.
Let us recapitulate in bold strokes the course of the French
revolution in its phases from 24 February 1848 to [2] December
1851.
Three main periods are unmistakable: the February period; 4 May
1848 to 28 May 1849, the period of constituting the republic or the
constituent assembly for the nation; 28 May 1849 to 2 December 1851,
the period of the constitutional republic or the legislative national
assembly.
The first period from 24 February, or the overthrow of [King] Louis
Philippe, to 4 May 1848, the meeting of the constituent assembly,
the February period proper, can be termed the prologue to the
revolution. Its character was expressed officially when the
improvised government declared itself provisional, and like the
government everything that was proposed, attempted or proclaimed
in this period was passed off as merely provisional. Neither anyone
nor anything dared to claim a right to exist or to take real action.
The factions which had prepared or made the revolution, the
dynastic opposition [legitimists and Orléanists], the republican
bourgeoisie, the democratic-republican petty bourgeoisie, the social
democratic workers, all provisionally found their place in the
February government.
It could not have been otherwise. The original intention in the
February days [of 1848] was for an electoral reform through which
the circle of political privilege amongst the possessing classes was to
be widened and the exclusive rule of the finance aristocracy
overthrown. But when it came to actual conflict the people mounted
the barricades, the national guard behaved passively, the army
offered no serious opposition, and the monarchy decamped, so the
republic appeared as a matter of course. Every party construed this
in its own way. Once their weapons had been wrested from their
The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
25
hands, the proletariat set its stamp upon it and proclaimed it a social
republic. Thus the general content of modern revolution was
signalled, a content which – as is always the case in dramatic
prologues – stood in the most bizarre contradiction to everything
that could be put into practice there and then, given the material
available, the level of popular education, present circumstances and
conditions. On the other hand, the claim of all the other factions
taking part in the February revolution was made good when they
obtained the lion’s share in government. In no period do we find a
more confused mixture of superfluous phrases and practical
uncertainty and helplessness, of more enthusiastic striving for
innovation and of more fundamental dominance of old routine, of
seeming harmony in the whole society and of deep alienation
amongst the factions that compose it. While the Paris proletariat still
revelled in the vision of a grand prospect opening before it, and had
indulged itself collectively in earnest discussion on social problems,
the old powers of society had regrouped, rallied, composed
themselves and found unexpected support in the populace at large,
the peasants and petty bourgeoisie, who were all thrown onto the
political stage after the fall of the July monarchy [of the Orléanist
King Louis Philippe, 1830–48].
The second period, from 4 May 1848 up to the end of May 1849, is
the period of constituting, founding the bourgeois republic. Just after the
February days the dynastic opposition was surprised by the
republicans, the republicans by the socialists, indeed all France by
Paris. The constituent assembly, drawn from the votes of the entire
nation, met on 4 May 1848 and represented the whole. It was a
living protest against the aspirations of the February days and was to
reduce the achievements of the revolution to bourgeois standards.
Grasping at once the character of this constituent assembly, the Paris
proletariat tried vainly though forcefully to negate it a few days after
its meeting on 15 May [1848], to dissolve it, to shatter the organic
whole into its individual constituent parts, as in national reaction
was posing a threat. The well known result of 15 May [1848] was
that Blanqui and associates, i.e. the real leaders of the proletarian
party, the revolutionary communists, were removed from the public
arena for the entire duration of the events we are considering.
Louis Philippe’s bourgeois monarchy could only be followed by a
bourgeois republic, i.e. if a limited section of the bourgeoisie has ruled
in the king’s name, so now the whole of the bourgeoisie rules in
26
Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire
the name of the people. The demands of the Paris proletariat are
utopian humbug which must be stopped. To this declaration of the
constituent assembly the Paris proletariat replied with the June insurrection [of 1848], the most colossal event in the history of European
civil wars. The bourgeois republic was triumphant. On its side stood
the finance aristocracy, the industrial bourgeoisie, the middle
classes, the petty bourgeoisie, the army, the lumpenproletariat
organised as a militia, the intellectual authorities, the church and
the landowners. On the side of the Paris proletariat there was none
but itself. More than 3000 insurgents were massacred after the
victory, and 15,000 were transported without trial. With this defeat
the proletariat moves into the background on the revolutionary
stage. Every time events appear to take a fresh turn, it tries to press
forward again, but with ever declining bursts of strength and always
diminishing results. As soon as one of the higher social strata plots
a revolutionary trajectory, the proletariat enters into an alliance
with it and thus shares all the defeats which successive parties suffer.
But these further blows are of ever diminishing force the more they
are distributed over the whole surface of society. Its more important
leaders in the assembly and in the press are sacrificed one after
another in the courts, and ever more ambiguous figures take up
leadership. Amongst other things it throws itself into doctrinaire
experiments, cooperative banks and workers’ associations, hence into a
movement renouncing an overthrow of the old world by means of its own
great resources, and instead seeks to attain its salvation behind society’s
back, privately, within its own limited conditions of existence, and hence
necessarily coming to naught. It seems unable to rediscover revolutionary prowess or to renew its energy from fresh alliances, until all
the classes it struggled with in June are lying flat out beside it. But
at least it was defeated with the honours of a great world historical
struggle; not only France but all Europe trembles at the June
earthquake, while the ensuing defeats of the higher classes are so
cheaply purchased that they require blatant exaggeration by the
victorious party in order to pass as events at all, and these events
become the more disgraceful the further the losing party is from
the proletariat.
To be sure the defeat of the June insurgents had prepared level
ground for founding and constructing the bourgeois republic; but it
had demonstrated at the same time that in Europe the question of
today is something other than ‘republic or monarchy’. It had
The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
27
revealed that bourgeois republic means the unlimited despotism of
one class over the others. It had proved that in long-civilised
countries with a developed class structure, with modern conditions
of production, and with an intellectual consciousness representing
centuries of effort in dissolving traditional ideas, the republic signifies
in general only the revolutionary way to destroy bourgeois society and not
a conservative way to develop it, as for example in the United States,
where there are already classes, to be sure, but they have not yet
solidified, rather they are in constant flux, changing and switching
their component parts; where modern means of production
compensate for the relative paucity of heads and hands, instead of
declining together with a stagnant surplus population; and where
finally the feverish youth of material production, which has a new
world to appropriate, left neither time nor opportunity for exorcising
the spirits of the old.
During the June days [of 1848] all classes and parties that had
united as the party of order were against the proletarian class as the
party of anarchy, of socialism, of communism. They had ‘saved’
society from ‘the enemies of society’. They had made the catchphrases of the old society, ‘property, family, religion, order’ into military
passwords and had proclaimed to their counter-revolutionary
crusaders: ‘Under this sign shalt thou conquer!’ From this time on,
whenever one of the many parties banded together under this motto
against the June insurgents seeks to claim the revolutionary high
ground in its own class interest, it succumbs to the call: ‘property,
family, religion, order’. Society is saved as often as its circle of rulers
contracts, as a more exclusive interest is maintained against the
wider one. Even the simplest demand for bourgeois financial reform,
for the most ordinary liberalism, for the most formal republicanism,
for the most basic democracy, is simultaneously castigated as an
‘outrage to society’ and stigmatised as ‘socialism’. Finally the high
priests of the ‘religion of order’ are kicked off their Pythian tripods,
hauled from their beds in the dead of night, flung into prison vans,
thrown into gaols or sent into exile; their temple is razed to the
ground, their mouths are sealed, their pens broken, their laws torn
to shreds in the name of religion, property, family, order. Bourgeois
fanatics for order are shot on their balconies by mobs of drunken
soldiers, their family gods are profaned, their houses are bombarded
for amusement – in the name of property, family, religion and order.
Finally the scum of bourgeois society forms the holy phalanx of order
28
Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire
and the hero Crapulinski [Louis Bonaparte] seizes the [Palace of the]
Tuileries as ‘saviour of society’.
II
Let us pick up the thread once again.
The history of the constituent assembly since the June days [in
1848] is the history of the rise and fall of the republican faction of the
bourgeoisie, the faction known variously as tricolour republicans, pure
republicans, political republicans, formal republicans, etc.
Under the bourgeois monarchy of [the Orléanist King] Louis
Philippe they had formed the official republican opposition and hence
a recognised part of the political world of the time. The faction had
its representatives in the legislative chambers and an influential
circle in the press. Its Paris organ, Le National, was considered just as
respectable in its way as the [Orléanist] Journal des débats. This
position under the constitutional monarchy accorded with its
character. It was not a faction of the bourgeoisie held together
through substantial common interests and set apart by peculiar
conditions of production. It was a coterie of republican-minded
businessmen, writers, lawyers, officers and officials whose influence
rested on the personal antipathy of the country to Louis Philippe,
on recollections of the old republic [of 1789–99], on the republican
faith of a number of enthusiasts, above all on French nationalism, a
continuously awakened hatred for the Vienna treaties [of 1814–15]
and the [restoration] alliance with England. A large part of the
following enjoyed by the National under Louis Philippe was due to
this hidden Napoleonic sentiment, later to emerge in the person of
Louis Bonaparte as a deadly rival to the republic. It fought the
financial aristocracy, as did the rest of the bourgeois opposition.
Polemics against the budget, which coincided in France with the
struggle against the financial aristocracy, created such a lot of cheap
popularity and such rich material for puritanical ‘leading articles’
that exploitation of this was irresistible. The industrial bourgeoisie
was grateful to it for its slavish defence of French protectionism,
adopted more on grounds of national than economic interest, and
the bourgeoisie as a whole for its virulent denunciations of
communism and socialism. In general the party of the National was
purely republican, i.e. it demanded a republican rather than a
monarchical form of bourgeois rule, and above all the lion’s share
in power. About the conditions for this transformation it was not at
all clear. What was clear as daylight, on the other hand, and was
The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
29
publicly clarified at the reform meetings in the last days of Louis
Philippe, was its unpopularity with the democratic petty bourgeoisie,
and in particular with the revolutionary proletariat. These pure
republicans, as is always the way with pure republicans, were on the
point of settling for a regency of the duchess of Orléans [mother of
Louis Philippe’s grandson], when the February [1848] revolution
erupted and appointed their best known representatives to a place in
the provisional government. At the outset they naturally had the
confidence of the bourgeoisie and a majority in the constituent
assembly. They at once excluded the socialist elements of the
provisional government from the executive commission [which
replaced the provisional government], formed when the national
assembly first met, and the party of the National then used the
outbreak of the June [1848] insurrection to dismiss the executive
commission and to get rid of its nearest rivals, the petty bourgeois or
democratic republicans (Ledru-Rollin, etc.). Cavaignac, the general of
the bourgeois-republican party, commander for the June [1848]
massacre, replaced the executive commission with a kind of dictatorship. Marrast, formerly editor-in-chief of the National, became the
permanent president of the constituent assembly, and the cabinet
posts, like all the other important appointments, came home to the
pure republicans.
The republican faction of the bourgeoisie, which had long
considered itself the legitimate heir of the [Orléanist] July monarchy,
found its fondest hopes surpassed, but it came to power, not by
means of a liberal revolt of the bourgeoisie against the throne, as it
had dreamt during the time of Louis Philippe, but rather through a
proletarian riot against capital, put down with grape-shot. What it
had imagined as the most revolutionary event occurred in reality as
the most counter-revolutionary. The fruit fell into its lap, but it fell from
the tree of knowledge, not from the tree of life.
The exclusive rule of the bourgeois republicans lasted only from 24
June to 10 December 1848. It is summed up in the drafting of a
republican constitution and in the siege of Paris.
The new constitution was at bottom only a republicanised version
of the constitutional charter of 1830. The restricted suffrage of the
July monarchy, which excluded a large portion of the bourgeoisie
from political power, was incompatible with the existence of the
bourgeois republic. The February revolution [of 1848] had at once
proclaimed a general right to vote in place of this suffrage. The
bourgeois republicans could not undo this event. They had therefore
30
Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire
to content themselves by restricting it to include a six months
residence requirement in the constituency. The old administration
– local government, the judicial system, the army, etc. – was left
untouched, or where altered by the constitution, the change
concerned the table of contents, not the content, and the names,
not the substance.
The inescapable roll call of the freedoms of 1848 – freedom of the
person, press, speech, association, assembly, education and religion,
etc. – obtained a constitutional guise, making them invulnerable.
Each of these freedoms was proclaimed as the absolute right of the
French citizen, but always with the marginal gloss that it is unlimited
so far as it does not limit the ‘equal rights of others and the security of
the public’, or through ‘laws’ which were to integrate individual
freedoms harmoniously with one another and with the security of
the public. For example: ‘Citizens have the right to associate, to
assemble peaceably and unarmed, to petition and to express their
opinions in the press or otherwise. The enjoyment of these rights has
no limit besides the equal rights of others and the security of the public’
(chapter II of the French constitution [of 1848], § 8) – ‘Education is
free. The free exercise of this right is to be enjoyed under conditions
fixed by law and under the supervision of the state.’ (chapter II, § 9).
– ‘The home of every citizen is inviolable except in circumstances
prescribed by law.’ (chapter II, § 3), etc. etc. – The constitution
therefore constantly refers to future organic laws which are to
implement these glosses and regulate the enjoyment of these
unlimited freedoms so that they conflict neither with one another
nor with the security of the public. Later these organic laws were
promulgated by the friends of order and all those freedoms regulated
so that the bourgeoisie finds no obstacle to its enjoyment of them in
the equal rights of other classes. Where it denies these freedoms
wholly to ‘others’ or permits enjoyment of them only under
conditions which are just so many police traps, this always happens
solely in the interest of ‘public security’, that is, the security of the
bourgeoisie, as the constitution prescribes. Consequently both sides
can appeal with perfect justice to the constitution, the friends of
order, who subverted all those freedoms, just as much as the
democrats, who demanded them all outright. Each paragraph of the
constitution contains its own antithesis in itself, its own upper and
lower house, namely freedom in general terms, and subversion of
freedom in the glosses. Hence so long as freedom is nominally
respected and only its actual exercise is hindered, in a very legal way
The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
31
you understand, then the constitutional existence of freedom
remains undamaged, untouched, however much its commonplace
existence is murdered.
This constitution, made inviolate in so ingenious a manner, was
nevertheless vulnerable in one place, like Achilles, not in the heel,
but in the head, or rather in two heads as the thing developed – the
legislative assembly, on the one hand, and the president, on the other.
Leafing through the constitution one finds that the paragraphs in
which the relationship between the president and the legislative
assembly is defined are the only absolute, positive, uncontradicted,
untwistable ones that it contains. Here we see the bourgeois
republicans making themselves secure. [Chapter V] §§ 45–70 of the
constitution are so drafted that the national assembly can remove
the president constitutionally, but the president can remove the
national assembly only unconstitutionally, by removing the constitution itself. Hence it invites its own forcible destruction. Not only
does it sanctify the separation of powers as under the charter of 1830,
it widens this to an unendurable contradiction. The constitutional
power game, as Guizot called the parliamentary squabble between
legislative and executive power, is constantly played out in the constitution of 1848 at the highest stakes. On one side are 750
representatives of the people, elected by universal manhood suffrage
and eligible for re-election, who form an uncontrollable, indissoluble, indivisible national assembly, a national assembly which enjoys
legislative omnicompetence, has the final say in war, peace and
trade, possesses sole right of amnesty, and as a continuing body is
always at centre stage. On the other side is the president, with all
the appurtenances of royal power, but augmented, in that he
appoints and dismisses his ministers independent of the national
assembly, and has all the tools of executive power in his hands,
bestowing all offices and disposing of over 11⁄2 million livelihoods,
for so many depend on the 500,000 officials and on officers of every
rank – the whole of the armed forces are behind him, and he is
possessed of the privilege of pardoning individual miscreants, of
suspending the national guard, of proroguing – in conjunction with
the council of state – the elected general, cantonal and municipal
councils nominated and elected by the citizens, reserving to himself
the initiation and negotiation of all agreements with foreign
countries – unlike the assembly, which is constantly on the boards
and continuously exposed to the glare of public criticism, he leads
a secluded life in the elysian fields [i.e. Elysée Palace], but with
32
Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire
[chapter V] § 45 of the constitution before his eyes and in his heart,
crying out to him every day [like the ascetic Trappists]: ‘brother, one
must die’. ‘Your power runs out on the second Sunday in the lovely
month of May in the fourth year of your term! Then is power at an
end, there is no second performance, and if you have debts, see to it
that you pay them off in time with the 600,000 francs settled on you
by the constitution, unless perhaps you prefer to wander down to
Clichy [debtors’ prison] on the second Monday of the lovely month
of May!’ – If the constitution assigns all actual power to the
president, it tries to secure moral authority for the assembly. Leaving
aside that it is impossible to create moral authority through legal
phrases, here again the constitution subverts itself by having the
president directly elected by all Frenchmen. While French votes are
divided up amongst the 750 members of the national assembly, here
they are concentrated on a single individual. While each individual
delegate of the people merely represents this or that party, this or
that city, this or that outpost, or even just the necessity of electing
any old seven hundred and fifty where neither the man nor the
matter is closely examined, He is the elect of the nation, and electing
him is the trump card which the sovereign people plays once every
4 years. The elected national assembly stands in a metaphysical
relation to the nation, but the elected president stands in a personal
one. Through its individual members the national assembly well
represents manifold aspects of the national character, but the
president is the spirit of the nation incarnate. As opposed to the
assembly he has a kind of divine right, he is president by the people’s
grace.
Thetis, the sea goddess, prophesied to Achilles that he would die
in the bloom of youth. The constitution, which had its weak spot
like Achilles, also had its forewarning that it would have to go to an
early death. It sufficed for the pure republican constitutionalists to
cast a glance from the high heavens of their republican ideals down
to the base world below in order see how the morale of the royalists,
of the Bonapartists, of the democrats, of the communists, and also
their own discredit, increased proportionally each day as they neared
completion of their great legislative masterpiece, without any need
for Thetis to leave the sea and communicate this secret to them.
They sought to cheat destiny through constitutional shenanigans in
[chapter XI] § 111, according to which every motion for a revision of
the constitution must be supported by at least 3⁄4 of the votes, not less
than 500 members of the national assembly taking part, and in three
The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
33
successive debates, between each of which there must always be a
whole month. At a time when they controlled a parliamentary
majority and all the resources of governmental authority, they saw
themselves prophetically as a parliamentary minority, and made
only an impotent attempt to exercise a power, which was day by day
slipping from their feeble grasp.
Finally in a melodramatic paragraph, the constitution entrusts
itself to ‘the vigilance and patriotism of the people of all France and
of every single Frenchman’, after it had previously entrusted
‘vigilant’ and ‘patriotic’ Frenchmen to the tender yet necessarily very
painful ministrations of its own high court of justice, or ‘haute cour’,
in another paragraph.
Such was the constitution of 1848, overturned on 2 December
1851, not by a knockout, but felled at the mere touch of a hat;
indeed the hat was a three-cornered Napoleonic one.
While the bourgeois republicans in the assembly were busy with
picking over, arguing about and voting in this constitution, outside
the assembly Cavaignac mounted the siege of Paris. The siege of Paris
was midwife for the constituent assembly in the birth throes of the
republic. If the constitution were later dispatched from the world
with bayonets, it must not be forgotten that it had to be protected
with bayonets, and to be sure, bayonets turned against the people,
even in its mother’s womb, and it had to be brought into the world
with bayonets. The [revolutionary] forefathers of the ‘honest
republicans’ had sent their symbol, the tricolour, on a tour [of
conquest] round Europe. For their part they made a discovery which
found its way over the whole continent, but which came back to
France with ever increasing affection, until it became a true citizen
in half its départements – the state of siege. A splendid invention, periodically employed in each successive crisis in the course of the
French revolution. But barrack and bivouac, which were periodically
applied to the head of French society to compact the brain and
render the body torpid; sabre and musket, which were periodically
allowed to judge and administer, to tutor and to censor, to act the
policeman and to do duty as night watchman; moustache and
uniform, which were periodically trumpeted as the highest wisdom
and saviour of society – were not barrack and bivouac, sabre and
musket, moustache and uniform finally bound to hit on the idea of
saving society once and for all by touting their own regime as best
and setting bourgeois society free from the trouble of governing
itself? Barrack and bivouac, sabre and musket, moustache and
34
Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire
uniform were all the more bound to come to this realisation because
they could then expect better cash payment for their enhanced
services, while from merely periodical sieges and transitory rescues
of society, at the behest of this or that faction of the bourgeoisie,
there was little substantial gain, other than a few dead and wounded
and some bourgeois smirks of friendship. Should not the military
once and for all play out a siege in its own interest and for its own
benefit, and at the same time help itself to the wallets of the
bourgeoisie? One should not forget, be it noted in passing, that
Colonel Bernard, the president of the military commission under
Cavaignac who transported 15,000 insurgents [of June 1848] without
trial, is again acting at this very moment [early 1852] as head of the
military commission for Paris.
Though with the siege of Paris the honest, pure republicans laid
the seedbed in which the praetorians of 2 December 1851 grew
strong, they still deserve praise because instead of exaggerating
national sentiments as they had done under Louis Philippe, now,
when they had the power of the nation at their bidding, they relinquished it, and instead of conquering Italy for themselves, they let
the Austrians and Neapolitans reconquer it. The election of Louis
Bonaparte as president on 10 December 1848 put an end to
Cavaignac’s dictatorship and to the constituent assembly.
The constitution states in [chapter V] § 44: ‘The president of the
French republic must never have lost his status as a French citizen.’
The first president of the French republic, one L.N. Bonaparte, had
not simply lost his status as a French citizen, had not merely been an
English special constable, he was in fact a naturalised Swiss.
I have explained elsewhere the significance of the [presidential]
election of 10 December [1848]. I will not advert to this here. It
suffices to say that it was a reaction by the peasantry, which had had
to bear the costs of the February revolution [of 1848], against the
other classes of the nation, a reaction of the country against the town.
This struck a chord in the army, for which the republicans of the
National had provided neither glory nor a pay rise, also amongst the
highest of the bourgeois who hailed Bonaparte as a transition to
monarchy, and amongst the proletarians and petty bourgeoisie, who
hailed him as a scourge for Cavaignac. I shall find an opportunity
later to go more thoroughly into the relationship between the
peasantry and the French revolution.
History from 20 December 1848 [when Bonaparte’s presidency
succeeded Cavaignac’s dictatorship] to the dissolution of the
The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
35
constituent assembly in May 1849 marks an epoch in the downfall
of the republican bourgeoisie. After founding a republic for the
bourgeoisie, driving the revolutionary proletariat from the field and
reducing the democratic petty bourgeoisie to silence for the time
being, they were themselves shoved aside by the bulk of the
bourgeoisie, who with some justice seized this republic as its property.
However, this great bourgeoisie was royalist. One part of it, the large
landowners, had held power under the restoration [of the Bourbons
after 1815] and was therefore legitimist. The other, the financial
aristocracy and great industrialists, had held sway under the July
monarchy [1830–48] and was therefore Orléanist. The highest
echelons of the army, the universities, the church, the legal
profession, the academy and the press divided themselves between
the two camps, though in varying proportions. Here in the bourgeois
republic, which bore neither the name of Bourbon nor that of Orléans,
but rather the name capital, they found a type of state through which
they could rule conjointly. The June insurrection [of 1848] had
already united them in the ‘party of order’. The next business was to
remove the coterie of bourgeois republicans who still held seats in
the national assembly. When it was a matter of holding their republicanism and their legislative rights against the power of the
executive and of the royalists, these pure republicans were just as
cowardly, shamefaced, dispirited, broken down, incapable of
fighting, even in retreat, as they had been brutal in using physical
force against the people. There is no need to relate the ignominious
tale of their disintegration. It was a fade-out, not a blow-up. Their
history has ceased forever, and in subsequent times, whether inside
or outside the assembly, they figure as memories, memories which
seem to come to life whenever the republic is merely named and as
often as revolutionary conflict threatens to sink to new depths. I
note in passing that the journal which gave this party its name, the
National, turned in subsequent years to socialism.
Therefore the period of constituting or founding the French
republic falls into three periods: 4 May to 24 June 1848, a struggle
of all the classes and their allies united in February under the
leadership of the bourgeois republicans against the proletariat, [with
a] terrible defeat of the proletariat; 25 June 1848 to 10 December
1848, rule of the bourgeois republicans, drafting of the constitution,
siege of Paris, Cavaignac’s dictatorship; 20 December 1848 to the
end of May 1849, struggle by Bonaparte and the party of order with
the republican constituent assembly, defeat of same, downfall of the
bourgeois republicans.
36
Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire
Before we finish with this period we must cast a backward glance
at two powers, one of which destroyed the other on 2 December
1851, and yet the two had lived as a happy couple from 20 December
1848 up to the departure of the constituent assembly [in May 1849].
I have in mind Louis Bonaparte, on the one hand, and the party of
the royalist coalition, of order, of the great bourgeoisie, on the other.
On acceding to the presidency Bonaparte at once formed a ministry
of the party of order, placing Odilon Barrot at its head, the former
leader, take note, of the most liberal faction of the parliamentary
bourgeoisie. M. Barrot had finally bagged the cabinet which he had
been stalking since 1830, and still better the premier post in that
cabinet; but not, in the way that he had envisaged under Louis
Philippe, as the ablest leader in the parliamentary opposition, but
rather as charged with the task of putting a parliament to death, and
as the confederate of all his arch-enemies, Jesuits and legitimists. He
brought the bride home at last, but only after she had been
prostituted. Bonaparte himself seemed completely eclipsed. This
party acted for him.
The very first cabinet meeting decided on the expedition to Rome,
which, so it was agreed, was to be conducted behind the back of the
national assembly, and resources for which were to be wrested from
it under false pretences. So they began by swindling the national
assembly and conspiring secretly with absolutist powers abroad
against the revolutionary Roman republic. In the same way and with
the same manoeuvres Bonaparte prepared his coup of 2 December
[1851] against the royalist legislature and its constitutional republic.
Let us not forget that this same party which formed Bonaparte’s
cabinet on 20 December 1848 also formed the majority of the
legislative national assembly on 2 December 1851.
In August [1848] the constituent assembly had resolved not to
disband itself without debating and promulgating an array of
organic laws to augment the constitution. On 6 January 1849 the
party of order had its representative Rateau propose to the assembly
that the organic laws should be abandoned and that it should resolve
its own dissolution instead. At that time all the royalist representatives in the national assembly, not just the cabinet headed by M.
Odilon Barrot, pestered it that its dissolution was necessary for the
maintenance of credit, for the consolidation of order, for bringing
provisional arrangements to an end and for establishing a definite
state of affairs; it hindered the efficacy of the new government and
sought to eke out its life from sheer rancour, the country was weary
The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
37
of it. Bonaparte noted well all this invective against the power of the
legislature, learnt it by heart and showed the parliamentary royalists
on 2 December 1851 that he understood it. He quoted their own
catchphrases back to them.
The Barrot cabinet and the party of order went further. They drew
up petitions to the national assembly throughout all France, in which
this body was most kindly requested to dissolve itself, to disappear.
Thus they led the unorganised populace into the fray against the
national assembly, the voice of the people organised constitutionally. They taught Bonaparte to appeal from parliamentary assemblies
to the people. Finally on 29 January 1849 the day had come on
which the constituent assembly was to make a decision concerning
its own dissolution. The national assembly found its chambers
occupied by soldiers; Changarnier, the general of the party of order,
in whose hands was united the supreme command of the national
guard and regular troops, staged a grand show of force in Paris, as if
a battle were in the offing, and the royalist coalition put threats to
the constituent assembly that force would be used if it did not
comply. It was compliant and merely bargained for a very short lease
of life. What was 29 January 1849 but the coup d’état of 2 December
1851, only carried out by royalists together with Bonaparte against
the republicans of the national assembly? These worthy men did not
notice or did not want to notice that on 29 January Bonaparte had
taken the opportunity to have a portion of the troops go on parade
before the Tuileries and had thus seized with avidity this first proclamation of military might against parliamentary power, alluding to
Caligula. Doubtless they saw only their Changarnier.
The organic laws augmenting the constitution, like the education
bill, the bill on religion, etc., were a particular motive for the party
of order to cut short the lifespan of the constituent assembly by
force. For the royalist coalition everything lay in making these laws
themselves, and in not letting the increasingly mistrustful
republicans do it. Amongst these organic laws there was even one
on the accountability of the president of the republic. In 1851 the
legislative assembly was occupied with drafting such a law when
Bonaparte anticipated this coup with the coup of 2 December. What
would the royalist coalition not have given in their campaign in the
parliamentary winter of 1851 to have found the article of accountability ready to hand, and drawn up at that by a mistrustful, hostile
republican assembly!
38
Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire
After 29 January 1849, when the constituent assembly destroyed
its last weapon itself, the Barrot cabinet and the friends of order
hounded it to death, leaving nothing undone which could humiliate
it, and wresting laws from its self-pitying weakness that cost it all
remaining public regard. Preoccupied with his Napoleonic idée fixe
Bonaparte was impudent enough to exploit this abasement of parliamentary power in public. On 7 May 1849, when the national
assembly censured the cabinet for the occupation of Civitavecchia by
[General] Oudinot and ordered the expedition to Rome to return to
its original purpose, Bonaparte published a letter to Oudinot in the
Moniteur that evening congratulating him on his heroic exploits and
posing as the munificent protector of the army, in contrast to the
pen-pushing parliamentarians. The royalists chuckled at this. They
regarded him simply as their dupe. At last when Marrast, president
of the constituent assembly, believed for a moment that the security
of the national assembly was endangered, he appealed to the constitution and requisitioned a colonel and his regiment; the colonel
refused, citing proper discipline and referring Marrast to [General]
Changarnier, who haughtily demurred with the comment that he
did not like bayonets with brains. In November 1851 when the
royalist coalition wanted to mount the decisive contest with
Bonaparte, they tried to go too far and to force through the direct
requisition of troops by the president of the national assembly in
their infamous commissioners’ bill. One of their generals, Le Flô, had
signed the proposed law. In vain did Changarnier vote for the bill
and in vain did [the Orléanist politician] Thiers pay homage to the
foresight of the erstwhile constituent assembly. The Minister of War
[the Bonapartist] Saint-Arnaud answered him as Changarnier had
answered Marrast – and all to the cheers of the [social-democrats of
the] montagne.
Thus the party of order itself, though as yet still the cabinet, and
not yet the national assembly, denounced the parliamentary regime.
And it protests when 2 December 1851 banishes the parliamentary
regime from France!
We wish it a pleasant journey.
III
On 28 May 1849 the national assembly gathered in legislative
sessions. On 2 December 1851 it was dispersed. This period comprises
the lifespan of the constitutional or parliamentary republic. It falls into
three main periods: 28 May to 13 June 1849, conflict between
The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
39
democrats and the bourgeoisie, defeat of the petty bourgeois or democratic
party; – 13 June 1849 to 31 May 1850, parliamentary dictatorship of
the bourgeoisie, i.e. of the Orléanists and legitimists in coalition, or of
the party of order, a dictatorship which fulfilled itself by abolishing
universal manhood suffrage; – 31 May 1850 to 2 December 1851, conflict
between the bourgeoisie and Bonaparte, collapse of bourgeois rule,
demise of the constitutional or parliamentary republic.
In the first French revolution the rule of the constitutionalists is
succeeded by the rule of the Girondins, and the rule of the Girondins
by the rule of the Jacobins. Each party leans on the more progressive
party for support. When each has led the revolution to a point where
there is no going further, still less of going on ahead of it, each is
pushed aside by the keener ally waiting in the background and sent
to the guillotine. The revolution thus follows an ascending path.
The revolution of 1848 is just the reverse. The proletarian party
appears as an annex of the petty bourgeois democrats. The proletarians are betrayed and dropped by the democratic party on 16 April,
15 May and in the June days [of 1848]. The democratic party, for its
part, rides on the shoulders of the bourgeois republican party. The
bourgeois republicans no sooner believe themselves set up than they
shake off their burdensome friend and support themselves on the
shoulders of the party of order. The party of order hunches its
shoulders, allows the bourgeois-republicans to topple off and heaves
itself onto the shoulders of the armed forces. It fancies that it is still
sitting on those shoulders when one fine morning it realises that the
shoulders have been transformed into bayonets. Each party kicks
back at the one pressing from behind, and leans forward on the one
pushing back. It’s no wonder that in this ridiculous position each
loses its balance, and after making the inevitable faces, each collapses
in curious spasms. Thus the revolution follows a descending path,
and it commenced retrograde motion before the last barricade of
February [1848] had been cleared away and the first revolutionary
authority set up.
The period unfolding before us comprises the most motley
mixture of crying contradictions: constitutionalists who conspire
openly against the constitution; revolutionaries who are confessedly
constitutional; a national assembly which wants to be all-powerful
and still remains parliamentary; a montagne that makes a career out
of patience and parries present defeats with prophecies of future
victories; royalists who are the founding fathers of the republic, and
who are forced by the situation to maintain inimical royal houses,
40
Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire
which they support, in exile abroad, and the republic, which they
hate, at home in France; an executive power that finds its strength
in its own weakness, and its respectability in the contempt that it
provokes; a republic that is none other than the disrepute of two
monarchies, the restored Bourbons and the July monarchy,
combined with an imperial etiquette – alliances whose first proviso
is separation; contests whose first law is indecision; wild, senseless
agitation in the name of peace, and the most solemn preaching of
peace in the name of revolution; passion without truth, truth
without passion; heroes without exploits, history without achievements; development driven solely by the calendar and wearisome
through constant repetition of the same tension and release;
antagonisms which seem periodically to reach a peak only to go dull
and diminish without resolution; pretentious interventions for show
and small-minded terror that the world will end; and at the same
time the saviours of the world play out the pettiest intrigues and
high comedies, redeemers whose inaction reminds us less of the Day
of Judgement than of the [confusions of the anti-absolutist] Fronde
[rebellion amongst the nobility of 1648–53] – the whole genius of
official France disgraced by the artful foolishness of a single
individual; as often as it is voiced in a general election, the will of the
whole nation seeks self-expression in superannuated enemies of the
general interest, finding this at last in the self-will of a racketeer. If
any episode in history has been coloured grey on grey, this is the
one. Men and events appear as Schlemihls in reverse, as shadows
that have lost their bodies. The revolution has paralysed its own
proponents and has endowed only its enemies with passion and
violence. The counter-revolutionaries continually summon, exorcise
and banish the ‘red spectre’, and when it finally appears, it is not in
the phrygian cap of anarchy but in the uniform of order, in [the
soldiers’] red breeches.
We have observed: the cabinet, which Bonaparte installed on 20
December [1848], his Ascension Day [to the office of president], was
a ministry for the party of order, the coalition of legitimists and
Orléanists. This Barrot-Falloux cabinet outlasted the constituent
assembly for the republic, whose lifespan it had shortened, more or
less forcibly, and found itself still at the helm of state. Changarnier,
the general of the united royalists, continued to unite in his person
the general command of the First Army and the Paris National
Guard, and the general election [of 28 May 1849] had finally secured
a large majority in the national assembly for the party of order. Here
The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
41
the deputies and peers of Louis Philippe met up with a holy order of
legitimists who emerged from hiding after great quantities of voting
papers from the nation had been transformed into admission tickets
to the political arena. The Bonapartist representatives of the people
were sown too thinly to be able to form an independent parliamentary party. They were sufficiently to hand to make up numbers in a
general call-up against the republican forces. They appeared merely
as pitiful hangers-on of the party of order. Thus the party of order
was in possession of the powers of government, the army and the
legislative bodies, in short: the whole might of the state, bolstered
morally by the general elections which made its rule appear to be
the will of the people, and by the simultaneous triumph of counterrevolution on the whole of the European continent.
Never did a party inaugurate its campaign with greater resources
and under more favourable auspices.
The shipwrecked pure republicans found that they had dwindled
in the national assembly to a clique of about 50 headed by generals
from the north African wars: Cavaignac, Lamoricière, Bedeau. The
principal opposition party however was made up of the montagne.
The social-democratic party christened itself with this parliamentary
name. It commanded more than 200 of the 750 votes in the national
assembly and was therefore at least as powerful as any of the other
three factions of the party of order taken singly. Its relative inferiority
compared to the whole of the royalist coalition seemed to be
mitigated by special circumstances. It was not only the case that
voting in the départements revealed that they had won a significant
following amongst the rural population. It counted in its ranks
almost all the deputies from Paris, the army had pledged a confession
of faith in democracy in the election of three junior officers, and the
leader of the montagne Ledru-Rollin, in contradistinction to all the
other representatives of the party of order, had been raised to the
heights of parliamentary distinction by five départements pooling
their votes for him. Hence on 29 May 1849 the montagne appeared
to have all the makings for success to hand, given the inevitable
clashes of the royalists between themselves and of the entire party
of order with Bonaparte. Fourteen days later they had lost
everything, honour included.
Before going any further with this parliamentary history, a few
introductory remarks are necessary to avoid widespread misconceptions concerning the overall character of the epoch which lies before
us. From a democratic point of view, the period of the national
42
Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire
assembly was concerned with what the period of the constituent
assembly was concerned with, a straightforward conflict between
republicans and royalists. Yet they sum up the events themselves
with one word: ‘reaction’, a night in which all cats are grey and which
allows them to rattle off clichés like a night watchman. And indeed
at first glance the party of order appeared to be a tangle of different
royalist factions not only intriguing against one another to put their
own pretender on the throne and exclude the pretender of the
opposing party, but also uniting in a common hatred of and attacks
on the ‘republic’. The montagne for its part appears in opposition to
this royalist conspiracy as a representative of the ‘republic’. The party
of order appears continuously occupied with a ‘reaction’ directed
against the press, voluntary associations and the like, no more and
no less than in [Prince Metternich’s] Austria, and executed in a brutal
police intervention in the state bureaucracy, the local constabulary
and the judiciary, as in Austria. The ‘montagne’ for its part is just as
constantly occupied with fighting off these attacks and protecting
the ‘natural rights of man’ as every so-called people’s party has been,
more or less, for a century and a half. Nevertheless on closer
inspection of the situation and the parties, this superficial
appearance, which veils the class struggle and the peculiar
physiognomy of this period, disappears, and it thus becomes a gold
mine for saloon bar politicians and republican-minded gents.
As we said, legitimists and Orléanists make up the two great
factions of the party of order. Was what bound these factions to their
pretenders and kept them mutually at odds – was it nothing but the
lily and tricolour, the royal house of Bourbon and the royal house of
Orléans, different shades of royalism? Was it their royalist faith at
all? Under the Bourbons the large propertied interests governed with
priests and lackeys, under Orléans rule it was high finance, largescale industry, large commercial interests, i.e. capital with its retinue
of lawyers, professors and smooth-talkers. The legitimate monarchy
was merely the political expression of the hereditary rule of the
feudal lords, and the July monarchy was likewise merely the political
expression for the usurping rule of bourgeois parvenus. What kept
the two factions apart was not any so-called principles, it was their
material conditions of existence, two different kinds of property; it
was the old opposition between town and country, the rivalry
between capital and landed property. That at the same time old
memories, personal antipathies, hopes and fears, prejudices and
delusions, sympathies and antipathies, convictions, articles of faith
The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
43
and principles bound them to one or the other royal house, whoever
denied this? On the different forms of property, the social conditions
of existence, arises an entire superstructure of different and
peculiarly formed sentiments, delusions, modes of thought and
outlooks on life. The whole class creates and forms them from the
material foundations on up and from the corresponding social
relations. The single individual, to whom they are transmitted
through tradition and upbringing, can imagine that they form the
real motives and starting-point for his actions. As Orléanists, as
legitimists, each faction sought to convince itself and the other that
loyalty to their two royal houses separated them, yet facts later
proved that it was rather their divided interests which forbade their
unification. Just as in private life one distinguishes between what a
man thinks and says, and what he really is and does, so one must
all the more in historical conflicts make the distinction between the
fine words and aspirations of the parties from their real organisation
and their real interests, their image from their reality. Orléanists and
legitimists found themselves side by side in the republic with the
same demands. If each side wanted to carry out the restoration of its
own royal house in opposition to the other, then this signified
nothing but the desire of each of the two great interests into which the
bourgeoisie had split – landed property and capital – to restore its own
supremacy and to subordinate the other. We are talking in terms of
two interests within the bourgeoisie, for large landed property, in
spite of its flirtations with feudalism and pride in its pedigree, has
been thoroughly assimilated to the bourgeoisie by the development
of modern society. Thus the Tories in England long fancied that they
were in raptures about royalty, the church and the beauties of the
ancient constitution, until a time of trial tore from them the
confession that they were only in raptures about rent.
The royalist coalition pursued their intrigues against one another
in the press, at Ems [in Germany amongst the Bourbons], at
Claremont [in England amongst the Orléanists], outside parliamentary bounds. Behind the scenes they donned their antique Orléanist
and legitimist livery once again and pursued their old tournaments.
But on the public stage, in high politics and matters of state, as a
grand parliamentary party, they pawned off their royal houses with
token acts of reverence, and adjourned the restoration of the
monarchy ad infinitum, and did their real business as the party of
order, i.e. under a social rather than a political banner, as a representative of the bourgeois world order, not as knights seeking fair ladies,
44
Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire
as the bourgeois class against other classes, not as royalists against
republicans. And as the party of order they exercised a more unrestricted and sterner dominion over the other classes of society than
they had been able to do under the restoration or the July monarchy,
as was possible only in a parliamentary republic, for only under that
form could the two great divisions of the French bourgeoisie unite
and make the rule of their class the order of the day, instead of the
regime of one of its privileged factions. If in spite of that as the party
of order they insulted the republic and expressed aversion to it, this
did not happen as the result of mere royalist recollections but rather
from the instinct that the republican form made their political
dominion complete and stripped it of all alien appearances, but at
the same time undermining its social basis in that they have to
confront the subjugated classes, and to grapple with them without
a mediator, without the crown for cover, without being able to
distract the interests of the nation with their secondary quarrels
amongst themselves and with royalty. This results from a weakness
which causes them to recoil from the pure conditions of their own
class rule and to hanker after the incomplete, undeveloped and on
that account less dangerous forms of dominion. On the other hand
every time that the royalist coalition come into conflict with the
pretender opposing them, with Bonaparte, they believe their parliamentary might to be threatened by the power of the executive, and
they have to pull out the political title to their rule, they come
forward as republicans and not as royalists, from the Orléanist Thiers
who warns the national assembly [on 17 January 1851] that the
republic would divide them least to the legitimist Berryer, who on 2
December 1851 harangues the assembled people of the tenth
arrondissement in the name of the republic as a tribune, swathed in
the tricolour on the steps of the town hall. To be sure a mocking echo
calls: Henri V! Henri V! [the legitimist pretender and self-styled king].
Opposed to the bourgeoisie in coalition there was a coalition
between the petty bourgeoisie and the working classes, the so-called
social-democratic party. The party regarded themselves as badly
rewarded after the June days of 1848, their material interests
endangered and the democratic guarantees, which ought to have
assured the exercise of these interests, called into question by the
counter-revolution. Hence they drew near to the workers. On the
other hand, their parliamentary representation, the montagne,
pushed aside during the dictatorship of the republican bourgeoisie,
had reconquered its lost popularity because of the struggle between
The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
45
Bonaparte and the royalist ministers during the second half of the
constituent assembly’s lifespan. It had struck an alliance with the
leaders of the socialists. In February 1849 there were banquets to
celebrate the event. A joint programme was produced, joint election
committees were instituted and joint candidates put up. The revolutionary sting was taken from the social demands of the proletariat,
and a democratic cast was given to them; the merely political form
was stripped back from the democratic claims of the petty
bourgeoisie and a socialist sting revealed. In that way socialdemocracy arose. The new montagne, the result of this combination,
contained the same elements as the old montagne only numerically
stronger, apart from a few token workers and a few socialist
sectarians. But in the course of development it had altered, along
with the class which it represented. The peculiar character of socialdemocracy is epitomised in the way that democratic and republican
institutions are demanded as a means of weakening the conflict
between capital and labour, and of creating a harmony between the
two extremes, but not of transcending them both. Different markers
for reaching this goal may be proposed, and it may be embellished
with more or less revolutionary notions, but the content remains
always the same. This content is the reform of society in a
democratic way, but a reform within petty bourgeois limits. Only we
must not take the narrow-minded view that the petty bourgeoisie
wants on principle to pursue an egoistic class interest. Rather it
believes that the particular conditions for its freedom are the only
general conditions under which modern society can be safeguarded
and escape the class struggle. Even less should one imagine that
democratic representatives are all shopkeepers or their admirers. In
respect of education and circumstances they could be as far removed
from them as the heavens above. What makes them representatives
of the petty bourgeoisie is the fact that in their heads they do not
transcend the limitations that others have not surmounted in life,
that they are therefore driven to the same problems and solutions
in theory that material interests and social life pose for others in
practice. In general terms this is the relationship between the political
and literary representatives of a class to the class that they represent.
After the exposition given above, it is self-evident that if the
montagne continually contends with the party of order for the
republic and the so-called rights of man, neither the republic nor the
rights of man are its real goal, just as an army, which one wants to
46
Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire
disarm and which mounts resistance, has not entered the field of
battle in order to safeguard its own weapons.
When the national assembly met, the party of order immediately
provoked the montagne. The bourgeoisie just then felt the necessity
of getting rid of the petty bourgeois democrats, just as a year before
it had realised the necessity of putting an end to the revolutionary
proletariat. Yet the situation of its adversary was different. The
strength of the proletarian party lay in the streets, that of the petty
bourgeoisie in the national assembly itself. It was therefore a
question of luring them from the national assembly onto the streets
and making them destroy their parliamentary power themselves,
before time and opportunity could consolidate it. The montagne
sprang at full gallop into the trap.
The bombardment of Rome by French troops [in June 1849] was
thrown to it as bait. It violated article V of the [preamble to the] constitution which prohibits the French republic from turning its
military forces against the freedom of any other people. In addition
[chapter V] § 54 forbade any declaration of war by the executive
without the assent of the national assembly, and by its resolution of
8 May [1849] the constituent assembly had disavowed the
expedition to Rome. On these grounds Ledru-Rollin introduced a bill
of impeachment against Bonaparte and his ministers on 11 June
1849, and stung by Thiers into action, he let himself get carried away
to the point of threatening that he would defend the constitution
by any means, even fighting hand-to-hand. The montagne rose up as
one man and echoed this call to arms. On 12 June [1849] the
national assembly threw out the bill of impeachment, and the
montagne walked out of parliament. The events of 13 June [1849] are
well known: the proclamation from one part of the montagne by
which Bonaparte and his ministers were declared ‘outside the constitution’; the democratic national guard, parading weaponless in
the streets, dispersed when they met up with Changarnier’s troops,
etc. etc. A part of the montagne fled abroad, another was arraigned
before the high court at Bourges, and a parliamentary regulation
subjected the rest to the schoolmasterly supervision of the president
of the national assembly. Paris was again besieged and the
democratic section of the national guard dissolved. The influence of
the montagne in parliament and the power of the petty bourgeoisie
in Paris was thereby destroyed.
The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
47
Lyons, where the signal for a bloody workers’ insurrection had
been given on 13 June, was besieged, along with five neighbouring
départements, a situation which continues up to the present moment.
The bulk of the montagne had abandoned the avant garde, refusing
to sign its proclamation. The press had deserted, only two papers
daring to publish the broadside. The petty bourgeoisie betrayed their
representatives in that the national guard stayed away, or where they
appeared, they obstructed the building of barricades. The representatives had duped the petty bourgeoisie, as the alleged affiliates from
the army were nowhere to be seen. Finally, instead of gaining
additional strength from the proletariat, the democratic party
infected it with its own weakness, and as is generally the case with
democratic heroism, the leaders took satisfaction in being able to
blame the ‘people’ for desertion, and the people in charging the
leaders with fraud.
Seldom had a charge been sounded with greater alarum than the
impending campaign by the montagne, seldom had an event been
trumpeted with greater certainty or further in advance than the
inevitable victory of democracy. This is for certain: the democrats
have faith in the trumpeting that breached the walls of Jericho. And
as often as they confront the ramparts of despotism, they try to
imitate the miracle. If the montagne wished to triumph in parliament,
it should not have resorted to arms. If the call to arms was in
parliament, it should not have behaved in a parliamentary way in
the streets. If the peaceful demonstration was seriously intended,
then it was foolish not to foresee a violent reception. If they had a
real war in mind, then it was eccentric to put aside the weapons to
fight it. But the revolutionary threats of the petty bourgeoisie and
their democratic representatives are mere attempts to bully the
enemy. And if they run into a cul de sac, if they compromise
themselves enough to force them to carry out their threats, then this
will happen in an ambiguous way which avoids nothing so much as
the means to an end and which hankers after excuses for failure. The
thundering overture announcing the contest dies away to the
faintest growl as battle is commenced, the players cease to take
themselves seriously, and the affair goes flat like a burst balloon.
No party exaggerates its strength more than the democratic one,
and none deludes itself with more insouciance about the situation.
Since a part of the army had declared for it, the montagne was now
convinced that the army would revolt for it. And on what occasion?
On an occasion that had no meaning for the troops other than that
48
Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire
the revolutionaries sided with the soldiers of Rome against the
French ones. Concerning the workers, the montagne had to know
that the recollections of June 1848 were still too fresh for anything
but a deep aversion on the part of the proletariat for the national
guard and a thoroughgoing mistrust on the part of the chiefs of the
secret societies for the democratic chiefs. To even out these
differences would require an overwhelming common interest to
come into play. The infraction of an abstract constitutional clause
could not provide this. Had not the constitution been repeatedly
infringed according to the testimony of the democrats themselves?
Had the popular papers not branded it as a counter-revolutionary
botch-job? But the democrat, because he represents the petty
bourgeoisie, hence a transitional class, in which the interests of two
classes are neutralised, fancies himself above class conflict entirely.
The democrats admit that a privileged class confronts them, but they
together with the whole rest of the nation make up the people. What
they represent is the people’s right to rule; their interests are the people’s
interests. Hence at a time of impending struggle, they do not need to
examine the interests and positioning of the different classes. They
do not need to weigh their own resources all that critically. They
have only to give the signal, and the people will fall on the oppressors
with inexhaustible resources to hand. If in the course of events their
interests turn out to be uninteresting and their power turns out to be
impotence, then the fault lies either with damned sophists splitting
the indivisible people into different warring camps, or the army was
too brutalised and too dazzled to understand that the pure aims of
democracy are in its best interests, or the whole thing has been
wrecked by a mere detail in execution, or else an unforeseen accident
has thwarted the party this time. In any case the democrat emerges
from the most shameful defeat just as unscathed as he was when he
innocently went into it, with the newly won conviction that he is
bound to triumph, not that he and his party have given up their
long-standing views but rather the opposite, that conditions have to
ripen to suit him.
Decimated and broken down and humiliated by the new parliamentary order, the montagne should not be thought particularly
unfortunate. The remuneration for attendance and their official
position were for many of them a source of consolation that was
renewed daily. If 13 June [1849] had removed its leaders, then it
opened the way for lesser talents who were flattered by this new
arrangement. If their impotence in parliament could no longer be
The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
49
doubted, then they were justified in limiting their interventions to
outbursts of moral indignation and tub-thumping oratory. If the
party of order pretended to see in them an embodiment of all the
terrors of anarchy, as the last official representatives of the
revolution, then they could in reality be all the more insipid and
unassuming. They consoled themselves, however, for 13 June [1849]
with this profound twist: But if any dare to attack the general
suffrage, well then! Then we will show them what we are made of!
We shall see!
So far as the montagnards who fled abroad are concerned, it suffices
to note here that Ledru-Rollin, since he had succeeded in scarcely a
fortnight in irretrievably ruining the powerful party that he headed,
now found himself called up to form a French regime in exile; his
distant figure, far from the scene of action, seemed to increase in
stature proportionate to the sinking level of the revolution and the
dwarfing of the great and the good of official France, so that he could
figure as republican pretender for [the presidential election of May]
1852; periodically he issued circulars to the Wallachians and to other
peoples whereby the despots of the continent were threatened with
his actions and the actions of his confederates. Was Proudhon
wholly wrong when he called out to these men [in 1850]: ‘You’re
nothing but braggarts’?
On 13 June [1849] the party of order had not only broken the
montagne, it had brought about the subordination of the constitution to
the majority decisions of the national assembly. And this is what it
understood about the republic. That the bourgeoisie rules here in
parliamentary form, without encountering any limitations in the
veto power of the executive or in the power to dissolve parliament,
as there are in a monarchy. That was the parliamentary republic, as
Thiers had termed it [in 1851]. But on 13 June when the bourgeoisie
secured its supreme power within the parliamentary chambers, did
it not afflict parliament itself, as opposed to the executive power and
the people, with an incurable weakness by throwing out the most
popular section? By surrendering numerous deputies to the writs of
the judiciary without further ceremonial, it abolished parliamentary
immunity itself. The humiliating regulations to which it subjected
the montagne denigrated the individual representatives of the people,
and exalted the president of the republic in inverse proportion. By
condemning the insurrection to maintain constitutional rule as
anarchic and tending to the overthrow of society, it precluded an
appeal to insurrection, should the executive power act against it by
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Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire
violating a constitutional provision. The irony of history had it that
the general who bombarded Rome on Bonaparte’s orders and so
provided the immediate occasion for the constitutional fracas of 13
June [1849], that very same Oudinot, had to be the one that the party
of order offered, with fruitless supplications, to the people on 2
December 1851 as a constitutional general in opposition to
Bonaparte. Another hero of 13 June [1849], [General] Vieyra, praised
from the rostrum of the national assembly for leading a gang of
national guards linked to high finance to commit brutalities in the
offices of the democratic press, this same Vieyra was sworn to
Bonaparte and played an essential part in the death throes of the
national assembly by depriving it of any protection from the
national guard.
The 13th of June [1849] had still another meaning. The montagne
had wanted Bonaparte out of the way through impeachment. Its
defeat was therefore a signal victory for Bonaparte, a personal
triumph over his democratic enemies. The party of order gained a
victory; Bonaparte had only to cash in. And that he did. On 14 June
[1849] there was a proclamation to be read on the walls of Paris
whereby the president, quite without meaning to, fighting against it,
forced by pressure of events to emerge from cloistered seclusion,
intones the calumnies of his enemies against his misprised virtue,
and in fact identifies the cause of order with his person whilst
seeming to identify his person with the cause of order. Moreover the
national assembly had sanctioned the expedition against Rome after
the fact, but Bonaparte had taken the initiative. Having installed the
high priest Samuel in the Vatican once again, he could hope to enter
the Tuileries [crowned by the Pope] as King David. He had won over
the church.
The revolt of 13 June [1849] was limited, as we have seen, to a
peaceful march through the streets. Hence there were no laurels to
be won in combating it. At a time when heroes and exploits were
scarce, the party of order nevertheless transformed this bloodless
encounter into a second [Battle of] Austerlitz [when Napoleon
defeated the Austrians and Russians on 2 December 1805]. Speechmakers and leader-writers extolled the army as the champion of
order, versus the impotent anarchism of the populace at large, and
praised Changarnier as the ‘bulwark of society’. This was a mystification that he finally believed himself. But secretly the army corps
that seemed doubtful were transferred from Paris, the regiments that
had voted for the democrats were banished to Algiers, hotheads
The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
51
amongst the troops were consigned to punishment squads, and
finally the press was systematically barred from the barracks and the
barracks from civilian life.
We have now reached the turning-point in the history of the
French national guard. In 1830 it was decisive in the overthrow of
the restoration monarchy [of Charles X]. Under Louis Philippe, every
time the national guard sided with the troops, the rebellion misfired.
In the February days of 1848, when it signalled passivity to the
uprising and ambiguity to Louis Philippe, he acknowledged defeat
and went under. Thus the conviction took root that the revolution
could not win without the national guard, and the army could not
win against it. Thus the army had a superstitious belief in an
almighty civilian power. That superstition was strengthened when
the national guard joined forces with regular troops to put down the
insurrection of the June days of 1848. When Bonaparte took office,
the standing of the national guard declined somewhat owing to the
unconstitutional amalgamation of its command with that of the first
army in the person of Changarnier.
The national guard itself now appeared to be but an appendage to
the regulars, just as its command appeared to be a department of the
top brass. It was finally disposed of on 13 June [1849]: not just by
the partial dissolution of the national guard, periodically re-enacted
all over France, and leaving only fragments behind. The demonstration by 13 June was above all a demonstration of the democratic
[elements of the] national guard. They had, to be sure, confronted
the army with their uniforms, not with weapons, but the talisman
was precisely in the uniform. The army satisfied itself that the
uniform was a length of woollen cloth just like any other. The spell
was broken. In the June days of 1848 the bourgeoisie and petty
bourgeoisie were united as national guards against the proletariat,
and on 13 June 1849 the bourgeoisie let the army disperse the pettybourgeois national guards; on 2 December 1851 the bourgeois
national guard itself vanished and Bonaparte merely confirmed this
fact when he signed an order of dissolution. So the bourgeoisie itself
smashed its last weapon against the army, doing this the moment
the petty bourgeoisie rebelled and ceased to be its vassal, and
generally destroying all its own defences against absolutism once it
became absolute itself.
Meanwhile in the national assembly the party of order celebrated
the reconquest of a power that seemed lost only in 1848 but was
recovered in 1849 free from previous restrictions, spouting invective
52
Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire
against the republic and the constitution, cursing all future, present,
and past revolutions including the one their own leaders had made,
and passing laws muzzling the press, forbidding free association and
making siege controls a permanent institution. The national
assembly then adjourned from the middle of August to the middle of
October [1849], after naming a commission to rule in its absence.
During this recess the legitimists intrigued at Ems, the Orléanists at
Claremont, Bonaparte on his princely rounds, and councils of the
départements in deliberations on constitutional revision – incidents
which regularly recur in the periodic recesses of the national
assembly, and which I will examine only when they turn out to be
events. Here it is merely noted that the national assembly behaved in
an impolitic way by disappearing for long intervals from the stage
and leaving only a single figure at the head of the republic, Louis
Bonaparte, even if a pitiable one, while the party of order caused a
public scandal by separating into its royalist elements with mutually
conflicting demands for restoration. Once the distracting din of
parliament was silenced by this recess and it had dissolved bodily
into the nation, it became inescapably clear that the republic required
but one thing for true completion: making parliamentary recess
permanent and replacing the republican motto ‘liberty, equality,
fraternity’ with the unambiguous words ‘infantry, cavalry, artillery’!
IV
In mid-October 1849 the national assembly went back into session.
On 1 November Bonaparte surprised it with a communiqué
announcing the dismissal of the Barrot-Falloux cabinet and the
formation of a new one. Nobody has sacked his lackeys more unceremoniously than Bonaparte did his ministers. For the moment
Barrot and Co. got the boot intended for the national assembly.
The Barrot cabinet, as we have seen, was composed of legitimists
and Orléanists, a cabinet for the party of order. This was what
Bonaparte needed in order to dissolve the constituent assembly, to
mount the expedition against the republic in Rome, and to destroy
the democratic party. In apparent eclipse behind this ministry, he
had delivered governmental authority into the hands of the party
of order and masked himself in the unassuming guise of a ‘straw
man’, which the respectable ‘guarantors’ of the Paris press bore
[under Louis Philippe, when the real editors were in prison]. Now he
cast off his larval shell, which was no longer a light covering under
which he could hide his features but rather an iron mask which
The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
53
prevented him from showing his true face. He had appointed the
Barrot cabinet to break up the national assembly in the name of the
party of order; in his own name he discharged it in order to declare
his independence from the party of order and its national assembly.
There was no lack of plausible pretexts for this dismissal. The
Barrot cabinet neglected even the formalities that would have let the
president of the republic appear to hold power alongside the national
assembly. During the recess of the national assembly Bonaparte
published a letter to [his military aide] Edgar Ney in which he seemed
to object to the liberal policies of the Pope, just as he had published
a letter in opposition to the constituent assembly praising Oudinot
for his assault on the Roman republic. When the national assembly
approved the budget for the Roman expedition, the liberal Victor
Hugo brought this letter to attention [on 19 October 1849]. The party
of order drowned out the suggestion that Bonaparte’s ideas could
have any political weight with exclamations of disbelieving scorn.
Not one of the ministers took up the challenge to defend him. On
another occasion Barrot, with his usual high seriousness, alluded
from the rostrum to his indignation concerning the ‘abominable
intrigues’ that in his opinion were going on in the immediate
entourage of the president. Finally, though the cabinet obtained a
widow’s pension for the duchess of Orléans from the national
assembly, it refused to consider an increase in presidential expenses.
In Bonaparte the imperial pretender was so intimately bound up with
the down-and-out mercenary that his one big idea – that his mission
was to restore the empire – was always accompanied by another –
that it was the mission of the French people to pay his debts.
The Barrot-Falloux cabinet was the first and last parliamentary
cabinet that Bonaparte called into existence. Its discharge therefore
marks a decisive turning point. In it the party of order lost the lever
of executive power, an indispensable position for defending a parliamentary regime, and never again recovered it. In a country like
France, where the executive power has at its disposal a bureaucracy
of more than half a million civil servants, so holding an immense
number of individual interests and livelihoods in abject dependence;
where the state restricts, controls, regulates oversees and supervises
civil life from its most all-encompassing expressions to its most
insignificant stirrings, from its most universal models of existence
to the private existence of individuals; where through the most
extraordinary centralisation this parasite acquires an all-knowing
pervasiveness, an enhanced capacity for speed and action which
54
Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire
only finds an analogue in the helpless dependence and scatterbrained formlessness of the actual body politic – it is easy to see that
in such a country the national assembly forfeits any real influence
when it loses control of ministerial portfolios, if it does not at the
same time simplify the state administration, reduce the bureaucracy
as far as possible, and lastly allow civil life and public opinion to
create their own organs of expression independent of governmental authority. But the material interests of the French bourgeoisie are
intertwined in the most intimate way with the maintenance of just
that wide-ranging and highly ramified machinery of state. Here it
accommodates surplus population and makes up in the form of state
maintenance what it cannot pocket in the form of profit, interest,
rent and fees. On the other hand its political interests force it to
increase state repression day by day, hence resources and personnel,
while at the same time waging a continuous war on public opinion,
suspecting independent movement in society, then maiming and
laming its limbs where not wholly successful in amputating them.
Thus the French bourgeoisie was compelled by its class position both
to negate the conditions of existence for any parliamentary power,
including its own, and to make the power of the executive, its
adversary, irresistible.
The new cabinet was known as the d’Hautpoul ministry. Not that
General d’Hautpoul had been granted the title prime minister. With
Barrot’s dismissal Bonaparte had also abolished this office which
condemned the president of the republic to the legal nullity of a constitutional monarch, though a constitutional monarch without
throne or crown, without sceptre and sword, without unilateral
power, without unimpeachable possession of the highest office of
state, and most fatal of all, without [expenses from] a civil list. The
d’Hautpoul cabinet included only one man of parliamentary
standing, the Jew Fould, one of the most notorious of the high
financiers. The finance ministry went to him. Check the quotations
on the Paris bourse and you’ll find that from 1 November 1849
onwards French government securities rose and fell with the fall and
rise of Bonapartist shares. While Bonaparte was finding friends on
the bourse he also took control of the police, appointing Carlier as
prefect in Paris.
This change of cabinet had consequences that would only emerge
in the ensuing train of events. At first Bonaparte seemed to take a
step forward only to be driven conspicuously back again. His abrupt
communiqué was followed by the most servile pledge of allegiance
The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
55
to the national assembly. Whenever ministers dared to make a
diffident attempt to introduce his personal whims as proposed
legislation, they appeared unwilling, forced by their position to fulfil
comic instructions, convinced in advance of their failure. Whenever
Bonaparte babbled out his intentions behind his ministers’ backs
and played up his ‘Napoleonic ideals’ [as published in a book of
1839], his own ministers disavowed him from the rostrum of the
national assembly. His usurpatory lusts only seemed to come forth
so that the malicious laughter of his enemies would not die away.
He behaved like an unrecognised genius whom all the world takes
for a simpleton. Never did he experience the contempt of all classes
to a greater degree than in this period. Never did the bourgeoisie rule
more unconditionally, never did it display the insignia of power with
more bravado.
I do not need to tell the story of the bourgeoisie’s legislative
activity here, as it can be summarised for this period in two laws: the
reintroduction of the wine tax, and the education act disallowing
atheism. Though wine drinking was made harder for the French,
they were all the more richly supplied with the water of the living
truth. Though the bourgeoisie declared the old, despised tax system
in France sacrosanct by reintroducing the despised tax on wine, it
tried to secure the old habits of mind that helped people to bear it
by passing the education law. It is astonishing to see the Orléanists,
the liberal bourgeois, these votaries of Voltaire and apostles of philosophical eclecticism, entrusting the supervision of French
intellectual life to their sworn enemies the Jesuits. Though Orléanists
and legitimists could part company over pretenders to the throne,
they both understood that their joint authority required a
combination of the repressive apparatus of two eras, the July
monarchy and the restoration, supplementing and strengthening
the former with the latter.
Out in the départements the peasantry began to agitate, as they
were dashed in all their hopes, oppressed more than ever by low
price-levels for grain, and by increasing tax burdens and mortgage
debts. They were answered with a witch hunt against school
teachers, who were subjected to the clergy, a witch hunt against
mayors, who were subjected to prefects, and through a system of
spying, which subjected everyone. In Paris and the big cities
[political] reaction bears the true character of the times and provokes
more than it executes. In the countryside it is vulgar, sordid, petty,
tiresome and badgering, in a word the gendarme. We know how
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Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire
much three years of a police state, blessed by the authority of the
Church, must demoralise an unsophisticated population.
Despite all the passion and shouting from the rostrum that was
directed by the party of order against the minority in the national
assembly, its words were always monosyllabic, like the Christian who
was to say: Yea, yea; nay, nay! Monosyllables from the rostrum,
monosyllables in the press. Boring as a riddle whose solution you
already know. Whether it was a question of the right of petition or
of the tax on wine, of freedom of the press or free trade, incorporating societies or municipalities, protecting personal freedom or
accounting for public money, the universal remedy recurs, one
theme is always the same, the verdict is ever ready and is invariably
a cry of: ‘socialism’! Even bourgeois liberalism is decried as socialistic,
the bourgeois enlightenment is socialistic, bourgeois financial
reforms are socialistic. It was socialistic to build a railway where there
was already a canal, and it was socialistic to defend oneself with a
stick when attacked with a sword.
This is not mere rhetoric, fashion or party tactics. The bourgeoisie
saw correctly that all the weapons it had forged against feudalism
were turned back on their makers, that all the educational institutions it had supported were rebelling against its own civilisation, that
all the gods it had created were forsaking them. It knew that all socalled liberty and progress threatened and strained its class-rule both
at the foundations of society and at its political heights, and had
therefore become ‘socialistic’. In these threats and strains it rightly
discerned the secret of socialism, whose tendency and aim it judges
more correctly than so-called socialism knows how to judge itself,
since it cannot understand how the bourgeoisie stubbornly resists
it, even though it snivels sentimentally about the suffering of
mankind, or prophesies brotherly love and the millennium like the
Christians, drivels humanistically about ideas, education and
freedom, or concocts a doctrinaire system for the reconciliation and
welfare of all classes. But what it doesn’t grasp is the conclusion that
its own parliamentary regime, its political rule in general, must now be
condemned universally as socialistic. So long as the organisation of
bourgeois class rule is incomplete, and has not taken on its purest
political expression, the opposition of other classes cannot emerge
in a pure form, and where it does emerge, it cannot take the
dangerous turn of calling property, religion, the family and public
order into question, and so transforming the struggle against state
power into a struggle against capital. If it saw ‘peace and quiet’
The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
57
endangered by every stirring of life in society, how could it want to
retain at the head of society a regime of unrest, its own regime, the
parliamentary regime, a regime that – as one of its spokesmen put it –
thrives on conflict? The parliamentary regime lives by discussion, so
how is it to forbid it? Every interest, every social organisation is
transformed into a generality, debated as a generality, so how is an
interest, any kind of institution, to transcend thinking and to impose
itself as an article of faith? The war of the orators at the rostrum
evokes the war of the printing presses; parliamentary debaters are
necessarily supplemented by debaters in the salons and saloon bars;
representatives who make constant appeals to public opinion license
public opinion to express itself openly in petitions. The parliamentary regime leaves everything to majority decision, why then should
the great majorities outside parliament not want to make decisions?
When you call the tune at the pinnacles of power, is it a surprise
when the underlings dance to it?
By branding as ‘socialistic’ what it had previously extolled as ‘liberal’,
the bourgeoisie confesses that its own interests require it to dispense
with the dangers of self-government, that in order to restore peace to
the countryside the bourgeois parliament must first be laid to rest,
that to retain its power in society intact its political power would have
to be broken; that the individual bourgeois could continue to exploit
other classes ‘privately’ and to continue in untroubled enjoyment of
property, family, religion and public order only on condition that his
class and all the others be condemned to the same political nullity;
that to save its purse it must forfeit the crown, and the sword of state
must be hung up like the sword of Damocles.
In the domain of bourgeois interests in general, the national
assembly proved itself so unproductive that, for example, the negotiations on the Paris-Avignon railway, begun during the winter 1850,
were still not wrapped up on 2 December 1851. Where it was not
repressive or reactive, it was incurably sterile.
While Bonaparte’s cabinet took the initiative, in part, to put the
programme of the party of order into law, and surpassed, in part, its
harshness in executing and administering it, he also tried to win
popularity through silly, childish proposals, to manifest his
opposition to the national assembly and to hint at a secret reserve,
though conditions temporarily hindered the French people from
spending the hidden treasures. Such was the proposal to grant a pay
increase of four sous per day to non-commissioned officers. Such
was the proposal for unsecured bank loans for workers. Cash in hand
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Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire
and cash on tick, that was the perspective with which he hoped to
lead on the populace. Gifts and loans – here we have the only
economics of the lumpenproletariat, both the refined and the
common sort. And here we have the only trips which Bonaparte
knew how to wire. Never has a pretender speculated so stupidly on
the stupidity of the populace.
The national assembly raged repeatedly at these bare-faced
attempts to win popularity at its expense, at the growing danger that
this shyster, goaded by debt and unrestrained by reputation, would
risk a desperate coup. The discord between the party of order and
the president had taken on a threatening character when an
unexpected event threw him repenting into its arms. We refer to the
by-elections of 10 March 1850. These were held to fill seats vacated by
deputies exiled or imprisoned after 13 June [1849]. Only socialdemocrats were elected in Paris. Indeed most of the votes there were
concentrated on Deflotte, an insurgent in June 1848. Thus did the
Paris petty bourgeoisie, in alliance with the proletariat, take revenge
for its defeat on 13 June 1849. Though it seemed to disappear from
battle at the crucial time, it regained the field on a more propitious
occasion with greater forces and a bolder battle-cry. Another circumstance seemed to make this electoral victory more dangerous for
Bonaparte. In Paris the army voted for one of the June [1848]
insurgents against one of Bonaparte’s ministers, Lahitte, and in the
départements mostly for the montagnards, outweighing the enemy
there, too, though not so decisively as in Paris.
Suddenly Bonaparte saw revolution rising against him once more.
On 10 March 1850, as on 29 January and 13 June 1849, he
disappeared behind the party of order. He bowed down, he humbly
begged pardon, he offered to appoint any cabinet it pleased on
behalf of the parliamentary majority, he even implored the Orléanist
and legitimist leaders, the Thiers’s, the Berryer’s, the Broglie’s, the
Molé’s, in short the so-called grandees, to take the helm of state in
person. The party of order did not know what to do with this chance
of a lifetime. Instead of boldly seizing power it did not even force
Bonaparte to reinstate the cabinet previously discharged on 1
November [1849]; it was satisfied to humiliate him with forgiveness
and to attach M. Baroche to the d’Hautpoul cabinet. As public
prosecutor, this Baroche had ranted before the high court at Bourges
on two occasions, the first time against the revolutionaries of 15 May
[1848] and the second against the democrats of 13 June [1849], both
times because of the outrage to the national assembly. But none of
The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
59
Bonaparte’s ministers had a bigger part in the subsequent abasement
of the national assembly, and after [the coup of] 2 December 1851
we meet him once more, comfortably installed and highly paid as
vice-president, presiding over the senate. He had spat in the revolutionists’ soup so that Bonaparte could slurp it up.
The social-democratic party seemed only to snatch at pretexts for
doubting its own victory and for taking the edge off it. Vidal, one of
the newly elected representatives for Paris, had also been elected for
Strasbourg. He was persuaded to give up the seat in Paris and take
the one in Strasbourg. Instead of making its victory at the polls
definitive and forcing the party of order into a parliamentary
showdown, instead of drawing the enemy into battle at a time of
popular enthusiasm and favourable disposition in the army, the
democratic party wearied Paris with electoral campaigning in March
and April [1850], let popular excitement wear itself out in a game of
repeated provisional ballots; let revolutionary energy sate itself in
constitutional successes, fizzle out in petty intrigues, hollow rhetoric
and illusory actions; let the bourgeoisie rally and prepare itself; and
finally, let an April [1850] by-election victory for Eugène Sue become
a sentimental commentary on the earlier March vote and weaken its
significance. In a word it made 10 March [1850] into April Fool’s.
The parliamentary majority knew the weakness of its adversary
[the social-democrats or montagne]. Bonaparte had left it the job of
organising an attack and taking responsibility for it; seventeen
grandees worked out a new electoral law to be proposed by [the
minister of the interior] Faucher, who had begged to be entrusted
with that honour. On 8 May [1850] he brought in a bill to abolish
universal manhood suffrage, to impose a three-year condition of
residence on the electors, and finally in the case of workers to make
proof of residence depend on certification by their employer.
During the electoral contest over the constitution, the democrats
had fussed and blustered in a revolutionary way, but now when it
was a matter of demonstrating the importance of free elections
through force of arms they sermonised in a constitutional way about
public order, lofty tranquillity (calme majestueux), legal procedure,
i.e. blind subjection to the terms of the counter-revolution, which
paraded itself as law. During the debate the montagne shamed the
party of order by adopting the dispassionate mien of the honourable
law-abiding man, as opposed to its passionate revolutionism, and
the montagne cut them down with the fearful reproach that they
were revolutionaries. Even the newly elected deputies took care to
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Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire
be respectable and discreet to show what a misperception it was to
decry them as anarchists and to interpret their election as a victory
for revolution. On 31 May [1850] the new electoral law went
through. The montagne was content to go to the president of the
national assembly and stick a protest in his pocket. The electoral law
was followed by a new press law completely eliminating the revolutionary newspapers. They deserved their fate. After this deluge the
National and La Presse, two bourgeois papers, remained behind as
the most extreme outposts of revolution.
We have seen how the democratic leaders did everything to
embroil the people of Paris in a sham battle during March and April
[1850], and how after 8 May [1850] they did everything to hold them
back from a real one. It should also not be forgotten that 1850 was
one of best years of industrial and commercial prosperity, so that
Paris proletariat was fully employed. But the electoral law of 31 May
1850 excluded it from any part in political power. The field of battle
was barred to it. The workers were pariahs once again, as they had
been before the February revolution. By allowing the democrats to
lead them after such an event and by forsaking the revolutionary
interests of their class for transitory comforts, they renounced the
honours of conquest, surrendered to their fate, demonstrated that
the defeat of June 1848 had rendered them incapable of fighting for
years to come and that the historical process would once again have
to go on over their heads. As for the petty bourgeois democrats who
had cried on 13 June [1849], ‘just one finger on universal manhood
suffrage, and then!’ – they now consoled themselves with the
thought that the counter-revolutionary blow which they suffered
was no blow and the law of 31 May [1850] no law. On 9 May 1852
[when Bonaparte’s term as president was to expire] every Frenchman
would appear at the polls, ballot in one hand and sword in the other.
For the petty bourgeois democrats this prophecy was self-sufficient.
Finally the army was punished by its superior officers for the
elections of March and April 1850 as it had been for the one of 29
May 1849. But this time it said decidedly: ‘the revolution will not
cheat us a third time.’
The law of 31 May 1850 was the coup d’état of the bourgeoisie. All
its previous victories over the revolution had had a merely
provisional character. They were called into question once the
national assembly had retired from the stage [for an electoral
campaign]. They were dependent on the hazards of a new general
election, and the history of elections since 1848 had demonstrated
The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
61
incontrovertibly that when the political authority of the bourgeoisie
went up, its moral authority over the populace went down. On 10
March [1850] universal manhood suffrage made a declaration
directly contrary to the authority of the bourgeoisie, and the
bourgeoisie replied by outlawing it. Hence the law of 31 May [1850]
was one of the requirements of the class struggle. On the other hand,
the constitution demanded a minimum of two million votes to
validate the election of the president of the republic. Should none of
the presidential candidates obtain the minimum, the national
assembly was to choose the president from amongst the five
candidates at the top of the poll. At the time when the constituent
assembly passed this law, there were ten million voters on the rolls.
In its view a fifth of the electorate sufficed to validate the election of
the president. The law of 31 May [1850] struck at least three million
voters from the rolls, reduced the number in the electorate to seven
million, and still retained the legal minimum of two million for the
election of the president. It therefore raised the legal minimum from
a fifth to nearly a third of the eligible voters, i.e. it did everything to
wangle the election of the president from the hands of the people
into the hands of the national assembly. Thus the party of order
appeared to have made its rule doubly secure through the electoral
law of 31 May [1850], because it put the election of the national
assembly and of the president of the republic into the hands of this
stable part of society.
V
The struggle between the national assembly and Bonaparte broke
out again once the revolutionary crisis had blown over and universal
manhood suffrage was abolished.
The constitution had set Bonaparte’s salary at 600,000 francs.
Scarcely six months after his installation he succeeded in doubling
his money. This happened when Odilon Barrot extracted an annual
supplement of 600,000 francs from the constituent assembly for socalled official expenses. After 13 June [1849] Bonaparte had similar
requests put about but this time Barrot did not give them a hearing.
Now after 31 May [1850] he seized an auspicious moment and got
his ministers to propose a civil list of three million in the national
assembly. Leading the life of an adventurous vagabond had endowed
him with highly sensitive feelers for searching out the weak
moments when he might squeeze money from the bourgeoisie. He
was a real blackmailer. The national assembly had violated the
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Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire
sovereignty of the people with his cooperation and connivance. He
threatened to expose this crime to the people unless it loosened the
purse-strings and paid up three million a year in hush-money. It had
robbed three million Frenchmen of their right to vote. For every
Frenchman put out of circulation he demanded a franc in
circulation, three million to be precise. Elected by six million, he
demanded compensation from the assembly for subsequently
cheating him of votes. The executive commission of the national
assembly dismissed this upstart. The Bonapartist press grew
threatening. Could the national assembly break with the president
of the republic at a time when it had broken decisively with the bulk
of the nation on a matter of principle? Admittedly it had thrown out
the annual civil list but it had granted one-off supplementation of
2,160,000 francs. Thus it was guilty of a double weakness in granting
the money and at the same time displaying an irritation that
revealed its reluctance to do so. We will see later what Bonaparte
used the money for. After this irritating sequel to the abolition of
universal manhood suffrage, in which Bonaparte switched from
humility during the crises of March and April [1850] to provocative
impudence when challenged by parliament, the national assembly
adjourned for three months, from 11 August to 11 November [1850].
It left behind an executive commission of eighteen members
containing no Bonapartists but a few moderate republicans. The
executive commission of 1849 had included only gentlemen from
the party of order and Bonapartists. But at the time the party of order
had declared itself implacably opposed to the revolution. This time
the parliamentary republic declared itself implacably opposed to the
president. After the electoral law of 31 May [1850] this was the only
rival confronting the party of order.
When the national assembly came back into session in November
1850 it seemed that there would be a ruthless struggle with the
president, an inevitable battle to the death between two great
powers, instead of the previous petty skirmishing.
During this parliamentary recess, just as in the one of 1849, the
party of order broke up into factions, each busy with its restorationist intrigues, given new impetus by the death of Louis Philippe
[on 26 August 1850]. The legitimist Henri V had even appointed a
proper cabinet which met in Paris and included members of the
executive commission amongst its numbers. Bonaparte was
therefore licensed for his part to progress through the départements
of France, canvassing for votes, and airing his own plans for a
The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
63
restoration, overtly or covertly, depending on the politics of the
town favoured with his presence. On this procession, necessarily
celebrated as a triumphal progress by the official gazette and
Bonaparte’s minor ones, he was continually accompanied by
affiliates of the Society of 10 December. This society dates from the
year 1849. Under the pretext of incorporating a benevolent
association, the Paris lumpenproletariat was organised into secret
sections, each led by a Bonapartist agent, and the whole headed by
a Bonapartist general. From the aristocracy there were bankrupted
roués of doubtful means and dubious provenance, from the
bourgeoisie there were degenerate wastrels on the take, vagabonds,
demobbed soldiers, discharged convicts, runaway galley slaves,
swindlers and cheats, thugs, pickpockets, conjurers, card-sharps,
pimps, brothel keepers, porters, day-labourers, organ grinders, scrap
dealers, knife grinders, tinkers and beggars, in short, the whole
amorphous, jumbled mass of flotsam and jetsam that the French
term bohemian; from these kindred spirits Bonaparte built up his
Society of 10 December. This was a ‘benevolent society’ in that all its
members, like Bonaparte, felt a need to benefit themselves at the
expense of the nation’s workers. This Bonaparte, installed as chief
of the lumpenproletariat, discovering his personal interests here in
popular form, perceiving in the dregs, refuse and scum of all classes
the sole class that offers unconditional support, here is the real
Bonaparte, the genuine article, even though when in power he paid
his debt to some of his erstwhile fellow conspirators by transporting them to [the penal colony in] Cayenne [in South America]
alongside the revolutionaries. A cunning old roué, he conceives
popular history and high politics and finance as comedies in the
most vulgar sense, as masquerades where fine costumes, words and
postures serve only to mask the most trifling pettiness. So it was [in
1830] when he processed into Strasbourg, where a trained Swiss
vulture played the part of the Napoleonic eagle. For his entry into
Boulogne [in 1840] he put some London lay-abouts into French
uniforms. They stood in for the army. In his Society of 10 December
he collected 10,000 ragamuffins who were supposed to represent the
people the way that Klaus Zettel represented the lion. The
bourgeoisie was playing an utter comedy, but in the most serious
way in the world, without infringing even the most pedantic
strictures of French dramatic etiquette, and themselves half
swindled, half convinced of the solemnity of their own high politics
and finance; that was a time when a swindler, who took the comedy
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Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire
straight, was bound to win. Only now [in early 1852] that he has
removed his solemn opponent, when he has taken on the imperial
role in earnest and with his Napoleonic mask means to represent
the real Napoleon, does he become a victim of his own world-view,
the straight comedian who no longer sees world history as a comedy
but his own comedy as world history. What the nationalised
workshops were for the socialist workers, what the militia was for
the bourgeois-republicans, the Society of 10 December, his very own
fighting force, was for Bonaparte. On his journeys, detachments
were to pack the trains to improvise a crowd, raise public
enthusiasm, howl a salute to the Emperor, insult and beat up
republicans, all under the protection of the police, of course. On his
return journeys to Paris they were to form an advance guard, forestalling or breaking up counter-demonstrations. The Society of 10
December belonged to him, it was his work, his very own idea.
Whatever else he got his hands on, came to him by force of circumstances; whatever else he did, either circumstances did for him
or he was satisfied to copy the deeds of others; but he became an
artist in his own right when he put official turns of phrase – like
public order, religion, the family, and property – before the public,
but kept the secret society of racketeers and con-artists, the society
of disorder, prostitution and pilfering well out of sight, and the
history of the Society of 10 December is his own history. But once
there was an exception, when representatives of the party of order
got hammered by the December-mob. And there was worse to come.
Police commissioner Yon, assigned to security at the national
assembly, got a story from a certain Alais and informed the executive
commission that a section of the December-mob were plotting to
murder General Changarnier and Dupin, the president of the
national assembly, and had already found people to carry this out.
M. Dupin’s panic is understandable. A parliamentary enquiry into
the Society of 10 December, i.e. the profanation of the secret world
of Bonapartism, seemed unavoidable. But just before the national
assembly came into session, Bonaparte prudently dissolved his
society, only on paper of course, for even at the end of 1851, Carlier,
the prefect of police, was still pressing him in a detailed but vain
memorandum to make the break-up of the December-mob a fact.
The Society of 10 December was to remain Bonaparte’s private
army until he could successfully transform the official army into the
Society of 10 December. Shortly after the adjournment of the
national assembly Bonaparte made his first attempt at this, and to be
The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
65
sure with the money that he had just extorted from it. As a fatalist,
he lived the maxim that there are certain higher powers which a
man, and particularly a soldier, cannot withstand. Amongst those
powers he reckoned first of all on cigars and champagne, cold
chicken and garlic sausage. Hence he began by treating officers and
junior officers to cigars and champagne, cold chicken and garlic
sausage in his residence at the Elysée Palace. On 3 October [1850] he
repeated this ploy with the massed troops reviewed at Saint-Maur
and on 10 October the same thing again on a still grander scale at the
army’s Satory parade. His uncle Napoleon had invoked the
campaigns of Alexander in Asia, the nephew the triumphs of
Bacchus in the same land. Alexander was of course a demi-god, but
Bacchus was a full-fledged one, and in fact the god watching over
the Society of 10 December.
After the military review of 3 October [1850], the executive
commission summoned the minister of war d’Hautpoul to a hearing.
He promised that such breaches of discipline would not be repeated.
We know how on 10 October [at St. Maur] Bonaparte kept to
d’Hautpoul’s promise. At both reviews Changarnier had been in
command as head of the army in Paris. He was simultaneously a
member of the executive commission, commander-in-chief of the
national guard, ‘saviour’ of 29 January and 13 June [1849], ‘bulwark
of society’, presidential candidate for the party of order, the
presumed [General] Monk [who restored King Charles II] for two
[pretending] monarchs; up to then he had never acknowledged that
he was subordinate to the minister of war, had always openly scoffed
at the republican constitution, and had acted as a highly placed but
ambiguous protector for Bonaparte. Now he was a stickler for
discipline against the minister of war and a zealot for the constitution against Bonaparte. Despite the fact that on 10 October [1850] a
part of the cavalry raised the cry: ‘Long live Napoleon! and the
sausages!’ Changarnier arranged that at least those troops under the
command of his friend Neumeyer would observe an icy silence
whilst parading by. At Bonaparte’s instigation the minister of war
punished General Neumeyer by relieving him of his post in Paris,
under the pretext of making him commander of the 14th and 15th
divisions. Neumeyer refused this transfer and so had to take his
leave. On 2 November [1850], for his part, Changarnier posted an
order forbidding the troops from engaging in political sloganising
or demonstrations of any kind whilst under arms. The Elyséeist
papers attacked Changarnier, the papers for the party of order
66
Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire
attacked Bonaparte; the executive commission held numerous secret
sessions repeatedly proposing a state of emergency; the army seemed
divided into two warring camps with two warring general staffs, one
in the Elysée with Bonaparte and the other in the Tuileries with
Changarnier. It appeared that only the recall of the national
assembly was needed to sound the call to arms. The French public
reacted to the dissension between Bonaparte and Changarnier rather
like the English journalist who characterised it in the following way:
‘Housemaids in France are clearing away the glowing lava of
revolution with old brooms and bickering amongst themselves while
they do their work.’
Meanwhile Bonaparte hastened to remove the minister of war,
d’Hautpoul, speeding him headlong to Algiers and appointing
General Schramm in his place. On 12 November [1850] he sent the
national assembly a communiqué of American prolixity, overburdened with detail, redolent of order, anxious for reconciliation,
acquiescing in the constitution, treating of all and sundry except the
burning questions of the time. As if in passing he remarked that
according to the express provisions of the constitution, the army was
answerable to the president alone. The communiqué concluded with
this solemn affirmation:
Above all France clamours for peace ... I alone am bound by an oath of
office, so I shall stay within the narrow limits that the constitution has
set for the president ... Concerning myself, I have been elected by
the people and owe my power solely to them, and I shall always
submit to their lawful will. Should you resolve on a revision of the
constitution at this session, a constituent assembly will determine
the extent of executive power. If not, then the people will make
their solemn decision in [May] 1852. But whatever the future may
bring, let us come to an understanding so that emotion, shock or
violence will never decide the fate of this great nation ... What is
always at the forefront of my concern is not to know who will
govern France in 1852, but rather to use the time at my disposal
so that the interim passes without unrest or disorder. I have
sincerely opened my heart to you, you will answer my frankness
with your trust, my good endeavours with your cooperation, and
God will do the rest.
In the mouth of Bonaparte – the autocrat of the Society of 10
December and the picnic hero of Saint-Maur and Satory – the
The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
67
language of the bourgeoisie – respectable, moderate in its hypocrisy,
virtuous in its commonplaces – opened new vistas of meaning.
The grandees of the party of order did not delude themselves for a
moment concerning the trust that this heartfelt effusion deserved.
They had long been blasé about oaths, as they numbered in their
midst veterans and virtuosi of political perjury, and they had not
omitted to note the passage concerning the army. They remarked
with annoyance that the communiqué, in a long-winded
enumeration of the latest enactments, had passed over the most
important measure, the electoral law, in studied silence, and
moreover, that unless the constitution were revised, the election of
the president in 1852 would be left to the people. The electoral law
was a ball and chain for the party of order, hindering motion of any
kind, much less forward assault! Moreover by disbanding the Society
of 10 December and sacking the war minister d’Hautpoul, Bonaparte
had found scapegoats to sacrifice on the altar of patriotism. He had
taken the force from the impending collision. Finally the party of
order itself was anxious to avert, mitigate or conceal any conflict with
the executive that might be decisive. For fear of losing what it had
gained in the revolution, it allowed its rivals to help themselves to
the fruits of victory. ‘Above all France clamours for peace.’ The party
of order had proclaimed this to the revolution since February [1848],
and now Bonaparte’s communiqué proclaimed it to the party of
order. ‘Above all France clamours for peace.’ Bonaparte had
committed acts that pointed toward usurpation, but the party of
order committed ‘unrest’ if it raised the alarm over these acts and
exposed its hypochondria. The sausages of Satory were quiet as mice
when no one mentioned them. ‘Above all France wants order.’ Thus
Bonaparte demanded to be left in peace, and the parliamentary party
was doubly crippled by fear – fear of precipitating revolutionary
unrest once again, and fear of appearing to its own class, the
bourgeoisie, as the instigator. Since above all France clamours for
peace the party of order dared not reply ‘war’ to Bonaparte’s
communiqué on ‘peace’. The public, anticipating a juicy scandal at
the opening of the national assembly, was cheated of this
expectation. The opposition deputies, demanding the executive
commission’s account of the events of October [1850], were overruled
by the majority. All debates that could cause an uproar were avoided
on principle. The proceedings of the national assembly during
November and December [1850] were entirely without interest.
68
Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire
At last towards the end of December [1850] guerrilla warfare began
over certain prerogatives of parliament. The fighting got bogged
down in small-scale manoeuvres over the power of the two branches
of government, because the bourgeoisie had wound up the class
struggle by abolishing universal manhood suffrage.
A court judgement for debt had been delivered against one of the
people’s representatives, Maugin. Responding to the petition from
the president of the court, the minister of justice, Rouher, declared
that a warrant for his arrest should be issued without further
formalities. Maugin was therefore thrown into debtors’ prison. The
national assembly flared up at news of this outrage. Not only did it
order his immediate release, but had him forcibly sprung from
Clichy that very same evening by a justice’s clerk. But in order to
prove its faith in the sanctity of private property – and with the
ulterior motive of opening an asylum in case the montagnards
became troublesome – it declared that the people’s representatives
might be imprisoned for debt on prior consent of the national
assembly. It forgot to decree that the president could also be locked
up for debt. It destroyed the last semblance of the immunity encompassing its own members.
It will be recalled that police commissioner Yon, acting on reports
from a certain Alais, had denounced a section of the December-mob
for plotting to murder Dupin and Changarnier. On this account at
the very first session the commissioners proposed a parliamentary
police, funded from its private budget and completely independent
of the prefect of police. The minister of the interior, Baroche,
protested at this encroachment on his territory. On that they reached
a shabby compromise that the parliamentary police chief should be
paid from the private budget [and] appointed and dismissed by parliamentary commissioners, but only on prior agreement with the
minister of the interior. Meanwhile the government had taken
criminal proceedings against Alais, and here it was easy to represent
his information as a hoax and to make a laughing stock of Dupin,
Changarnier, Yon and the whole national assembly through the
speeches of the public prosecutor. Then on 29 December [1850]
Baroche wrote to Dupin demanding Yon’s dismissal. The officers of
the national assembly decided to retain Yon in his position, but the
national assembly did not approve this, as they were frightened by
their own use of force in the Maugin affair and were used to double
blows from the executive for every poke they took at it. As a reward
for his faithful service Yon was discharged, and the national
The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
69
assembly robbed itself of a parliamentary privilege indispensable
against a man [Louis Bonaparte] who does not decide by night and
act by day, but decides by day and acts by night.
We have seen already how the national assembly met with striking
opportunities during November and December [1850] in its great
battle with the executive, but ducked out or went under. Now we see
it compelled to take up the most trivial points. In the Maugin affair
it confirmed the principle that representatives of the people may be
imprisoned for debt, but reserved the right to apply this only to representatives it found obnoxious, and it haggled with the minister of
justice over this dubious privilege. Instead of making the assassination plot an occasion to initiate an inquiry into the Society of 10
December and irrevocably to expose Bonaparte’s real role as chief of
the Paris lumpenproletariat before France and all of Europe, it let the
conflict sink to a point where all that divided it from the minister of
the interior was which of them had the authority to hire and fire the
commissioner of police. Thus during the whole of this period we see
the party of order compelled by its equivocal position to dissipate
and fragment its struggle with the executive into petty disputes over
authority, chicanery, legal hair-splitting and demarcation disputes
with ministers, and to make the silliest questions of form into the
substance of its action. It did not dare to do battle when there was a
matter of principle at stake, when the executive was really
compromised, and the cause of the national assembly would have
been the cause of the nation. By doing that it would have given the
nation its marching orders, and it feared nothing so much as that
the nation should get on the move. Accordingly it rejected the
motions of the montagne at those junctures and proceeded to the
business of the day. Having put aside the broad question of principle,
the executive calmly bided its time until it could take up again on
trivial, insignificant matters of merely local parliamentary interest,
so to speak. Then the pent-up rage of the party of order bursts out,
it tears down the backdrop, denounces the president, declares the
republic in danger; but then its pathos appears absurd and the
occasion for battle a hypocritical pretext or hardly worth the effort.
The parliamentary storm is a storm in a teacup, the battle an intrigue,
the conflict a scandal. The revolutionary classes revel in the
humiliation of the national assembly, for they were just as enthusiastic for parliamentary privilege as the assembly was for their civil
liberties. And the bourgeoisie outside parliament cannot understand
how the bourgeoisie inside parliament can waste its time on such
70
Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire
trivial back-biting and so compromise public order through such
pitiful rivalries with the president. It becomes confused and
bewildered by a strategy which makes peace at a time when the
whole world expects war, and attacks at a time when the whole world
believes that peace has been made.
On 20 December [1850] Pascal Duprat [the Orléanist deputy]
cross-examined the minister of the interior on the ‘gold bars’ lottery.
This lottery was blessed by the Elysée, as Bonaparte and his faithful
henchmen had brought it into the world, and Carlier the prefect of
police had taken it under his wing, although in France all lotteries,
with the exception of charitable raffles, were illegal. Seven million
tickets at a franc apiece, the profits supposedly earmarked for the
transportation of Parisian riff-raff to California. Partly the idea was
to replace the socialist dreams of the Paris proletariat with dreams
of glistering gold, and the guarantied right to employment with the
seductive prospect of the grand prize draw. Of course workers in Paris
did not see through the blaze of California gold to the plain old
francs winkled from their pockets. But in the main it was just a
straightforward swindle. The riff-raff wanting to open up the gold
mines of California without the trouble of leaving Paris were
Bonaparte himself and his debt-ridden cronies. They had partied
through the three million authorised by the national assembly, and
the cash box had to be refilled one way or another. Bonaparte had
vainly launched a national subscription for so-called workers’ towns,
putting himself at the head for a substantial donation. Meanminded
bourgeois awaited this with grave suspicion, and when of course it
was not forthcoming, the socialist ‘castles in the air’ crashed to earth.
The gold bars were a better draw. Bonaparte & Co. were not satisfied
with pocketing part of the profit from the seven million over and
above the cost of the prize bullion; they fabricated false lottery
tickets, issuing the same number 10 on fifteen or twenty tickets, a
financial whiz in keeping with the Society of 10 December. Here the
national assembly was confronted with the real flesh and blood
Bonaparte, and not with the fictional ‘president of the republic’.
Here it could catch him in open violation of the criminal law rather
than of the constitution. If it passed over Duprat’s cross-examination
and proceeded to the business of the day, this was not just because
the motion of confidence in the minister from [the republican
deputy] Girardin reminded the party of order of its own systematic
corruption. The bourgeois, above all the bourgeois inflated into a
statesman, supplements his commonplace practicality with
The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
71
theoretical superfluity. As a statesman he becomes a higher form of
existence, like the state power facing him, which can only be
contested on an ethereal plane.
Because he was such a bohemian, and such a prince of thieves,
Bonaparte had the advantage over bourgeois grafters of fighting
dirty; once the national assembly itself had escorted him over the
treacherous terrain of regimental dinners, army reviews, the Society
of 10 December and finally the criminal law, he saw that the
moment had come to go openly on the offensive. He was little
troubled with the minor reversals sustained by the minister of
justice, minister of war, minister for the navy and minister of
finance, through which the national assembly growled its
displeasure. Not only did he prevent ministers from resigning, and
thus stop the executive from being accountable to parliament, but
he was now able to complete what he had begun during the recess
of the national assembly: the severance of military power from parliamentary control, Changarnier’s dismissal.
An Elyséeist paper published an order, allegedly sent during May
[1850] to the first army division, hence from Changarnier, in which
officers were advised to give no quarter to traitors in their own ranks,
should there be an insurrection, but rather to shoot them straight
away and to refuse any requisition of troops by the national
assembly. On 3 January 1851 questions were put to the cabinet
concerning this order. To examine these circumstances it requested
a stay of three months at first, then a week, and finally a mere
twenty-four hours. The assembly insisted on an immediate
explanation. Changarnier rose to explain that no such order had
ever existed. He added that he would always hasten to comply with
any demands from the national assembly and that it could rely on
him in case of conflict. It received this assurance with ineffable
applause and voted its confidence in him. By putting itself under the
private protection of a general, the national assembly abdicated,
decreed its own impotence beside the almighty army, but the general
was deceiving himself when he put at the assembly’s disposal a force
that he held only at Bonaparte’s behest, when he expected
protection from the parliament which needed him to be its
protector. Changarnier, however, believed in the mysterious power
that the bourgeoisie had invested in him since 29 January 1849
[when he and his troops successfully intimidated the constituent
assembly]. He considered himself the third governmental power
alongside the other two branches of state. He shared in the fate of
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Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire
the other heroes or rather saints of this era whose fame consisted in
the biassed reports which their own parties put about, but who
collapse into ordinary mortals as soon as they are required to
perform miracles. Scepticism is the deadly enemy of these reputed
heroes and real-life saints. Hence their self-righteous indignation at
the dearth of enthusiasm displayed by wits and scoffers.
That same evening ministers were summoned to the Elysée Palace;
Bonaparte insisted on dismissing Changarnier; five refused to sign
this; the Moniteur announced a ministerial crisis; and the press siding
with the party of order threatened to form a parliamentary army
under Changarnier’s command. The party of order had constitutional authority to take this step. It merely had to appoint
Changarnier to the presidency of the national assembly and to
requisition any number of troops it pleased for security. It could do
this all the more safely as Changarnier was still heading the army
and the national guard in Paris and was only waiting to be requisitioned together with the army. The Bonapartist press did not as yet
even dare to question the right of the national assembly to
requisition troops directly, a legal scruple that did not promise to be
of any use under the circumstances. That the army would have
obeyed the national assembly is probable, remembering that
Bonaparte had to scour all Paris for eight days to find two generals
– Baraguay d’Hilliers and Saint-Jean d’Angély – who were ready to
countersign Changarnier’s dismissal. That the party of order would
have found in its own ranks and in parliament the votes necessary
for such a resolution is much more doubtful, considering that eight
days later 286 of them took their votes elsewhere, and that the
montagne rejected a similar resolution in December 1851 in the last
decisive hours [of the parliamentary regime]. Nonetheless the
grandees might perhaps have succeeded in spurring the mass of their
party to a heroism consisting in feeling secure behind a forest of
bayonets and accepting the services of an army which had deserted
in order to join their camp. Instead of doing this the grandees betook
themselves to the Elysée on the evening of 6 January [1851] to make
Bonaparte desist from sacking Changarnier by using statesman-like
phrases and scruples. He who seeks to persuade, acknowledges the
superiority of the other. Reassured by this, Bonaparte appointed a
new cabinet on 12 January [1851], retaining Fould and Baroche, the
leaders of the old one. Saint-Jean d’Angély became minister of war,
the Moniteur published the decree discharging Changarnier, his
command was divided between Baraguay d’Hilliers, who got the first
The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
73
army division, and Perrot, who got the national guard. The bulwark
of society was dismissed, and while the earth did not move, prices
did go up on the stock exchange.
The party of order revealed that the bourgeoisie had lost its will to
rule in that it had rebuffed the army, which had been at its disposal
in the person of Changarnier, and had made it incontrovertibly
accountable to the president. A parliamentary cabinet was no longer
in existence. Having lost its grip on the army and the national guard,
what means were left for retaining the power over the people it had
usurped from parliament and its constitutional power vis-à-vis the
president? None at all. All that was left was a nugatory appeal to
principles, general rules one prescribes to others just to make one’s
own actions easier. With the dismissal of Changarnier and
Bonaparte’s acquisition of military power, the first part of the period
we are considering, the period of conflict between the party of order
and the executive power, draws to a close. War between the two
authorities was now openly declared and waged, but only after the
party of order had lost both weapons and soldiers. Without a
cabinet, without an army, without a people, without public opinion,
no longer representing the sovereign nation after its electoral law of
31 May [1850], sans eyes, sans ears, sans teeth, sans everything, the
national assembly was gradually transmuted into a pre-revolutionary parlement which left action to the government and had to
content itself with whingeing after the event.
The party of order received the new cabinet with a storm of
protests. General Bedeau recalled the deference of the executive
commission during the recess and the punctiliousness with which
it refused publication of its proceedings. The minister of the interior
himself now insists on the publication of these minutes which were
of course as dull as ditchwater, uncovering nothing new and making
not the slightest impression on a blasé public. Following a proposal
from [the Orléanist] Rémusat, the national assembly retired to its
quarters and appointed a ‘commission for extraordinary measures’.
Ordinary life was very little disturbed in Paris as trade was
flourishing, factories were busy, grain prices were low, food was
plentiful and savings banks took in new deposits every day. The
‘extraordinary measures’ which parliament had announced with
such a stir then fizzled out into a vote of no-confidence in the
minister on 18 January [1851] without a mention of General
Changarnier. The party of order was forced to word its resolution in
this way to secure the republican vote, since of all the cabinet’s
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Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire
measures the discharge of Changarnier was the sole one that it
approved of, while it could not complain about the other ministerial
actions as it had in fact dictated them itself.
The vote of confidence of 18 January [1851] passed 415 to 286.
Hence it was carried only through a coalition of staunch legitimists
and Orléanists together with the pure republicans and the montagne.
This proved that in its conflicts with Bonaparte the party of order
had lost not just the cabinet and the army but its independent parliamentary majority, that a detachment of representatives had
deserted out of fanaticism for compromise, fear of conflict, from
boredom, nepotism, expectation of cabinet posts (Odilon Barrot),
from the base egoism that always inclines the ordinary bourgeois to
sacrifice the common interest of his class to this or that private
benefit. From the beginning, Bonapartist representatives only
belonged to the party of order to do battle against the revolution.
The head of the Catholic party, Montalembert, had already thrown
his influence into Bonaparte’s begging bowl, because he doubted
that the parliamentary party would survive. Finally the leaders of
this party, Thiers the Orléanist and Berryer the legitimist, were forced
to admit openly their republicanism, to acknowledge that they were
royalist at heart but republican in the head, that the parliamentary
republic was the only possible form for the rule of the bourgeoisie as
a whole. Thus they were forced in front of the whole bourgeoisie to
brand the restorationist plots, indefatigably conducted behind the
back of parliament, as stupid and dangerous intrigues.
The no-confidence motion of 18 January [1851] hit the cabinet
and not the president. But it was the president and not the cabinet
that had discharged Changarnier. Ought not the party of order to
impeach Bonaparte himself? For his restorationist sympathies? These
were only added to their own. For conspiracy in the military reviews
and in the Society of 10 December? They had long ago buried these
matters under business as usual. For dismissing the hero of 29
January and 13 June [1849], the man who in May 1850 threatened
to set all Paris ablaze in the event of insurrection? Their allies from
the montagne and Cavaignac did not let them re-erect the fallen
bulwark of society by sending an official message of sympathy.
Indeed they could not dispute the constitutional authority of the
president to discharge a general. They were only fussing because he
had made an unparliamentary use of a constitutional right. But had
they not made repeated unconstitutional use of parliamentary
prerogative, in particular abolishing universal manhood suffrage?
The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
75
They were therefore constrained to work within strict parliamentary
limits. This was part and parcel of a peculiar malady that after 1848
spread to a whole continent, parliamentary cretinism, which confines
its victims to an imaginary world and robs them of their senses, their
recollection, all knowledge of the rude external world; it was part of
this parliamentary cretinism that the party of order took their parliamentary victories to be real ones and believed they had hit the
president when they struck his ministers, although they had
themselves destroyed the whole basis of parliamentary power with
their own hands as they were bound to in battling against other
classes. They merely gave him the opportunity to humiliate the
national assembly in front of the nation once again. On 20 January
[1851] the Moniteur announced that the resignation of the entire
cabinet had been accepted. Under the pretext that no parliamentary
party had a majority, as was demonstrated by the vote of 18 January
[1851] won by the coalition of the montagne and the royalists,
Bonaparte appointed a so-called transition cabinet while waiting for
a new majority to form; not one member of this cabinet was in
parliament, it was all unknown and insignificant individuals, a
cabinet of mere clerks and scribes. The party of order could now wear
itself out playing with these puppets, the executive no longer
thought it worthwhile to be seriously represented in the national
assembly. Bonaparte concentrated the entire power of the executive
in his own person all the more securely and had all the more room
to exploit it for his own ends, the more his ministers were reduced
to mere ciphers.
The party of order, in coalition with the montagne, revenged itself
by throwing out a subvention of 1,800,000 francs to the president
which the head of the Society of 10 December had pushed his
ministerial clerks to propose. This time a majority of only 102 votes
decided it; since 28 January [1851] another 27 votes had departed,
and the dissolution of the party of order continued apace. To leave
no doubt about the nature of its coalition with the montagne it
disdained even to consider a motion signed by 189 members of the
montagne for a general amnesty for political offenders. It sufficed for
the minister of the interior, a certain Vaïsse, to explain that the
present calm was only apparent, but that hidden disorder prevailed,
everywhere secret societies were being organised, the democratic
papers were preparing to reappear, reports from the départements
sounded unfavourable, Genevan exiles were directing a conspiracy
beyond Lyons through the whole of southern France, France was on
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Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire
the brink of an industrial and commercial crisis, the factories in
Roubaix were working short-time, the prisoners on Belle Isle were in
revolt – a mere Vaïsse creating a red scare was all that was needed for
the party of order to reject without discussion a motion that would
have won immense popularity for the national assembly and thrown
Bonaparte back into its arms. Instead of allowing the executive to
intimidate it with prospects of renewed unrest, it should have
yielded a little to the class struggle in order to preserve the
dependence of the executive. But it did not feel up to the business
of playing with fire.
Meanwhile the so-called transitional cabinet continued to
vegetate up to the middle of April. Bonaparte tired and teased the
national assembly with constant ministerial shuffles. Sometimes he
seemed to want to form a republican cabinet with [the poet]
Lamartine and [the Bonapartist] Billault, sometimes a parliamentary
one with the inevitable Odilon Barrot, whose name never failed to
come up when a dupe was needed, sometimes a legitimist one with
Vatimesnil and Benoist d’Azy, sometimes an Orléanist one with
Maleville. While he set the different factions of the party of order
against one another and frightened them with the prospect of a
republican cabinet and the inevitable reinstatement of universal
manhood suffrage, he made the bourgeoisie believe that his honest
efforts to form a parliamentary ministry had foundered on the
intransigence of the royalist factions. The bourgeoisie cried all the
louder for ‘strong government’, but it found it unforgivable to leave
France ‘without administration’, as an economic crisis appeared to
be advancing and so recruiting socialists in the cities just as ruinously
low farm prices did in the countryside. Trade was getting slacker by
the day, unemployed hands were increasing noticeably, in Paris there
were at least 10,000 workers without food, in Rouen, Mulhouse,
Lyons, Roubaix, Tourcoing, St. Etienne, Elbeuf, etc. innumerable
factories were idle. Under these conditions Bonaparte could risk a
restoration on 11 April [1851] of the cabinet of 18 January. Messrs.
Rouher, Fould, Baroche, etc. strengthened by M. Léon Faucher, who
was censured [on 11 May 1849] during the last days of the
constituent assembly for telegraphing false dispatches, all of the
deputies (save 5 cabinet ministers) having voted no-confidence in
him. The national assembly had therefore won a victory over the
cabinet on 18 January [1851], then struggled for three months with
Bonaparte, so that on 11 April Fould and Baroche could take on the
ultra-moral Faucher as third man in their ministerial cabal.
The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
77
In November 1849 Bonaparte had been satisfied with an unparliamentary cabinet, in January 1851 with an extra-parliamentary
one, on 11 April 1851 he felt strong enough to form an anti-parliamentary cabinet, harmoniously combining no-confidence votes from
both assemblies, the constituent and the national, republicans and
royalists. This graded progression of cabinets was the thermometer
by which parliament could measure the decline in its own vitality.
By the end of April this had sunk so low that [the Bonapartist
deputy] Persigny could enjoin Changarnier in a personal interview
to go over to the presidential camp. He assured him that Bonaparte
considered the influence of the national assembly to be completely
null and had already perpetrated a proclamation to be published
after the coup d’état, continuously in mind but delayed once again for
contingent reasons. Changarnier imparted this obituary to the
leaders of the party of order, but whoever believes that such fleabites are fatal? And the assembly, defeated, disintegrated, rotting as
it was, could not bring itself to see the fight with the grotesque chief
of the Society of 10 December as other than a fight with a flea. But
Bonaparte answered the party of order as Agesilaus [King of Sparta]
answered King [Tachos] of Egypt: ‘I may seem an ant to you but one
day I shall be a lion.’
VI
In its futile endeavours to keep possession of military power and to
reconquer supreme control of executive power, the party of order
saw itself condemned to remain in coalition with the montagne and
the pure republicans, proving incontrovertibly that it had lost its
independent parliamentary majority. The mere advance of dates and
ticking of the clock gave the signal on 28 May [1851] for its complete
disintegration. The 28th of May marked the beginning of the last
year of life for the national assembly. It had now to decide whether
to keep the constitution unchanged or revise it. But constitutional
revision did not only involve bourgeois rule or petty bourgeois
democracy, democracy or proletarian anarchy, parliamentary
republic or Bonaparte, it also meant Orléans or Bourbon! Thus the
apple of discord fell into the midst of parliament, opening up
conflicts of interest and sundering the party of order into warring
factions. The party of order was a conglomerate of heterogeneous
social components. Constitutional revision raised the political
temperature to the point where decomposition had to occur.
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Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire
The Bonapartists’ interest in revision was simple. They were
concerned above all with the question of abolishing [chapter V] §
45, which forbade Bonaparte’s re-election and any continuation of
his authority. No less simple was that of the republicans. They
unconditionally rejected any revision, seeing in it a comprehensive
conspiracy against the republic. Since they held sway over more than
a quarter of the votes in the national assembly, and constitutionally
three quarters of the votes were required for a valid motion for
revision and for summoning a revising convention, they needed
only to tally their votes to make sure of victory. And they were.
Compared to these clear positions, the party of order found itself
entangled in contradictions. If it rejected revision, it endangered the
status quo by leaving Bonaparte only one way out, force, and by
abandoning France to revolutionary anarchy at the deciding
moment of 9 May [1852], with a president who had lost his
authority, with a parliament which no longer possessed it, and with
a people who thought they would conquer it again. The party of
order knew that to vote for revision in accordance with the constitution would be to vote for nothing and would have to fail
constitutionally because of the republican veto. If it declared a
simple majority to be binding, in defiance of the constitution, then
it could hope to master the revolution only if it subordinated itself
unconditionally to the sovereignty of the executive and thus made
Bonaparte master of the constitution, of any revision and of the
party of order itself. A merely partial revision prolonging the
authority of the president would pave the way for an imperial takeover. A general revision which shortened the existence of the
republic would bring dynastic claims into inevitable conflict, for the
conditions for a Bourbon restoration and for an Orléanist one were
not merely different but mutually exclusive.
The parliamentary republic was more than the neutral territory
where the two factions of the French bourgeoisie, legitimists and
Orléanist, large-scale landed property and industry, could take up
residence with an equal right. It was the inescapable condition of
their joint rule, the sole form of state in which the claims of their
particular factions and those of all other classes of society were
subjected to the general interest of the bourgeois class. As royalists
they relapsed into their old antagonism, a battle for supremacy
between landed property and money, and the highest expression of
this antagonism, the personification of it, were their kings, their
The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
79
dynasties. Hence the resistance of the party of order to the recall of
the Bourbons.
In 1849, 1850 and 1851 the Orléanist deputy Creton had regularly
introduced a measure to rescind the decree exiling the royal families.
Parliament just as regularly presented the spectacle of an assembly
barring the gate through which their exiled kings could come home.
Richard III murdered Henry VI with the remark [in Shakespeare’s
play] that he was too good for this world and belonged in heaven.
They declared that France was too bad to have the kings back again.
They had become republicans through force of circumstances, and
they repeatedly sanctioned the decision by the people to banish their
kings from France.
A revision of the constitution – and circumstances compelled this
– called into question the republic as well as the joint rule of the two
bourgeois factions, and the possibility of monarchy brought back to
life a rivalry between interests it had promoted in turn, and the
battle for supremacy of one faction over the other. The diplomats of
the party of order thought that they could settle the struggle by
merging the two dynasties, a so-called fusion of the royalist parties
and their royal houses. The real fusion of the restoration and the July
monarchy was the parliamentary republic in which Orléanist and
legitimist colours were extinguished and the various varieties of the
type bourgeois disappeared into the bourgeois pure and simple, into
the bourgeois species. But now the Orléanist was to become
legitimist and the legitimist Orléanist. Royalism, which personified
their antagonism, was to embody their unity, the expression of their
exclusive factional interests to become an expression of the common
class interest, the monarchy was to accomplish what only the
abolition of two monarchies – the republic – could do and had done.
This was the philosophers’ stone, and the learned doctors of the
party of order racked their brains to produce it. As if the legitimate
monarchy could ever become the monarchy of the industrial
bourgeoisie, or the bourgeois kingdom the kingdom of the
hereditary landed aristocracy. As if landed property and industry
could fraternise together under a single crown, when the crown
could be lowered onto a single head, the head of the elder brother
or the younger one. As if industry could be reconciled at all with
landed property, so long as landed property did not decide to go
industrial itself. If Henri V [Bourbon] were to die tomorrow, the
[Orléanist] comte de Paris [grandson of Louis Philippe] would not
become the legitimist king, unless he ceased being the Orléanist
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Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire
king. The philosophers of fusion who achieved wide circulation as
the question of constitutional revision came to prominence, who
had created an official voice in the daily Assemblée nationale, working
away at this very moment (February 1852), explained all the difficulties in terms of the conflict and rivalry between the two dynasties.
The attempt to reconcile the house of Orléans with Henri V, begun
after the death of Louis Philippe, was only played out, like dynastic
intrigues in general, during the recesses of the national assembly, in
the intervals, behind the scenes, more sentimental coquetry with
ancient superstition than business in earnest; these now became
high affairs of state and were performed by the party of order on the
public stage instead of in amateur theatricals as before. The couriers
flew from Paris to [the legitimist pretender in] Venice, from Venice
to [the Orléanists at] Claremont, from Claremont to Paris. The
[Bourbon] comte de Chambord [known as King Henri V] issued a
manifesto announcing not his own but the ‘national restoration’
‘with the help of all members of his family’. The Orléanist
[politician] Salvandy threw himself at the feet of Henri V. The
legitimist leaders Berryer, Benoit d’Azy, Saint-Priest, journeyed to
Claremont to persuade the Orléanists but without success. Too late
did the fusionists perceive that the interests of the two factions of
the bourgeoisie did not lose their differences nor gain in compliance
when crystallised into family interests, the interests of the two royal
houses. If Henri V recognised the comte de Paris as his successor –
the best outcome that fusion could achieve – then the house of
Orléans would not win anything that was not already assured by the
childlessness of Henri V, but it would lose everything gained in the
July revolution. It would abandon its original objectives, all the
authority wrung from the elder branch of the Bourbons in more than
a hundred years of struggle; it would have exchanged its historical
prerogative, the prerogative of modern monarchy for the prerogative
of its ancestral line. Fusion was therefore nothing other than a
voluntary abdication by the house of Orléans, a resignation in favour
of legitimism, a penitent retreat from the Protestant state church
into the Catholic one. A retreat would not bring it to the throne it
had lost but to the steps of the throne from which it was born. The
old Orléanist ministers Guizot, Duchâtel, etc., who had hastened to
Claremont to speak up for fusion, only represented regret for the July
revolution in the first place, a despair in the bourgeois monarchy
and in the monarchism of the bourgeois, superstitious belief in
legitimism as the last amulet to ward off anarchy. In their
The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
81
imagination they were mediators between Orléans and Bourbon, but
were in reality only backsliding Orléanists, and the prince de
Joinville [son of Louis Philippe] received them as such. On the other
hand the Orléanists who were wide-awake and wanting a fight –
Thiers, Baze, etc. – convinced the family of Louis Philippe all the
more easily that if any direct restoration of the monarchy were the
fusion of the two dynasties, presupposing the abdication of the
house of Orléans, then it corresponded entirely to the tradition of its
forebears to recognise the republic straight away and to await the
conversion of the president’s seat into a throne when events
permitted. Joinville was widely touted as a candidate [for the
presidency of the republic], the public curiously was kept in
suspense, and a few months later after constitutional revision was
rejected, his candidature was announced in September [1851].
The attempt at a royalist fusion of Orléanists and legitimists had
not only foundered, it had broken up their parliamentary fusion, their
common republican mode, and had again split the party of order
into its original constituents; but as Claremont and Venice grew
more estranged from each other, their working arrangements
collapsed, and support for Joinville mounted, so the negotiations
between Faucher, Bonaparte’s minister, and the legitimists grew more
pressing and serious.
The disintegration of the party of order did not stop at its original
elements. Each of the two great factions underwent further fragmentation. It was as if all the old nuances that had previously jostled
and conflicted within the two circles, legitimist and Orléanist, were
once again brought to life like dried infusoria on contact with water,
as if they had regained enough vital energy to form their own groups
and take independent positions. The legitimists imagined they had
returned to the disputes [during the restoration period] between the
Tuileries [where Louis XVIII held court] and the Pavillon Marsan
[where the reactionary Comte d’Artois resided], between [the corresponding political rivals] Villèle and Polignac. The Orléanists relived
the golden age of knightly tournaments between Guizot, Molé,
Broglie, Thiers and Odilon Barrot.
The section of the party of order that was eager for constitutional
revision, but disunited concerning the bounds of the exercise,
composed of legitimists under Berryer and Falloux on the one hand
and under La Rochejaquelin on the other, and the battle-weary
Orléanists under Molé, Broglie, Montalembert and Odilon Barrot,
agreed the following indeterminate and sweeping motion with the
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Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire
Bonapartist representatives: ‘The undersigned representatives,
aiming to restore the nation to the full exercise of its sovereignty,
move that the constitution be revised.’ But at the same time they
unanimously declared through their rapporteur [the legitimist
historian and deputy Alexis de] Tocqueville that the national
assembly did not have the right to undertake the abolition of the
republic, that this right belonged only to a constitutional convention.
Otherwise the constitution could only be revised in a ‘legal’ manner
when the constitutionally prescribed three quarters of the votes were
cast for revision. On 19 July [1851], after six days of stormy debate,
they threw out constitutional revision, as expected. There were 446
votes in favour but 278 against. The staunch Orléanists Thiers,
Changarnier, etc. voted with the republicans and the montagne.
A parliamentary majority had declared against the constitution,
but the constitution itself had declared for the minority, and for its
decision to be binding. But hadn’t the party of order subordinated
the constitution to the parliamentary majority on 31 May 1850 and
13 June 1849? Didn’t its whole previous policy rest on subordinating the articles of the constitution to majority decisions in
parliament? Hadn’t it left an Old Testament belief in the letter of law
to the democrats and punished them for it? But at this moment constitutional revision meant nothing but continuation of presidential
power, just as continuation of the constitution meant nothing but
the removal of Bonaparte. Parliament had declared for him, but the
constitution declared against parliament. Therefore he carried out
the will of parliament when he tore up the constitution, and he
carried out the will of the constitution when he sent parliament
packing.
Parliament had declared the constitution and perforce its own
authority to be ‘beyond majorities’, it had abolished the constitution with its own decision and augmented the president’s power,
and yet was saying at the same time that the one could not die nor
the other live so long as parliament itself continued. Its grave diggers
were on the doorstep. While it debated the question of revision,
Bonaparte relieved General Baraguay d’Hilliers, who was indecisive,
from the command of the first army division and appointed General
Magnan to the post, the victor [over the workers] of Lyons [on 15
June 1849], the hero of the December days [of 1848], one of his
creatures which had more or less compromised himself under Louis
Philippe in connection with the march from Boulogne.
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83
By its decision on constitutional revision the party of order proved
that it could neither rule nor obey, neither live nor die, neither
tolerate the republic nor overthrow it, neither stick to the constitution nor throw it overboard, neither cooperate with the president
nor break off with him. Who then was it expecting to resolve these
contradictions? The calendar, the course of events. It stopped
pretending to have any control over events. It therefore challenged
events to take control, hence surrendering to that power one thing
after another in battling the people until it was impotent; hence the
chief executive could produce a battle plan undisturbed, strengthen
the means of attack, choose the instruments for it, fortify his
positions, precisely because they decided to withdraw from the stage
during this critical time and to recess for three months, from 10
August until 4 November [1851].
Not only was the parliamentary party divided into its two great
factions [party of order and montagne] and each faction divided
within itself, but the party of order within parliament had fallen out
with the party of order outside parliament. The spokesmen and
writers for the bourgeoisie, their publicity and press, in short the
ideologues of the bourgeoisie and the bourgeoisie itself, representatives and represented, were caught in mutual estrangement and
incomprehension.
The legitimists in the provinces, with their limited horizons and
unbridled enthusiasm, censured their parliamentary leaders Berryer
and Falloux for deserting to Bonaparte’s camp and abandoning Henri
V. Their understanding, pure as their fleur de lis, encompassed
original sin but not diplomacy.
Far more fateful and decisive was the breach between the
commercial bourgeois and their politicians. They did not reproach
them, as the legitimists had done with theirs, for abandoning their
principles, but on the contrary for clinging to principles that had
become useless.
I have pointed out earlier that after Fould’s accession to the
cabinet a part of the commercial bourgeoisie who had taken the
lion’s share of power under Louis Philippe, the financial aristocracy,
had become Bonapartist. Fould did not only represent Bonaparte’s
interests on the bourse, he also represented the interest of the bourse
with Bonaparte. The position of the financial aristocracy is depicted
most strikingly in a quotation from its European mouthpiece, the
London Economist. In its issue of 1 February 1851 there was this
dispatch from Paris: ‘Now we have it stated from numerous quarters
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Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire
that France wishes above all things for repose. The President declares
it in his message to the Legislative Assembly, it is echoed from the
tribune, it is asserted in the journals, it is announced from the pulpit,
it is demonstrated by the sensitiveness of the public funds at the least
prospect of disturbance, and their firmness whenever the executive power
is victorious.’
In the issue of 29 November 1851 The Economist itself tells us: ‘The
president is recognised by all Europe as the guardian of order, and on all
the stock exchanges.’ The financial aristocracy thus condemned the
parliamentary battle between the party of order and the executive
power as a disruption of order, and celebrated every victory of the
president over its own alleged representatives as a victory for order.
Under financial aristocracy we must understand here not only the
great merchant banks and speculators in public funds whose
interests we can immediately grasp as coincident with those of the
state. The whole of the modern money market, the whole banking
business, is interwoven with public credit in the most intimate way.
A part of their business capital is necessarily put out at interest in
readily convertible government issue. Their deposits, the capital put
at their disposal and divided by them amongst merchants and industrialists, derive for the most part from the dividends of government
bondholders. For the whole money market and its priests in every
epoch, stability of state power was all the law and the prophets; how
could this not be more so today when every deluge threatens to wash
away the indebtedness of existing states along with the states
themselves?
Fanatical for order, the industrial bourgeoisie was also worked up
about the quarrel between the parliamentary party of order and the
executive. After voting on 18 January [1851] for Changarnier’s
dismissal, Thiers, Anglès, Sainte-Beuve, etc. [representatives in the
‘party of order’] received a public reprimand from their constituents
in just those industrial districts excoriating their coalition with the
montagne as the high treason to the cause. If, as we have seen, the
open mockery, the petty intrigues that characterised the struggle
between the party of order and the president, deserved no better
reception, then on the other hand this bourgeois party, demanding
that its representatives let military power slip, just like that, from its
own parliament to a fake-on-the-make, was not worth the efforts
that were wasted on intriguing for it. It demonstrated that the battle
for retaining its public interests, its own class interests, its political
The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
85
power, represented only the annoyance and ill-temper of an inconvenience in private affairs.
With scarcely an exception the bourgeois dignitaries of the
provincial towns, the magistrates, judges, etc. received Bonaparte in
the most servile way on his tours, even when he made an unrestrained attack on the national assembly, and especially the party of
order, as in Dijon [on 1 June 1851].
When trade was going well, as at the beginning of 1851, the
commercial bourgeoisie objected to any parliamentary struggle lest
the heart should go out of it. When trade was going badly, as it was
persistently since the end of February 1851, they intoned that parliamentary struggles were the cause of the slump and shouted for
them to desist so that trade could pick up. The debate on constitutional revision fell into just this period of difficulty. Since it was the
existence or non-existence of the state in its present form that was
at stake, here the bourgeoisie felt all the more justified in demanding
that its representatives put an end to this excruciating interregnum
and retain the status quo. There was no contradiction in this. By the
end of the interregnum they understood its actual continuation,
postponing the moment of decision to a distant future. The status
quo could only be retained in two ways: by prolonging Bonaparte’s
authority or by retiring him as constitutionally prescribed and
electing Cavaignac. One part of the bourgeoisie desired the latter
solution and could give its deputies no better advice than to shut up
and steer clear of the whole issue. If their representatives did not
speak, so they thought, Bonaparte would not act. They wanted a parliamentary ostrich that would hide its head to make itself invisible.
Another part of the bourgeoisie wanted Bonaparte to stay as
president because he already occupied the position, keeping
everything in the same old rut. They were worked up that their
parliament had not openly breached the constitution and unceremoniously abdicated.
The councils of the départements, those provincial representatives
of the richest bourgeoisie, meeting from 25 August [1851] onwards
during the recess of the national assembly, declared almost
unanimously for constitutional revision, hence against parliament
and for Bonaparte.
The bourgeoisie vented its ire on its literary representatives, on its
own daily press, even more unambiguously than it did when it fell
out with its parliamentary representatives. Not only France but the
whole of Europe was astounded by the judgements enforcing
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Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire
ruinous fines and shamefully long prison sentences that bourgeois
juries brought in every time bourgeois journalists attacked
Bonaparte’s desire to seize power, or attempted to defend the
political rights of the bourgeoisie against the executive.
I have shown how the parliamentary party of order, crying for
peace, condemned itself to acquiescence, how it declared the
political power of the bourgeoisie incompatible with the security and
existence of the bourgeoisie by destroying with its own hand all
conditions for its own regime, the parliamentary regime, in the war
against other classes in society, hence the extra-parliamentary bulk of
the bourgeoisie enjoined Bonaparte to suppress, to annihilate its own
pen and voice, its publicists and politicians, speakers and press,
through its own servility towards the president, its vilification of
parliament, its brutal mistreatment of its own press, so that it could
pursue its private affairs in full confidence under the protection of a
strong and unrestricted government. It declared unambiguously that
it longed to be rid of its own political power in order to be rid of the
burdens and dangers of ruling.
And this miserable, cowardly lot, which was scandalised by the
merely parliamentary and literary battle for its own class to govern
and had betrayed the leaders of this struggle, now dares to indict the
proletariat for not rising up in a bloody struggle, a life and death
struggle on its behalf! This lot, who every moment sacrifice their
overall class interests, i.e. their political interests, to the narrowest
and dirtiest private interests, and expected a similar sacrifice of their
representatives, now blubbers that the proletariat has sacrificed the
ideal political interests of the bourgeoisie to the material interests of
the proletariat. It poses as an uncorrupted soul, misunderstood by
an egotistical proletariat led astray by socialists, and abandoned at
the decisive moment. And it finds an echo in the bourgeois world.
Of course I am not referring here to small-time German politicians
and intellectual low-life. I refer for example to The Economist which
was still writing as late as 29 November 1851, hence four days before
the coup d’état, that Bonaparte was the ‘guardian of order’, and Thiers
and Berryer were ‘anarchists’, and then on 27 December 1851, after
Bonaparte had silenced these anarchists, it was screaming about a
betrayal of the ‘skill, knowledge, discipline, mental influence, intellectual resources and moral weight of the middle and upper ranks of
society’ that had been committed by the ‘masses of ignorant,
untrained and stupid proletaires’. The stupid, ignorant and vulgar
mass was none other than the greater part of the bourgeoisie itself.
The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
87
During 1851 France had in any case experienced a kind of minor
economic crisis. The end of February showed a decline in exports
compared with 1850; in March trade suffered and factories closed
down, in April the condition of the industrial départements appeared
to be as desperate as after the February days [of 1848], in May [1850]
business had still not revived; as late as 28 June the portfolio of the
bank of France revealed that production was at a standstill, as there
was an immense growth in deposits and an equally great decline in
cash advances on bills of exchange, and it was not till mid-October
that a progressive improvement in business set in once more. The
French bourgeoisie attributed this trade slump to purely political
causes, the conflict between parliament and the executive,
uncertainty with a merely provisional type of state, the horrifying
prospect of 9 May 1852 [when Bonaparte’s presidential term was to
end]. I will not deny that all these circumstances depressed some
branches of industry in Paris and in the départements. But in any case
the effect of political events was only local and insignificant. Does
this need any more proof than that an improvement in trade
appeared about the middle of October at the time that political
conditions got worse, the political horizon clouded over and a
thunderbolt from the Elysée was expected at any moment? The
French bourgeois, whose ‘skill, knowledge, spiritual insight and
intellectual resource’ reach no further than his nose, could otherwise
have poked it into the cause of his commercial afflictions at any time
during the Great [Industrial] Exhibition [of 1851] in London. While
in France factories were closed down, in England there were
commercial bankruptcies. While industrial panic reach a high point
in France in April and May, commercial panic peaked in England at
the same time. As the French woollen industry suffered, so did the
English one; as French silk manufacturing, so with English; English
cotton mills continued to work, but not with the same profits as in
1849 and 1850. The difference was only that the crisis in France was
industrial and in England commercial; while factories in France were
idle, the ones in England expanded output but under less favourable
conditions then in previous years; in France exports took the major
blow, and in England imports. The common factor, which was
obviously not to be found within the bounds of the French political
horizon, was plain to see. The years 1849 and 1850 were a period of
the greatest material prosperity, and a glut only appeared as such in
1851. At the beginning of that year it got a particular boost from the
prospect of the [London] industrial exhibition. Special circumstances
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Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire
also contributed: first, the partial failure of the cotton crop in 1850
and 1851, then the certainty of a bigger crop than expected; first the
rise, then the sudden collapse, in short, fluctuations in the price of
cotton. The raw silk harvest, at least in France, turned out to be even
lower than average. And finally the wool industry had expanded so
much since 1848 that production could not keep up, and the price
of raw wool rose out of all proportion to the price of finished cloth.
Here in the raw materials for three major world industries we already
have the explanation for a trade slump three times over. Abstracting
from these special circumstances, the apparent crisis of 1851 was
none other than the dead stop that is brought about by overproduction and speculative fever as depicted in every trade cycle
before they join forces for a last feverish rush through the final phase
to get back to their starting point, the general economic crisis. During
such interruptions in trade, commercial bankruptcies break out in
England, while in France industry itself is made idle, partly through
being forced to withdraw from markets where competition with the
English was becoming unsustainable, partly because luxury goods
are particularly hit by any slow down in business. So besides the
general crisis, France had its own national one, which was defined
and conditioned by the general situation in the world markets far
more than by local influences in France. It is not without interest to
contrast the prejudice of the French bourgeois with the judgement
of the English. One of the great commercial houses in Liverpool
wrote in its annual report for 1851 [as reported in The Economist]:
Few years have more thoroughly belied the anticipations formed
at their commencement than the one just closed; instead of the
great prosperity which was almost unanimously looked for, it has
proved one of the most discouraging that has been seen for the
last quarter of a century – this, of course, refers to the mercantile,
not to the manufacturing classes. And yet there certainly were
grounds for anticipating the reverse at the beginning of the year
– stocks of produce were moderate, money was abundant, and
food was cheap, a plentiful harvest well secured, unbroken peace
on the continent, and no political or fiscal disturbances at home;
indeed, the wings of commerce were never more unfettered ... To
what source, then is this disastrous result to be attributed? We
believe to overtrading both in imports and exports. Unless our
merchants will put more stringent limits to their freedom of
action, nothing but a triennial panic can keep us in check.
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89
Now picture the French bourgeois, how in the midst of this
commercial panic his trade-sick brain is tortured, addled, stunned
by rumours of a coup d’état and of the restoration of universal
manhood suffrage, by the struggle between parliament and the
executive, by the guerilla warfare between Orléanists and legitimists,
by communistic conspiracies in the south, by purported rural revolts
in the Nièvre and Cher, by publicity from various presidential
candidates, by quackish solutions from the press, by threats from
the republicans to uphold the constitution and the general right to
vote by force of arms, by evangelising from émigré heroes in exile
who predict the end of the world on 9 May 1852, and you’ll now
understand why in the middle of this unspeakable, deafening chaos
of fusion, revision, dissolution, constitution, conspiracy, coalition,
emigration, usurpation and revolution, the crazed bourgeois snorts
at his parliamentary republic: ‘Better an end to terror than terror without
end!’
Bonaparte understood this cry. His powers of comprehension had
been sharpened by the growing uproar amongst creditors, who,
seeing settlement day 9 May 1852 draw nearer with every setting of
the sun, observed a protest in the stars against their earthly bills of
exchange. They had turned into veritable astrologers. The national
assembly had cut off Bonaparte’s hopes for a constitutional variance
prolonging power, and the candidature of the prince de Joinville
forbade further vacillation.
If there was ever an event that cast a shadow before it arrived it
was Bonaparte’s coup d’état. As early as 29 January 1849, scarcely a
month after his election, he had put such a proposal to Changarnier.
His own prime minister Odilon Barrot had secretly denounced the
politics of the coup in the summer of 1849, and Thiers had done this
publicly in the winter of 1850. In May 1851 Persigny had once again
tried to enlist Changarnier for the coup, the paper Messager de
l’Assemblée had published these negotiations, with every parliamentary fracas the Bonapartist journals threatened a coup, and the
nearer the crisis got to them the more noise they made. In the orgies
which Bonaparte celebrated every night with the men and women
of the ‘mob’, each time midnight approached and flowing drink
loosened tongues and excited imaginations, the coup would be fixed
for the following morning. Swords were drawn, glasses clinked, representatives thrown out the window, the imperial mantle fell onto
Bonaparte’s shoulders, until the next morning the spectre vanished
again and an astonished Paris learned of the danger, that it had once
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more escaped, from vestals of little discretion and paladins of indiscretion. During the months of September and October [1851]
rumours of a coup d’état came thick and fast. At the same time the
shades took on colour like a touched-up photographic plate. If you
look up the September and October numbers of the European press
you will find word-for-word intimations like the following: ‘Paris
seethes with rumoured coup. The capital will be entered by troops
during the night, and the next morning will bring decrees to dissolve
the national assembly, to place the département of the Seine under
siege, to restore universal manhood suffrage, to appeal to the people.
Bonaparte is to seek ministers for the execution of these illegal
measures.’ The correspondents who bring these reports always end
them with the single word ‘postponed’. The coup d’état had always
been Bonaparte’s idée fixe. With this obsession he returned to French
soil. It possessed him so thoroughly that he continually gave it away
and blurted it out. He was so weak that he gave it up again just as
often. The shadow of the coup had become so familiar to Parisians
as a shade that they could not believe in it when it finally appeared
in flesh and blood. What allowed the coup to succeed was therefore
neither cautious discretion on the part of the head of the Society of
10 December nor an ambush of an unsuspecting national assembly.
When it succeeded, it did so in spite of his indiscretion and with the
foreknowledge of the Assembly, a necessary, inevitable result of
previous developments.
On 10 October [1851] Bonaparte informed his ministers of his
decision to restore universal manhood suffrage once again, on the
16th they handed in their resignations, on the 26th Paris learned
that a cabinet headed by [the Bonapartist] Thorigny had been
formed. At the same time the prefect of police Carlier was replaced
by [the Bonapartist] Maupas, the commander of the first army
division. [General] Magnan concentrated the most reliable regiments
in the capital. On 4 November [1851] the national assembly went
back into session. It could do no more than recapitulate what it had
already gone through in abbreviated form and to demonstrate that
after death comes burial.
The first outpost that it lost in the battle with the executive was
the cabinet. It had solemnly to acknowledge this loss by giving full
credence to the Thorigny cabinet, a mere sham. The executive
commission received [the minister of education] M. Giraud with
laughter when he presented himself in the name of the new
ministers. Such a weak cabinet for formidable measures such as the
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restoration of universal manhood suffrage! But that was just what it
was about, to do nothing in parliament, to do everything against it.
On the very first day of the new session the national assembly
received Bonaparte’s message demanding the restoration of universal
manhood suffrage and abolishing the law of 31 May 1850. The same
day his ministers introduced a decree to that effect. The assembly
rejected straight away the ministers’ motion of urgency, and on 13
November [1851] the law itself, 355 to 348. Thus it tore up its
mandate once again, confirming once more that it had transformed
itself from the freely elected representative of the people into the
usurping parliament of a class; it acknowledged once again that it
had cut the integuments linking the parliamentary head with the
body of the nation.
While the executive appealed over the national assembly to the
people, through its proposal to restore universal manhood suffrage,
the legislature appealed over the people to the army through its commissioners’ bill. This bill was to establish a right to requisition troops
directly, to form a parliamentary army. While it thus designated the
army as mediator between itself and the people, between itself and
Bonaparte, while it recognised the army as the superior power in the
state, it had to confirm, on the other hand, that it had long ago given
up its claim to command it. By debating the right of requisition,
rather than requisitioning them at once, it made evident its doubts
about its own power. By throwing out the commissioners’ bill, it
publicly confessed its impotence. This bill was 108 votes short of a
majority, so the montagne had decided the outcome. It found itself
in the position of Buridan’s ass, though not between two sacks of
hay and having to decide which is the more attractive, but between
two thorough drubbings and having to decide which is the harder.
On the one hand there was fear of Changarnier, on the other, there
was fear of Bonaparte. One has to say that the situation did not allow
for heroism.
On 18 November [1851] an amendment was proposed to the law
on municipal elections that had been brought in by the party of
order itself, changing the three-year residence requirement for
municipal electors to one year. The amendment fell by a single vote,
but this single vote was immediately revealed to be an error. When
the party of order splintered into hostile factions, it forfeited its
independent parliamentary majority. Now it demonstrated that
there was no longer any parliamentary majority at all. The national
assembly had become incapable of making decisions. Its atomistic
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constituent parts were no longer cohesive, it had drawn its last
breath, it was dead.
Finally a few days before the catastrophe, the extra-parliamentary
mass of the bourgeoisie confirmed its break with the bourgeoisie in
parliament. Thiers, a parliamentary hero with an incurable case of
parliamentary cretinism, had hatched a new parliamentary intrigue
together with the council of state, after parliament had died; this
was an accountability act to keep the president within constitutional
bounds. On 15 September [1851] at the dedication of a new market
hall in Paris, Bonaparte charmed the market women, the fishwives,
like a second Masaniello [a fisherman who led a Neapolitan rebellion
against Spanish rule in 1647] – in any case one fishwife outweighed
17 grandees [of the ‘party of order’] in terms of real power – so in
the same way, after the introduction of the commissioners’ bill, he
inspired the lieutenants who were wined and dined at the Elysée,
and again on 25 November [1851] he enthralled the industrial
bourgeoisie who had gathered at the circus [in Paris] to receive their
prize medals for the Great [Industrial] Exhibition in London from
his very own hand. I present here the most significant part of his
speech as reported in the Journal des débats [on the 26th]:
With such unhoped-for results, I am justified in repeating how
great the French Republic would become if she were allowed to
follow her real interests, and to reform her institutions, instead of
being incessantly troubled, on the one side by demagogism, and
on the other by monarchical hallucinations. (Loud, stormy,
repeated applause from every part of the amphitheatre.) The
monarchical hallucinations impede all progress and all kinds of
serious industry. In place of advancing, there is only a struggle.
Men are seen who, heretofore the most ardent supporters of the
prerogatives and the authority of royalty, become partisans of a
convention for the purpose of weakening that authority, which is
the issue of popular suffrage. (Loud and repeated applause.) We
see those who have suffered the most from, and who have
deplored revolution the most, provoke a new one, simply to fetter
the will of the nation ... I promise you public order in future, etc.
etc. (Bravo, bravo, a storm of bravos.)
And so the industrial bourgeoisie applauded the coup of 2 December
[1851], the annihilation of parliament, the downfall of its own
government, the dictatorship of Bonaparte, with servile bravos. The
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thunderous cheers of 25 November were answered in the thunderous
cannons of 3rd to 6th December [1851], and it was the house of [the
industrialist] M. Sallandrouze, who had clapped to the rafters, that
got clapped to bits by the most bombs.
Cromwell, when he dissolved the Long Parliament, went alone
into the midst of the chamber, drew out his watch so that it should
not carry on a minute past the limit he had fixed for it, and then
drove out every single member with jovial banter and abuse.
Napoleon, smaller than his precursor, at least betook himself into
the legislative body on 18 Brumaire and read out, even if in a
faltering voice, its sentence of death. As it happens, the second
Bonaparte found himself in possession of an executive power quite
different from that of Cromwell and Napoleon, and he sought his
model in the annals of the Society of 10 December, in the annals of
criminality, not in the annals of world history. He robs the bank of
France of 25 million francs, buys General Magnan with a million
and the soldiers bit by bit with 15 francs apiece and booze, gathers
his accomplices in secret like a thief in the night, has the houses of
the most dangerous parliamentary leaders broken into, and
Cavaignac, Lamoricière, Le Flô, Changarnier, Charras, Thiers, Baze,
etc. dragged from their beds, the main squares and parliament
buildings in Paris occupied by troops, propagandistic notices stuck
on all the walls early in the morning proclaiming the dissolution of
the national assembly and the council of state, the restoration of the
general right to vote and the imposition of a state of siege in the
département of the Seine. Shortly after that he inserted a false
document in the Moniteur to the effect that influential parliamentarians had grouped themselves around him in a commission of
state.
The rump parliament, consisting mainly of legitimists and
Orléanists, assembled in the mairie of the 10th arrondissement and
voted Bonaparte’s removal amid repeated cheers of ‘long live the
republic’, harangued the gaping crowds outside to no avail, and is
finally marched off by a company of African sharpshooters first to
the d’Orsay barracks, later packed into prison vans and transported
to prisons at Mazas, Ham and Vincennes. Thus ended the party of
order, the national assembly and the February revolution. Before we
hasten to our conclusion, here is a brief summary of its history:
I. First period. From 24 February to 4 May 1848. February period.
Prologue. Sham solidarity.
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II. Second period. Period of founding the republic and of the
constituent assembly.
1) 4 May to 25 June 1848. Struggle of all classes against the
proletariat. Defeat of the proletariat in the June days.
2) 25 June to December 1848. Dictatorship of the pure
bourgeois republicans. Drafting of the constitution.
Imposition of a state of siege in Paris. The bourgeois dictatorship supplanted by Bonaparte’s election to the presidency
on 10 December.
3) 20 December 1848 to 28 May 1849. Struggle of the
constituent assembly with Bonaparte and with the party of
order in alliance with him. End of the constituent assembly.
Fall of the republican bourgeoisie.
III. Third period. Period of the constitutional republic and the legislative
national assembly.
1) 28 May 1849 to 13 June 1849. Struggle of the petty bourgeois
with the bourgeoisie and with Bonaparte. Defeat of petty
bourgeois democrats.
2) 13 June 1849 to 31 May 1850. Parliamentary dictatorship of
the party of order. Completion of its supremacy through the
abolition of the general right to vote, but loss of parliamentary control over the cabinet.
3) 31 May 1850 to 2 December 1851. Struggle between the parliamentary bourgeoisie and Bonaparte.
a) 31 May 1850 to 12 January 1851. Parliament loses
supreme command of the army.
b) 12 January to 11 April 1851. It fails in its attempts to
regain administrative authority. The party of order loses
its independent parliamentary majority. Coalition with
the republicans and the montagne.
c) 11 April 1851 to 9 October 1851. Attempts at revising [the
constitution], fusing [the royalist parties], suspending
[presidential power]. The party of order splits into its
constituent parts. The breach between bourgeois
parliament and bourgeois press, and the mass of the
bourgeoisie, is consolidated.
d) 9 October 1851 to 2 December 1851. Open break between
parliament and the executive. Parliament completes its
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death scene and fades out, left in the lurch by its own
class, by the army, by all other classes. End of the parliamentary regime and of the rule of the bourgeoisie.
Victory for Bonaparte. Parody of an imperial restoration.
VII
The social republic appeared as a phrase, as a prophecy on the
threshold of the February revolution. In the June days of 1848 it was
drowned in the blood of the Paris proletariat, but it stalked the
succeeding acts of the drama as a spectre. The democratic republic then
announced itself. It fizzled out on 13 June 1849 with its turncoat
petty bourgeoisie, but in fleeing it left redoubled boasts behind. The
parliamentary republic and its bourgeoisie occupied the entire stage,
living life to the full, but 2 December 1851 buried it amid anguished
cries from the royalist coalition of ‘long live the republic!’
The social and democratic republic took a beating but the parliamentary republic, the republic of the royalist bourgeoisie, went onto
the rocks, as did the pure republic, the republic of the bourgeois
republicans.
The French bourgeoisie balked at the rule of the working
proletariat, so it brought the lumpenproletariat to power, making the
chief of the Society of 10 December its head. The bourgeoisie kept
France in breathless terror at the prospective horrors of red anarchy;
Bonaparte sold it this future cheaply when on 3 and 4 December he
had the distinguished citizenry of the Boulevard Montmartre and the
Boulevard des Italiens shot through their own windows by the
drunken army of order. It deified the sword; now the sword rules over
it. It destroyed the revolutionary press; now its own press is destroyed.
It put public meetings under police surveillance; now its drawing
rooms are spied on by the police. It disbanded the democratic
national guard; its own national guard has been disbanded. It
imposed a state of siege; now a state of siege has been imposed on it.
It replaced juries with military commissions; now its juries have been
militarised. It put public education under the influence of the church;
now the church subjects it to its own education. It transported people
without trial; now it has been transported itself without trial. It
suppressed every impulse in society through the use of state power;
now every impulse of its society is crushed by state power. It rebelled
against its own politicians and intellectuals to line its own pocket;
now its politicians and intellectuals have been disposed of; but after
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its mouth was gagged and its presses smashed, its pocket has been
picked. The bourgeoisie never tired of proclaiming to the revolution
what Saint Arsenius said to the Christians: ‘Fuge, Tace, Quiesce!’ ‘Run
away, be quiet, keep still!’ Bonaparte admonishes the bourgeoisie:
‘Run away, be quiet, keep still!’
The French bourgeoisie had long ago resolved the dilemma put
by Napoleon: ‘In fifty years Europe will either be republican or
Cossack.’ Their resolution was the ‘Cossack republic’. That work of
art, the bourgeois republic, has not been deformed by Circe’s black
magic. That republic has lost nothing but its rhetorical arabesques,
the outward decencies, in a word, the appearance of respectability.
The France of today [after the coup d’état] was already there within
the parliamentary republic. It required only a thrust of the bayonet
for the membrane to burst and the monster to spring forth.
The immediate aim of the February revolution was to overthrow
the Orléans dynasty and that part of the bourgeoisie which governed
under its authority. It was not until 2 December 1851 that this aim
was achieved. It was then that the immense possessions of the house
of Orléans, the real basis of its influence, were confiscated, and what
was expected to follow the February revolution finally came to pass
in December [1851]: imprisonment, exile, dispossession,
banishment, disarming, humiliation of the men who had wearied
France since 1830 with their pleas. But under Louis Philippe only a
part of the commercial bourgeois was in power. The other factions
in it formed a dynastic and republican opposition, or stood entirely
outside so-called legality. Only the parliamentary republic included
all factions of the commercial bourgeoisie in the realm of the state.
Moreover under Louis Philippe the commercial bourgeoisie excluded
the large landholders. Only the parliamentary republic put them
side-by side, joined the July monarchy to the legitimist monarchy,
and merged two eras in the rule of property into one. Under Louis
Philippe the privileged part of the bourgeoisie concealed its rule
beneath the crown; in the parliamentary republic the rule of the
bourgeoisie, after unifying its constituent parts and extending its
power to power over its own class, came out into the open. So the
revolution first had to create the form in which the rule of the
bourgeois class gained its broadest, most general and ultimate
expression, and hence could also be overthrown without being able
to rise up again.
Only now was the sentence executed which was pronounced in
February on the Orléanist bourgeoisie, i.e. the most viable faction of
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97
the French bourgeoisie. Now a blow was struck at its parliament, its
legal chambers, its commercial courts, its provincial representatives,
its notaries, its universities, its spokesmen and their platforms, its
press and its literature, its administrative income and its court fees,
its army salaries and its state pensions, its mind and its body. [The
revolutionary communist] Blanqui had made the disbanding of the
bourgeois guard the first demand of the [1848] revolution, and the
bourgeois guard, who in the February of the revolution raised their
arms to stop this, disappeared from the scene in December. The
Pantheon has been transformed once again into an ordinary church.
With the last version of the bourgeois regime the spell, which
transformed its eighteenth-century founders into saints, has at last
been broken. When Guizot learned of the successful coup d’état of 2
December [1851] he exclaimed: This is the complete and final triumph
of socialism! What he meant was: this is the final and complete
collapse of the rule of the bourgeoisie.
Why did the proletariat not rescue the bourgeoisie? The question
boils down to this: Why did the Paris proletariat not rise up after 2
December?
The overthrow of the bourgeoisie had only been decreed, but the
decree had not yet been carried out. Any genuinely revolutionary
uprising of the proletariat would have put new life into the
bourgeoisie, reconciled it with the army and ensured a second June
[1849] defeat of the workers.
On 4 December [1851] the proletariat was goaded into a fight by
grocers and traders. On the evening of that day several legions of the
national guard promised to appear in the principal squares under
arms and in uniform. These traders and grocers had got wind of the
fact that Bonaparte had abolished their secret ballot in one of his
decrees of 2 December [1851] and enjoined them to inscribe their
yea or nay beneath their names in the official register. The bloody
confrontation of 4 December [1851] intimidated Bonaparte. During
the night he had placards posted on all the street corners of Paris
announcing the restoration of the secret ballot. Traders and grocers
were convinced they had achieved their aim. But it was the traders
and grocers who didn’t turn up next morning.
During the nights of Bonaparte’s coup d’état, 1 and 2 December
[1851], the Paris proletariat had also been robbed of its leaders, the
commanders of the barricades, so it was an army without officers,
too enlightened by its own recollections of June 1848 and 1849 and
of May 1850 to fight under the banner of the montagnards; it had
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therefore come to a correct assessment of its own power and the
general situation when it left to its vanguard of secret societies the
task of saving the insurrectionary honour of Paris, which the
bourgeoisie had readily given up to the soldiery, so that Bonaparte
could later disarm the national guard with this cynical explanation:
it was not that he feared the misuse of their weapons against him
but rather that anarchists would misuse these weapons against the
guard itself.
‘It is the complete and final triumph of socialism!’ This was Guizot’s
characterisation of 2 December [1851]. Though the overthrow of the
parliamentary republic contains the triumph of the proletarian
revolution in embryo, the immediate tangible result was Bonaparte’s
victory over parliament, the executive over the legislature, force without
words over the force of words. The unitary power of the ancien régime
is thus freed from its limitations, becoming an unlimited absolute
power. In parliament the nation elevated its general will into law,
i.e. the law of the ruling class was elevated into its general will. It
abdicated its own will before the executive and subjected itself to
the sovereignty of an alien will, to authority. The opposition
between the executive and legislative powers expresses the
opposition between the heteronomy and autonomy of the nation.
Hence France seems to have escaped the despotism of a class only
to revert to being under the despotism of an individual, and under
the authority of an individual without authority to boot. The
conflict seems to have been settled so that all classes bow down
equally powerless and equally voiceless before the rifle-butt.
But the revolution is thorough-going. It is still preoccupied with
journeying through purgatory. It does its work methodically. By 2
December [1851] it had completed half its preparatory work, and
now it is completing the other half. First it developed parliamentary
power so that it could be overthrown. Now that this has been
attained, it is developing the executive power, reducing it to its purest
expression, isolating it, confronting it as sole challenger in order to
concentrate all its powers of destruction against it. And when it has
brought this second half of its preparatory work to completion the
whole of Europe will jump up and cry: Well grubbed up, old mole!
This executive with its enormous bureaucratic and military
apparatus, with its widespread and ingenious machinery of state, a
complement of a half million officials alongside an army of another
half million, this fearsome parasitic body, which traps French society
like a net and chokes it at every pore, arose at the time of the
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absolute monarchy, accelerating the decline of feudalism. The
political prerogatives of landowners and municipalities were
transformed into so many aspects of state power, the feudal
dignitaries became salaried civil servants, and the variegated pattern
of conflicting medieval authorities became the disciplined layout of
state power with centralised functions in a factory-like division of
labour. The first French revolution had the job of centralisation,
breaking down all separate local, territorial, municipal and provincial
powers in order to create a civil unity in the nation as begun by
absolute monarchy, but at the same time it had to develop the
extent, aspects and operatives of governmental power. Napoleon
perfected this machinery of state. The legitimist and July monarchies
contributed only a further division of labour, growing in proportion
as the division of labour created new interest groups within
bourgeois society, hence new objects for the state to administer.
Every common interest was detached from society and counterposed
to it as a higher, general interest, torn away from the independently
generated activity of individuals within society and made into an
object of governmental administration, from bridges, schools and
community projects in a village up to railways, national public works
and the national university of France. Finally in its struggle with the
revolution the parliamentary republic found itself compelled to
strengthen the apparatus and centralisation of governmental power
with repressive measures. All upheavals perfected this machinery
instead of destroying it. The parties that grappled in turn for power
regarded possession of this immense edifice of state as the chief
booty of the victor.
But under the absolute monarchy, during the first revolution
[1789–99], under Napoleon [1799–1815], bureaucracy was only the
means of preparing the class rule of the bourgeoisie. Under the
restoration [1816–30], under Louis Philippe [1830–48], under the
parliamentary republic [1848–51], it was the instrument of the ruling
class, however much it also strove for power in its own right.
Only under the second Bonaparte does the state seem to have
achieved independence with respect to society and to have brought
it into submission. The independence of the executive comes
through clearly when its head no longer needs ingenuity, its army no
longer needs glory, and its bureaucracy no longer needs moral
authority in order to justify itself. The state machine has established
itself so firmly vis-à-vis commercial life that the head of the Society
of 10 December provides sufficient leadership, a soldier of fortune
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swooping down from abroad, elevated to leadership by a drunken
soldiery that he bought with grub and drink and at which he has to
go on chucking sausages. Hence the shamefaced despair, the feeling
of terrible humiliation, degradation, which weighs down upon
France and suffocates her. France feels dishonoured. Just as under
Napoleon there was scarcely any pretext for freedom, so under the
second Bonaparte there was no longer any pretext for servitude.
But state power is not suspended in mid-air. Bonaparte represents
a class, indeed the most numerous class in French society, the smallholding peasants.
Just as the Bourbons were the dynasty of large landed property
and the Orléans the dynasty of finance, so Bonaparte is the dynasty
of peasants, i.e. of the mass of the French people. Not the Bonaparte
who knuckled under to the parliament of the bourgeoisie, but the
Bonaparte who disbanded it, is the chosen one of the peasantry. For
three years the cities were successful in falsifying the meaning of the
election of 10 December and cheating the peasantry out of the
restoration of the empire. The election of 10 December 1848 has
been fulfilled only through the coup d’état of 2 December 1851.
The smallholding peasants form an immense mass whose
members live in similar conditions but without entering into
complex relationships with one another. Their mode of production
isolates them from one another, instead of bringing them into
complex interactions. This isolation is reinforced by the terrible
means of communication in France and the poverty of the peasants.
Their site of production, the smallholding, does not allow any
division of labour in its cultivation, no application of science and
therefore no diversity in development, no diversification of talents,
no wealth of social relationships. Each individual peasant family is
almost self-sufficient, producing the greatest part of its consumption
directly and getting its means of subsistence more in brutal exchange
with nature than in relationships within society. The smallholding,
the peasant and the family; alongside them another smallholding,
another farmer and another family. A few score of these make a
village and a few score villages make a département. Thus the great
bulk of the French nation is formed by simple accretion, much as
potatoes in a sack form a sack of potatoes. In so far as millions of
families get a living under economic conditions of existence that
divide their mode of life, their interests and their culture from those
of other classes and counterpose them as enemies, they form a class.
In so far as there is merely a local interconnection amongst peasant
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proprietors, the similarity of their interests produces no community,
no national linkage and no political organisation, they do not form
a class. They are therefore incapable of asserting their class interests
in their own name, whether through a parliament or constitutional
convention. They cannot represent themselves, they must be
represented. Their representative must also appear as their master,
as an authority over them, as an unrestricted governmental power
which protects them from other classes and watches over them from
on high. The political influence of peasant proprietors is ultimately
expressed in the subordination of parliament to the executive,
society to the state.
Through historical tradition it has come to pass that the French
peasantry believed in a miracle, that a man of the name of Napoleon
would bring them back their former glory. And there came an
individual who presented himself as such a man because he bore the
name Napoleon, in accordance with the Napoleonic Code which
stipulates: ‘All inquiry into paternity is forbidden.’ After twenty years
of bumming around and a string of grotesque adventures, the
prophecy was fulfilled and the man became emperor of the French.
The idée fixe of the nephew was realised because it coincided with
the idée fixe of the most numerous class of the French.
But, it may be objected, what about the peasant uprisings over
half of France [in late December 1851], the raids on the peasantry
by the army, the mass incarceration and transportation of peasants?
Since the time of Louis XIV France has not experienced a similar
persecution of the peasantry ‘for intriguing with demagogues’.
But let us be clear about this. The Bonaparte dynasty does not
represent the revolutionary peasants, but rather the conservative
ones, not the peasant who reaches beyond his social condition of
existence, the smallholding, but rather the one who wants to shore
it up more firmly, not the country people who want to overthrow
the old order under their own steam in conjunction with the towns,
but rather the exact opposite, those who are stupidly locked up
within the old order and want to see themselves saved and
preferred along with their small holdings by means of the ghost of
an empire. It represents peasant superstition, not enlightenment,
prejudice not judgement, the past not the future, the modern
Vendée [royalist revolt of 1789–94], not the modern Cévennes [antifeudal revolt of 1702–5].
Three years hard rule under the parliamentary republic had freed
a part of the French peasantry from Napoleonic illusions and revo-
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lutionised them, albeit only superficially, but the bourgeoisie
repressed them forcibly whenever they tried to do anything. Under
the parliamentary republic the modern consciousness of the French
peasantry fought with the traditional one. The contest advanced in
the form of an incessant battle between schoolmasters and the
church. The bourgeoisie defeated the schoolmasters. For the first
time the peasantry made efforts to act independently against
government machinations. This showed up in the persistent conflict
between mayors and prefects. The bourgeoisie removed the mayors.
Finally during the parliamentary republic, peasants from different
parts of France rose up against their own monstrous offspring, the
army. The bourgeoisie punished them with states of siege and foreclosures on property. And this is the bourgeoisie that now whines
about the stupidity of the masses, the vile multitude that has
betrayed it to Bonaparte. It has greatly strengthened the fervour for
empire amongst the peasant class; it conserved the conditions which
are the breeding ground of this peasant religion. In any case the
bourgeoisie is bound to fear the stupidity of the peasant masses so
long as they remain conservative, and the insights of the peasantry
as soon as they become revolutionary.
In the uprisings after the coup d’état a portion of the French
peasantry mounted armed protests against its own vote of 10
December 1848. Since 1848 they had schooled their wits. But they
had enrolled in the underworld of history, and history kept them to
their word, and the majority was still so prejudiced that even in the
reddest of départements the peasant population openly supported
Bonaparte. In its view the national assembly had hindered his
progress. He had now merely broken the fetters which bound the
will of the countryside to the towns. Here and there they entertained
the grotesque idea that a constitutional convention could co-exist
with a Napoleon.
After the first revolution had transformed the semi-feudal
peasantry into freeholders, Napoleon confirmed and regulated the
conditions in which they could exploit their newly acquired land in
France and satisfy their new found passion for property undisturbed.
But what is now causing the ruin of the French peasant is his smallholding itself, the division of the land and soil, the form of property
which Napoleon consolidated in France. These are the material
conditions which made the French feudal peasant a smallholding
peasant and Napoleon into an emperor. Two generations were
sufficient to produce the inevitable result: further deterioration of
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103
agriculture, further indebtedness of agriculturists. The ‘Napoleonic’
form of property, which at the beginning of the nineteenth century
was the condition for the liberation and enrichment of French
country dwellers, has developed in the course of a century into the
law of their enslavement and pauperisation. And it is just this law
which is the first of the ‘Napoleonic ideals’ which the second
Bonaparte has to uphold. If he still shares with the peasants the
illusion that the cause of their ruin is to be sought, not in smallscale
property, but outside it in the influence of secondary factors, then his
experiments will be smashed on the relations of production like soap
bubbles, cutting that illusion off from its last hiding place and at best
making the disease more acute.
The economic development of small-scale landed property has
fundamentally turned round the relationship of the peasantry to the
other classes of society. Under Napoleon the parcelling out of land
and soil complemented free competition and the beginnings of
large-scale industry in the cities. Even the preferment of the peasant
class was in the interest of the new bourgeois order. This newly
created class was the complex expansion of the bourgeois regimes
beyond the gateways of the cities, its realisation on a national scale.
This class was the ever present protest against the recently
overthrown landed aristocracy. If it was preferred over all, it was also
suited above all as a point of attack for the restoration of feudalism.
The roots that small-scale property had struck in French soil deprived
feudalism of all nourishment. Its boundary stones formed a natural
fortification for the bourgeoisie against any reprisals from its former
overlords. But in the course of the nineteenth century the place of
feudal orders was taken by urban usurers, the place of feudal
obligation attached to the land by the mortgage, and the place of
aristocratic landed property by bourgeois capital. The smallholding
of the peasant is only a means for capitalists to draw profit, interest
and rent from the soil, leaving to the farmer himself how to extract
his wages. The mortgage interest weighing on French soil imposes
on the French peasantry an interest burden equal to the annual
interest on the whole of the British national debt. In this slavery to
capital, as it inevitably develops, small-scale landed property
transforms the bulk of the French nation into a nation of
troglodytes. Sixteen million peasants (women and children included)
dwell in hovels of which the greatest number have only one
opening, others only two and the best of the lot only three.
Windows are to a house as five senses are to the head. The bourgeois
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Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire
order, which at the beginning of the century made the state a sentry
over the newly emerged smallholding and manured it with laurels,
has turned into a vampire which sucks out its blood and brains and
throws them into the alchemist’s vessel of capital. The Napoleonic
Code is now but a code for foreclosures on property, public auctions
and forced sales. To the four million (including children, etc.) official
paupers, vagrants, criminals and prostitutes in France must be added
five million people who hover on the margin of existence and either
house themselves in the countryside itself or continually desert the
countryside for the cities or the cities for the countryside, together
with their rags and their children. The interests of the peasants are
therefore no longer in accord with the bourgeoisie, as under
Napoleon, but in deadliest opposition to the interests of the
bourgeoisie, to capital. Hence the peasants find their natural allies
and leaders in the urban proletariat whose task is the overthrow of
the bourgeois order. But strong and unlimited government – and this is
the second ‘Napoleonic ideal’ which the second Napoleon is to carry
out, has the job of defending this ‘material order’ by force. This
‘material order’ also serves as a catch-phrase in all Bonaparte’s proclamations against peasant unrest.
Beside the mortgage which capital imposes on it, the smallholding is burdened with taxes. Taxation is the source of life for the
bureaucracy, the army, the church and the court, in short the whole
apparatus of executive power. Strong government and heavy taxes
are identical. Small-scale landed property by its very nature provides
a basis for an all-pervasive and numerous bureaucracy. It uniformly
levels people and relationships over the whole surface of the land.
Hence it also permits uniform action from a sovereign centre to all
points. It destroys the aristocratic middle levels between the mass of
the people and the state power. Hence it calls forth from all sides the
direct intervention by this state power and the direct use of its
agents. Finally it produces an unemployed surplus population which
can find a place neither in the country nor in the towns and hence
seizes on state offices as a kind of respectable charity and promotes
the creation of state employment. Under Napoleon these numerous
government personnel were not just directly productive, since in fact
they provided for the newly arisen peasantry through state coercion
in the form of public works, what the bourgeoisie could not yet
provide through the means of private industry. State taxation was a
necessary means of coercion to maintain exchange between town
and country. Otherwise the smallholder, by becoming a self-
The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
105
sufficient peasant, would have broken off any connection with the
towns, as happened in a part of Switzerland, [and] in Norway.
Napoleon repaid the forced taxation with interest when he opened
new markets with the bayonet and plundered continents. This was
a spur to peasant industry, though they now rob his industry of its
last source of help and break down the last barriers to pauperism.
And an enormous bureaucracy, well-decorated and well-fed, is the
‘Napoleonic ideal’ which appeals the most to the second Bonaparte.
How could it be otherwise since he is compelled, alongside the actual
classes of society, to create an artificial caste for which the
maintenance of his regime is a bread-and-butter question. Consequently one of his first financial acts was to raise official salaries once
again to their old level and to create new sinecures.
Another ‘Napoleonic ideal’ is the dominance of the Church as an
instrument of state. But while the newly developed smallholding
was naturally religious in its accord with society, in its dependence
on the powers of nature and in its subjection to an all-high
protecting authority, it becomes naturally irreligious when riddled
with debt, at odds with society and authority, and driven past its
own limits. Heaven was just a beautiful annex to the narrow strip of
land just acquired, especially as it makes the weather; it becomes an
insult as soon as it is offered as a substitute for the smallholding. The
priest then appears as but the anointed bloodhound of the earthly
police – another ‘Napoleonic ideal’ – whose duty under the second
Bonaparte is not, as it was under Napoleon [I], to spy on the enemies
of the peasant regime in the cities, but to spy on Bonaparte’s enemies
in the country. Next time the march on Rome [to put down an insurrection] will take place in France itself, but in a sense opposite to that
of M. de Montalembert [who advocated a war on socialism].
The culmination of the ‘Napoleonic ideals’ is the predominance of
the army. The army was the point d’honneur for the smallholding
peasantry; it transformed them into heroes, defended their new
possessions from outside threats, glorifying their recently acquired
nationality, plundering and revolutionising the world. The dazzling
uniform was its own national dress, war its poetry, the smallholding, extended and rounded off in the imagination, was its fatherland,
and patriotism was the ideal form of their sense of property. But the
enemies against whom the French peasant now has to defend his
property are not the cossacks but the bailiffs and tax collectors. The
smallholding is no longer in the so-called fatherland but in the
mortgage register. The army itself is no longer the flower of peasant
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Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire
youth, it is the fetid bloom of the peasant lumpenproletariat. It
consists in the greater part of place-holders, substitutes, as the second
Bonaparte is himself only a place-holder, a substitute for Napoleon.
It performs its deeds of valour in hunting down peasants like game,
in police duties, and if the internal contradictions of his system drive
the head of the Society of 10 December over the French border, the
army will reap no laurels after skirmishing but rather take a beating.
It’s plain as day: ‘all Napoleonic ideals’ are ideals of the undeveloped
smallholding in its heyday, but for the smallholding that has outlived
this, they are an absurdity. They are merely hallucinations of its
death struggle, words transformed into phrases, ideas into spectres,
befitting dress into preposterous costumes. But the parody of the
empire was necessary to liberate the bulk of the French nation from
the weight of tradition and to work out in pure form the opposition
between state and society. The demolition of the state machine will
not endanger centralisation. Bureaucracy is only the low and brutal
form of a centralisation which is still afflicted with its opposite,
feudalism. When disappointed with the Napoleonic restoration, the
French peasant will cease to believe in the smallholding, the whole
edifice of state erected on this smallholding will collapse, and the
proletarian revolution will obtain the chorus without which its solo
becomes a swan song in all peasant countries.
The condition of the French peasantry solves the riddle for us of
the general elections of 20 and 21 December [1851] which led the
second Bonaparte up Mount Sinai, not to receive the laws but to give
and execute them. Anyway in those fateful days the French nation
committed a mortal sin against democracy, which falls to its knees
and prays daily: Holy Universal Suffrage, pray for us! The believers
in universal manhood suffrage naturally do not want to dispense
with the miraculous power which has brought great things to pass
for them, which has transformed Bonaparte II into a Napoleon, a
Saul into a Paul, and a Simon into Peter. The spirit of the people
speaks to them through the ballot box as the God of the prophet
Ezekiel [37:5] spoke to the dry bones: ‘Thus saith the Lord God unto
these bones: “Behold, I will cause breath to enter into you, and ye
shall live.”’
Evidently the bourgeoisie had no choice other than to elect
Bonaparte. Despotism or anarchy. Naturally they voted for
despotism. When the puritans complained at the council of
Constance [1414–18] about the dissolute lives of the popes and
moaned about the necessity for moral reform, Cardinal Pierre d’Ailly
The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
107
thundered at them: ‘Only the devil himself can save the Catholic
church, and you are demanding angels.’ In the same way after the
coup d’état the French bourgeoisie cried: Only the head of the Society
of 10 December can save bourgeois society! Only theft can save
property, only perjury, religion; bastardy, the family; disorder, order!
As an executive with independent power, Bonaparte felt that it
was his vocation to safeguard ‘bourgeois order’. But the strength of
this bourgeois order is in the middle classes. Hence he sees himself
as the representative of the middle class and issues decrees on that
basis. However he is only where he is, because he has destroyed the
political power of this middle class, and does it again every day. He
therefore sees himself as the enemy of the political and literary
power of the middle class. But because he protects its material power,
he generates its public, its political power anew. The cause must
therefore be kept alive, but the effect where it is revealed must be
dispatched from this world. But this cannot happen without some
slight confusion of cause with effect, since both lose their distinguishing characteristics when they interact. There are new decrees
that muddle the boundary lines. Bonaparte sees himself opposing
the bourgeoisie as the representative of the peasantry and of the
people in general at the same time, wanting to please the lower
classes within bourgeois society. There are new decrees that rob the
‘true socialists’ of their administrative brainstorms in advance. Above
all Bonaparte sees himself as head of the Society of 10 December, as
representative of the lumpenproletariat, to which he himself, his
entourage, his government and his army belong, and for which the
chief concern is how to do well oneself and to extract prizes for the
California lottery from the national treasury. He vindicates himself
as head of the Society of 10 December with decrees, without decrees
and despite decrees.
The contradictory tasks that face this man explain the contradictions of his government, the confused poking about to try to win
over and then to humiliate now this, now that class, turning them
all equally against himself; and his uncertainty in practice forms a
highly comic contrast to the peremptory and categorical style of governmental decrees, a style obediently copied from the uncle
[Napoleon]. So the speed and recklessness of these contradictions is
supposed to imitate the complicated doings and quick-wittedness of
the Emperor.
Industry and commerce, the occupations of the middle class, are
to flourish in this hothouse regime of strong government. They are
granting an innumerable number of railway concessions. But the
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Bonapartist lumpenproletariat is to enrich itself. So there is insider
trading with the railway concessions on the stock exchange. But
this draws no capital for the railways. So the bank is obliged to make
advances on railway shares. But at the same time the bank is to be
exploited for a certain person and therefore must be cajoled. So it
is released from the obligation to publish a weekly report. Then the
government makes a heads-I-win-tails-you-lose deal with the bank.
The people are to be provided with employment. So instructions
are issued for public works. But the public works raise the tax
burden of the people. Hence the taxes are reduced by attacking the
rentiers through the conversion of 5 per cent bonds to 41⁄2 per cent.
But the middle class must again receive a sweetener. Hence the
doubling of the wine tax on the people, who buy it retail, and
halving of the wine tax for the middle class, who drink it wholesale.
Disbanding of real workers’ association, but promises of future
miracles of association. There is to be help for the peasantry. So
there are mortgage banks to increase their indebtedness and
promote the concentration of property. But these banks are to be
used to garner money for a certain person from the confiscated
estates of the house of Orléans. But no capitalist wants to agree to
this condition, which is not in the decree, and the mortgage bank
remains a mere decree, etc. etc.
Bonaparte would like to appear as the patriarchal benefactor of all
classes. But he cannot give to one without taking from another. At
the time of the Fronde [1648–53], it was said of the duc de Guise that
he was the most obliging man in France, because he had transformed
all his property into credits that his partisans were obliged to repay
to him, and so Bonaparte would like to be the most obliging man in
France and transform all his property, all the labour of France, into
credits to be repaid to himself. He would like to steal the whole of
France in order to be able to give it back, or rather to be able to buy
France back with French money, for as the head of the Society of 10
December, he has to buy what is to belong to him. And all the institutions of state, the senate, the council of state, the legislative
chamber [under the new constitution of 14 January 1852], the legion
of honour, military decorations, wash-houses, public works, railways,
the general staff of the national guard excluding common ranks, and
the confiscated estates of the House of Orléans become a saleroom.
Every place in the army and in the governmental machine is up for
sale. But the most important thing in this process of taking France in
order to give it back is the percentage which goes to the head and
members of the Society of 10 December during the transaction. The
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109
witty countess L[éhon], the mistress of the duc de Morny [half
brother of Louis Bonaparte], characterised the confiscation of the
Orléanist loot in this way: ‘It’s the first flight [vol = theft] of the
[Napoleonic] eagle.’ That fits every flight of this eagle, which is more
like a raven [that feeds on carrion]. Every day he and his hangers-on
call to each other as the Italian Carthusian called out to the miser
who made a show of counting up the money on which he would be
drawing for years to come: ‘You are counting up your goods, but you
should first be counting up your years.’ So as not to get the years
wrong, they count the minutes. A gang of louts are pushing their way
into the court, the ministries, the chief offices in administration and
the army, of whom the best to be said is that no one knows where
they come from, a noisy, foul, rapacious crowd of bohemians,
crawling into gold braid with the same grotesque dignity as [the
emperor] Soulouque’s stuffed shirts [in Haiti]. The higher stratum of
the Society of 10 December can be clearly discerned by reflecting on
the fact that [philistines such as] Véron-Crevel preaches its morals and
[the journalist] Granier de Cassagnac its wisdom. When Guizot made
use of this Granier at the time of his cabinet [during the 1840s] for a
provincial rage against the [legitimist] dynastic opposition, he was
wont to boast of him with the quip: ‘He’s the king of the fools’. It would
be an injustice to recall the regency [of the duc d’Orléans 1715–23]
or [the reign of] Louis XV [1723–74] in conjunction with Louis
Bonaparte’s court and clique. For ‘France has often had a government
of mistresses, but never before a government of kept men’ [as Mme.
Girardin, the editor’s wife, put it]. And Cato who took his own life so
that he could walk in the Elysian Fields with heroes! Poor Cato!
Driven by the contradictory demands of his circumstances, and
having to keep in the public eye as a substitute for Napoleon, hence
executing a coup in miniature every day, Bonaparte, like a conjuror
who has to come up with constant surprises, brings the whole
bourgeois economy into confusion, violates everything that seemed
inviolable during the revolution of 1848, makes some tolerant of
revolution and others desirous of it, and produces anarchy in the
name of order, while stripping the halo from the whole machinery of
state, profanes it, and makes it loathsome and laughable. He
replicates the cult of the holy tunic of Trier in Paris as the cult of the
imperial mantle of Napoleon. But when this imperial mantle falls at
last onto the shoulders of Louis Bonaparte, the bronze of Napoleon,
high on the column in the Place Vendôme, will plunge to the ground.
Part 2
The Eighteenth Brumaire
as Discourse
3
Imagery/Writing,
Imagination/Politics:
Reading Marx through
the Eighteenth Brumaire
Terrell Carver
Readers have choices, and there are things no person or group may
do to them (without violating their choices).1 Around Marx there is
a highly developed politics of reading. Readers do not read just as
they please in circumstances they choose for themselves; rather they
read in present circumstances, given and inherited. There are
nightmares weighing on their brains, and disciplinary practices
violating their choices. Shifting all the dead generations is really very
hard work.2
Why would anyone want to? I wouldn’t claim that a new, antitraditional or ‘against the grain’ reading of Marx will revolutionise
him. Nor would I claim that interpreting him will change the world.
However, his interventions in politics were based mostly on writing
(rather than other forms of so-called direct action), and he clearly
thought that readers would change things, or at least try to. We know
very little in general, or even specific terms most of the time, about
what he thought his relation to his readership was, or should be. What
we know for dead and absolute certain is that he wrote a lot; since the
Fall of the Wall, MEGA2 (Marx–Engels Gesamtausgabe, 2nd series) has
been riven with strategies, economic and academic, for coping with
the Nachlaβ, currently planned for about 120 double volumes.
There are prefaces and letters that get us close to what Marx
thought about his writing and his readership, but even they don’t
really explain who was supposed to do what with whom in relation
to him, having read him. If he had been running a group or party in
an acknowledged leadership role, then we would be on surer ground.
Whether working for newspapers, or advising the International
Working Men’s Association, he seems rather on the outside, sending
messages to those within. When he famously said (or rather is said
to have said) that he was ‘not a Marxist’, even that didn’t tell us
exactly what he thought a ‘Marxist’ was, nor what he himself
thought he was instead.3 This political self-characterisation was
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Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire
about as unhelpful and enigmatic as his (rare) philosophical characterisation that he was not an idealist, but a ‘materialist’.4 Discuss.
Marx was discussed, not least by Engels, and we know rather more
about the latter’s relationship to his own texts, and to the texts by
Marx that he came to own in later life. Engels organised a politics of
reading for Marx, saying who he was and why he was important,
saying what he said in fewer words, and explaining why he (Engels)
was entitled to do this. Engels thus worked to gather a readership for
Marx, a followership of Marxists, and therefore some kind of
consistent influence or control over thoughts and events. Whether
Marx agreed with all of this, or with any of this, has been a question
of debate the last 100 years, and is part of the nightmare of reading
Marx. It has certainly weighed on my brain.5
The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte is a difficult work. The
title alludes to the calendar and events of the French Revolution,
and I venture to say that most contemporary readers have to look
this up.6 Louis Bonaparte is not one of the major features of anyone’s
politics of memory in France, a country in which there is no shortage
of collective memorialisation. His presidency of the Second Republic
(which?), and his reign as Emperor Napoleon III (who?), do not
surface as important in the republican tradition even as threats,
precisely because the original Napoleon (of which he was a selfconscious copy) occupied the same ambiguous position: the people’s
dictator who dictates to the people, the republican who destroyed
the republic.
Of those in France who would know the story, few would actually
disagree with Marx’s overall judgement and overweening scorn:
Louis Bonaparte was ridiculous and disastrous.7 All the current
websites I have looked at take the same view. Napoleon himself had
epic grandeur, and was brilliant at delivering it, but not across the
generations. Charles-Louis-Napoleon was the son of a marriage that
Napoleon had arranged between his stepdaughter Hortense de
Beauharnais (that is, his first wife Josephine’s daughter from her first
marriage to a revolutionary general) to Napoleon’s own brother
Louis Bonaparte, eventually (and briefly) King of Holland. This
makes our Louis Bonaparte the nephew or step-grandson of his
‘original’, depending on which way you construe the relationship.
The major shrines to the man who was Emperor of the French for
nearly 20 years (and his Empress Eugénie de Montoja) are in a very
grand château at Compiègne, near Paris, and in a small, dusty and
utterly obscure former hunting lodge in Les Landes, near the wild
Reading Marx through the Eighteenth Brumaire
115
Atlantic coast. The tastelessness of the decor and furnishings of the
former have to be seen to be believed, and the treasures of the latter
can best be left to the imagination – though I was particularly
fascinated by a set of crockery depicting the Emperor’s triumphs,
such as a grand entry by train into Cherbourg. Perhaps his most
notable memorialisation outside France is the cameo role he plays in
Hollywood’s romance with Maximilian and Carlotta down Mexico
way, tragic characters caught in a mad overseas caricature of the
Second Empire.
The Eighteenth Brumaire has not survived, then, because Louis
Bonaparte/Napoleon III went on to greater things, and so carried
Marx with him. Rather it is the other way around. Similarly, if Marx
had memorialised the Second Republic (1848–51), perhaps it would
have survived better as an episode in the republican tradition,
precisely because he had done so. He did this later with the Paris
Commune (1871) in The Civil War in France, another work of instant
history (written in English) that is near-contemporaneous with
events. While it is hardly the case that the Commune survives
because of Marx, a strong connection developed over the years, and
indeed there was a connection at the time. His advocacy of the cause
made him the ‘Red Terror Doctor’ in England, and this was, indeed,
his own entry into mainstream history.8 Perhaps hanging his politics
on Louis Bonaparte was a bit of a mistake for Marx. Bonaparte didn’t
last, no one was that moved by Marx’s scorn (either way) at the time,
and hardly anyone wants to know about him now. He seems to have
become a justly obscure and Eurotrashy Emperor with terrible
clothes who wandered into Marx’s life ... briefly.
Introducing a new edition of the Eighteenth Brumaire in 1885,
Engels said it was, ‘in truth a work of genius’. It ‘laid bare the whole
course of French history since the February days [of 1848] in its inner
interconnection, [and] reduced the miracle of [the coup d’état of]
December 2 [1851] to a natural, necessary result of this interconnection’. It was a work of science because:
It was precisely Marx who had first discovered the great law of
motion of history, the law according to which all historical
struggles, whether they proceed in the political, religious, philosophical or some other ideological domain, are in fact only the
more or less clear expression of struggles of social classes ... This
law, which has the same significance for history as the law of the
transformation of energy has for natural science – this law gave
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Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire
him here, too, the key to an understanding of the history of the
Second French Republic. He put his law to the test on these
historical events, and even after thirty-three years we must still
say that it has stood the test brilliantly.
It is difficult to square this reading of the Eighteenth Brumaire with the
discursive character of the text, organised as historical narrative, and
famous for personal invective and bitter sarcasm. The closest Engels
got to commenting on the language and politics of the text was to
say that it is ‘concise [and] epigrammatic’. Engels concluded that
‘Marx did not even need to treat the hero of the coup d’état otherwise
than with the contempt he so well deserved’, thus inverting the
apparent aim of the text, which was to rubbish the newly proclaimed
emperor as thoroughly as possible at the outset of his career.9
Presumably Marx intended the text as a political intervention,
though as mentioned above, it is difficult to know exactly what this
was supposed to mean. It was written in German, published in New
York in May 1852, about six months after the coup of 2 December
1851. Writing in 1869 Marx commented that a ‘few hundred copies
found their way into Germany at that time’, but did not seem to
have an opinion as to what happened to the main print run, or
indeed what was supposed to happen to any of this work. The works
to which he compared it were not science of any kind but rather contemporary polemics by Victor Hugo and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon.
The nearest he got to a scientific justification was one that was much
fuzzier than the law-governed reductionism Engels had in mind: ‘I
[Marx] ... demonstrate how the class struggle in France created circumstances and relationships that made it possible for a grotesque
mediocrity to play a hero’s part.’ 10
There is a prediction in the work, but not one that follows
deductively from laws of science, nor one that is falsifiable and easy
to understand. In 1869 Marx wrote that the concluding words of his
work – which he says he has not robbed of its ‘peculiar colouring’ –
have already been fulfilled: ‘but when this imperial mantle [of
Napoleon] falls at last onto the shoulders of Louis Bonaparte, the
bronze of Napoleon, high on the column in the Place Vendôme, will
plunge to the ground’ (109). The statue, however, was not literally
taken down until the spring of 1871 during the Commune. In 1869
Marx was presumably referring to the part of his prediction fulfilled
by Louis Bonaparte’s assumption of the title Emperor in December
Reading Marx through the Eighteenth Brumaire
117
1852, which occurred shortly after Marx had finished writing his
text in March.
This sets the stage for the primary way that the Brumaire has been
read ever since. Does it confirm a scientific method for Marx in the
way its arguments and evidence are constructed, and in its authorial
intent? If so, what are the key passages, and why then the invective?
If not, what are the implications for the view that Marx was a
scientist of history and politics? Moreover, does the text actually
state a version of the ‘great law of motion’ that Engels attributes to
Marx? If so, how do those sections of the text relate to other places
where Marx (and, additionally, Engels) state these propositions? If
not, what do those sections of the text say instead, and what does
that imply about the status of other passages in other texts that are
thought to state this law?
The Eighteenth Brumaire lies between The German Ideology
manuscripts (1845–46) and the ‘Preface’ (1859) to A Contribution to
the Critique of Political Economy. If you read Marx through this lens –
the ‘law and the propositions’ of ‘the materialist interpretation of
history’ – then you can read the 1852 version chronologically as
another stage on the way to the ‘Preface’ (1859), or you can read the
1852 text itself doctrinally through the ‘final’ version of the
‘materialist interpretation of history’, as we have it from the 1859
‘Preface’ and Engels’s glosses of that year and later.11 However, if you
think that the Eighteenth Brumaire produces a version of these famous
generalisations that is significantly different from either of the other
versions, then you can join mainstream commentary which values
the work, either because it contains a sociologically more sensitive
version than elsewhere, or because it crucially demonstrates that
Marx was intellectually confused about the whole issue.
Alternatively, and radically, there may be a way of reading Marx
through his ‘historical’ works, in which he really gets to grips with
political analysis. His more abstract generalisations can then be reinterpreted in that light, rather than chopped about in a Procrustean
way to fit a preconceived notion of science. Some of these generalisations are indeed rather lengthy and worked out to a certain degree;
the discussions in The German Ideology are a case in point (though
there are irresolvable interpretive problems with that text).12 Other
formulations are much more concise, most famously the rather
confused and confusing ‘materialist conception of history’ passages
in the ‘Preface’ (1859) to A Contribution to the Critique of Political
Economy. I sense a certain diffidence and half-heartedness about that
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Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire
text (as well as signs of panic at being late for a publisher’s deadline).
Why should readers really need a ‘guiding thread’? It looks tacked
on. This ‘Preface’ really does not sound like some great law from
which a work of science necessarily unfolds from within itself. By
the time of Capital, Vol. I, this locus classicus of Marxian scientific
methodology has shrunk to a footnote.13
The Eighteenth Brumaire rehearses a number of ideas very similar to
Marx’s generalisations of 1859, and these passages suffer from much
the same defects. Or rather they seem to, if our expectations as
readers tell us that Marx should be writing in clear, testable propositions. If they don’t, then he’s not in trouble. If he’s not in trouble
in the Eighteenth Brumaire, then perhaps the onus is on readers to get
to grips with the extensive and problematic character of his critique
of political economy (which is what happens after the now famous
‘Preface’ in the book A Contribution to the Critique of Political
Economy), and indeed to make use of the ‘Preface’, if at all, only in
the manner of a ‘guiding thread’.
Much the same then applies to the Eighteenth Brumaire, in that the
now famous ‘forerunner’ passages (42–3), less than half a page in all,
and less than one paragraph, can sink back into the narrative flow
and sociopolitical analysis of class struggle. In that way the interplay
between individual characters, groups and factions, and the
overarching features of a class-divided economy, will come to the
fore, and much more of Marx’s technicolour writing will reach the
reader. This will have the effect of opening out the issue of class
struggle politically, rather than closing it down to an academic
problem scientifically. Marx’s analysis is sharp and his writing is
vivid. Present-day readers will find analogies in contemporary
politics. My own was to think of the militarised and authoritarian
character of the ‘Thatcher years’, not to mention the sleaze, and then
to gasp, when Marx was thundering through the events of the coup,
‘How close we got to it!’
Of all Marx’s writings the Eighteenth Brumaire has the most
extravagant imagery, withering scorn and scathing satire. I am
leaving the issues around the ‘materialist interpretation of history’
aside now, and, contra Engels, taking the view that Marx’s invective
and sarcasm was the point. These were intended, presumably, to
have illocutionary force in international politics, that is, writing that
Louis Bonaparte was rubbish would actually rubbish him. The
Eighteenth Brumaire is also the victim of the worst translation into
English of any of his works; the ‘classic’ English text dates from
Reading Marx through the Eighteenth Brumaire
119
1897–98, and was done by Daniel de Leon in New York. This is a
shame, and clearly detracts from any perlocutionary force that
present-day readers might experience, subject to appropriate
historical and contextual transference, that is, they might make
judgements and actions about contemporary politics as a result of
reading Marx’s text. Much of the language in that translation is
neither English nor German, and Marx’s brilliance as a writer, in this
text above all, has been sleeping for about 100 years in the Englishspeaking world.
Marx advanced his arguments in the Eighteenth Brumaire through
writing that deploys metaphor on a sliding scale from the literal to
the burlesque. There are also ideas in the images and tropes, rather
than the other way round, and remarkable levels of irony, even for
Marx. Marx wrote about politics in France for a German audience,
and employed terms for French institutions in French as well as in
Germanised loan words from French. Making this intelligible for
contemporary readers of English is something of a challenge, particularly as there are no exact political equivalents in Anglophone
history for the institutions Marx was writing about. Getting his
highly coordinated choice of terms to work together in a different
language, in a different time, and still make him Marx (and not some
honorary Victorian Englishman), is tricky.14
In the discussion that follows I canvass some of these issues and
suggest that rather than stripping away the linguistic extravagance to
find the ideas, we reverse the process and find the ideas in the choice
of words and imagery. After all, Marx wrote it that way. This strategy
displaces the established reading, which is that Marx’s texts have to
be about science, and about historical materialism, or they are not
really worth reading, and certainly not for the verbal effects. Actually
those special effects were the closest Marx could get to the movies.
There are a number of controlling, analytical ideas in Marx’s text,
to which he adapted his metaphors, some of which are extraordinarily visual and dramatic. Within the register of the visual and
dramatic, he was equally at ease with images from Greek and
Roman literature, the Bible and Church doctrine, and a huge range
of other ideas from magic to masquerade. The introductory section
set a very tight framework, which the succeeding six sections filled
out. No doubt there are other ways of analysing what Marx was
doing when he selected and manipulated his imagery, but in terms
of controlling ideas I would choose the following: hero/fool,
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Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire
original/caricature, masquerade/parody, downward slope/upward
slope, progress/reversion, construction/destruction.
At the outset the overall trope is repetition, captured in the
opening line: ‘Hegel observes somewhere that all the great events
and characters of world history occur twice, so to speak’ (19). The
corresponding footnotes in Marx and Engels, Collected Works, and in
MEGA2, trace the origins of this to Hegel’s Philosophy of History,
where the idea is that the same thing simply happens twice, or more
specifically, that a transformation in state power must occur twice
before it is sanctioned by the opinion of the people. Hegel wrote that
those wanting to undo a coup (such as the conspirators against Julius
Caesar) needed to do more to restore the Roman Republic than
merely kill him. Repetition creates realities seems to be Hegel’s
message: ‘Thus, Napoleon was defeated twice and twice the
Bourbons were driven out.’
Marx was possibly recalling a letter from Engels (of 3 December
1851) in which historical events are described as ‘the first time high
tragedy and the second time low farce’. Engels was possibly recalling
earlier works by Marx in which world historical events culminate in
comedy or in the rule of a comedian. Both were recalling the intellectual fireworks of their youthful days as Young Hegelians.15 Marx
thus developed the notion of repetition, making the first and second
occurrences different, and eventually substituting a much more
dynamic idea as to what is required to produce a revolutionary
overthrow of state and society.
Marx’s notion of repetition with difference was thus enriched by
the notion of a decline from heroism to foolishness: ‘... the London
constable [Louis Bonaparte] ... after the little corporal [Napoleon
Bonaparte] ... The eighteenth Brumaire of the fool after the
eighteenth Brumaire of the genius!’ (19). Not content with
denigration Marx moved on to the cartoon send-up, and the notion
of the second imprint or bad copy. This is a realm of living satire and
reductio ad absurdum: ‘The first time France was on the verge of
bankruptcy, this time [Louis] Bonaparte is on the brink of debtors’
prison’ (19).
The most famous passage in the Eighteenth Brumaire also occurs in
the introductory section: ‘Men make their own history, but they do
not make it just as they please in circumstances they choose for
themselves; rather they make it in present circumstances, given and
inherited.’ The most astonishingly original and egregiously underestimated of Marx’s devices in the Eighteenth Brumaire is not the idea
Reading Marx through the Eighteenth Brumaire
121
that people make history albeit under constraints. The novelty is
rather the identification of ‘circumstances, given and inherited’ –
not with economic conditions or relations of production or any such
‘material’ feature of experience – but with something quite different:
‘tradition from all the dead generations’ weighing ‘like a nightmare
on the brain of the living’ (19).
The next shock for the contemporary reader is finding out that this
nightmare world of tradition is, in Marx’s view, politically productive.
From ‘things happening twice’, to ‘the second time as low farce’,
Marx moved on to a notion of doing something once and once only,
but in the guise of a previous event, thus making masquerade the
opposite of farce.16 Farce as cartoon reductio is embarrassing;
performing revolution in the costumes of a prior age is enabling. The
repetition here is in the clothes and set dressing, rather than in the
events. Indeed the revolutionary events that Marx was interested in
were described by him as ‘creating something unprecedented’ (19).
Substantively Marx declared that there have been ‘epochs of revolutionary crisis’, in which ‘spirits of the past’ are ‘nervously’
summoned up, not just in the minds and language of those participating but in uniforms, guise and art forms (19–20). The fusion here
of the nightmare in the individual brain with collective recollection
enacted in ritual is intellectually forward-looking, to say the least.
Thus Luther masqueraded as the Apostle Paul, the [French]
revolution of 1789–1814 draped itself alternately as Roman
republic and Roman empire, and the revolution of 1848 could
come up with nothing better than to parody 1789 at one point,
the revolutionary inheritance of 1793–5 at another. (20)
Strikingly Marx conceptualised the performative side of revolutionmaking in emotional terms. Referring to the pre-history of the 1848
revolution – the heroic events of 1789–1814 – Marx noted that the
unheroic outcome had required an evocation of antique heroism, a
world of ‘antediluvian colossi, and ... resurrected Romans – the
Brutuses, the Gracchuses, the Publicolas, the tribunes, the senators
and Caesar himself’:
But unheroic as bourgeois society is, it nevertheless required
heroism, sacrifice, terror, civil war and national conflict to bring
it into the world. And in the strict classical traditions of the
Roman republic its gladiators found the ideals and art forms, the
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self-deceptions that they needed, in order to hide from themselves
the constrained, bourgeois character of their struggles, and to
keep themselves emotionally at the level of high historical
tragedy. (20–1)
The complication here is that the latter stage of bourgeois
revolution (1848) evoked only the ‘antiquity’ of the revolution of
1789–1814, which was itself conducted in Roman dress. Bourgeois
revolutions, Marx seems to say, require this historical evocation for
emotional reasons, as otherwise the revolution will not be satisfactorily performed. Nonetheless the sequence of revolutionary crises
(1789–1814, 1830, 1848) evidently required to enact this kind of
revolution, and the substantive goal of bourgeois society itself (a
‘dreary realism’ antithetical to the ‘classical traditions of the Roman
republic’) meant that productive masquerade attenuated into evasive
parody and immaterial spectrality:
Thus the resurrection of the dead in those revolutions [1789–1814]
served to glorify new struggles, not to parody the old [1848–51];
to magnify fantastically the given task, not to evade a real
resolution; to recover the spirit of revolution, not to relaunch its
spectre. (21)
Just to reinforce his point Marx added that at an even earlier stage
(pre-1789) in this historical development, ‘Cromwell and the English
had borrowed Old Testament language, passions and delusions for
their bourgeois revolution’. This extends Marx’s revolutionary
sequence back to the 1640s and 1650s, and his line of productive,
parodic counterparts further back to pre-Roman Old Testament
political dramaturgy (21).
The performative aspect of this conceptualisation of what it takes
to get progressive political change (towards this particular goal,
bourgeois society) was explained by Marx in psychological terms as a
theory of language-learning, or rather second language-learning:
[A] beginner studying a new language always translates it back
into his mother tongue; but only when he can use it without
referring back, and thus forsake his native language for the new,
only then has he entered into the spirit of the new language, and
gained the ability to speak it fluently. (20)
Reading Marx through the Eighteenth Brumaire
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Thus the new must come into being through a process of imaginative
anachronism that gives a comforting illusion of familiarity, an
emotional high of heroism and a collective act of performative intercommunication that actually enacts the requisite changes:
Camille Desmoulins, Danton, Robespierre, Saint-Just, Napoleon –
these heroes of the former French revolution, as well as the
political parties and massed crowds alike – accomplished the
business of the day in Roman costumes and with Roman phrases:
the unleashing and consolidation of modern bourgeois society. (20)
What, then, is the connection between antediluvian colossi, whether
of the Old Testament or of classical Rome, and the making of
bourgeois society? Marx seems to say that the work of political
parties, massed crowds and heroes – that is, the dramatis personae of
the sequential revolutionary crises, working in masquerade and thus
resurrecting the dead – were destroying feudalism as a system of
authority and property relationships. In that way they were creating
the conditions for free competition and so unfettering ‘the industrial
productive power of the nation’ (20). Whether this was an
unfettering of pre-existing ‘forces of production’ or an unfettering
of the ability to create such forces is rather a moot point. It is worth
considering that in Marx’s scheme of things – a certain kind of jerky
linearity in historical development – it really doesn’t matter. Change
happens. The added value here is Marx’s emotionally, psychologically and performatively perceptive account of how progressive
politics takes place.
Given Marx’s self-proclaimed goal (in the Communist Manifesto of
1848) of moving history on to the next phase, proletarian revolution
and communist society, it is perhaps surprising, yet again, that his
sequential view of this historical process is remarkably different from
his etiology of bourgeois revolution:
The social revolution of the nineteenth century cannot create its
poetry from the past but only from the future. It cannot begin till
it has stripped off all superstition from the past. Previous
revolutions required recollections of world history in order to dull
themselves to their own content. The revolution of the nineteenth
century must let the dead bury the dead in order to realise its own
content. There phrase transcended content, here content
transcends phrase. (22)
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Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire
The overall trajectory here has more jerkiness than linearity. The
trajectory from feudalism through to bourgeois society is both
upward sloping, towards eventual proletarian revolution, and
downward sloping, towards the immediate ‘content’ of bourgeois
society. This content seems to be the ‘revolutionary starting point,
the situation, the relationships, the exclusive conditions for the
development of a real modern revolution’. Politically this is
described as a ‘situation ... which makes impossible any reversion,
and circumstances themselves cry out:’
Hic Rhodus, hic salta!
Hier ist die Rose, hier tanze!
[There’s no time like the present!] (23)17
Marx’s depiction of these circumstances was again highly
imaginative, including allusions to death, dementia, dejection and
demolition. The bourgeois republic must be destroyed, he said,
before the conditions for successful proletarian revolution are in
place, but the agent of destruction is not the proletariat:
The constitution, the national assembly, the dynastic parties, the
blue [right-wing] and the red [left-wing] republicans, the heroes
of [the Algerian wars in] Africa, the thunder from the grandstand,
the sheet-lightning of the daily press, all the literature, political
names and intellectual reputations, the civil law and the penal
code, liberty, equality and fraternity, and the ninth of May 1852
[when Bonaparte’s presidency was supposed to expire, but didn’t]
– all that has magically vanished under the spell of a man whom
even his enemies would deny was a sorcerer. Universal manhood
suffrage seems to have lasted just long enough to make its own
testament in the eyes of the world and to declare in the very name
of the people: ‘What’s worth building is worth demolishing’
[Goethe, Faust, I]. (23–4)
Moreover (ultimately) successful proletarian revolutions progress in
an almost backwards way, according to Marx, so he did not conceive
of proletarian victory until, paradoxically, the revolutionary class
had reached a dead-end in a sequence of defeats:
[P]roletarian revolutions, such as those of the nineteenth century,
engage in perpetual self-criticism, always stopping in their own
Reading Marx through the Eighteenth Brumaire
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tracks; they return to what is apparently complete in order to
begin it anew, and deride with savage brutality the inadequacies,
weak points and pitiful aspects of their first attempts; they seem
to strike down their adversary, only to have him draw new powers
from the earth and rise against them once more with the strength
of a giant ... (22)
Marx seems to see the proletariat victorious only when stripped of
illusions and superstition, unlike the bourgeoisie, who, through
productive masquerade, were actually rather used to these things.
What buoyed them up (in getting rid of feudalism) then dragged
them down, not as victims of the proletariat, but as victims of
authoritarian militarism of a very low sort. Marx identified Louis
Bonaparte and his thuggish associates and hangers-on with cheats,
crooks, con-men etc. As the story unfolds towards the coup d’état
Marx painted the supposed saviours of the Republic (from workingclass insurrection) as more and more nakedly criminal and enemies,
in fact, of the bourgeoisie and their ideas of ‘order’:
Finally the high priests of the ‘religion of order’ are kicked off
their Pythian tripods, hauled from their beds in the dead of night,
flung into prison vans, thrown into gaols or sent into exile; their
temple is razed to the ground, their mouths are sealed, their pens
broken, their laws torn to shreds in the name of religion, property,
family, order. Bourgeois fanatics for order are shot on their
balconies by mobs of drunken soldiers, their family gods are
profaned, their houses are bombarded for amusement – in the
name of property, family, religion and order. Finally the scum of
bourgeois society forms the holy phalanx of order and the hero
Crapulinski [Louis Bonaparte] seizes the [Palace of the] Tuileries as
‘saviour of society’. (27–8)
Marx was scathing about the elements of bourgeois society that
fooled themselves that this campaign against working-class interests
was being run for the benefit of the republican bourgeoisie:
[T]hey packed up their things, donned their laurel wreaths in
advance of the games, and busied themselves on the financial
exchanges ... The [coup d’état of the] second of December [1851]
struck them like a bolt from the blue, and the peoples that were
willing enough to allow their innermost fears – in an era of
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Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire
cowardly dejection – to be assuaged by the most vociferous
loudmouths will perhaps have convinced themselves that cackling
geese can no longer save the Capitol. (23)
The drama here is the dissolution of the bourgeois republic,
supposedly the vehicle for the development of industrial wealth
within a competitive economy, as it collapses into an authoritarian
and decidedly unbourgeois regime of banditry:
Society is saved as often as its circle of rulers contracts, as a more
exclusive interest is maintained against the wider one. Even the
simplest demand for bourgeois financial reform, for the most
ordinary liberalism, for the most formal republicanism, for the
most basic democracy, is simultaneously castigated as an ‘outrage
to society’ and stigmatized as ‘socialism’. (27)
What brings this on is a temporary collusion between forces uniting
themselves against the massed working class, that is, bourgeois
republicans and armed criminals. Marx memorialised the working
class in its ‘June days’ insurrection of 1848, in which it was defeated,
and after which it went down to further defeats:
As soon as one of the higher social strata plots a revolutionary
trajectory, the proletariat enters into an alliance with it and thus
shares all the defeats which successive parties suffer. But these
further blows are of ever diminishing force the more they are
distributed over the whole surface of society. Its more important
leaders in the assembly and in the press are sacrificed one after
another in the courts, and ever more ambiguous figures take up
leadership ... It seems unable to rediscover revolutionary prowess
or to renew its energy from fresh alliances, until all the classes it
struggled with in June are lying flat out beside it. But at least it was
defeated with the honours of a great world historical struggle; not
only France but all Europe trembles at the June earthquake ... (26)
The truth of these circumstances, for Marx, was that ‘bourgeois
republic means the unlimited despotism of one class over’ (26–7).
This seems to be excellent Hegelianism – progressive development
arising, phoenix-like, from the ashes of irreconcilable contradictions
– but rather poor sociology and politics, not to mention strategy and
tactics for armed revolutionary conflict. However, Marx’s portrayal
Reading Marx through the Eighteenth Brumaire
127
of bourgeois democrats as weak and therefore vulnerable to authoritarians, who can manipulate the politics of class, was prescient.
Further, Marx’s short treatise on the performative power of anachronistic allusions and invocations is startling. The Eighteenth Brumaire
represents a politics of imagination done through writing with extraordinary imagery. It isn’t everything, but it’s a tremendous start.
NOTES
1. Apologies to Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State and Utopia (Oxford: Blackwell,
1974), p. ix.
2. Apologies to Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, in
Later Political Writings, ed. and trans. Terrell Carver (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press), this volume, pp. 19–20. Hereafter numbers
in brackets after quotations from Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire refer to this
edn.
3. Engels to Eduard Bernstein, 2–3 November 1882, in Karl Marx and
Frederick Engels, C.W., Vol. 46, p. 356; see also Engels to Carl Schmidt,
5 August 1890, in Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Selected Correspondence,
trans. I. Lasker, ed. S. Ryazanskaya, 2nd edn (Moscow: Progress, 1965),
p. 415.
4. Marx to Ludwig Kugelmann, 6 March 1868, in C.W., Vol. 42, p. 544.
5. See Terrell Carver, Marx and Engels: The Intellectual Relationship (Brighton:
Harvester/Wheatsheaf, 1983); and Terrell Carver, The Postmodern Marx
(Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998), Ch. 8.
6. Napoleon’s coup d’état of 9 November 1799 (18 Brumaire VIII by the revolutionary calendar) overthrew the ruling Directory of the (First)
Republic.
7. Karl Marx, ‘Preface’ (1869) to The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte,
2nd edn, in C.W., Vol. 21, pp. 56–8.
8. See Isaiah Berlin, Karl Marx, new edn (London: Fontana, 1995), p. 189.
9. Frederick Engels, ‘Preface’ (1885) to Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of
Louis Bonaparte, 3rd edn, in C.W., Vol. 26, pp. 302–3.
10. Marx, ‘Preface’ (1869), pp. 56–7.
11. These issues are discussed in Terrell Carver, Marx’s Social Theory (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1982); for a comparison of the 1845–46 and
1859 texts see Terrell Carver, Marx and Engels, pp. 72–6; see, of course,
G.A. Cohen, Karl Marx’s Theory of History: A Defence (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1978).
12. I discuss problems in and about The German Ideology in Terrell Carver,
Postmodern Marx, Chs 5, 8, 10.
13. Carver, Marx’s Social Theory.
14. I have aired some of these issues in Terrell Carver, ‘Translating Marx’,
Alternatives, Vol. 22 (1997), pp. 191–204, and Postmodern Marx, Ch. 7.
15. Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, C.W., Vol. 11, p. 643, n. 65; Karl Marx
and Friedrich Engels, MEGA2 (Berlin: Dietz, 1985), Vol. I.11.Apparat, pp.
738–9.
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16. My use of the notions of masquerade and performativity is derived from
Judith Butler, Gender Trouble (London: Routledge, 1990).
17. This quotation derives from Hegel’s ‘Preface’ to his Philosophy of Right,
and consists of a Greek passage from Aesop, followed by a Latin
translation. The quotation comes from a story in which a braggart boasts
that he once made a stupendous jump in Rhodes, and then a bystander
says, in effect, ‘if so, you can do it here’. Hegel constructs a German
version, punning first on the Greek (Rhodos = Rhodes, rhodon = rose) and
then on the Latin (saltus = jump, salta = dance!), alluding obscurely to
Rosicrucianism, which finds the rose in the cross, and joy in tragedy –
or at least that is what Hegel seems to think. See G.W.F. Hegel, Philosophy
of Right, trans. T.M. Knox (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1965), p. 303,
n. 31, n. 33, n. 34. Given that the Latin line from Aesop was something
of an adage, I have given an English ‘drift’ of this in square brackets.
Warm thanks and grateful acknowledgement to Henry Hardy, Wolfson
College, Oxford, for his scholarly work on this widely misinterpreted
conundrum.
4
Performing Politics:
Class, Ideology and Discourse
in Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire
James Martin
The end of 1851: revolutionary advances have swiftly degenerated.
Bourgeois reaction and petty intrigue have led to a coup d’état by
Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte. The bourgeoisie, unable to stabilise its
political rule, has opted to destroy its own parliamentary power-base
passing the reins to a ‘fake-on-the-make’. How does Marx choose to
narrate this miserable historical episode? Not with the distanced
‘objectivity’ of a social scientist but with the bitter prejudgement of
a theatre critic. The Eighteenth Brumaire is a review of a ‘low farce’ in
three acts. While it is a ‘class analysis’ of a particular historical
conjuncture, what stands out are the tropes of farce. In interpreting
the crisis Marx presents us with improbable events, inversions of
expected behaviour and exaggerated responses all performed in
outlandish costume.
In this chapter I want to draw some parallels between Marx’s text
and contemporary theories of politics as a ‘performative’ activity in
Austin’s sense of a ‘speech act’ that brings into being a certain state
of affairs.1 A performative differs with a constative that seeks to
‘reflect’ or describe the world. The words ‘I do’ in a wedding
ceremony do not reflect or describe a state affairs, they effectively
bring it about. On the basis of this recognition certain strands of contemporary theory make the claim that politics is not so much a
reflection of something that pre-exists it (such as Reason, selfinterest, etc.) but is, rather, a performative act. Agents and/or the
contexts in which they act are themselves produced in the process
of action itself. This logic of the performative cuts across any strict
distinction between the ‘real’ or material and the mental or
‘imagined’. Such a view is closely associated with the ‘linguistic turn’
in social and political theory, particularly its most recent
‘postmodern’ incarnations. The idea that the world is constituted
through ‘discourses’ that frame the meaning of its subjects and
objects is increasingly commonplace, if still controversial, in the
texts of the social and political sciences.
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Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire
There is no space here for a full treatment of this argument or its
implications but it is certain that it challenges the widespread notion
that political activity always masks a more fundamental, ‘underlying’
reality of interests or motivations. This does not mean that the world
is simply fabricated in any way we please, that things are ‘whatever
we say they are’. It means that what we take as the ‘material’
conditions of politics (its agents, their interests, structural
constraints, etc.) are, in a fundamental sense, fictive constructs that
set limits to how we might think or act.2 To understand politics it is
not enough simply to ‘reveal’ the true forces at play ‘beneath the
surface’. It is necessary to understand how the parameters of politics
are themselves defined and contested by and through processes that
are performative in nature. I will argue that this logic of the performative is evident in an untheorised but nevertheless tantalising way
in Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire. I will then go on to discuss three contemporary theorisations of politics which take the performative as
their point of departure.
STAGING THE REVOLUTION
Marx opens his analysis of the Eighteenth Brumaire with a short
commentary on the imaginary themes through which revolutions
are made that sets the tone for much of the rest of the book. It has
been necessary, he claims, for revolutionaries to ‘summon up the
spirits of the past ... to enact new scenes in world history’.3 Bourgeois
revolutions often invoke historical references and symbols – the ‘dead
weight of tradition’ – to legitimise and so ease the momentous breach
they make with earlier orders. Yet he draws a crucial contrast between
the French revolution of 1789 and that which overthrew the July
Monarchy in 1848. Whereas the first was brought about by ‘heroes’
and invoked images of the Roman republic in order to ‘glorify new
struggles’ and to ‘magnify fantastically the given task’, the second
was a grotesque ‘parody’ whose ‘resurrection of the dead’ (that is, its
referencing of the events and characters of 1789) ultimately resolved
nothing. The revolution of 1848 represents ‘low farce’ when
compared to its more edifying original. In a further contrast, he
points out that the future proletarian revolution will ‘let the dead
bury the dead’. It will require none of this ‘superstition’ and fanciful
rhetoric to fulfil its promise. Instead it will be nourished on ‘perpetual
self-criticism’ and a realistic understanding of the task at hand.
What is striking about Marx’s analysis is that despite his
invocation of the more austere, self-critical character of a proletarian
Class, Ideology and Discourse
131
revolutionary perspective – with which we must assume he identifies
– he nevertheless employs a rich, figurative language to describe and
evaluate the events he is examining. The theatrical dimension –
though employed to disparage the events as ludicrous – is incorporated into his own analysis as part of his critical interpretation.
Clearly, in his view classes are the underlying forces but they figure
as dominant interests rather than as evidence of the ‘determination’
of society in general by the economic base. The succession of events
is narrated not simply as the conjunctural interplay of class forces
but precisely as the ‘low farce’ he announces in his first paragraph –
with all its ridiculous characters and sudden, implausible turns in
the plot. Needless to say, class interests are presented at various
points, and somewhat inconsistently, as the motivation behind a
number of decisions. But what occupies the narrator is not
exclusively the ‘real interests’ obscured by the day-to-day events but
also the imaginary terrain of political conflict in which alliances
shift, paradoxes arise, events are mishandled. Superstitions, blind
prejudices, and blatant opportunism come into play just as much as
the interests of social classes. Considering the shifting meanings of
the revolution’s ‘catch-phrases’ (for example, ‘property, family, religion,
order’),4 the hysterical positioning of different factions in relation to
each other (for example, ‘Even bourgeois liberalism is decried as
socialistic …’)5 and Bonaparte’s ability to represent the peasantry ‘by
means of the ghost of an Empire’6 we are encouraged to understand
this complex process by taking into account the self-perceptions and
motivations, however deluded, of the actors themselves. It is
precisely these symbolic ‘phrases’ and not exclusively their material
‘content’ that shape the flow of events and their eventual outcome.
Marx offers us little in the way of sound methodological pointers
for conducting such a political analysis. What he does say is not consistently followed through in the text. For instance, he makes a key
reference to the way ‘different forms of property’ give rise to a ‘superstructure of different and peculiarly formed sentiments, delusions,
modes of thought and outlooks on life’. An individual may mistake
this surface ‘image’ for ‘real motives’ which in fact derive from
property relations.7 This familiar analytical framework is not,
however, rigorously employed by Marx himself. At times class
interests seem to be the real motivations, at other times peculiarly
formed sentiments are clearly at work. This does not suggest that
Marx is working with an implausible methodology – it is not evident
that he is working with one at all. That makes it difficult, if we are
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Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire
looking for a clear Marxist ‘method’, satisfactorily to reconcile the
Eighteenth Brumaire with Marx’s more well-known remarks on history
and society. Clearly this was not, in this instance, Marx’s own preoccupation. For those who believe Marxism is a theory of history first
and only secondly a political theory this is clearly a dilemma. There
is no evidence in this analysis that property relations are understood
to ‘determine’ consciousness in anything but an indirect and
haphazard way. But for those not seeking such a method the
Eighteenth Brumaire suggests a rather more interesting lesson: that a
symbolic dimension is integral to the ‘material’ operation of the
social, especially political, world and requires interpretation as such.
We might say that the staging of events must be the object of analysis
because there is nobody hiding in the wings directing the action.
The 1848 revolution in France was profoundly ambiguous, in itself
and in its implications, especially for direct observers and those
involved. This point is underlined by art historian T.J. Clark who,
considering the effect of the events of 1848–51 on French painters,
argues that the precise meaning of the revolutions was never at all
transparent.8 The diverse composition of class forces in February
meant that ‘[t]he revolution was a triumph for the bourgeoisie, yet
it struck fear into its heart’.9 Ordinary people were both revered and
reviled as both the symbol of popular revolt and as ‘barbarians’ only
too ready to destroy civilisation. This was not simply paranoia:
workers actually fought on both sides of the barricades in June 1848,
that is, both for and against the republican bourgeoisie. The political
forces in February (and later) consisted of unstable and complex
coalitions of bourgeoisie, shopkeepers, craftsmen, artisans, rural
peasants, etc. The political terrain was shifting and deeply confused
and there was not always clarity as to who was fighting for what. In
this context, conjuring up the ‘spirits of the past’ was not just some
sly effort at propaganda but a way of stabilising a volatile situation
by ‘calling on old resentments and memories’.10
Marx’s figurative language might be understood, then, not simply
as evidence of his flare for the dramatic but an implicit recognition
that the events of 1848–51 must be understood in terms that
recognise the symbolic dimension in which they unfolded. That
‘class interests’ are key to this process is undoubtedly true for him,
yet that particular ‘Marxist’ insight never overwhelms his analysis
in the way encouraged by the crude base/superstructure model (often
taken to be the essential principle of Marxist social theory). Marx’s
Eighteenth Brumaire embodies a recognition (though not a theorisa-
Class, Ideology and Discourse
133
tion) of the ‘performative’ character of politics, that is, the manner
in which the symbolic is not simply some secondary ‘level’ perched
upon the hard rock of property relations but is itself integral to the
materialisation of class power. One hundred and fifty years later, that
point has become central to innovations in theorising politics and
the political.
PERFORMING POLITICS: BEYOND CLASS AND IDEOLOGY
Contemporary ‘post-Marxist’ theories have increasingly focused on
the symbolic dimension in the constitution of political identities
and the defining of their terrain of contest. In particular ‘class’ and
‘ideology’ have been diminished as operative terms in political
analysis and substituted by concepts such as ‘identity’ and
‘discourse’. Whilst some Marxists pass this off as a bizarre
postmodern delusion in which once sophisticated Marxist theoreticians have swapped serious analysis for some kind of fantasy world
where ‘anything goes’, a less reactionary approach makes clear the
effort to conceive politics and the political more critically than
reference to class and ideology has allowed.11
The problem with class analysis lies in its abstract and reductive
character. Whilst it is possible to abstractly identify different class
positions in relation to a capitalist economy, any concrete analysis
has to take into account a wider variety of social forces that do not
easily fall into a ‘proletarian’ or ‘bourgeois’ camp. At the same time,
trying to place individuals, their actions and beliefs into a class
category involves a reduction of social complexity that, increasingly,
is considered illegitimate. This is not to say that ‘class’ is not at times
a useful shorthand for a variety of phenomena. But it is an imprecise
shorthand and fails to fully grasp the character of different social
identities and antagonisms. Few post-Marxists would deny the classdivided character of capitalism. But to say that classes are the major
social forces upon which the entirety of society is built is a different
matter altogether. As Barry Hindess argues, classes do not exist as
coherent collective agents able to act on the basis of pre-existing
‘interests’ that can be derived from a social structure.12 We may
classify the distribution of certain of the benefits and losses of
capitalism in terms of classes but this does not make an automatic
case for political agency.
Debates on ideology over the past three decades have followed
this growing dissatisfaction with class analysis. Ideology – in the
sense of beliefs, identities, language and other ‘forms of conscious-
134
Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire
ness’ – cannot be shown to have an automatic ‘class’ character. Many
different types of ideological thought (e.g. ethnic or sexual identity)
and practice (e.g. participation in democratic elections) are
irreducible to a specific position in a class structure, although actual
classes may adopt and modify them on certain occasions. The
alignment between class position in an economic structure and
ideology has come to be conceived by some as a ‘relatively
autonomous’ relationship, for others as ‘non-necessary’. 13 For others
still, the symbolic realm denoted by the concept of ideology needs
to be entirely rethought in such a way that its independence is not
always asserted in relation to an economic base external to it. In the
late 1970s and 1980s, under the influence of different currents of
‘post-structuralist’ and psychoanalytic thought, the argument
became increasingly popular that language and discourse can be
regarded not just as ‘autonomous’ but rather as a constitutive
dimension of social life. This does not mean that social structures do
not influence political identities but rather that they cannot be
conceived as external and independent of the discursive realm.
This movement away from a reliance on class and ideology as
‘objective’ references in social and political analysis has been
fundamental in providing space for the concept of the performative
in radical political theory. Let us consider briefly three contemporary proponents of this argument: Judith Butler, Slavoj Zizek and
Ernesto Laclau.
The idea of politics as a type of performance is today closely
associated with the feminist theorist Judith Butler.14 Butler has
developed the idea that sexual identity is discursively performed
rather than ascribed by nature. In Gender Trouble her argument
follows Foucault’s notion that bodies are ‘sites of inscription’ onto
which particular conceptions are projected through the discursive
practices of medicine and so on. Foucault rejects the idea of a preconstituted subject as the starting point of social analysis; subjects
are themselves produced in distinctive ways through acts of power
in which the self is moulded through techniques and knowledges
applied to it. For Butler, the argument extends to sexual identity, in
particular the notion of heterosexual difference (that is, the idea that
there is by nature an essential difference between male and female
sexes). Heterosexuality is typically assumed to be a natural, structural
difference around which a variety of social constructions – or
‘genders’ – are later moulded. Such an assumption has been crucial
to the feminist movement who typically argue from the position of
Class, Ideology and Discourse
135
the subordinated other: namely, ‘woman’. However, Butler
challenges this notion by claiming that heterosexual difference is
not an ‘essential’ structure of human life but a social construction.
Heterosexual difference – the binary distinction between ‘male’
and ‘female’ – is conceived by Butler in terms of Austin’s notion of
a performative, that is, a claim whose validity stems from being acted
out or performed. For Butler, sex classifications are not descriptions
of natural dispositions but are the effects of practices that invoke the
reality that ‘male’ and ‘female’ purport to describe. Sexual identity
is ultimately a product of performed practices that generate
appearances that imply an internal essence: ‘what we take to be an
“internal” feature of ourselves is one that we anticipate and produce
through certain bodily acts’.15
This is not say that sexual identity is simply a matter of the will,
of ‘dressing up’ as one pleases. In Bodies that Matter Butler develops
her argument by recognising the materiality of sexual difference, its
apparently ‘natural’ and incontestable character. Yet materiality, she
argues, is the ‘effect of power’, the embeddedness of cultural constructions in practices that efface their own contingency and
therefore seem natural. Thus ‘performativity must be understood not
as a singular or deliberate “act”, but, rather, as the reiterative and
citational practice by which discourse produces effects that it
names’.16 The widespread and persistent performance of sexual
difference – as though it inhered within the body as a natural
disposition – endows it with a material presence and provides its
bearer with a sense of legitimate ‘personhood’. Yet, performativity
highlights acts of subversion as well as imposition; the meaning and
character of ‘sex’ is open to modification in the same moment as it
is reproduced. Thus it is the performative character of sexual identity
that makes ‘parody’ and other kinds of symbolic manipulation so
fascinating. Parodic practices such as cross-dressing both affirm the
assumed reality of sexual difference and subvert it by revealing its
contingency on the outward display of an elusive internal essence.
Butler has expanded the notion of performativity from her initial
concern with sexual identity to wider contexts of political interest.
In Excitable Speech she examines the power of ‘hate’ speech to
constitute subjects as intrinsically inferior. Importantly, for our
discussion, in 1998 she published a piece in New Left Review rejecting
claims that the politics of sexuality and ‘race’, along with other new
social movements, could be dismissed by Marxists as ‘merely
cultural’ in contrast to the materiality of class politics.17 She argues
136
Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire
that the cultural construction of legitimate personhood (which her
theory of performativity takes as its focus) is integral to the
materiality of political economy. Sexuality and its regulation must be
understood as part of the mode of production not an entirely
separate concern or related only marginally.18 The family, welfare
entitlements, civil law and so forth are elements of ‘the economy’
in the broad sense of ‘the reproduction of goods and the social reproduction of persons’19 and are fundamental sites in the social
regulation – and hence performativity – of sexual identity.
The ‘material’ character of ideology is a key theme in the work of
Slavoj Zizek and bears a certain resemblance to the notion of performativity in Butler. Drawing on the psychoanalytic theory of
Jacques Lacan, Zizek argues that fantasy should be understood as a
necessary support to social reality not its opposite. Rejecting the
common Marxist notion of ideology as misrecognition of an external
reality, Zizek insists that the real issue isn’t really what people
believe. It is crucial only that people act as if certain things were
true.20 So long as their actions are regulated by this ‘as if’ then their
experience of the world retains a degree of ‘normalcy’. Thus he
insists that people tend to know the gloss of propaganda is never
literally true, that, for example, money isn’t intrinsically valuable or
that the totalitarian state isn’t really working efficiently. Drawing on
Marx’s theory of commodity fetishism, Zizek argues that ideology
should be conceived in terms of the ‘fantasy space’ that structures
social experience prior to any specific belief we hold within it.
Ideology is not a dreamlike illusion that we build to escape insupportable reality; in its basic dimension it is a fantasy-construction
which serves as a support for our reality itself: an ‘illusion’ which
structures our effective, real social relations …21
The illusion is necessary because human subjects are, according to
Lacanian theory, constitutively lacking a positive identity: ‘Fantasy
is … an imaginary scenario the function of which is to provide a
kind of positive support filling out the subject’s constitutive void.’22
The ideological fantasy regulates our often mundane reality and in
a quite material way constructs our sense of ‘being’; it serves as a
space into which certain desires can be projected and an essential
emptiness can be filled.23 The fantasy ‘sets a scene’, stages a play, in
which we may play a role, yet we need not fully identify with that
role. We can be as cynical as we like, yet still exchange commodities
Class, Ideology and Discourse
137
in capitalism; or we can demand our ‘universal rights’ as ‘free’
individuals, yet be perfectly aware that such rights are not all
compatible or equally shared. Paradoxically, Zizek points out that
‘too literal’ an identification with an ideology can in fact undermine
its functioning. The zealots of capitalism or of totalitarian societies
believe too much that equal exchange or the command economy
can produce a harmonious society and so cannot adequately explain
the empirical anomalies. For fantasy to work, a certain ‘distance’
must be taken between individual belief and the fantasy scenario
that regulates the subject’s behaviour.24 Indeed, ‘[t]his very distance
is ideology. Ideological identification exerts a true hold on us
precisely when we maintain an awareness that we are not fully
identical to it, that there is a rich human person beneath it.’25
If fantasy functions to conceal the traumatic lack in the subject,
it is nevertheless a fragile construction, constantly haunted by the
emptiness it seeks to occlude. As often as he highlights the fantasy
at work in material practices, Zizek alerts us to the ‘obscene’,
‘repressed’ and ‘horrific’ elements that return to undermine the
world it constructs. The other side of fantasy is an anxiety produced
by the gap between our image of a well-ordered reality and the leftover (the Real) that cannot be assimilated. The fantasy can be
maintained only by neutralising the remainder. Following Lacan,
Zizek argues that this remainder embodies jouissance (enjoyment),
the image of a pre-symbolic fullness that destabilises our neatly
regulated fantasy space. The disruption of fantasy is typically given
form by the identification of an ‘other’ who wants to ‘steal our
enjoyment’. Thus the fantasy of settled national identity is often
constructed around a fascination with the pleasures of the other who
‘undermines’ the nation’s purity. For example, the sexual, culinary
or personal habits of the Jews, blacks or Catholics whose presence
supposedly ‘hinders’ the full realisation of the fantasy-nation. It is
just this obsessive concern with the pleasures of the other that Zizek
notes in contemporary racial and nationalist discourses. But it can
also be detected in liberal democratic ideas in which the fantasy of
the harmonious liberal community persistently slides into an
obsession with the ‘enemies’ of the nation.26
Our third and final theorisation of the performative character of
politics lies in the work of Ernesto Laclau. In a number of recent
works Laclau has developed a political theory of discourse that builds
upon the arguments first published with Chantal Mouffe in
Hegemony and Socialist Strategy.27 In that text Laclau and Mouffe
138
Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire
argued against a Marxist ‘economism’ which theorised politics
exclusively from the perspective of a determining economic base.
Rejecting the idea of an economic instance autonomous from the
rest of the social totality and exerting a ‘necessary’ determining force
over it, Laclau and Mouffe claim that society is constituted ‘discursively’. That is, its organising principles are not fixed and law-like
but symbolic patterns of differences that overlap, mutually constrain
and modify each other. Political subjects cannot, therefore, be
inferred a priori from some pure, abstract structure but are contingent
products of concrete struggles and conflicts. Social classes, therefore,
have no privileged place in left-wing struggles; their leading role in
socialist politics is not guaranteed by the ‘laws of history’ or the
primacy of the economic structure in historical change.
For Laclau and Mouffe, political identities are the outcome of
particular conflicts that succeed in unifying a multiplicity of
demands around a generalised antagonism. Importantly, it is
‘antagonism’ itself that unifies or, adapting Gramsci, hegemonises
particular identities by generating a ‘chain of equivalence’ amongst
their different demands and positioning them against a global
oppressor (e.g. capitalism, the state, ‘infidels’, etc.).28 For Laclau and
Mouffe, antagonism is not algorithmic, the calculable outcome of a
structural contradiction (e.g. between classes); rather, it is a
distinctive social experience in which particular identities face an
enemy deemed to ‘threaten’ or negate the very being of a social
group. This sense of threat modifies the identity of the group,
causing it to lose its differential character in relation to other groups
and permits it to be placed alongside them in a common space.
Laclau and Mouffe claim that ‘antagonism is the limit of all
objectivity’, it is the limit of the social.29 By this they mean that
political identities do not have an essentially objective character that
can be determined prior to the context in which they emerge. What
we are as political subjects (for example, nationalists, workers,
Royalists, Christians, etc.) is dependent upon what we identify as a
limit on our being, as ‘Other’ (e.g. foreigners, capitalists, republicans,
heathens, etc.). Thus the distinction between ‘real’ and ‘false’
interests or needs around which social agents are formed is bound up
with the effort to define social reality. In short political struggle is a
process with intrinsically symbolic dimensions in which ‘objectivity’
is itself part of the contest.
Laclau has developed his theory of discourse in recent years to
interpret the processes of signification at work in politics.30 Central
Class, Ideology and Discourse
139
to his argument has been the concept of the ‘empty signifier’. An
empty signifier is a sign which loses its particular reference and
comes to stand as the symbol of a generic equivalence between differential identities.31 Concepts such as ‘Justice’, ‘Freedom’ and
‘Order’ typically function in this way as the unifying theme articulating a variety of identities and demands. The distinctive role of
empty signifiers is to serve as a generic ‘frontier’ separating legitimate
and illegitimate demands and symbolising a shared aspiration to
overcome repression. Because particular identities are always partial
and incomplete, contingently produced through differences raised in
the process of struggle and conflict, the empty signifier symbolises
what Laclau calls an ‘absent fullness’, the (impossible) settled
identity that is yet to be attained. Thus, paradoxically, it is what
negates a group that gives it a positive identity. Political struggle
involves, for Laclau, certain social groups trying to present
themselves as the ‘incarnation’ of this absent fullness, that is, as the
unique social agency able to embody the universal demand for
Order, Justice, etc. It is this attempt to incarnate universal categories
that Laclau conceives as the key move in the politics of hegemony.
These theoretical approaches differ in important ways and it
would be wrong to assume there is an easy fit between each (as a
recently published ‘dialogue’ between the authors shows).32
However, there are a number of overlapping concerns that unify
them: a rejection of the notion of a preconstituted ‘self’ or subject;
the rejection of class and economic structures as a privileged starting
point for analysis; a concern with the way the subject’s identity is
contingently constructed through a socio-symbolic (or discursive)
process which constitutes the subject as ‘already given’, that is, as
having a positive essence that exists prior to its context; and a
conception of ideological mechanisms not as concealing an
independent reality but, on the contrary, as concealing the impossibility of a fully determined, independent reality. For each, political
struggle involves a performative dimension whereby certain kinds
of imaginary identification bring into being the terrain on which
subjects contest their ‘interests’, however these are then defined.
CONCLUSION
Inevitably, doubts will arise as to how political analyses that focus
on, or begin from, a symbolic dimension can remain properly
engaged with the effective constraints of socio-economic and
political struggles. Importantly, however, none of the theories above
140
Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire
denies the significance of capitalism as a fundamental context in
which political struggle occurs. Indeed, for Zizek the commodification of individual identity in capitalism is key to his continued
commitment to a form of Marxism.33 Yet, the explicit rejection of a
distinction between the symbolic and the material sets these thinkers
apart from a traditional Marxist agenda. Capitalism is one of a
number of overlapping contexts around which discursive identifications might be made. For Butler and Laclau, in particular, this
steering away from capitalism as the baseline of all political action
underscores strong support for a radical pluralism in which a variety
of social movements are conceived as legitimate agents of change.
Critics may well bemoan this focus on the discursive as a
distraction from the underlying forces at work in the contemporary
global-capitalist order. But the above thinkers’ arguments are not in
any way ‘anti-Marxist’ if by that we mean opposed to a critical
account of the structuring effects of capitalism on society, its role in
producing conflict and antagonism and, at the same time,
generating ideology that obscures its effects. Indeed, it is interesting
to note that key elements in these theories are already present in
Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire: the parodic character of the 1848
revolutions, and Louis-Napoleon in particular; the colliding fantasy
worlds of the different bourgeois, socialist and Royalist parties; the
struggle by Bonaparte and the parties to hegemonise empty signifiers
such as ‘Order’ and ‘the Republic’. However, where these thinkers
differ fundamentally from Marx is with his claim that the symbolic
dimension, or its need, will be surpassed by a more honest ‘facing
the facts’ by a genuinely radical political subject. The realm of
fantasy, imagination and discourse are not exclusively bourgeois
instruments but must be integral to any collective mobilisation;
indeed, they are a constitutive dimension of collectivity itself. By
suggesting that proletarian revolutionaries will abandon superstition
Marx seems to indulge in the very ideological misconception that
contemporary theorists warn us against: namely, to believe that
‘reality’ can be accessed and transformed without recourse to fantasy,
imagination and discourse.
Of course, Marx does not set out a theory of the performative or
try in some way to anticipate post-modern concerns with language,
discourse and identity. But implicit in what he writes is an
assumption that political struggle must, at some level, be read in
terms of its symbols and imaginary constructions because these are
effective elements in making history. If contemporary social and
Class, Ideology and Discourse
141
political theorists take this point much further than Marx, they do
so not to diminish the constraints on political action but to ensure
that however ‘new scenes in world history’ are ‘acted out’ the
performance will not be an empty ‘resurrection of the dead’.
NOTES
I am grateful to Alan Finlayson and Adrian Little for their helpful comments
on earlier drafts of this chapter.
1. See J.L. Austin, How to Do Things with Words (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1962).
2. Setting limits, it should be pointed out, is not the same as ‘determining’.
The claim that discourses set limits does not imply that such limits
cannot be contested and/or transformed. Indeed, in political conflicts
that is precisely what we should expect to occur.
3. Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, this volume,
pp. 19–20.
4. See ibid., p. 27.
5. Ibid., p. 56.
6. Ibid., p. 101.
7. See Ibid., p. 43.
8. T.J. Clark, The Absolute Bourgeois: Artists and Politics in France, 1848–1851
(London: Thames & Hudson, 1973).
9. Ibid., p. 10.
10. Ibid., p. 15.
11. For the reactionaries, see, for example, Norman Geras, ‘Post-Marxism?’,
New Left Review, 163 (May–June 1987); Terry Eagleton, Ideology: An Introduction (London: Verso, 1991); Ellen Meiskins Wood, The Retreat from
Class, revised edn (London: Verso, 1998); Jeremy Lester, Dialogue of
Negation (London: Pluto Press, 2000); Paul Reynolds, ‘Post-Marxism:
Radical Political Theory and Practice Beyond Marxism’, in Mark Cowling
and Paul Reynolds (eds), Marxism, The Millennium and Beyond
(Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2000).
12. See Barry Hindess, Politics and Class Analysis (Oxford: Blackwell, 1987),
esp. Chs 2, 6 and 7.
13. See the discussion by Gareth Stedman Jones in the ‘Introduction’ to his
Languages of Class: Studies in English Working Class History 1832–1982
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983).
14. See Judith Butler, Gender Trouble, 2nd edn (New York and London:
Routledge, 1999).
15. Ibid., p. xv.
16. Judith Butler, Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of ‘Sex’ (New
York and London: Routledge, 1993), p. 2.
17. Judith Butler, ‘Merely Cultural’, New Left Review, 227 (January–February
1998), pp. 33–44.
18. Here Butler takes issue with Nancy Fraser’s distinction between a politics
of ‘recognition’ and of ‘redistribution’. See Nancy Fraser, Justice
142
19.
20.
21.
22.
23.
24.
25.
26.
27.
28.
29.
30.
31.
32.
33.
Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire
Interruptus: Critical Reflections on the ‘PostSocialist’ Condition (New York
and London: Routledge, 1997).
Butler, ‘Merely Cultural’, p. 40.
Slavoj Zizek , ‘How Did Marx Invent the Symptom?’ in Slavoj Zizek, The
Sublime Object of Ideology (London and New York: Verso, 1989), p. 36.
Ibid., p. 45.
Slavoj Zizek, ‘Beyond Discourse Analysis’, in Ernesto Laclau, New
Reflections on the Revolution of Our Time (London: Verso, 1990), p. 254.
Slavoj Zizek, ‘Fantasy as a Political Category: A Lacanian Approach’, in
Elizabeth Wright and Edmund Wright (eds), The Zizek Reader (Oxford:
Blackwell, 1999), pp. 89–92. See also, Slavoj Zizek, ‘From Reality to the
Real’, in Slavoj Zizek, Looking Awry: An Introduction to Jacques Lacan
through Popular Culture (Cambridge, Mass. and London: MIT Press, 1991),
p. 8.
Zizek, ‘Fantasy as a Political Category’, pp. 97–9.
Ibid., p. 97.
Slavoj Zizek, ‘Formal Democracy and its Discontents’, in Looking Awry, p.
165.
Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy:
Towards a Radical Democratic Politics, 2nd edn (London: Verso, 2001).
Ibid., pp. 127–34.
See ibid., pp. 122–7.
See Laclau, New Reflections on the Revolution of Our Time and Ernesto
Laclau, Emancipation(s) (London: Verso, 1996).
See Laclau, ‘Why do Empty Signifiers Matter to Politics?’ in Emancipation(s).
See Judith Butler, Ernesto Laclau and Slavoj Zizek, Contingency, Hegemony,
Universality: Contemporary Dialogues on the Left (London: Verso, 2000).
See his comment in his ‘Preface’ to The Zizek Reader (p. ix) that ‘a return
to the centrality of the Marxist critique of political economy is crucial for
my project: the proliferation of the new forms of postmodern political
agents is for me the obverse of the tacit acceptance of global capitalism
as “the only game in town”’.
Part 3
The Eighteenth Brumaire
as History
5
Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte:
‘Hero’ or ‘Grotesque
Mediocrity’?
Roger Price
The debate on the nature of the state continues to be informed by
the contribution of Karl Marx. In The Manifesto of the Communist
Party (1848) he contended that ‘the executive of the modern state is
but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole
bourgeoisie’. It represented the organised power of one class for
oppressing another.1 The forms taken by a state were the product of
class rule at a particular stage of social development. In the first
volume of Capital Marx would insist on the importance of political
repression:
during the historic genesis of capitalist reproduction … [t]he
bourgeoisie, at its rise, wants and uses the power of the state to
‘regulate’ wages, i.e., to force them within the limits suitable for
surplus value making, to lengthen the working day and to keep
the labourer himself in the normal degree of dependence. This is
an essential element of the so-called primitive accumulation.2
This stress on the role of the state was supplemented by an insistence
on its employment of education, religion and patriotism in order to
reinforce its position – an emphasis foreshadowing Gramsci’s notion
of hegemony. This is nowhere more clearly expressed than in The
German Ideology, written in 1845–46, in which Marx and Engels
wrote that the
ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas: that is,
the class which is the ruling material force of society is at the same
time its ruling intellectual force. The class that has the means of
material production at its disposal, consequently also controls the
means of mental production, so that on the whole, the ideas of
those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it.
The ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the
145
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Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire
dominant material relations, … hence of the relations which make
the one class the ruling one, therefore, the ideas of its dominance.
Those who controlled the machinery of state were able ‘to represent
its interest … as the general interest’.3
Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte’s election as President of the Republic
in December 1848 and his coup d’état in December 1851 clearly
caused problems for Marx. Previously, he had conceived of a
situation in which the state was able to achieve a degree of
autonomy only ‘in those countries where the estates have not yet
completely developed into classes, where the estates, done away with
in more advanced countries, still play a part and there exists a
mixture, where consequently no section of the population can
achieve dominance over the others’.4 In contrast Bonaparte’s coup
appeared to represent the renunciation of power by the ‘ruling
classes’ and a step back from bourgeois liberalism to absolute
monarchy, to a situation in which the ‘executive with its …
complement of half a million officials alongside an army of another
half million, this fearsome parasitic body, … traps French society like
a net and chokes it at every pore’.5 Furthermore it raised questions
about the role of the individual in history. The exceptionalism of the
first Napoleon had been considered in 1845 in The Holy Family.
Assuming the role of protector of the interests of the bourgeoisie, he
had come to regard ‘the state as an end in itself’ and had both
‘oppressed the liberalism of bourgeois society’ and ‘showed no more
pity for its essential material interests, trade and industry, whenever
they conflicted with his political interests’. However, this exception
seemed to Marx to have had only limited significance for general
historical development. Once he had served his purpose the
bourgeoisie had deserted the Emperor.6 Now, a second Bonaparte
had seized power, creating a military-bureaucratic regime in which
the army was ‘the superior power in the state’.7 Bonapartism posed
a threat to a class-based interpretation of history.
In the 1869 preface to The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
Marx described his purpose as being to ‘demonstrate how the class
struggle in France created circumstances and relations that made it
possible for a grotesque mediocrity to play a hero’s part’.8 Marx was
not alone in expressing surprise and disquiet at the ability of a man
widely regarded as without aptitude or principles to gain power.
Alexis de Tocqueville, who briefly served the Prince-President as
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147
foreign minister, was hardly less scathing, pointing out that ‘a dwarf
on the summit of a great wave is able to scale a high cliff which a
giant placed on dry ground at the base would not be able to climb’.9
The complex economic and social crisis lasting from 1845 until 1852
and particularly the 1848 Revolution and the introduction of
manhood suffrage had established the conditions of political
instability and social fear in which large sections of the population
were tempted to look for a ‘saviour’. According to the eminent
republican politician Victor Schoelcher, this was ‘the circumstance’
that together with the Bonapartist legend – ‘this deplorable prestige
of a name’ – ‘entirely made the incredible fortune of M. Bonaparte’.
These were the typically negative assessments of an adventurer who
did not fit into a conventional mould. However, as the leading
liberal politician Charles de Rémusat pointed out, although
He lacks all the qualities of an ordinary man of merit, judgement,
instruction, conversation, experience, all of these things are so
lacking that one is tempted to assume that he is beneath contempt
… this idiot is endowed with a rare and powerful faculty – that of
placing himself at the centre of human affairs ... His presence has
changed the course of history ... Whoever is able to intervene in
the affairs of the world and impose and produce or modify events
according to his will possesses I don’t know what gift of daring or
strength which sets him apart from the crowd and places him
amongst the rank of historical personalities.10
Assessing the impact of ‘historical personalities’ is never easy. As Ian
Kershaw points out in his study of Adolf Hitler – ‘Biography … runs
the natural risk of over-personalising complex historical developments, over-emphasising the role of the individual in shaping and
determining events, ignoring or playing down the social and
political context in which these actions took place.’ He adopted
Marx’s dictum that ‘men do make their own history, but … under
given and imposed conditions’.11 The actions of the individual need
to be considered in relation to their historical context. In similar
fashion, if much less ambitiously, I would like to set Louis-Napoleon
Bonaparte’s actions in context as a means of considering the value
of Marx’s analysis to the historian, examining first of all the
background to the coup d’état, before proceeding beyond the
Eighteenth Brumaire into the Second Empire.12
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Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire
THE ELECTION OF A PRINCE-PRESIDENT
Recent work by historians represents France at mid-century as a
society in transition, undergoing complex processes of industrialisation and urbanisation, as part of which agriculture was
increasingly commercialised and the rural world integrated into the
national society. Political debate during the July Monarchy
(1830–48) had largely been restricted to the wealthy members of
older (landowning and bureaucratic) and newer (financial and
business) elites competing, and not necessarily across ‘class’ lines,
for a share of political and economic power. The introduction of
manhood suffrage as a result of the February 1848 revolution
represented an important stage in mass politicisation. One result was
the election on 4 June 1848, as a parliamentary deputy, of LouisNapoleon Bonaparte, nephew of the great Emperor, to the
amazement of the political elite. Personality is at least as much the
product of private as of public experience. As a result of his family
background and upbringing, Louis-Napoleon possessed an intense
sense of personal destiny. Furthermore, he was the major beneficiary
of a sentimental cult of Napoleon and of a more prosperous, happy
and glorious epoch kept alive by an outpouring of books, pamphlets,
plays, lithographs, songs, and stories. His friend from childhood,
Mme. Cornu described his ‘mission’ as ‘a devotion first to the
Napoleonic dynasty, and then to France … His duty to his dynasty
is to perpetuate it. His duty to France is to give her influence abroad
and prosperity at home.’13 In a letter to his cousin Napoleon-Jérôme,
Louis-Napoleon would insist that ‘when one bears our name and is
head of government, there are two things to do: satisfy the interests
of the most numerous classes, attach to oneself the upper classes’.14
This would require a constant juggling act but he was determined to
eliminate the ‘party’ divisions, which he believed were responsible
for successive revolutions, and to secure the foundations of a social
system based upon the conservative trinity of the family, private
property and religion.
Bonaparte’s first electoral success stimulated a further explosion
of Bonapartist sentiment. Unwilling to be associated with the
growing disorder in Paris, however, he resigned and returned to
London. He was anyway easily re-elected in five departments on 18
September. It was becoming increasingly evident that, as a candidate
for the presidency of the new republic, Bonaparte was likely to
attract considerable support. Unable to agree on a candidate
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149
themselves, conservative politicians were drawn reluctantly towards
someone who appeared to be fully committed to the restoration of
social order. To conservative leaders like Adolphe Thiers, LouisNapoleon appeared to be weak, a clown they could use. Marshal
Bugeaud’s warning that the peasants would be voting not for a
president but for an emperor went unheeded.15 Even republicans
were attracted. After all, the great Emperor had defended the work of
the revolution and enhanced the glory of the nation. This was the
strength of Bonapartism – to be able to appear as ‘all things to all
men’. One Bonapartist manifesto promised that ‘The nephew of the
great man, with his magic, will give us security, and save us from
misery.’16 Louis-Napoleon’s electoral victory in December 1848 was
overwhelming. He gained 74 per cent of the votes cast. In rural areas,
which were to remain the basis of Bonaparte’s electoral strength for
decades to come, this support represented both a vote against the
republic, which had brought tax increases instead of prosperity, and
for the man of providence whose election heralded a better future.
This unique election of a man with complete faith in his historical
‘mission’, and determined once having gained power, to retain it,
had made a coup d’état almost inevitable. In the immediate aftermath
of his election, however, the new president’s support for political
repression reassured conservatives. Then, gradually, he replaced
those ministers who saw themselves as primarily responsible to
parliament with men dependent on himself, insisting that a
‘community of ideas’ between the president and his ministers was
essential for the effective conduct of government.
THE COUP D’ÉTAT
In a situation of continuing economic depression and widespread
fear of socialist revolution there was considerable support for ‘strong’
government. The constitution prevented Bonaparte from standing
for a second term in office but, as head of the executive of a
centralised state, he was well placed to mount a coup d’état. The
decisive factor was the army. Trusted officers were moved into
strategic positions. The coup, which occurred on 2 December 1851,
was planned carefully. Although directed against both the
monarchist majority in the National Assembly and the republicans,
the fact that only the latter offered resistance gave it an essentially
anti-republican character. In this respect the coup could be seen as
the culmination of a long period of repression beginning with the
crushing of the June 1848 insurrection in Paris. It allowed a ‘final’
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Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire
settling of accounts. 26,000 republican militants were arrested.
Resistance, especially in rural regions in the southeast, helped to
convince conservatives that the coup had been necessary. They were
badly frightened by grossly exaggerated accounts of ‘red’ atrocities.
According to the Bishop of Nancy in an address to the President, the
‘triumph of your cause ... is that of France and Religion ... God wishes
to use you for his own purposes.’17 Salvation seemed to be offered by
the police state. The coup was undoubtedly illegal and brutal. The
authoritarian regime it established was, however, conceived of in the
ancient Roman sense, by a classically educated elite, as a short and
exceptional period of ‘dictatorship’ when the rule of law was
suspended. Of course this did not end the process of repression. A
complex of old and new laws, and especially their more rigorous
enforcement would continue to deter political opposition.
On 20 December the electorate was asked to vote on whether ‘the
people wishes to maintain the authority of Louis-Napoleon and
delegate to him the powers necessary to establish a constitution on
the basis of the proclamation of 2 December’. This appeal to popular
sovereignty by means of a plebiscite was to be a characteristic of the
new regime. Louis-Napoleon was determined to secure a large
majority as a means of legitimising his actions. It was made clear to
all officials that their continued employment depended upon enthusiastic campaigning. In place of the era of disorder opened in 1848,
a new period of order, peace and prosperity was promised. Coercion
was employed but the result was primarily due to the immense
popularity of the Prince-President. He was perceived as the only
safeguard against renewed revolution and by some as offering
protection against the restoration of the ancien régime. The strength
of latent Bonapartist sentiment was clearly evident. Nationally,
7,500,000 voted ‘yes’, 640,000 ‘no’ and 1,500,000 abstained.
The coup d’état required abdication from power by the social elites,
the landowners and wealthy businessmen, in return for the
protection of their ‘vital’ interests and most notably private property,
against the threat of revolution. Subsequently, the popularity of the
monarch was to be enhanced by the ‘invention’ of ritual and by the
provincial tours, facilitated by railway travel, which sought to
personalise the bonds between ruler and people. Invariably wearing
military uniform, the Emperor posed as the symbol of national unity
and as the supreme warlord. This resurgence of the monarchical state
was glorified in school, church and in the developing mass media.
In practice, however, in spite of the vested interests of its personnel,
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151
the independence of the state would continue to be circumscribed by
the power and influence of social elites and its own recruitment of
key personnel from within their ranks. Clearly much of the support
offered to Bonaparte was conditional. This was indeed a strange
republic! The effigy of the Prince-President stared from coins and
stamps. On 10 May 1852 new flags and imperial eagles were
distributed at a parade of 60,000 troops on the Champ-de-Mars,
watched by some 400,000 spectators, to shouts of ‘Vive l’Empereur!’
However, Louis-Napoleon remained to be convinced that an
imperial restoration was the popular will. At Bordeaux on 9 October
undoubtedly impressed by the reception organised by Haussmann
the local prefect, he finally made up his mind. Through the
procedure known as a senatus consultum on 7 November the senate
formally revised the constitution – ‘the imperial dignity is reestablished. Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte is Emperor of the French,
under the name of Napoleon III.’ Another plebiscite sanctioned the
proposal on 21 November with 7,824,000 positive votes, and only
253,000 against, although with nearly 2 million abstentions.
Clearly Marx found it difficult to explain these events in terms of
a class struggle. The ‘proletariat’ had certainly failed to live up to his
expectations. A heroic legend could be constructed around the
Parisian insurrection in June 1848, described as ‘the first great battle
… fought between the two classes that split modern society’.18 Its
defeat also provided an explanation of the removal of the
‘proletariat’ from the centre of the revolutionary stage.19 It made it
clear, furthermore, that in future it would be the army, soon to be
‘personified by its own dynasty’ which ‘must represent the State in
its antagonism with Society’.20 According to Engels, writing in 1865,
Bonapartism is the necessary form of the state in a country where
the working class, although having attained a high level of
development in the towns, but numerically inferior to the small
peasants, has been defeated in a great revolutionary struggle by a
class of capitalists, the petty bourgeoisie and the army.21
That workers had fought on both sides in the struggle in June 22 was
explained by the participation of the ‘lumpenproletariat’,23 the
‘social scum’24 – the mass of underemployed people attempting to
subsist in the rapidly growing city. They would reappear as
Bonaparte’s hired thugs.25 Substantial working class support for
Bonaparte in the presidential election was portrayed as largely rep-
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Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire
resenting a negative vote against General Cavaignac, the ‘Butcher of
June’.26 The workers’ subsequent quiescence was explained by the
renewal of prosperity and the institutionalisation of protest through
elections,27 as well as by the establishment of the ‘police state,
blessed by the authority of the Church, [which] must demoralise an
unsophisticated population’.28 This explained the feebleness of
resistance to the coup, although an exasperated Engels would
complain that the workers’ inaction was evidence of ‘childish
stupidity’.29 Evidently it was difficult to accept that for many workers
Louis-Napoleon had a positive appeal and more palatable to explain
his successes in terms of peasant support,30 and the bourgeoisie’s
‘crying for peace’.31 Clearly the majority of smallholding peasants
lacked class-consciousness.
They are therefore incapable of asserting their class interests in
their own name … They cannot represent themselves, they must
be represented. Their representative must also appear as their
master, as an authority over them, as an unrestricted governmental power which protects them from other classes and watches
over them from on high. The political influence of peasant
proprietors is ultimately expressed in the subordination of
parliament to the executive, society to the state.32
However, judged by ‘his personal interests’ the ‘real Bonaparte’, is
none other than the ‘chief of the lumpenproletariat … perceiving in
the dregs, refuse and scum of all classes the sole class that offers
unconditional support …’.33 The bourgeoisie had renounced power
in favour of a gangster regime! These contortions and contradictions,
together with recent historical research which emphasises the heterogeneity of the various identifiable social groups, implies that
Marx’s conclusions, although invariably suggestive, are subject to so
many exceptions as to render them unsatisfactory as generalisations
and to throw doubt on the value of ‘class’ as an all-embracing
explanatory factor. Although Marx’s contemporaries frequently
employed the language of class, in practice individuals were inspired
by a range of historically constructed political options, and subject
to influence exercised by the various groups to which they belonged
– family, social peers, community, and confessional associations, as
well as ‘class’, and to pressure from those best able to exercise ‘power’
– landlords, employers, priests and government officials.
Bonaparte: ‘Hero’ or ‘Grotesque Mediocrity’?
153
In order to further assess the stature of the ‘grotesque mediocrity’
who had become Emperor it might be worth considering the
achievements of the regime he had created.
THE SECOND EMPIRE
The decision to retain ‘universal’ suffrage clearly distinguished the
Second Empire from previous monarchical regimes. This was a
monarchy which owed its legitimacy not to divine right but to the
popular will. The regime was committed to the principles of 1789 and
particularly to equality before the law and to popular sovereignty. It
also offered strong, centralised government. Napoleon insisted that
only the Bonapartist dynasty could represent these twin principles
of order and democracy effectively. The constitution required
plebiscites to sanction major constitutional change, and regular
elections to a Corps législatif with limited power. Every election would
be a quasi-plebiscite on the regime. The problem was to recognise
popular sovereignty whilst retaining control. The entire administrative machine would be deployed to support the government’s
candidates and to counter opposition. In order to reinforce social
order, urgent efforts were made to increase the effectiveness of
civilian policing. Even more importance was attached to the progress
of ‘moral’ reform. The ideal was to secure the ‘willing’ collaboration
of subordinate groups, self-discipline and respect for the established
social hierarchy. The agents of this policy were to be the clergy and
primary school teachers. Already the education laws of 1833 and
1850 had defined the ‘civilising mission’ of primary instruction. The
masses were to be assimilated into a well-ordered police state.
Prosperity was to be secured through economic modernisation.
The Emperor was convinced also that this was essential to the
survival of France as a great power. He was determined to emulate
Britain, the model of a modern society. He shared with his closest
advisers a progressivist ideology, which ascribed a positive economic
role to the state. The rapid completion of the rail network and urban
reconstruction were the clearly defined objectives. This technocratic
romanticism was at the heart of the regime’s economic policy. The
Emperor had long dreamed of rebuilding Paris as the capital of a
modern empire. Haussmann, appointed Prefect of the Seine
department, contributed a systematic approach to overcoming the
complex practical and financial obstacles to the realisation of these
dreams. As with the railways, state initiative would again be closely
associated with private enterprise. The new thoroughfares, each
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Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire
focusing on major public buildings and monuments or on the reconstructed railway stations, together with their gas lighting, street
furniture and public gardens, conformed to a coherent urban plan.
They provided for the easier circulation of traffic within the city
centre and between the railway stations – the symbols of a new
society. Reconstruction also provided an opportunity to improve
public hygiene through slum clearance, improved water supply, and
the construction of a sewer network. Urban renewal also sought to
‘cleanse’ the city through greater social segregation. It provided those
who could afford the rents with more spacious and comfortable
accommodation. The poor, however, expelled from the centre by
demolition and rising rents were crowded into the older streets
surviving behind the boulevards or pushed out to the periphery. The
twin threats of revolution and disease, so often linked in bourgeois
social imagery, were thus to be destroyed. Although strategic
concerns were of secondary importance in determining the shape of
the new city centre, it would have been surprising, in the aftermath
of a bloody revolution if they had not assumed considerable
importance. More difficult to barricade and with barracks strategically placed at crossroads, broad new boulevards provided for the
easy movement of troops. A similar combination of demographic
pressure and political factors promoted urban reconstruction in the
provinces. These massive construction projects provided work on a
substantial scale. Prosperity and order went together but the essential
objectives were supervision, control and, if need be, repression.
Haussmann became the symbol of authoritarian government.
THE RISE OF OPPOSITION
In seeking to limit the historical significance of this second
Bonaparte, Marx suggested that, like his uncle he ‘would like to
appear as the patriarchal benefactor of all classes. But he cannot give
to one without taking from another’. Indeed, ‘because he protects
its [the bourgeoisie’s] material power, he generates its public, its
political power anew’. Eventually it would feel able to do without its
‘protector’.34 On 15 January 1860 the Emperor outlined his
‘programme for peace’. It combined further investment in transport
with a commercial treaty with Britain designed to force the pace of
industrialisation. Businessmen expressed concern about what was
bound to be a difficult period of transition. Substantial parts of the
social elite and business classes felt that their views had been ignored
and that their vital interests were being sacrificed. Their confidence
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155
in the regime was badly shaken by this ‘new coup d’état’. Already
there was considerable resentment of the absence of parliamentary
control over public works expenditure. Provincial taxpayers objected
to paying for the embellishment of the capital. The rising tide of
opposition was swelled further by criticism of the Emperor’s
adventurous foreign policy. Alienated by the 1859 war in Italy which
had unintentionally led to the collapse of the Papal states, Catholics
together with protectionists, critics of the regime’s expenditure and
all those made anxious by the arbitrary and seemingly erratic
character of government, wanted to restrain the Emperor’s personal
initiatives. Authoritarian government appeared less justifiable as the
threat of revolution diminished. These ‘liberals’ were determined to
impose parliamentary controls over the monarch. In a brilliant
speech to deputies on 11 January 1864 Thiers called for the reintroduction of freedom of assembly, of association and of the press – for
the ‘necessary liberties’, essential to prevent arbitrary government.
The Empire, he warned, would survive only if it made substantial
concessions. In return liberals would be prepared to collaborate.
Their growing desire for ‘liberty’ was balanced always by social fear,
however. Remembering 1848 they were deeply suspicious of
manhood suffrage, which they associated both with revolution and
the ‘rural imbecility and provincial bestiality’ (Prévost-Paradol),
which provided mass support for a demagogic imperial regime. The
liberal ideal remained leadership by a social and intellectual elite.
There was little space for social reform in their vision. This was the
liberalism of social elites anxious to restore their own political power.
They posed a threat to the regime because their views were shared
not only by its opponents, including moderate republicans, but also
by many government supporters.
LIBERALISATION
Unlike his predecessors, Napoleon III was prepared to adapt to
changing political circumstances. The first liberalising measures in
1860, conceded wider rights of debate and publicity to the Corps
législatif, and represented concessions by a regime at the height of its
power. Quite what the Emperor intended remains open to debate.
Napoleon’s ideal would probably have been a parliament without
parties, offering loyal support for his various initiatives. He was
horrified by the prospect of a ‘faction’ ridden parliament together
with freedom of the press. The problem was how to liberalise the
regime without destabilising the system of government. However,
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Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire
liberals would never be satisfied with anything less than a return to
a parliamentary system similar to that of the July Monarchy, in
which deputies enjoyed the right to question ministers, reject their
proposals and to initiate legislation. The further concessions made
to the liberal politicians from January 1867 were in response to
growing opposition particularly from within the sociopolitical elite
which provided the regime with its ministers, senior officials and
army officers, and whose members alone possessed the qualifications thought necessary for participation in ‘high’ politics. From
May 1868 substantial freedom was restored to the press and public
meetings, providing the means for a spectacular revival of political
life. Nevertheless, following the 1869 elections 116 deputies signed
a motion in favour of further reform. A Note from the Emperor’s
cousin Prince Napoleon spelled out the options – 1. A reactionary
policy. This might succeed in the short term, but for only as long as
the Emperor lived; 2. maintenance of the status quo. This would
mean gradual but inevitable decline; 3. ‘conciliation’, which
demanded that the Emperor take a decisive lead in liberalisation.35
Only the last would guarantee the regime’s survival. The formation
of the Ollivier ministry on 2 January 1870, represented the real
beginning of the liberal Empire. Like most liberals, the former
moderate republican, Ollivier, saw strong government as essential
to the maintenance of public order and appreciated the continued
potency of the Napoleonic legend. Additionally he wanted the
Emperor to rule with the support of public opinion. It was proposed
to enlarge the rights of parliament to initiate debate, to vote the
budget, and decide on customs tariffs. Ministers were to be
responsible to both the Emperor and parliament. However, the
Emperor’s own power to determine constitutional development was
preserved. Napoleon retained the right to dissolve parliament and
appeal to the country, the authority to negotiate treaties, declare war
and command the army. It was this retention of the right to consult
voters through the plebiscite which more than any other provision
symbolised the survival of the Emperor’s personal power. In the
plebiscite on the new constitution held on 8 May 1870, 7,350,000
voted positively, 1,538,000 against and 1,900,000 abstained. The
results represented a widespread rallying to the Liberal Empire. Most
liberals with monarchist sympathies, as well as a significant minority
of moderate republicans, found it impossible to reject the reforms.
The official plebiscite campaign had appealed to the social fear
created by a carefully manipulated ‘red’ scare. ‘Liberty’ depended
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157
both on the curbing of the personal power of the Emperor and on
the preservation of order.
Certainly the results of the plebiscite came as a considerable shock
to the republicans who remained the only irreconcilable opponents
of the Empire. Although they retained considerable support in the
major cities and industrial centres, this was relatively weak amongst
the propertied classes, in the countryside, and wherever the clergy
were influential. Moreover republicans remained divided, often
bitterly, between the legalistic and essentially liberal-democratic
moderates like Favre and ‘radicals’ like Gambetta, and the revolutionary socialists popularly identified with Blanqui. As late as the
early summer of 1870, there appeared to be no real threat to the
Empire. The establishment of a Liberal Empire with a strong
executive power held in check by rejuvenated parliamentary institutions, seemed to herald a long period of political stability. The
elites had been reassured, their right to a share in political power
commensurate with their wealth and status had been recognised. At
the same time the popular support necessary to legitimise the regime
had survived. As Ludovic Halévy, the librettist and secretary to the
Corps législatif, perceptively wrote in his notebook the danger now
was – ‘Too many Yes votes. The Emperor will believe that this is still
the France of 1852 and do something stupid.’36
WAR AND REVOLUTION
In July 1870 France again went to war. The report of a subsequent
commission of enquiry blamed the disaster entirely on the Emperor
and his leading generals. Military greatness and martial display were
essential features of Bonapartism. Napoleon’s particular objectives
appear to have been to ‘restore France to its proper rank’ as the preeminent European power, and to ensure the pacification of Europe
by means of its reconstruction on the basis of its major nationalities, assembled in loose (con)federal structures, too weak to challenge
French predominance. The regenerated continent would be given a
greater sense of mutual dependence through free trade. However,
the main result of Napoleon’s foreign policy was to ensure growing
international distrust of French intentions and diplomatic isolation.
When, following the Prussian victory over Austria at Sadowa in
1866, Napoleon proposed alliances to both Austria and Italy, in an
effort to defend French security, it was too late. Sadowa had substantially upset the European balance of power. The final crisis was
provoked by the candidature of a Prussian prince for the Spanish
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Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire
throne and French fear of ‘encirclement’. Consulting only his foreign
minister the Duc de Gramont, on 12 July the Emperor demanded a
firm guarantee that this candidature, already withdrawn, would
never be renewed. The Prussian chancellor Bismarck responded with
the deliberately provocative ‘Ems telegram’. The Emperor and his
advisers fell into this trap because of their failure to assess the
diplomatic and military risks calmly. Suffering acute pain from
gallstones the Emperor was too physically and mentally exhausted
to provide effective leadership. He succumbed to pressure from the
close circle of courtiers and politicians identified with the authoritarian Empire who were convinced that a successful war would lend
weight to their counter-attack against the liberal regime. On 28 July,
accompanied by the Prince-Imperial, Napoleon left Saint Cloud to
assume command of the armies. News of defeat and capitulation at
Sedan and the widespread sense of national humiliation, which this
engendered, rendered the collapse of the regime almost inevitable.
Its legitimacy had been destroyed. Already demoralised by a
succession of defeats ministers were stunned by the gravity of this
news. They would prove unable to provide effective leadership. On
4 September 1870 a bloodless revolution occurred in Paris.
CONCLUSIONS
Napoleon III had believed firmly in his historical destiny. His role
was to be that of a ‘charismatic’ leader, a ‘dictator’ at the centre of
an authoritarian political system drawing its legitimacy from the
manipulation of a mass electorate. The Second Empire was
established and endured in part due to the political skills of its
leading personalities. If policy options were inevitably constricted
and the problems of a society undergoing industrialisation and
urbanisation particularly complicated, Napoleon III and his
ministers worked hard to enlarge the possibilities open to them.
With a considerable degree of success, they had developed a policy
of economic and social modernisation. Large sections of the
community benefited from greater prosperity. However, the effect of
this adventurous politics was to alienate powerful groups, which felt
that their vital interests were under threat. As opposition increased
the regime had adapted, whether of the Emperor’s free will, or
increasingly, under pressure. It had gone down the extremely
tortuous path of liberalisation and, as the May 1870 plebiscite
suggested, again with considerable success. Napoleon III himself can
be allowed to sum up the regime’s achievements. In a sketch for a
Bonaparte: ‘Hero’ or ‘Grotesque Mediocrity’?
159
novel found amongst his papers, a M. Benoit who had emigrated to
America in 1847, returned to France in April 1868. In America
political refugees had warned him that:
France is groaning under despotism and he could expect to find
it debased and impoverished … Imagine his surprise!
Amazed by universal suffrage
Amazed by the railways, which criss-cross France;
by the electric telegraph.
Arrives in Paris: embellishment …
He wants to purchase various objects, which are much cheaper,
due to the commercial treaty.
No riots; no political prisoners; no exiles. 37
Who knows what might have happened if the war of 1870 had been
avoided? However, that it occurred and ended in a humiliating
defeat, represented governmental failure on an unacceptable scale.
For Marx and Engels the collapse of the Second Empire came as a
great relief. It appeared to confirm the ‘logical’ necessity for historical
evolution to pass through a bourgeois democratic phase.38 Again
Engels confidently asserted that a Bonapartist, or indeed
Bismarckian, regime might exist only ‘By way of exception’, the
products of ‘periods … in which the warring classes balance each
other so clearly that the state authority, as ostensible mediator,
acquires, for the moment, a certain degree of independence of
both’.39 In the intervening years, however, they had seemingly come
to accept that Louis-Napoleon’s role was not as exceptional as had
initially been suggested. It had appeared that in Germany too,
From the moment when it became necessary instead of protecting
the nobility against the onrush of the bourgeoisie to protect all
propertied classes against the onrush of the working class, the old,
absolute monarchy had to go over completely to the form of state
expressly devised for this purpose: the Bonapartist monarchy.40
In an article in the New York Tribune in 1856 Marx had reached similar
conclusions regarding Spain.41 It had also been recognised that in the
Austrian empire ‘different class interests, the national features of
narrow-mindedness, and local prejudices’ had ‘allowed the old
scoundrel Metternich the utmost freedom to manoeuvre’.42 More
generally, it appeared that substantial portions of all social classes
160
Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire
might renounce their political rights, might be bought off by
prosperity and chauvinistic appeals. In a letter to Marx on 13 April
1866 Engels maintained that ‘Bonapartism’, which ‘promotes the
great material interests of the bourgeoisie’, ‘really is the true religion
of the modern bourgeoisie’.43 In 1871, in an emotional defence of the
Paris Commune, Marx seemed to return to the concept of ‘alienation’,
which had dominated his writing in the early 1840s. Historically,
Society had created its own organs to look after its common
interests, originally through simple division of labour. But these
organs, at whose head was the state power, had in the course of time,
in pursuance of their own special interests, transformed themselves
from the servants of society into the masters of society.44
From this perspective, Bonapartism represented not an exception so
much as the culmination of a lengthy process.
The Bonapartist analogy would certainly enjoy a long shelf life.
Historians described Napoleon III in the 1930s and 1940s as a
precursor of fascism. However, in comparison with twentieth
century dictatorships, his was much less brutal. The Second Empire
lacked both the bureaucratic machinery of the ‘totalitarian’ state and
the determination to invade the private space of its citizens and to
ignore the ‘rule of law’. The regime became less rather than more
authoritarian, accepting, in particular, the need to share power with
the social elites it had managed to exclude briefly in December 1851.
The institutions created as part of a violent counter-revolution were
adapted to meet the needs of a changing society with different
political aspirations. Bearing many similarities to the presidential
system of the Fifth Republic established by General de Gaulle, the
new regime was probably viable. The liberal experiment was cut
short by catastrophic military defeat, however. The Emperor could
hardly escape responsibility for this. Under the constitution of the
Liberal Empire he had retained the right to pursue his own foreign
policy objectives. Inspired by the Napoleonic legend and the dream
of reliving the glories of the First Empire he had been unwilling to
risk the loss of prestige, which would have resulted from humiliation
by Prussia. Napoleon III had determined on a course of action,
which was risky in the extreme. He had not inherited his uncle’s
military genius, and success ultimately depended on a flawed
military machine. Defeat destroyed both the legitimacy of the
regime and the strength of the army, in the circumstances the only
Bonaparte: ‘Hero’ or ‘Grotesque Mediocrity’?
161
force capable of protecting the Empire against Revolution. Reversing
the order of Marx’s words, the situation seemed to ‘demonstrate how
the class struggle in France created circumstances and relationships
that made it possible for a hero to play a grotesque mediocrity’s part’,
and with important consequences for the subsequent course of
European history.
NOTES
I would like to thank Heather Price for her comments on an earlier draft of
this chapter.
1. Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party, C.W.,
Vol. 6, p. 486.
2. Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. 1, C.W., Vol. 35, p. 726.
3. Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, The German Ideology, C.W., Vol. 5, pp. 59,
47.
4. Ibid., p. 90.
5. Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, this volume, p. 98.
6. Karl Marx in Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, The Holy Family, C.W., Vol.
4, pp. 123–4.
7. Marx, Eighteenth Brumaire, p. 91.
8. Karl Marx, ‘Preface’ (1869) to The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte,
C.W., Vol. 21, p. 57.
9. Alexis de Tocqueville to Beaumont, 29 Janury 1851, in Oeuvres complètes,
Vol. 8 (Paris: Gallimard, 1964), p. 369.
10. Victor Schoelcher, Histoire des crimes du deux décembre (London: J.
Chapman, 1852), p. 402; C. de Rémusat, Mémoires de ma vie, Vol. 4 (Paris:
Plon, 1962), pp. 359–60.
11. Ian Kershaw, Hitler. 1889–1936: Hubris (London: Allen Lane, 1998),
p. xxi.
12. A first attempt appeared as The French Second Republic: A Social History
(London: Batsford; Ithica: Cornell University Press, 1972). This was a
scaled down, and far less theoretical, version of ‘Karl Marx as a Historian
of Nineteenth Century France’ (PhD thesis, University of Wales,
Swansea, 1970). Some of the themes developed in this article are taken
up in Roger Price, Napoleon III and the Second Empire (London: Routledge,
1997) and The French Second Empire: An Anatomy of Political Power
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001).
13. Nassau William Senior, Conversations with M. Thiers, M. Guizot and other
Distinguished Persons During the Second Empire, Vol. 2 (London: Hurst and
Blackett, 1878), p. 115.
14. Archives nationales (AN) 400 AP 150 Fonds Bonaparte.
15. Letter to Thiers 4 November 1848, in Bibliothèque nationale (BN) naf
20617.
16. Enclosed with a report from the state prosecutor at Metz 1 December
1848, in AN BB18/1471.
17. 10 December 1851, in AN AB XIX 173.
162
Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire
18. Karl Marx, The Class Struggles in France, 1848 to 1850, C.W., Vol. 10, p. 67.
19. Marx, Eighteenth Brumaire, p. 26.
20. Quoted by Maximilien Rubel (ed.), Karl Marx devant le Bonapartisme
(Paris: La Haye, 1960), pp. 49–50.
21. ‘Die preussische Militärfrage und die deutsche Arbeiterpartei’ in ibid.,
pp. 116–17.
22. Marx, Class Struggles, p. 62.
23. Marx, Eighteenth Brumaire, p. 63.
24. Marx and Engels, Manifesto, p. 494.
25. Marx, Class Struggles, p. 143.
26. Ibid., p. 80.
27. Ibid., p. 137; Marx, Eighteenth Brumaire, p. 60.
28. Marx, Eighteenth Brumaire, p. 56.
29. Engels to Marx, 3 December 1851, C.W., Vol. 38, p. 505.
30. Marx, Class Struggles, p. 80.
31. Marx, Eighteenth Brumaire, p. 86.
32. Ibid., p. 101.
33. Ibid., p. 63.
34. Ibid., pp. 108, 107.
35. AN 400 AP 150.
36. Quoted in L. Girard, Questions politiques et constitutionnelles du Second
Empire (Paris: CDU, n.d.), p. 138.
37. AN 400 AP 150.
38. Engels to Bernstein, 27 August 1883, and to Kautsky, 26 April 1884,
C.W., Vol. 47, pp. 51–2 and 131–3.
39. Frederick Engels, Origins of the Family, Private Property and the State, in
C.W., Vol. 26, pp. 271.
40. Frederick Engels, ‘Supplement’ to the ‘Preface’ of 1870 for The Peasant
Wars in Germany (1874), C.W., Vol. 23, p. 627.
41. Karl Marx, ‘Revolution in Spain’, C.W., Vol. 15, pp. 98–9.
42. Frederick Engels, ‘The Magyar Struggle’, C.W., Vol. 8, pp. 229–30.
43. Engels to Marx, 13 April 1866, C.W., Vol. 42, p. 266.
44. Frederick Engels, ‘Introduction’ (1891) to Karl Marx, The Civil War in
France, C.W., Vol. 27, p. 189.
6
The Appeal of Bonapartism
Geoff Watkins
Rejecting the notion that the coup d’état of 2 December 1851 was
unforeseeable, Marx sets out as his main purpose to explain ‘how a
nation of 36 millions can be taken unawares by three common conmen and marched off unresisting into captivity’.1 The use of the
term ‘common con-men’ to describe Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte
himself, his half-brother Morny and his Minister of Justice Rouher is
an indication of the dismissive contempt Marx felt for the Bonapartists. However, he also recognised that contempt alone, such as
that expressed by Victor Hugo in his Napoléon le Petit, does not allow
lessons to be drawn from what he calls the ‘unprecedented
humiliation’2 of the revolution of 1848.
Marx’s explanation concentrates on Louis-Napoleon’s period in
office as President of the Republic, when, with the proletariat
rendered impotent by its defeat in the June Days of 1848, he was
able to manipulate and defeat the various factions of the bourgeoisie
and prepare his coup. Whilst Marx lays great stress on the support of
the lumpenproletariat in the form of the Society of 10 December, he
also acknowledges two more formal elements which contributed to
Louis-Napoleon’s success. First, the Constitution gave a great deal of
real power to the President as the ‘elect of the nation’;3 second, and
perhaps more importantly, the head of the executive controlled a
state apparatus which in France ‘restricts, controls, regulates,
oversees and supervises civil life from its most all-encompassing
expressions to its most insignificant stirrings’.4 The importance Marx
attaches to this factor can be seen in the way he returns to it in his
conclusion, referring to ‘this executive with its enormous bureaucratic and military apparatus, with its widespread and ingenious
machinery of state, a complement of a half million officials
alongside an army of another half million’.5
However, it was only his election as President on 10 December
1848 that gave Louis-Napoleon these advantages, and Marx gives
little attention to the reasons for this electoral triumph. Yet the fact
that Louis-Napoleon was able to win the ballot so overwhelmingly
was fundamental to everything that followed. Not only was there
clearly no question of his having been able to seize power by force
in 1848 (his two previous attempts to do this had also ended in
163
164
Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire
complete failure), but more importantly the popular vote enabled
him to reinforce his position of power with claims of legitimacy.
Marx himself acknowledges this implicitly when he asserts that ‘the
President is the spirit of the nation incarnate. As opposed to the
Assembly, he has a kind of divine right, he is president by the
people’s grace.’6 Louis-Napoleon emphasised the same point in a
speech on 25 November 1851, only a week before the coup d’état,
when he accused his opponents in the Assembly of seeking to
‘weaken that authority which is the issue of popular suffrage’.7
Indeed, the insistence that only the vote of the whole nation could
legitimise authority had always been fundamental to the Bonapartist
claims. As early as 1836, in a letter to Odilon Barrot after the failure
of the Strasbourg coup, Louis-Napoleon had argued that he was the
only true representative of popular election because the people had
not voted as a whole since approving the hereditary rule of the
Bonapartes in Napoleon’s plebiscite of 1804; neither the Bourbon
Restoration nor the July Monarchy, then, had any legitimacy, since
‘a principle cannot be annulled by deeds, it can only be annulled by
another principle; neither the twelve hundred thousand foreigners
of 1815 nor the Chamber of the 221 of 1830 have the authority to
nullify the principle of the election of 1804’.8
Of course, Marx was not unaware of the importance of the presidential election, and he explains his brief treatment of it in the
Eighteenth Brumaire by noting that he has already dealt with its significance elsewhere.9 However, the passage in The Class Struggles in
France to which he is referring is itself little more than a sketchy
outline.10
For Marx, ‘10 December 1848 was the coup d’état of the peasants’,11
a point he reiterates in the Eighteenth Brumaire,12 refining it in the
conclusion to observe that ‘the Bonaparte dynasty does not represent
the revolutionary peasants, but rather the conservative ones’.13 He
explains, very briefly, how ‘the other classes helped to complete the
election victory of the peasants’,14 through a mixture of protest vote
and manipulation for their own ends. However, there are a number
of problems with this interpretation. First, whilst Louis-Napoleon
undoubtedly did attract a great deal of support from the rural
population, his votes in fact came from all kinds of social and geographical groups; his success in urban areas (he obtained well over
half the votes in five of the eight largest cities in France, including
Paris) was such that ‘coup d’état of the peasants’ is not an adequate
explanation for the scale of his victory. Second, Marx rightly saw
The Appeal of Bonapartism
165
conservatives and monarchists as seeking to use Louis-Napoleon’s
candidature for their own ends, and their backing was a considerable boost to him in the last weeks of the campaign. However, they
only turned to him after failing to put forward a candidate of their
own because he was already attracting enough popular support to
look like a possible winner. As de Tocqueville observed in his
memoirs, ‘As public opinion increasingly favours Louis-Napoleon,
he carries the parliamentary leaders with him; … most of them in
the end let themselves be swept along in the maelstrom; it is emphatically society’s tail which wags its head.’15 Their backing, then, was
a consequence of that popular support, the reasons for which need to
be examined more fully. Finally, in placing emphasis more on
reasons for voting against Cavaignac than for Louis-Napoleon, Marx
underestimates the positive appeal which Bonapartism could exert in
a society which has been shown to exhibit greater and more complex
social differentiations than Marx’s broad class categorisation
allows.16 In order to understand the overwhelming nature of the
victory achieved on 10 December (the scale of it surprised even
Louis-Napoleon’s own supporters), it is necessary to consider how
that appeal was carefully and skilfully exploited by Louis-Napoleon
and his allies both before and during the electoral campaign.
The opponents of Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte always maintained
that all he had was his name, a claim repeated by generations of
French historians writing in the Republican tradition. Undoubtedly
much simplistic exploitation of that name did take place in 1848,
and references such as that found in a broadsheet circulated in Metz
to ‘the great man’s nephew with his magical name’ were frequent.17
The very name of Napoleon certainly had considerable resonance in
France, and it is telling that both Marx and the anti-Bonapartist
newspaper Le National refer simply to ‘Louis Bonaparte’,18 whilst
Louis-Napoleon himself consciously foregrounded the association
for several years after he published his Napoleonic Ideas of 1839 in
the name of ‘Prince Napoléon-Louis’.19 However, to suggest that
Louis-Napoleon was simply the fortunate beneficiary of the
Napoleonic legend overlooks both the extent to which that legend
had to be re-politicised in the 1840s and the way it had to be imbued
with specific political associations which would have broad appeal
for Frenchmen in the mid-nineteenth century.
The memory of Napoleon and the myths that surrounded his
name were kept alive after 1815 through such traditional forms as
poems, songs, engravings, prints, brochures and almanacs, as well
166
Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire
as a strong oral tradition fuelled by veterans of the Imperial armies.20
Initially, the name of the Emperor served as a rallying point for
disparate opponents of the restored Bourbons, but after 1830 the
tradition became largely devoid of any direct political meaning. The
tales and images of the past were concerned to render homage to a
great man and a great age, but they did not suggest in any way that
this age could return. Indeed, their sentimental appeal was founded
on a nostalgia for something which was lost forever. The former
dignitaries of the Empire had been rehabilitated by the July
Monarchy, to which they were in turn fully reconciled, and 127 of
them sat in the Chamber of Peers which condemned LouisNapoleon after his second attempted coup in 1840.21 As late as 1846,
one of the most prolific of the propagators of the Napoleonic legend,
Emile Marco de Saint-Hilaire, launched a new almanac which
revived the title of the Imperial Almanac founded by Napoleon
himself. In so doing, he affirmed in the first number, he was offering
‘intimate recollections of the time of the Empire’, because ‘we do
not believe that it will ever rise like the phoenix from the ashes. This
is our true motive in exhuming this title, which is by now as
innocent as it is inoffensive.’22
The political establishment of the July Monarchy, too, felt there
was sufficiently little threat from Bonapartism as a political
movement to sponsor the return of Napoleon’s remains from Saint
Helena in 1840 and to support through the king’s subscription a new
journal, La Revue de l’Empire, founded in 1842. This royal patronage
was misplaced, however, despite the disingenuous claim of the
journal’s founder Charles-Edouard Tremblaire that as ‘an impartial
echo of all the glories of the Consulate and the Empire, our Revue
will be purely historical’.23 In fact, Tremblaire, a journalist with
unequivocal Bonapartist sympathies, used the journal to mix
exaltation of a glorious past with constant justification of
Bonapartist ideology and praise for Louis-Napoleon himself.24 Such
a journal was symptomatic of a move amongst supporters of the
Bonapartist cause to remind Frenchmen just what it was about the
Consulate and Empire that should be brought back.
Louis-Napoleon provided the foundation for this development
with the publication in 1839 of his Napoleonic Ideas, a long pamphlet
in which he expounded the merits of Napoleonic government,
contrasted them with the disappointments the French now had to
suffer, and presented himself as the heir and guardian of the
Bonapartist tradition. This last aim is implicit in the text of the
The Appeal of Bonapartism
167
pamphlet, but was made explicit by a brochure which LouisNapoleon produced to accompany its publication and which dealt
with the Imperial future. It is striking that he plays down the
element of military glory which forms the staple diet of much of the
popular culture referred to above, and he insists in the concluding
section ‘that the Napoleonic idea is not one of War, but a social,
industrial, commercial idea which concerns all mankind’; 25 he
repeated this ‘eschewing of militarism’26 in his manifesto for the
presidential election, arguing that the wars from 1792 to 1815 had
been forced on France, and that the Bonapartes had always stood for
honourable peace.
What Louis-Napoleon did in Napoleonic Ideas was to exploit the
ambiguous symbolism of his name, a symbolism which Price
identifies as a means of blurring the political spectrum;27 he
represents Napoleon (and by extension himself) as simultaneously
the guardian of social order and the heir of the French Revolution.
Order and stability are portrayed as especially important after
periods of upheaval when passions and excess are in danger of
creating disruption and chaos, for ‘when in a country become
thoroughly democratic like France, the principle of equality is not
generally applied, it must be introduced into all the laws before
liberty is possible’;28 it is the ‘want of stability and perseverance
which is the great defect of democratic republics’.29 This order does
not represent a return to the ancien régime, for it is only uncontrolled
democracy which is rejected, not democracy itself; the Napoleonic
system is one in which the ‘basis is democratic since all the powers
are derived from the people, whilst the organization is hierarchical,
since it provides different grades in order to stimulate all
capacities’.30 Napoleon ‘cleared up the chaos of nothingness and
glory’31 that characterised the decade of revolution and brought to
France an administrative order which provided the foundation ‘for
the prosperity of a 30 million population’.32 Thus, Louis-Napoleon
establishes the link between stability and prosperity which, as we
shall see, he was to use to full effect in the campaign of 1848.
In order to have mass appeal, it was vital for the Bonapartists not
to be seen as standing simply for the establishment of order, and the
Revolutionary legacy was a key element in the message to be sent
out. Louis-Napoleon explicitly demands, ‘let us not overlook the fact
that everything Napoleon undertook to effect a general fusion was
done without renouncing the principles of the Revolution’,33 and
he stresses throughout Napoleonic Ideas the extent to which
168
Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire
Napoleon made a reality of the Revolutionary ideals of equality,
careers open to talents and, crucially, liberty. Challenging those libertarians who sought to portray his uncle as a tyrant, Louis-Napoleon
insists that ‘the Emperor Napoleon has contributed more than
anyone else to hasten the reign of liberty by preserving the moral
influence of the Revolution and diminishing the fears which it
inspired’.34 It was this balance which enabled Napoleon to unite a
divided France, and it was this unity which Bonapartism was
portrayed as guaranteeing (as we have seen, Louis-Napoleon as
President constantly reiterated the claim that only he represented
the whole of the nation).
Napoleonic Ideas, then, provided a series of social and political
goals, and it specifically linked their accomplishment to Napoleonic
rule. From this basis both the conservative and the radical implications of the pamphlet were reinforced in a number of ways, in order
to ensure that the foundations were strengthened to support a future
Bonapartist bid for power, if and when circumstances favoured it.
One element which was of central importance in terms of both social
order and overcoming divisiveness was religion. Marx certainly
exaggerates when he refers to ‘the shameless, bare-faced rule of the
… cross’ and ‘the dominance of the Church as an instrument of
state’,35 for both the principle and the practice of Bonapartist rule
placed the Church firmly under state control. Neither Napoleon nor
his nephew, however, espoused the fierce anti-clericalism of the
Jacobin Republicans, preferring to see religion as a way of reinforcing
the civil order. Louis-Napoleon referred both to the need for religion
if liberty is to flourish and to the fact that Napoleon had made public
worship freely available,36 and he was careful in his presidential
manifesto to reassure Catholics who might feel threatened by the
new Republic. Such policy statements from the Bonapartists were
supported by an iconography which constantly showed the Church
approving their deeds. From the signing of the Concordat of 1801
and the Imperial catechism of 1806 every public ceremony was
represented in pictures and prints with the Church in prominent
attendance;37 its role was to enhance the moral legitimacy of the
Bonaparte dynasty, not to extend its own power.
At the same time, steps were taken to recall the extent to which
Bonapartism was and had always been the protector of the menu
peuple. As with religion, an iconographical tradition already existed
which depicted Napoleon as the friend of the ordinary man, whether
sharing a chicken leg with soldiers on the eve of battle or being lifted
The Appeal of Bonapartism
169
shoulder high on his return from Elba. Once again, Louis-Napoleon
added political substance to these images by receiving Radical
Republican leaders in prison, establishing links with the progressive
artisanal journal L’Atelier and, above all, writing The Extinction of
Pauperism in 1845. In this work he showed he was aware of the plight
of the poor at a time when the government seemed to offer nothing
but neglect, and he proposed solutions, including the idea of national
workshops, which were close to those of the socialist Republican,
Louis Blanc. This work and the activities which surrounded it
provided Louis-Napoleon with the ideal credentials in the presidential election to oppose the man who had backed the closure of the
National Workshops of 1848 and led the army against the workers
in June. It was no coincidence that when Tremblaire was editing the
Oeuvres de Louis-Napoléon in 1848, he arranged for The Extinction of
Pauperism to be reissued separately in September of that year.
The examples discussed above suggest that the process by which
the Bonapartist appeal was given greater political substance in the
1840s did not involve replacing the sentimentality of the Napoleonic
legend; on the contrary, it was a case of building upon it. It was the
interaction of the two elements which would contribute so
powerfully to the eventual attraction of Louis-Napoleon for the
electorate. Even writers less intellectually contemptuous of political
Bonapartism than Marx have tended to draw a sharp distinction
between it and the sentimental attachment to the name of
Napoleon. For Albert Guerard, ‘it was Louis-Napoléon alone who
turned sentimental Napoleonism into political Bonapartism’;38 more
recently, Frédéric Bluche has argued that Bonapartism was not the
product of the Napoleonic legend, but that it drew its content from
the ‘doctrine’ of the Empire,39 whilst Bernard Ménager opens his
study by insisting that popular Bonapartism, a politically motivated
movement with the aim of restoring power to Napoleon or his heirs,
must again be seen as quite separate from the legend.40 My
contention here is that the two were in fact part of the same process
and were deliberately made to be so by the Bonapartists of the 1840s,
that the legend on its own may not have been sufficient to sustain
a political movement a generation after Napoleon’s death, but that
the movement based on a political programme was all the more
powerful for being placed under the stewardship of the nephew and
heir of the Emperor himself (many of Louis-Napoleon’s detractors,
including Marx, implicitly acknowledge this in attempting to cast
doubt on Louis-Napoleon’s parentage).41
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Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire
In many cases, exploitation of the legend involved nothing more
than ‘cashing in’ on material produced by people who had no
connection with the political movement. As I have argued elsewhere,
much of the popular literature, images and bric-a-brac which
appeared had more to do with making money than supporting a
political cause, and very little of it made even indirect reference to
Louis-Napoleon before 1849.42 The Bonapartists did, however, also
take a number of steps to highlight the link between Louis-Napoleon
and his uncle on an emotional, as well as a political, level. Once
again, Napoleonic Ideas sets the tone; for all that it is a work of
exposition, its final chapter ends with a sentimental flourish, ‘Full
of beauty and honour are the obsequies of the sovereign whom a
nation in tears and glory clothed in mourning accompany to his last
resting place’,43 as does the overall conclusion, ‘May the shade of the
Emperor repose, then, in peace! His memory grows greater every
day.’44 The reference to ‘his last resting place’ highlights the fact that
Louis-Napoleon deliberately timed the publication of Napoleonic
Ideas to benefit from the publicity which surrounded the impending
return of Napoleon’s remains from Saint Helena. This place of exile
already had its own mythology, fuelled in particular by the
publication of Las Cases’s Memorial of Saint Helena (much of which
had been dictated by Napoleon himself); a picture had been
established of a lonely, suffering man, unjustly treated by his captors,
reduced to living out his days on a wild and distant island. This
image was projected by a vast array of engravings and prints which
created an imaginary landscape of barren rock, often portrayed as
no more than a few metres across, on which the lonely Emperor was
perched, as in Pierre-Eugène Aubert’s Napoleon on the Rock of Saint
Helena.45 After Napoleon’s death, a series of mournful images of the
lonely grave in a willow grove so far from France completed the sense
of martyrdom.46 It was precisely this sense of martyrdom that LouisNapoleon sought to show himself as sharing, and this provides a very
good example of the exploitation of sentiment referred to above.
In an extraordinary two-page brochure published in Paris in 1840
(and again using the name Napoleon-Louis), entitled To the Shade of
the Emperor, Louis-Napoleon parallels the suffering of Napoleon,
which has come to an end, with his own, which continues. Under
the guise of apologising to the Emperor for being unable on account
of his imprisonment to participate in the glorious ceremony, he links
both his fate and his ideas to those of his uncle. After protesting that
nobody had understood him when he spoke of Napoleon’s ideas,
The Appeal of Bonapartism
171
ideas which the present age had renounced, he asserts triumphantly,
‘it is in vain that they say you were a meteor which left no trace, it
is in vain they deny your civil glory, they will never disinherit you’.
He then finishes by having the shade of Napoleon say to him, ‘You
have suffered for me, friend, I am pleased with you!’47 A whole
cluster of messages is clearly sent by this brochure: Napoleonic ideas
are still relevant today, Louis-Napoleon is the legitimate heir to
whom those ideas have been entrusted, and because of this he too
experiences the martyrdom inflicted on his uncle. In short, both
were made to suffer because they loved France.
The image of Louis-Napoleon as the victim of tyranny and
injustice was reiterated throughout the 1840s, with frequent
evocations of the Bonapartes’ exile and his own imprisonment. The
same is true of the other idea invoked in the climax of To the Shade
of the Emperor, namely that the great Napoleon bestows his full
approval on the actions of his successor. The popular propaganda of
1848 took up this theme to the full to promote the idea that support
for Louis-Napoleon was the natural extension of admiration for his
uncle, as the following two examples demonstrate.
After Louis-Napoleon’s election to the Assembly in September
1848 a broadsheet was circulated in which this link was put forward
in both words and picture. The five verses of a song are addressed by
the Emperor to France, each ending with the same call to reciprocate
the love he had always shown for his country with equal love
towards his chosen heir, who, we are reminded, is his godson. In the
picture which is placed above the words of the song, Napoleon
(instantly recognisable in his grey riding coat and three-cornered
hat) presents Louis-Napoleon to a female allegorical figure who
represents France.48 Another broadsheet followed which took the
form of a letter ‘addressed from heaven by the Emperor Napoleon
to his nephew’, refuting claims that Louis-Napoleon sought power
only for himself. Speaking to ‘you, who I call my child and who I
believe to be worthy of that name’, and invoking his own ‘agony of
Saint Helena’, Napoleon urges his nephew to expect nothing for
himself but to think always of the ‘people’; do this, he says, ‘and you
will take your place at my side, and I will bless you as I bless all who
contribute to our beautiful France’.49
The close identification of Louis-Napoleon with his uncle did
undoubtedly play a significant part in the former’s electoral success,
but it would not have done so to the same extent without the
sustained efforts of the Bonapartists over several years to highlight
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Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire
the nature of the association. If many rural voters were like the agricultural labourer questioned by Nassau William Senior, who said his
village all voted for Louis-Napoleon ‘partly because of his uncle who
was the greatest man who ever lived’,50 if there is truth in the claim
that peasants in some parts of France thought they were voting for
Napoleon himself, and if such responses do suggest that the uncle
and the nephew were conflated into one figure at the time of the
presidential election, then this has been shown to be a process
which was encouraged and enhanced by the efforts of the
Bonapartist campaigners.
Moreover, the peasant cited by Nassau Senior only based his vote
‘partly’ on the association with Napoleon. In order to succeed, LouisNapoleon had to have something to offer in his own right, especially
when it came to attracting support from those less politically simple
than was much of the peasantry. In this respect, the Bonapartist
campaign consciously referred back to the two strands developed in
Napoleonic Ideas. It has already been seen how the idea of a radical
Louis-Napoleon, heir of the Revolution and friend of the worker, was
promoted. Even more insistent was the promise that LouisNapoleon, like his uncle, would bring order out of chaos without
sacrificing progress, and would thus promote prosperity for all. Marx
quotes the Economist as judging the President to be the guardian of
order in late 1851,51 but this quality had already been recognised in
Louis-Napoleon before his election by the Gazette de France, which
on 5 December 1848 gave its support to the candidate whose ‘name
is a living protest against tendencies to anarchy and disorder’.52
In a sense, Marx was right to observe that Louis-Napoleon was able
to ‘signify everything’, but in arguing that this was ‘because he was
nothing’,53 he implies that no more than a series of hollow promises
lay behind the appeal. This view does less than justice to the fact
that Louis-Napoleon’s ability to attract support from so many
different groups was enhanced by the way the promises could be
made to seem consistent with what he had been saying and doing
for the past ten years. A carefully edited version of his own record
was deliberately grafted on to that of Napoleon to lend conviction
to the pledge that he would provide solutions for French society’s
present ills.
How, then, are we to assess Marx’s analysis of Bonapartism in the
Eighteenth Brumaire? Roger Price, in The French Second Republic,
undertakes a detailed examination of French society at this time
explicitly as a critique of Marx’s essays, for he believes that Marx put
The Appeal of Bonapartism
173
forward a view which has led to false preconceptions of that society
and its institutions. However, whilst Price is correct in pointing to a
considerable number of differentiations in what Marx treats as broad
single classes, the ‘simplification’ which leads to ‘mistakes of interpretation by Marx himself’54 has less bearing on the election of 10
December than on other aspects of the Second Republic (Price’s
interpretation of the June Days of 1848, for instance, differs quite
fundamentally from that of Marx in Class Struggles in France).55 In
fact, Price’s analysis of the election56 contains nothing that is not in
broad agreement with that of Marx. It is not so much that Marx is
guilty of ‘mistakes of interpretation’ in this context, but rather that
his analysis lacks substance and as such only tells half the story.
It is in the nature of Marx’s approach to subject politics and
political movements to rigorous intellectual analysis, and it is
perhaps not surprising that he should be unimpressed by a
programme seemingly as loose and full of contradictions as that
offered by Louis-Napoleon and his supporters. But Bonapartism was
not based on intellect, and it did not propose a coherent political
ideology; it was from the outset eclectic in approach, and it
functioned ultimately more through suggestion than argument. For
Marx, this meant that its appeal must remain shallow. If LouisNapoleon attracted support, it was only because various class groups
saw him as the temporary means of achieving their own ends;
therefore, any success he enjoyed would be short-lived, as Marx
suggests at the end of the Eighteenth Brumaire,57 and again in his
Preface to the Second Edition of 1869.58
In this analysis, Marx underestimates the positive appeal that a
movement such as Bonapartism can exert. Even if the Second Empire
did collapse completely in 1870 (although not in the way that Marx
had predicted), the attraction of populist authoritarianism remained,
especially in periods of crisis. Marx’s legacy in this respect has proved
to be far-reaching, for Marxist political parties and Marxist intellectuals well into the twentieth century have frequently failed to grasp
the extent of the appeal of populist right-wing movements and have
therefore underestimated them as political opponents. The
arguments which portray Louis-Napoleon as a ‘proto-fascist’59 or as
part of a tradition of French ‘Caesarism’60 remain unconvincing, but
in terms of electoral techniques he did establish an approach which
was much imitated. As one of the first to gain national office through
universal manhood suffrage (Napoleon had only obtained plebisci-
174
Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire
tary approval when already in power), he demonstrated an ability
to come to terms with the demands of mass politics.
The dismissive contempt that Marx showed for Louis-Napoleon
and his ideas has found parallels in the attitude of many of his
followers. To cite merely one of the most notorious examples, many
left-wing intellectuals of the 1920s and early 1930s were quite
dismissive of the potential of Hitler, whose speeches in this period
showed just the combination of sentiment and promise analysed in
this essay. Establishing emotional sympathy with a long relation of
his own personal struggle, he would then go on to offer simple
solutions to seemingly intractable problems, ending with an
affirmation that he had the will to carry out these solutions.61
Irrational and inconsistent this may have been, but, as LouisNapoleon had recognised at an early stage, mass politics is not
always about rational and coherent argument. It would prove a
lesson that the Marxists of Western and Central Europe took a long
time to learn.
NOTES
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, this volume, p. 24.
Ibid., p. 23.
Ibid., p. 32.
Ibid., p. 53.
Ibid., p. 98.
Ibid., p. 32.
Ibid., p. 92.
Letter of 15 November 1836, quoted in Adrien Dansette, Histoire du
Second Empire: Louis-Napoléon à la Conquête du Pouvoir (Paris: Hachette,
1961), p. 141 (my translation).
Marx, Eighteenth Brumaire, p. 34.
C.W., Vol. 10, pp. 80–2.
Ibid., p. 80.
Marx, Eighteenth Brumaire, p. 34.
Ibid., p. 101.
C.W., Vol. 10, p. 80.
Alexis de Tocqueville, Recollections (New York: Doubleday and Company,
1975), pp. 348–9.
See Roger Price, The French Second Republic (London: Batsford, 1972), esp.
pp. 5–30.
Roger Price (ed.), Documents on the French Revolution of 1848 (Basingstoke:
Macmillan, 1996), p. 113.
Ibid., p. 115.
Brison D. Gooch (ed.), Napoleonic Ideas: Des Idées Napoléoniennes, par le
Prince Napoléon-Louis Bonaparte (New York: Harper & Row, 1967), p. 3.
The Appeal of Bonapartism
175
20. A classic evocation of this storytelling can be found in Balzac’s novel The
Country Doctor.
21. Four ministers, six marshals, fifty-six generals, fourteen councillors of
state, nineteen prefects, seven ambassadors and twenty-one chamberlains.
22. Almanac Impérial pour 1846, Bibliothèque Nationale (Paris), LC22.144.
23. Revue de l’Empire, Bibliothèque Nationale, LC2.1540 (my translation).
24. Frédéric Bluche, Le Bonapartisme (Paris: Nouvelles Editions Latines, 1980),
pp. 254–8; Bernard Ménager, Les Napoléons du Peuple (Paris: Aubier,
1988), p. 91.
25. Gooch, Napoleonic Ideas, p. 125.
26. R.S. Alexander, Napoleon (London: Arnold, 2001), p. 47.
27. Price, Second Republic, p. 214.
28. Gooch, Napoleonic Ideas, p. 43.
29. Ibid., p. 39.
30. Ibid., p. 86.
31. Ibid., p. 33.
32. Ibid., p. 61.
33. Ibid., p. 49.
34. Ibid., p. 34.
35. Marx, Eighteenth Brumaire, pp. 22, 105.
36. Gooch, Napoleonic Ideas, pp. 43, 59.
37. See, for example, Jacques-Louis David, Le Sacre (Musée du Louvre);
Goubaud, Baptism of the King of Rome in Notre-Dame (Réunion des Musées
Nationaux, Paris); Boullay, Exhumation des Cendres de L’Empereur Napoléon
(Bibliothèque Nationale); Imagerie Pellerin, Exhumation des Cendres de
Napoléon (Musée Carnavalet).
38. Albert Guerard, Reflections on the Napoleonic Legend (London: Fisher
Unwin, 1924), p. 149.
39. Bluche, Bonapartisme, p. 10.
40. Ménager, Napoléons du Peuple, p. 7.
41. Marx, Eighteenth Brumaire, p. 101.
42. Geoff Watkins, ‘Selling Bonapartism or Merely Selling Copies? The
Napoleonic Legend and Popular Almanacs’, in Bertrand Taithe and Tim
Thornton (eds), Propaganda (Stroud: Sutton Publishing, 1999)
pp. 131–48.
43. Gooch, Napoleonic Ideas, p. 122.
44. Ibid., p. 126.
45. Musée national du Château de Malmaison.
46. See, for example, Georgin, Imagerie Pellerin, Tombeau de Napoléon (Paris,
Musée de l’Armée).
47. Aux Mânes de l’Empereur, printed in Paris by P. Bredolin, 15 December
1840 (Bibliothèque Nationale) (my translation).
48. Bibliothèque Nationale, Ye 969 (50); the final words of each stanza are
‘l’enfant dont je fus le parrain’.
49. Lettre adressée du Ciel par l’Empereur Napoléon à son Neveu le Prince Louis
Bonaparte (Paris: Charles Boze, 1848) (my translation).
50. Nassau William Senior, Journals kept in France and Italy from 1848 to 1852
(New York: Da Capo Press, 1973), Vol. 2, p. 180.
176
51.
52.
53.
54.
55.
56.
57.
58.
Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire
Marx, Eighteenth Brumaire, p. 84.
Price, Second Republic, p. 212.
C.W., Vol. 10, p. 81.
Price, Second Republic, p. 12.
Ibid., pp. 155–92.
Ibid., pp. 208–25.
Marx, Eighteenth Brumaire, p. 109.
Karl Marx, ‘Preface’ (1869) to The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte,
2nd edn, C.W., Vol. 21, pp. 56–8.
59. For examples of this argument, see Brison D. Gooch (ed.), Napoleon 3rd:
Man of Destiny: Enlightened Statesman or Proto-Fascist? (Boston: D.C. Heath
and Company, 1963).
60. See Philip Thody, French Caesarism from Napoleon I to Charles de Gaulle
(New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1989).
61. For a discussion of Hitler’s rhetoric, see in particular, J.P. Stern, Hitler, the
Führer and the People (Hassocks: Harvester Press, 1975).
Part 4
The Autonomy of the State?
7
The Political Scene and the
Politics of Representation:
Periodising Class Struggle
and the State in the
Eighteenth Brumaire
Bob Jessop
The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte has a key place in debates
over Marx’s theory of the state and his account of political representation. For some critics, this text provides evidence for two
Marxian theories of the state: whereas Marx normally saw the state
as the executive committee or direct instrument of the ruling class,
in other contexts he argued that it can become relatively
autonomous from the various classes in society even if it continues
to perform a class function.1 For others, however, this same text
reveals devastating inconsistencies in Marx’s class-based account of
the state, since it allows for an executive (apparatus) that wins
autonomy for itself against the dominant class(es). This inconsistency
is said to be especially clear in Marx’s later remarks on the tendential
rise of a praetorian state, in which the army led by Bonaparte III, starts
to represent itself against society rather than acting on behalf of one
part of society against other parts.2 According to Mehlman, for
example, ‘the piquancy of Bonapartism lies entirely in the emergence
of a State which has been emptied of its class contents’.3 Yet others
suggest that Marx himself resolves these alleged inconsistencies ‘by
analysing the Bonapartist regime, if not as the organized rule of a
class bloc, nevertheless as the determined product of the class
struggle’.4 For others again, the same text confirms the generic
(rather than exceptional) tendency of the capitalist state to acquire
relative autonomy in order the better to organise the interests of the
dominant class(es) and to win the support of subordinate classes.5
The exceptional nature of state autonomy in the Bonapartist case
merely serves to indicate the exceptional nature of the circumstances
in which this role has to be played.6
The Eighteenth Brumaire poses similar problems for the nature and
significance of representation in the wider political system. For the
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180
Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire
complexity of the ideological and organisational forms in which
Marx claims to discern class interests at work seems to undermine
any attempt to show a one-to-one correlation between economic
classes and political forces. For some commentators this indicates
the need to take political identities, political discourses, and political
forms of representation seriously in theoretical analysis and to
explore the practical problems this poses in advancing economic
interests.7 For others this simply confirms the radical disjunction
between the economic and the political with no unilateral
translation or relay mechanism that might ensure that politics
reflects economic class interests.8 This highlights the problem of
economic class reductionism that allegedly plagues Marxism and
leads to the twin conclusions that political representation has its own
dynamic and that it is invalid to look behind the political stage in
order to discover hidden economic forces. And for yet others, this
text illustrates the great extent to which Marx anticipated subsequent
discourse-theoretical insights into the performative nature of
language, the discursive constitution of identities and interests, and
their role in shaping the forms and terms of political struggle. For
Marx interpreted politics in the Eighteenth Brumaire as formative
rather than superstructural, performative rather than reflective.9
For these and other reasons we can see the Eighteenth Brumaire as
a key text for the interpretation of Marx’s state and political theory.
Thus its implications for state theory and class analysis are typically
contrasted with a ‘standard’ Marxian position derived variously (and
with quite different results) from The Communist Manifesto, the 1859
‘Preface’ to the Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, or the
three volumes of Capital. This is a highly dubious procedure since
the Manifesto is a programmatic text, the status of the 1859 ‘Preface’
as a canonical text is highly questionable, and Capital’s class analysis
is incomplete even in economic, let alone political or ideological,
terms. There can be no innocent reading of a text such as the
Eighteenth Brumaire but it could well be useful to read it initially
without adopting preconceived views about Marx’s theory of the
state and class politics that have been derived from other studies that
were not concerned with specific political conjunctures. In this sense
the first question to ask is what does Marx set out to achieve in his
history of the Eighteenth Brumaire?
WHAT DOES THE EIGHTEENTH BRUMAIRE DO?
First, as a substantive exercise in historiography, the Eighteenth
Brumaire describes the background to Louis Bonaparte’s coup d’état
Periodising Class Struggle and the State
181
on 2 December 1851 and suggests that this is the farcical repetition
of the tragic coup d’état made by Napoleon Bonaparte on 9 November
1799 (or, as it was identified in the new revolutionary calendar, the
18 Brumaire VIII). It presents the run-up to this coup d’état in terms
of a periodisation of political developments that is presented and
analysed in terms of four closely interwoven objects of enquiry.
These comprise:
(a) the political scene, that is, the visible but nonetheless ‘imaginary’
world of everyday politics as acted out before the general public
through the open and declared action of more or less wellorganised social forces.10 Marx employs a wide range of
theoretical metaphors and allusions to describe and map the
political stage and to critically assess how the resulting political
theatre is played out by actors who assume different characters,
masks and roles according to changing material circumstances,
strategies and moods
(b) the social content of the politics acted out on this stage. This
involves a closer inspection of ‘the rude external world’11 based
on looking ‘behind the scenes’12 of ‘the situation and the parties,
this superficial appearance, which veils the class struggle’.13 This
class struggle is nonetheless related to the present situation and
its various strategic and tactical possibilities rather than to
abstract, eternal and idealised interests that are attached to
pregiven classes defined purely in terms of their position in the
social relations of production. Thus Marx emphasises the
concrete-complex articulation of the economic and extraeconomic conditions for the ‘expanded reproduction’14 of
specific class relations and what this implies for the reordering
of what are always relative advantages in the class struggle. In
this sense he also describes avant la lettre the stakes, strategies
and tactics involved in what Gramsci would later term ‘wars of
position’ and ‘wars of manoeuvre’15
(c) the transformation of the institutional architecture of the state and
the wider political system insofar as this entails a structural
framework that differentially constrains and facilitates the
pursuit of particular strategies and tactics in wars of position
and/or manoeuvre, provides a target of strategic action in its
own right as diverse political forces struggle to maintain or
transform it, and, indeed, itself derives from the results of past
182
Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire
class (or, at least, class-relevant) struggles in the ideological,
political and economic realms
(d) the interconnected movements of the local, national and international economy over different timescales insofar as these shape
the political positions that could feasibly have been adopted in
given conjunctures. Here too, although Marx strongly asserts his
belief (and, indeed, even protests too much in this regard) that
the ultimate victory of the proletarian social revolution is
guaranteed, he also emphasises the need to relate political action
to the present situation.
Second, Marx also poses questions throughout the Eighteenth
Brumaire about the language and other symbols in and through which
the class content of politics comes to be represented or, more
commonly, misrepresented. He explores the semiotic forms, genres,
and tropes through which different political forces articulate their
identities, interests, and beliefs and also reflects on the appropriate
political language in which the proletariat might formulate its
demands. In this context he argues that the social revolution of the
nineteenth century must develop its own, novel political language
rather than draw, as did earlier revolutions, on the ‘poetry from the
past’.16 In this sense, the Eighteenth Brumaire is more concerned with
the discursive limitations on the representation of class interests
(‘tradition from all the dead generations’, ‘the superstition from the
past’, ‘an entire superstructure of different and peculiarly formed
sentiments, delusions, modes of thought and outlooks on life’)17
than it is with the organisational forms in and through which they
might be advanced. This need to develop an appropriate political
language holds particularly for the proletariat and its potential allies.
Indeed, one could well interpret this text as a contribution to the
critique of semiotic economy, i.e., to an account of the imaginary
(mis)recognition and (mis)representation of class interests, rather
than to the political economy of capital accumulation. The most
extreme illustration of this is found in the floating signifier himself,
Louis Bonaparte. For, as Marx argued in The Class Struggles in France,
although Bonaparte was ‘the most simple-minded [einfältig] man in
France’, he had ‘acquired the most multiplex [vielfältig] significance.
Just because he was nothing, he could signify everything.’ So
different class forces could project their own hopes and fears onto
Bonaparte; and he in turn skilfully manipulated and exploited this
polyvalence to advance his own interests.
Periodising Class Struggle and the State
183
Third, as a serious and self-consciously literary work in its own
right, the Eighteenth Brumaire adopts a highly distinctive and
powerful set of literary techniques to narrate the historical
background of the coup d’état. Above all it adopts the form of parody
to unfold this narrative, to portray the ironies in French history, to
express the problems of class representation, and to resolve the
relative importance of external circumstances and willed action in
shaping the course of history. In this regard Marx’s use of language
is itself performative at several levels. Indeed, as he himself puts it in
his preface to the second edition, he intended to submit the cult of
the first Napoleon to ‘the weapons of historical research, of criticism,
of satire and of wit’.18 In this sense his withering descriptions of
Louis Bonaparte also serve to belittle the stature of his uncle,
Napoleon Bonaparte. As an intervention intended to influence the
subsequent course of French politics, Marx’s use of a specific literary
genre and choice of language has specific pedagogical and political
purposes. Far from being arbitrary, then, his mode of emplotting the
historical background to the Eighteenth Brumaire is organically related
to the intended political effects of this narrative.
ON PERIODISATION
Marx’s text presents a complex periodisation of contemporary
history rather than a simple chronology. This makes it a model of
political analysis that has inspired many subsequent Marxist analyses
and also won the respect of many orthodox historians for its
theoretical power and empirical insight. In the first instance Marx
relates key turning points in the class struggle to the unfolding of
actions and events on the political stage. He distinguishes three
successive periods, the first of brief duration, and the second and
third having three phases each, and the third phase of the third
period having four steps.19 His periodisation is based mainly on
movements in parliamentary and party politics as these are
influenced by actions and events occurring at a distance from the
state (e.g. in the press, petitions, salons and saloon bars, the streets
of Paris, the countryside, etc.).20 Marx identifies the three periods as
follows: (a) the ‘February’ period from 24 February to 4 May 1848 in
which, after the overthrow of Louis Philippe, the stage was prepared
for the republic – the period of improvised or provisional
government; (b) the period of constituting the republic or the
constituent assembly for the nation; and (c) the constitutional
republic or legislative national assembly.21 It is worth noting here
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Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire
that Marx offers three interpretations of each period. In distinguishing the periods, he refers first to their immediate conjunctural
significance, then to the primary institutional site in and around
which the political dramatic unfolds. In addition, each period (and
its phases, where these are distinguished) is discussed in terms of its
past, its present and, as far as it was already on the public record or
Marx deemed it knowable, its future significance.
Periodisations and chronologies differ in three ways. First, whereas
a chronology orders actions, events, or periods on a single unilinear
time scale, a periodisation operates with several time scales. Thus the
Eighteenth Brumaire is replete with references to intersecting and
overlapping time horizons, to unintended as well as self-conscious
repetitions, to dramatic reversals and forced retreats as well as
surprising turnarounds and forward advances, and to actions and
events whose true significance would only emerge in the ensuing
train of events. Second, while a chronology recounts simple
temporal coincidence or succession, a periodisation focuses on more
complex conjunctures. It classifies actions, events, and periods into
stages according to their conjunctural implications (as specific combinations of constraints and opportunities on the pursuit of different
projects) for the actions of different social forces on different sites of
action over different time horizons. For each period, Marx identifies
the possibilities it offers for different actors, identities, interests,
horizons of action, strategies and tactics. He also interprets periods
from diverse perspectives (e.g. from a long-term democratic
viewpoint as opposed to the immediate stakes declared by protagonists); emphasises how the balance of forces comes to be transformed
over time (e.g. the neutralisation of democratic elements in the army
through a series of deliberate manoeuvres); and identifies decisive
turning points (for example, the Party of Order’s loss of the lever of
executive power when it was excluded from the Cabinet).22 Third,
whereas a chronology typically provides a simple narrative
explanation for what occurs by identifying a single temporal series
of actions and events, a periodisation rests on an explanatory
framework oriented to the contingent, overdetermined interaction
of more than one such series. In this regard there can be no doubt
about the complex emplotment of the Eighteenth Brumaire. For it
presents a story marked by repetition and deferral, tragedy and farce,
high politics and low cunning, political theatre and mob violence –
set against a background in which a modern French national
capitalism is gradually being consolidated in city and countryside
Periodising Class Struggle and the State
185
alike in the broader context of an increasingly integrated world
market. This provides the basis for a complex narrative.
THE POLITICAL STAGE
Marx is especially concerned with the language and effectivity of
political action on the political stage and explores this in terms of a
wide range of theatrical metaphors. This could well reflect both real
changes in the nature of politics following the French Revolution
and Marx’s own interest in literary forms, styles and tropes along
with his extensive knowledge of specific plays and novels. For, on
the one hand, the French Revolution coincided with major changes
in the actors’ art in the literary theatre and in the official politics of
representation. As Friedland has shown, based on detailed analyses
of French theatre and politics from 1789 to 1820, the theatre and
acting were politicised and French politics was theatricalised. Given
our concern with the Eighteenth Brumaire, it is important to note that
French revolutionary politics did, indeed, adopt old political
languages, old character masks and old roles as its protagonists
sought to develop a new politics of representation in which the
national assembly now claimed to actively ‘represent’ the nation
rather than, as occurred in the Estates system of the ancien régime,
serving as its corporate embodiment.23 Marx, too, stresses the
theatricality of politics not only as metaphor but also as a selfconscious political practice on the part of political actors as they
sought to persuade and impress their audience by adopting character
masks and roles from the historical past and/or from a dramatic
repertoire. And, on the other hand, Marx himself had a solid
grounding in ancient and modern philosophies of literature and
drama, their theory and history, and an immense range of what he
and Engels described in the Communist Manifesto as ‘world
literature’.24 This is reflected in his passionate use of parody as a
mode of emplotment to ridicule the two Bonapartes.
Marx takes great pains to emphasise how the political stage has its
own effectivity. Far from being a simple political reflection of
economic interests, it has its own logic and its own influence on class
relations. This is quite consistent, of course, with The Communist
Manifesto’s claim that every class struggle is a political struggle. This
is almost painfully evident in Marx’s initial attempts in the first
instalment of the Eighteenth Brumaire, written it should be recalled
in separate parts over several months and intended for serial
publication,25 to establish correspondences between different
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Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire
political parties and different classes or class fractions. But even here
Marx recognises that there is no one-to-one fit between party and
economic class interests (see, e.g. his analysis of the pure republican
faction which, as Marx himself emphasises, is little more than a
political-intellectual côterie unified by shared political antipathies and
nationalist sentiments).26 Over the course of writing the Eighteenth
Brumaire, however, Marx moves towards an account of the logic of
political struggle in the modern (and capitalist type of) state and the
manner in which specific conjunctures and distinctive institutional
ensembles shape the forms and content of the political struggle. Thus
he builds on the institutional separation and potential antagonism
between state and civil society that he had already taken for granted
in his critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right;27 and he explores how
the institutional terrain of the state apparatus and its articulation to
the wider public sphere shapes the forms of politics. He therefore
notes many distinctive features of the state’s organisation and articulation to the public sphere – electoral, parliamentary, presidential,
bureaucratic, administrative, military, state-orchestrated mob
violence, etc. – that directly condition not only the various struggles
on the political stage but also struggles to modify the political balance
of forces discursively, organisationally and institutionally.
Among the many effects of the forms of politics on the course of
political struggle we can note, first, the (inevitably constrained)
choice of political genre and language in and through which the
aspirations of different political forces can be expressed. For,
implicitly conceding that there is no neutral language in and
through which social identities, interests, and aspirations can be
truly and unambiguously expressed, Marx emphasises that every
political movement needs to find appropriate discourses and
symbolism as means of political expression to advance its interests.
Second, Marx refers to the political space that this creates for the
literary representatives of a class.28 Thus he notes the emergence of a
parliamentary republican faction organised around political
sentiments rather than common material interests or position in the
relations of production. He describes this pure republic faction as no
more than a
coterie of republican-minded businessmen, writers, lawyers,
officers and officials whose influence rested on the personal
antipathy of the country to Louis Philippe, on recollections of the
Periodising Class Struggle and the State
187
old republic [of 1789–99], on the republican faith of a number of
enthusiasts, above all on French nationalism.29
Third, there is the phenomenon of ‘parliamentary cretinism, which
confines its victims to an imaginary world and robs them of their
senses, their recollection, all knowledge of the rude external world’.30
A fourth (but far from final example) is the emergence of a selfinterested military and bureaucratic caste (see below).
THE SOCIAL CONTENT OF POLITICS
Marx’s account of the superficial (but nonetheless significant and
causally effective) movements on the political stage is combined
with an analysis of the ‘social content of politics’.31 The economic
‘base’ figures in these analyses in two main ways. First, the necessary
institutional separation and the potential antagonism between state
and civil society (and hence the existence of a specific type of
political scene and its possible disjunctions from the economy)
depend on a particular form of economic organisation. Second, and,
for present purposes, more important, the economic ‘base’ is treated,
rightly or wrongly, as the ultimate source of the social or material
conditioning of political struggles. Here Marx refers both to the
changing economic conjunctures and successive modes of growth
in which political struggles occur and to the more general,
underlying connection between these struggles and basic economic
interests in a fundamentally capitalist social formation. Nonetheless
the social content of politics is related mainly to the economic
interests of the contending classes and class fractions in specific conjunctures and/or periods in a particular social formation rather than
to abstract interests identified at the level of a mode of production.
This approach is particularly important, of course, for intermediate
classes (e.g. the petite bourgeoisie), classes with no immediate role in
production (for example, the surplus population), or declassé
elements (e.g. the lumpenproletariat). But it also applies for other
classes. For example, in writing about the central role of the
peasantry in French politics, Marx noted how industrialisation and
the increasing power of financial capital had transformed its class
position. Whereas it had been a major beneficiary of land redistribution under Napoleon I, parcellisation and debt had undermined
the viability of many smallholdings and prompted a growing
division between a revolutionary and a conservative peasantry. It
was the latter whose proprietorial identity and traditional aspirations
188
Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire
Bonaparte claimed to represent (whilst doing little to help them in
practice) and whom he also mobilised as a crucial supporting class in
his political manoeuvres against other social forces. Likewise, over
the course of his successive analyses of the relations between the
financial aristocracy and the industrial bourgeoisie, Marx would later
come to emphasise how their original antagonism was moderated
through the development of a modern form of finance capital.32
In addition, Marx takes pains to emphasise the scope for
disjunction between the surface (but nonetheless effective)
movement and the deeper social content of political struggle. Thus
he writes that
[j]ust as in private life, one distinguishes between what a man
thinks and says, and what he really is and does, so one must all the
more in historical conflicts distinguish between the fine words
and aspirations of the parties and their real organisation and their
real interests, their image from their reality.33
It is important, for example, to distinguish the ‘“so-called” people’s
party’ from a real people’s party.34 Likewise, writing about the
Orléanist and Legitimist factions of the bourgeoisie, Marx argues that,
on the public stage, in high politics and matters of state, as a grand
parliamentary party, they pawned off their royal houses with
token acts of reverence, and adjourned the restoration of the
monarchy ad infinitum, and did their real business as the party of
order, i.e., under a social rather than a political banner, as a representative of the bourgeois world order, … as the bourgeois class
against other classes, not as royalists against republicans.35
Interestingly and significantly, Marx also tends to suggest that, the
more critical the economic situation, the less significant does the
disjunction between the political and the social become. For
divisions within the political field are then realigned, if possible,
around more basic social conflicts. Divisions within the bourgeoisie
are overcome, for example, when the bourgeoisie as a whole is
threatened. Political crisis may also prompt a realignment of state
and society when their separation risks becoming too antagonistic
and conflictual. Thus, some years after the Eighteenth Brumaire, when
a more or less completely autonomised Bonapartist ‘rule of the sword’
Periodising Class Struggle and the State
189
over society is threatened by social unrest, Napoleon III recognises
the need to retreat and rebuild his links to bourgeois civil society.36
THE STATE APPARATUS AND ITS TRAJECTORY
A further dimension of Marx’s analysis concerns the increasing centralisation of state power in France and its implications for the
development of the antagonism between state and society. For
present purposes, and given the limited space for this chapter, I will
make only two brief points in this regard. The first concerns how
changes in the overall architecture of the state shape the terrain of
political struggle and also condition the political balance of forces.
For strategic and tactical possibilities altered as the articulation
between parliament, Cabinet, and presidential authority was
modified; or, again, as the state acquired increasing control over
every aspect of social life throughout the land. This claim was taken
further, of course, in Marx’s later remarks on the praetorian state;
and was even more carefully elaborated in The Civil War in France.37
It reinforces the point that the very existence of an institutionally
separate state (and wider political system) excludes any possibility
that the political field can be a simple reflection of economic class
interests. Instead the general form of the state and the particular
form of political regimes modify the balance of forces and thereby
become stakes in the class struggle itself. Marx develops this point
most forcefully in exploring the implications of the transition from
a monarchical regime to a parliamentary republic for the capacity of
the two main fractions of the bourgeoisie to defend their common
interests. Thus he writes that:
The parliamentary republic was more than the neutral territory
where the two factions of the French bourgeoisie, legitimists and
orléanists, large-scale landed property and industry, could take up
residence with an equal right. It was the inescapable condition of
their joint rule, the sole form of state in which the claims of their
particular factions and those of all other classes of society were
subjected to the general interest of the bourgeois class. As
royalists, they relapsed into their old antagonism, a battle for
supremacy between landed property and money, and the highest
expression of this antagonism, the personification of it, were their
kings, their dynasties.38
190
Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire
Second, and as Marx takes pains to demonstrate, such state transformations are far from innocent. For they are partly the result of
political actions consciously directed at securing modifications in
the balance of forces. The clearest example of this in the Eighteenth
Brumaire is, of course, Louis Bonaparte’s conduct of a war of position
to centralise power in the hands of the president and then, through
a final war of manoeuvre, to venture the coup d’état that serves as
the dénouement of this particular Bonapartist farce. But it does not
follow that all such transformations are deliberate and their consequences intended (even if they are anticipated). For Marx also notes
the double bind in which the French bourgeoisie found itself in the
same conjuncture. Indeed, it ‘was compelled by its class position
both to negate the conditions of existence for any parliamentary
power, including its own, and to make the power of the executive,
its adversary, irresistible’.39
CONCLUSIONS
One should not write long conclusions to a short chapter. Instead I
will simply make five remarks about the problematic dialectic of
historical circumstances and social action from this far from
innocent (re-)reading of the Eighteenth Brumaire. First, rather than
denying it, Marx clearly recognises the so-called ‘problem of representation’. From the outset he problematises the semiotic resources
available to political forces to express their identities, interests, and
aspirations. If men do make their own history but not just as they
please in circumstances they choose for themselves, then one key
feature of the present circumstances, given and inherited is the
semiotic repertoire that they inherit from the past.40 Engels makes
much the same point in his commentary on The Peasant War in
Germany when he writes that all revolutionary social and political
doctrines directed against German feudalism were necessarily
theological heresies because of the dominance of religion in feudal
legitimation.41 This is why it is so important for the proletariat to
seek a ‘new poetry’ to express its identities, interests and aspirations.
Second, another key feature of these circumstances is the
topography of the political stage on which leading political forces
appeal for support from multiple audiences and the problems this
produces for political choreography. Marx regards the political scene
as the site of an experimental theatre as political actors adopt
different character masks, roles and styles of political action. A third
key feature of these circumstances is the political conjuncture. This
Periodising Class Struggle and the State
191
makes it imperative for different political forces to read the present
situation correctly in order to identify the horizons of possibility
(that is, the scope of possible actions in specific, but moving, fields
of political action) and the appropriate strategies and tactics to
maximise gains in an unfolding, open and indeterminate field. Marx
indicates the importance of reading the general line (ascending,
descending, etc.) of political development and choosing one’s
actions accordingly. In the conditions facing them from June 1848
up to Louis Bonaparte’s coup d’état, for example, it was quite right
for the defeated revolutionary proletariat to remain passive before
the advance of Bonapartism. Indeed, as a far from neutral observer
who was nonetheless confined to the sidelines, Marx hoped this
would serve to crystallise the gulf between state and society and
thereby clarify what was at stake for the revolutionary movement.
A fourth dimension of the circumstances confronting political
actors is the class-biased structure of the state and the need to
overcome this bias through actions to transform the state. Bonaparte
proved himself as a skilful practitioner of politics as ‘the art of the
possible’ in this regard. In The Civil War in France Marx will
eventually suggest that the commune is the most appropriate
political form for a revolutionary political regime. And fifth, these
other dimensions must be seen against the background of the nature
of the economic base and the dynamic of class struggles that provide
framework of possibilities. Two fine examples of this are Marx’s
account of the changing economic conditions of the peasantry (see
above) and of the increasing fusion between financial and industrial
capital associated with the rise of a modern fisco-financial system
during the 1840s and 1850s and the novel Bonapartist institution of
the Crédit Mobilier.42 Indeed this aspect will play an increasing role
in Marx’s analysis of Bonapartism and its role in the development
of a modern capitalist economy – and hence in further modifying
his analysis of its significance as a form of capitalist state.
NOTES
1. For example, Ralph Miliband, ‘Marx and the State’, The Socialist Register
1965, pp. 278–96.
2. Thus Marx writes that ‘the rule of the naked sword is proclaimed in most
unmistakable terms, and Bonaparte wants France to clearly understand
that the imperial rule does rest not on her will but on 600,000 bayonets
... Under the second Empire the interest of the army itself is to
predominate. The army is no longer to maintain the rule of one part of
the people over another part of the people. The army is to maintain its
192
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire
own rule, personated by its own dynasty, over the French people in
general … It is to represent the State in antagonism to the society. It must
not be imagined that Bonaparte is not aware of the dangerous character
of the experiment he tries. In proclaiming himself the chief of the
Pretorians, he declares every Pretorian chief his competitor.’ Karl Marx,
‘The Rule of the Pretorians’, in C.W., Vol. 15, pp. 464–7.
Cited by Peter Stallybrass, ‘Marx and Heterogeneity: Thinking the
Lumpenproletariat’, Representations, Vol. 31 (1990), pp. 69–95, p. 80; see
also R.N. Hunt, The Political Ideas of Marx and Engels. II. Classical Marxism,
1850–1895 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1984), pp. 47–56.
David Fernbach, ‘Introduction’ to Karl Marx: Surveys from Exile (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973), p. 15; cf. B. Berberoglu, ‘The 18th-Brumaire
and the Controversy Over the Theory of the State’, Quarterly Review of
Historical Studies, Vol. 25, No. 2 (1986), pp. 36–44.
For example, Nicos Poulantzas, Political Power and Social Classes (London:
New Left Books, 1973).
See also Hal Draper, Marx’s Theory of Revolution. Part One: State and
Bureaucracy, Vol. 2 (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1977).
Dominick LaCapra, ‘Reading Marx: The Case of The Eighteenth Brumaire’,
in Dominick La Capra, Rethinking Intellectual History: Texts, Contexts,
Language (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987), pp. 268–90; Claude
Lefort, ‘Marx: from One Vision of History to Another’, Social Research,
Vol. 45, No. 4 (1978), pp. 615–66; C.J. Katz, ‘Marx on the Peasantry: Class
in Itself or Class in Struggle?’, Review of Politics, Vol. 54, No. 1 (1992),
pp. 50–71; Gregor McLennan, Marxism and the Methodologies of History
(London: New Left Books, 1981).
For example, Barry Hindess, ‘Classes and Politics in Marxist Theory’, in
Gary Littlejohn et al. (eds), Power and the State (London: Croom Helm,
1980); Paul Q. Hirst, ‘Economic Classes and Politics’, in Alan Hunt (ed.),
Class and Class Structure (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1977).
Sandy Petrey, ‘The Reality of Representation: Between Marx and Balzac’,
Critical Inquiry, Vol. 14 (1988), pp. 448–68; Stallybrass, ‘Marx and Heterogeneity’.
Poulantzas, Political Power and Social Classes, pp. 246–7.
Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, this volume, p. 75.
Ibid., p. 43.
Ibid., p. 42.
The term ‘expanded reproduction’ (see Nicos Poulantzas, Classes in Contemporary Capitalism (London: New Left Books, 1975)) refers to the
economic and extra-economic conditions involved in the reproduction
of class relations qua economic, political, and ideological relations. This
notion is well expressed by Marx when he writes of how the Orléanist
faction of bourgeoisie, which was ‘the most viable faction of the French
bourgeoisie’, was seriously weakened when ‘a blow was struck at its
parliament, its legal chambers, its commercial courts, its provincial representatives, its notaries, its universities, its spokesmen and their
platforms, its press and its literature, its administrative income and its
court fees, its army salaries and its state pensions, its mind and its body’
(Marx, Eighteenth Brumaire, pp. 96–7).
Periodising Class Struggle and the State
193
15. Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks (London: Lawrence
& Wishart, 1971).
16. Marx, Eighteenth Brumaire, p. 22.
17. Ibid., pp. 16, 22, 43.
18. Karl Marx, ‘Preface’ to the second edition of The Eighteenth Brumaire of
Louis Bonaparte, C.W., Vol. 21, p. 57.
19. Ibid., pp. 110–11. Terrell Carver’s translation uses periods for both; here
I follow Nicos Poulantzas’ terminology in Fascism and Dictatorship
(London: New Left Books, 1974) in distinguishing periods, phases, and
steps.
20. Marx, Eighteenth Brumaire, pp. 55, 37, 45, 55, 37.
21. Ibid., p. 24.
22. Ibid., pp. 41, 50, 53.
23. P.A. Friedland, ‘Representation and Revolution: the Theatricality of
Politics and the Politics of Theater in France, 1789–1794’, unpublished
PhD thesis, Berkeley, University of California; P.A. Friedland, Métissage.
The Merging of Theater and Politics in Revolutionary France (Princeton:
Institute for Advanced Studies, 1999), Occasional Papers No. 4.
24. See, in general, S.S. Prawer, Karl Marx and World Literature (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1978) and, on the Eighteenth Brumaire in
particular, Petrey, ‘The Reality of Representation’; J.P. Riquelme, ‘The
Eighteenth Brumaire of Karl Marx as Symbolic Action’, History and Theory,
Vol. 19, No. 1 (1980), pp. 58–72; M.A. Rose, Reading the Young Marx and
Engels (London: Croom Helm, 1978); Peter Stallybrass, ‘“Well Grubbed,
Old Mole”: Marx, Hamlet, and the (Un)fixing of Representation’, Cultural
Studies, Vol. 12, No. 1 (1998), pp. 3–14; and Hayden White, Metahistory.
The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe (Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins University Press, 1973).
25. This also explains many of the repetitions in this text on repetition as
well as changes in argument over different instalments.
26. Marx, Eighteenth Brumaire, pp. 28–9.
27. Karl Marx, ‘Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Law’,
C.W., Vol. 3, pp. 3–129.
28. Marx, Eighteenth Brumaire, p. 45.
29. Ibid., p. 28.
30. Ibid., p. 75.
31. Ibid., pp. 43–4.
32. For details, see Draper, Marx’s Theory of Revolution; S. Bologna, ‘Money
and Crisis: Marx as Correspondent of the New York Daily Tribune,
1856–57 (Part I)’, Common Sense, Vol. 13 (1993), pp. 29–53; and S.
Bologna, ‘Money and Crisis: Marx as Correspondent of the New York
Daily Tribune, 1856–57 (Part II)’, Common Sense, Vol. 14 (1993),
pp. 63–88.
33. Marx, Eighteenth Brumaire, p. 43.
34. Ibid., p. 42.
35. Ibid., pp. 43–4.
36. On the Bonapartist ‘rule of the praetorians’, its specificity, and its
limitations, see especially Marx, ‘The Rule of the Pretorians’; and, for a
194
37.
38.
39.
40.
41.
42.
Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire
conspectus and critical interpretation of Marx’s writings on this issue,
see Draper, Marx’s Theory of Revolution, pp. 459–63.
Marx, ‘The Rule of the Pretorians’; and The Civil War in France, in C.W.,
Vol. 22, pp. 307–57.
Marx, Eighteenth Brumaire, pp. 78–9.
Ibid., p. 54.
Ibid., p. 19.
Engels, ‘The Peasant War in Germany’, C.W., Vol. 10, pp. 412–13, cf.
pp. 421, 451.
On this see Bologna, ‘Money and Crisis’, Parts I and II.
8
Making Sense of the ‘Relative
Autonomy’ of the State
Paul Wetherly
Rummaging in dustbins is generally an unpleasant business but can
occasionally uncover items of great value. The item in question here
is the concept of relative autonomy which has been consigned by
Bob Jessop to his theoretical dustbin.1 The aim of this chapter is to
make sense of the relative autonomy of the state by putting forward
a version of this concept that is theoretically coherent and may be
plausible. In the process Jessop’s criticisms of relative autonomy will
be confronted, and aspects of his alternative ‘strategic relational’
theory of the state will be criticised.
It is a commonplace that Marx’s writings on the state comprise a
diverse collection and do not provide a coherent unified
perspective.2 However there is a fair degree of consensus that there
are two principal views and that a tension exists between them. One
view portrays the state as an instrument controlled by the capitalist
class while the second emphasises the relative autonomy of the state
from this class. It is a matter of debate which is primary and which
secondary.3 In contrast to this conventional presentation arguably a
better interpretation of Marx, and certainly a better exposition of
Marxist state theory, identifies two connected theoretical strands as
instrumentalist and structuralist and uses the notion of relative
autonomy to characterise the theoretical claims made in each of
these strands. Expressed simply, Marxism contains a general theory
of the state in the form of economic determination within which
the instrumental and structural explanations constitute specific
causal mechanisms.4 This chapter defends the possibility of a general
theory of the state against Jessop’s preference for ‘contingent
necessity’ as an explanatory method.
The Communist Manifesto contains Marx’s best known view of the
state in what is usually seen as an explicit statement of the instrumentalist position. This is the claim that
the bourgeoisie has … conquered for itself, in the modern representative state, exclusive political sway. The executive of the
195
196
Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire
modern state is but a committee for managing the common affairs
of the whole bourgeoisie.5
According to Miliband the Manifesto reveals Marx’s primary view on
the state,6 but there is a secondary or subordinate view found in the
Eighteenth Brumaire. This is a view of the state as ‘independent from
and superior to all social classes, as being the dominant force in
society rather than the instrument of a dominant class’.7 Expressed
in these ways Marx’s two views are directly at odds with each other.
In the instrumentalist view the state is subordinate to the capitalist
class in whose hands it is controlled as a mere instrument. In the
secondary view the capitalist class, in common with other classes, is
subordinate to the state which, no longer seen as a class instrument,
is now the dominant force in society.
Elster contrasts instrumentalism with abdication (or abstention)
and class balance theories. The Eighteenth Brumaire analyses
Bonapartism in terms of ‘a voluntary abstention from power by the
industrial bourgeoisie … motivated by a desire to split the attention
of the subjugated classes’.8 Alternatively a class balance interpretation of the text suggests that ‘the struggle between two opposed
classes allows the state to assert itself by divide and conquer’.9
Although these appear as two forms of the autonomous state thesis
they differ in a crucial respect. Only the class balance view accords
with Miliband’s secondary view of the state as the dominant force for
in this case the state is able to ‘assert itself’. But in contrast to this
autonomy the abstention view suggests that the bourgeoisie could
take political power back into its own hands if it chose to. The state’s
autonomy is thus more apparent than real – the state is still
subordinate to the capitalist class which is, however, content to rule
at arm’s length. Thus the abstention view does not involve the
genuine autonomy of the state and is better seen as a special case of
the instrumental approach.
A problem with this way of presenting Marx’s views is that it tends
to encourage a dichotomous conception. Thus for Elster ‘the central
question in the Marxist theory of the state is whether it is
autonomous with respect to class interests, or entirely reducible to
them’.10 Similarly we might think of the ‘primary’ and ‘secondary’
views as alternatives. This dualism can take the form of seeing the
‘normal’ state as a class instrument and the Bonapartist autonomous
state as ‘exceptional’. This normal-exceptional distinction would
seem to be supported by the idea that the state acquires the capacity
The Relative Autonomy of the State
197
to assert itself only in the specific context of class balance. However
two considerations show that this dualism is unsustainable. First,
the state might not be an instrument of the capitalist class yet be
controlled by other class interests. The possibility of the state being
used as an instrument by the working class is the most obvious idea
within a simple Marxist framework, but we might easily identify a
range of interests which might seek to control state power including
non-capitalist classes and non-class social forces. It should also be
noted that the autonomy of the state should not be conceived only
in terms of the presence of various external social forces and their
relative strengths but also in terms of its own interests and capacities.
This suggests that the ability of the state to assert itself does not arise
only negatively from a particular balance of external forces but from
its own capacities as a differentiated institutional complex. Further,
as will become clear, the state might not be an instrument of any of
these social forces yet have limited autonomy on account of facing
constraints of a structural kind.
Second, and quite apart from other causal influences, class reductionism (instrumentalism) versus state autonomy is a false antithesis.
The central question should be posed not in terms of whether or not
the state is an instrument controlled by the capitalist class but how
far the capitalist class is able to exercise such control. This is not an
either–or question but one of degree to which answers may be in the
form ‘not very much’ or ‘a great deal’.
Thus within an instrumental framework state power should be
conceived as a reflection of the unstable balance between societycentred and state-centred influences – the capacity of dominant and
subordinate classes to control the state in their own interests and
the capacity of the state to assert itself over against these external
forces. The question is whether this balance is essentially open-ended
or contingent or one of the elements tends to be more weighty than
the others. The possibility that the interests of the capitalist class will
tend to have more weight in determining the character of state
power involves a claim that the capitalist class is able to wield more
potent power resources over against pressure from below and the
capacity for independent action on the part of the state itself. In that
case the political sway of the capitalist class would be not exclusive
but predominant. That is, roughly, the claim against which the instrumental view of the state in capitalist society must be tested.11 And
it is the claim that the idea of the ‘relative autonomy’ of the state is
intended to capture.
198
Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire
So far we have only investigated one dimension of Marx’s account
of the state – characterised as an instrumental view – and one
dimension of relative autonomy. The question is who
holds/controls/exercises state power? However there is a second,
structural, dimension of explanation in Marx’s writing on the state.
Structural explanation focuses on the structural context or terrain in
which strategic actors operate, normally involving a claim that
structure constrains, influences or determines agency.12 For example
in the Eighteenth Brumaire structural explanation is invoked in
conjunction with the claim that the Bonapartist state is able to assert
itself as superior to all social classes. The structural explanation
effectively qualifies this claim, seemingly to the point of its total
negation. Although Marx’s analysis emphasises that the state under
Bonaparte is not a mere instrument of the capitalist class, nevertheless ‘Bonaparte feels it is his mission to safeguard “bourgeois order”.
But the strength of this bourgeois order lies in the middle class.’13
In other words the Bonapartist regime, despite its independence
from the capitalist class, still safeguards capitalist society. Thus, in
effect, it seems to matter little whether or not the capitalist class is
able to capture political power since in any case the structural
context of the state induces the same mission of securing the
interests of the dominant class.
In order to explain state action to preserve the ‘bourgeois order’ in
the absence of capitalist rule there needs to be a reason why such
action is necessary for the state itself in the sense that it protects state
interests. This necessity can be expressed simply in terms of a notion
of dependence, in the following terms:
1. running the state, and achieving any kind of political objective,
requires revenue
2. revenue requires production
3. in a capitalist society production is controlled by capitalists who
own means of production
4. since the state cannot undertake production on its own account
it must rely on taxation for revenue
5. the potential tax take depends on the productiveness of the
capitalist economy and the associated flow of income
6. maintaining a stable potential tax take requires economic
stability, and increasing the potential tax take requires capital
accumulation (economic growth)
The Relative Autonomy of the State
199
7. in its own interests the state must undertake actions that
promote accumulation, and refrain from actions that threaten
accumulation
8. some state actions are required to secure conditions of accumulation (for example, the legal enforcement of a normal working
day)
9. in sum, the state needs capital accumulation, which needs the
state. The requisite state action is ‘dictated by necessity’.
The point about structural analysis of this kind is that it does not
rely upon capture of state power by the capitalist class to show that
the state will tend to favour policies that are functional for continued
capital accumulation. Indeed it allows for the autonomy of state
actors in relation to class forces or, as Block expresses it, a ‘division
of labour between those who accumulate capital and those who
manage the state apparatus’.14 The structural argument shows why
state policies will tend to favour capital accumulation even in the
absence of political power or influence exercised by the capitalist
class. The causal mechanism at work here is the dependence of the
state on capital accumulation. In this view state policies support
capital accumulation not as an end in itself but as a means to an end,
that is as the best way for the state to realise its own interests.
Just as the structural argument seems to qualify, or even negate,
the capture and use of the state apparatus by dominant or
subordinate classes to advance their own interests so it effectively
seems to leave no room for the idea of the independent state or state
autonomy. This is because if the structural context forces the state to
pursue policies that favour capital accumulation this effectively shuts
out the possibility that state managers face strategic choices.
However this conclusion is mistaken for two related reasons. First,
the argument is that state policies will favour capital accumulation
because this is the best option for state managers to realise their own
interests such as, as Block suggests, to stay in power.15 Thus the
interests of state managers matter in this argument: it is because of
the character of state managers’ interests that policy favours accumulation. If the interests of state managers were defined differently
then they would act differently within the same structural context.
For example it makes a difference to state policies whether state
managers act in accordance with a ‘public service ethic’ or, as Block
claims, to maximise their power, prestige and wealth. Second, the
structural argument need not involve the claim that structural
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Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire
constraints are so powerful that only one outcome is possible and,
in fact, such a claim would be highly implausible. This means that
the state always has room for manoeuvre. For example Block claims
that state managers are ‘dependent on the maintenance of some
reasonable level of economic activity … since their own continued
power rests on a healthy economy’.16 Likewise ‘business confidence’
is not an on–off variable but is defined by a spectrum within which
there may conceivably be a range that is acceptable for state
managers. The room for manoeuvre equates to policy discretion and
allows the possibility that some policies may even be at odds with
business confidence within an overall policy package that maintains
business confidence at an acceptable level. And even if we assume,
implausibly, that the state must single-mindedly court business
confidence as a way of promoting economic health there will always
be some element of policy discretion because there will always be
more than one possible ‘accumulation strategy’.17 Thus the
structural argument does not negate the idea that the state has some
degree of autonomy, some capacity for choice and independent
action, i.e. relative autonomy.
It is clear that the structural view is not an alternative to the
instrumental conception of the state. The state is indeed an
instrument and political forces do struggle to control state power in
their own interests. What the structural view adds to this perspective
is the recognition that whoever exercises state power does so within
a structural context. However unless the structural constraints are
conceived as overwhelming it still makes a difference who controls
state power. For example, the interest of state managers in raising
tax revenues may induce them to support capital accumulation as a
means to this end, but if state managers have to respond to effective
‘pressure from below’ the accumulation function of state policy may
have to be compromised by the need to make concessions to
working-class interests. Thus state power is not the simple expression
of either political forces using the state as an instrument to advance
their interests or of constraints emanating from the structural
context in which the state is located. Rather it is the effect of the
struggle of political forces to exercise state power within a structural
context. In other words, state theory has to combine the influences
of both ‘structure’ and ‘agency’. The notion of relative autonomy is
intended to convey the claim that these are the primary or preponderant influences on the state but do not tell the whole story. The
remainder is filled out by secondary or less weighty influences which
The Relative Autonomy of the State
201
may include the state’s capacity to ‘assert itself’ or the mobilisation
of ‘pressure from below’.
This understanding of relative autonomy can be defended against
criticisms made by Bob Jessop by way of developing his alternative
‘strategic-relational’ theory of the state. Relative autonomy is to be
understood, first and foremost, as a theoretical claim about the relationship between the economic structure and the ‘legal and political
superstructure’ that retains the central Marxist principle of economic
determination (or causation) yet does not involve commitment to
economic determinism or reductionism. Jessop defines economic
reductionism as the claim
that the forms and functions of non-economic systems necessarily
correspond to the forms and functional needs of the economy. It
also treats economic factors as the mechanism which generates this
correspondence. In this sense it denies that non-economic systems
have any significant autonomous institutional logic and also denies
they can have significant independent effects on the economy.18
The natural contrast with the idea of ‘necessary correspondence’ is
‘non-necessary correspondence’ and this provides a provisional
understanding of relative autonomy. Jessop aims ‘to show how a nonnecessary correspondence can emerge among various institutional
orders and their operations so that the different economic and extraeconomic conditions for capital accumulation come to be secured’
while also allowing for economic causation.19 Yet Jessop rejects the
idea of relative autonomy. The clue to the difference lies in the conceptualisation of ‘non-necessary’. For Jessop this term is synonymous
with ‘contingent’ so that he is concerned with ‘explaining how the
different systems [economic and non-economic] come to be
articulated in a contingent, non-necessary manner which sustains
capital accumulation’.20 In other terms Jessop insists on the
‘contingent necessity’ of social phenomena, such as the emergence
of correspondence between economic and political orders. This is
defined in terms of
the non-necessary interaction of different causal chains to produce
a definite outcome whose own necessity originates only in and
through the contingent coming together of those causal chains
in a definite context.21
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Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire
This means that determinate explanations of social phenomena can
be developed, but this will involve multiple determinations (causal
chains) and the manner of their coming together or interaction will
vary according to the specific context and cannot be known in
advance or outside of this definite context. In each case there is a
definite outcome (necessity) but it all depends on the particular circumstances in that particular context (contingency). This is a
recommendation for the analysis of specific conjunctures and an
argument against the ambition to construct general theory, such as
a general theory of the capitalist state. According to Hay the
implication is that ‘there is no Marxist theory of the state – there
couldn’t be’.22
The ‘contingent necessity’ coupling can be taken apart. The aspect
of necessity ‘refers to determinacy in the real world’ and involves
the claim that all social phenomena have real causes that are
knowable, and this presents no challenge to relative autonomy.23
There are two aspects to contingency: first, that there are multiple
determinations (which rules out the possibility that explanation can
ever be accomplished through reduction of any social phenomenon
to just one of these, such as economic reductionism): and second,
that the manner in which these determinations interact to produce
a definite outcome is essentially unpredictable.
Relative autonomy may be defined in a way that allows for the
operation of multiple determinations, but it is firmly located within
the tradition of general theory and thus rejects Jessop’s idea of the
essential uniqueness of each definite context. Relative autonomy
involves a different way of conceptualising the ‘non-necessary’ correspondence between the economic structure and the state while
retaining the principle of economic determination (or causation).
We may say that correspondence between A and B is non-necessary
but ask how likely it is that such correspondence will emerge. In other
terms we can ask whether such correspondence is a strong or weak
tendency. Among the multiple determinations that may combine to
cause (or prevent) such correspondence in definite contexts we may
also ask whether there are some enduring determinants that are, in
general, more powerful than others. If there is indeed a strong
tendency to correspondence then it seems an obvious question
whether there are particular causes that explain this outcome. We
may feel that such a strong tendency is more likely to result from
the consistent operation of certain powerful causal mechanisms
The Relative Autonomy of the State
203
rather than from a series of unpredictable and unique combinations
of multiple causal chains.
Jessop’s ‘contingent necessity’ and relative autonomy are united in
refusing to see economic causation as an all-or-nothing or either–or
question. They both advocate a position in between these two
extremes. Since economic causation is not nothing it must amount
to something, but since it is not the whole story it must leave a gap
in the explanation. In turn this means that there must be other, noneconomic, determinants of the state. One way of distinguishing
Jessop’s position from relative autonomy is in terms of whether it is
possible to make any general statement about what this something
amounts to and, correspondingly, the dimensions of the remaining
explanatory gap.
In Jessop’s view relative autonomy is an empty concept in the two
possible meanings he identifies. In the first it is ‘just an abstract,
formal concept’ that merely states what it does not stand for, that is
neither crude reductionism nor absolute autonomy. In thus stressing
‘the mutual interaction and co-evolution of different institutional
orders’ it points to ‘the need to explore the structural contradictions
and dilemmas involved in the dialectic between the operational
autonomy and functional interdependence of different orders’.24 In
other words without this exploration relative autonomy is empty –
it doesn’t tell us anything about how this dialectic works itself out
in concrete terms. Further, the term embodies ‘a contradictio in
adjecto: either a system or political agent is autonomous or it is not
– autonomy cannot be relative’.25 In a second meaning it is a
‘concrete, descriptive concept’ which refers to ‘the relative capacities
of different forces to realize their aims and interests in specific conjunctures’ and, more specifically, to ‘the capacity of state forces to
pursue policies against the expressed wishes of non-state forces
where these policies subsequently prove to advance the interests of
the latter’.26 But here the concept remains empty as a principle of
explanation since ‘the circumstances to which [it] refer[s] are always
conjuncturally specific and in need of explanation’.27 Thus, again,
the concept merely points to the need for an explanation rather than
providing one. In either case the ‘troubling phrase’ would be better
dispensed with and replaced by referring to the specific form of
analysis and explanation required.
However contingency and conjunctural specificity is not the only
alternative to either end of the all-or-nothing dichotomy. Jessop
believes that the only way to give content to the notion that the
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Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire
economic and political orders co-evolve or interact is through
analysis of specific contexts. This will reveal in each particular
context the peculiar coming together of multiple determinants that
results in a specific outcome. But we may, instead, make a general
claim about the nature of the interaction between different institutional orders which assigns causal weights to each. In this approach
relative autonomy is neither ‘just an abstract, formal concept’ since
it asserts a definite asymmetry in the causal relationship between
the base and superstructure, or a ‘concrete descriptive concept’ since
it takes the form of a general theoretical claim. Whether such a
general claim is plausible will depend on how well it is supported by
theoretical argument and empirical evidence. But there seems to be
no compelling logical objection to such a general theory. Indeed the
assumption behind contingent necessity that multiple determinations may combine in any number of ways so that each specific
context is seen as unique seems less plausible than the assumption
of a hierarchy of determinations which may be found in each
context. At any rate there are no grounds for arguing that there may
not be such a hierarchy, for ruling it out as a possibility. And, given
that it is a possibility, it can be argued that developing general
theories by identifying such hierarchies of determinants is intrinsic
to the endeavour of social science.
The idea of relative autonomy can be defended as a species of such
a general claim or theory. Allied to economic determination it
involves the claim that the autonomy of the state is constrained or,
conversely, that the reach of economic causation is limited.28 More
specifically it asserts a definite causal asymmetry in the interaction
between the economic and political orders which may be expressed
in the claim that the economic structure enjoys explanatory primacy
in relation to the state. Relative autonomy is consistent with Cohen’s
characterisation of the causal relationship between the ‘base’ and
‘superstructure’ in Marx’s theory of history. This asserts that ‘the
character of non-economic institutions is largely explained by the
nature of the economic structure’.29 This formulation does not rule
out the influence of other causal influences (i.e. multiple determinations) since it does not claim that the economic structure
exclusively explains the character of the state, but it assigns these
other influences a minor role. And the large role played by the
character of the economic structure in explanation of the state is
clearly intended as a general theoretical statement or claim. The
general form of this claim is, for example, that ‘the character of the
The Relative Autonomy of the State
205
state in a capitalist society is largely explained by the nature of the
capitalist economy’. So, far from an analysis of the coming together
of multiple causal chains (to which economic causation may or may
not contribute a greater or lesser part) acting on the state in a
manner that happens to sustain capital accumulation in a specific
conjuncture, we have the claim that economic causation plays a
primary role in explaining state action to sustain accumulation as a
general feature of capitalist society. The state normally sustains
accumulation and this is largely explained by the nature of the
economic structure.
‘Contingent necessity’ and ‘relative autonomy’ may be contrasted
in terms of two related issues: the range of determinants and their
interaction, and the specificity of explanation. Contingent necessity
seems to involve opening up the range of determinants and
narrowing down the explanation to a specific conjuncture. It is
because there are multiple determinants or causal chains that may
come together in a variety of ways that explanation must involve
the analysis of specific conjunctures. In contrast relative autonomy
seems to narrow down the range of determinants and open up the
explanation towards a general theory. It is because of the notion of
explanatory primacy according to which some determinants exercise
more weight or influence than others that explanation may take the
form of a general theoretical claim. Thus the alleged explanatory
primacy of ‘economics’ in relation to ‘politics’ allows the general
theory that the character of the state is largely explained by the
nature of the economic structure.30
‘Contingent necessity’ and ‘relative autonomy’ are best
understood not as dichotomous standpoints but as positions on a
spectrum. This is because all social theory necessarily involves
closure within the set of conceivable causal influences. In other
words all social theory involves selecting certain determinants as
members of a set whose interaction may explain a particular social
phenomenon, and thereby excluding others. The claim that ‘state
power is a complex social relation that reflects the changing balance
of social forces in a determinate conjuncture’ opens up the range of
determinants compared to the narrow focus of class reductionism.31
Social forces encompass class forces (capitalist and non-capitalist)
and non-class forces. However there is still closure here in the
assumption that it will be these social forces, however defined, and
not other possible ‘non-social force’ determinants that state power
will ‘reflect’. And Jessop’s statement is clearly a general claim.
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Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire
Although there will be a ‘changing balance’ of social forces it will
still be these social forces that state power will, in general, reflect.
Even though the changing balance is key to understanding the
peculiarity or specificity of each ‘determinate conjuncture’ this term
rather conceals the definition of a conjuncture. For example, does
Thatcherism constitute a determinate conjuncture for the purpose
of state theory, or the first term in office, or particular decisions or
actions of that government? If the first of these it is clear that
analysis of a ‘determinate conjuncture’ can involve theoretical
claims pitched at quite a high level of generality, such as
Thatcherism as a specific form of state or hegemonic strategy.
Explanation in terms of general theory or analysis of determinate
conjunctures clearly involves a spectrum. Once it is recognised that
all social theory involves some degree of generality the question
becomes what level of generality can be sustained by a plausible
social theory. The two theories in question here clearly push in
different directions. Relative autonomy is a version of a general
theory of a particularly ambitious kind. The claim that the character
of the state is largely explained by the nature of the economic
structure is entered not just in relation to capitalist societies but, as
a central claim of the theory of history, in relation to previous modes
of production and therefore as a generalisation that applies to the
broad sweep of history of human society. In contrast contingent
necessity is a reaction against this kind of general theory and pushes
in the direction of more concrete analyses of specific conjunctures.
The general theory does not reject the need for conjunctural analysis
but expects this to reveal peculiarities that are, in general, consistent
with higher level theoretical claims. Thus the general claim that the
state serves the interests of capital is consistent with variation in
terms of the closeness of the ‘functional fit’ between state and
economy, how these functions are carried out, the responsiveness of
the state to other social forces, and so on. In contrast contingent
necessity denies that analyses of determinate conjunctures can be
seen as exemplifying a more general theoretical claim for it is
precisely such a general theory that is being ruled out. Whereas
contingent necessity sees Marxism as over-reaching itself in the
general claims associated with the old-fashioned theory of history
and the state, relative autonomy sees this kind of generalisation as
the legitimate ambition of social theory.
The possibility of a general theory of the state does rest on the idea
of explanatory primacy, and thus the plausibility of the particular
The Relative Autonomy of the State
207
mechanisms of economic determination – the instrumental and
structural arguments – proposed in Marxist theory. The plausibility of
these mechanisms needs further argument than has been provided
here. However there seems to be no compelling logical objection to
either the idea of explanatory primacy or, what it supports, a general
social theory. This means, contrary to Hay, that there could be a
Marxist theory of the state.32
NOTES
1. Bob Jessop, State Theory. Putting the Capitalist State in its Place (Cambridge:
Polity Press, 1990), p. 103.
2. Bob Jessop, The Capitalist State (Oxford: Robertson, 1982), Ch. 1; Colin
Hay, ‘Marxism and the State’, in Andrew Gamble et al. (eds), Marxism
and Social Science (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1999).
3. See Ralph Miliband, ‘Marx and the State’, in Socialist Register 1965; David
Held, ‘Central Perspectives on the Modern State’, in Gregor McLennan
et al. (eds), The Idea of the Modern State (Milton Keynes: Open University
Press, 1984); Mike Evans, Karl Marx (London: Allen & Unwin, 1975).
4. The general theory of the state is one element of Marx’s more ambitious
general theory of history. It may be conceived as the second stage of a
two-step functional explanation. Thus a more detailed exposition than
is possible in this chapter would present structural and instrumental
explanations as specific causal mechanisms or elaborations of functional
explanation, this being the form of explanation which economic determination invokes. This approach is based on G.A. Cohen, Karl Marx’s
Theory of History: A Defence (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978).
5. C.W., Vol. 6, p. 486.
6. Miliband, ‘Marx and the State’, p. 283.
7. Ibid.
8. Elster, Making Sense of Marx (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1985), p. 411.
9. Ibid., p. 422.
10. Ibid., p. 402.
11. For a detailed assessment of instrumentalism see Clyde Barrow, Critical
Theories of the State (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1993).
12. Colin Hay, ‘Structure and Agency’, in David Marsh and Gerry Stoker
(eds), Theory and Methods in Political Science (Basingstoke: Macmillan,
1995), p. 194.
13. Karl Marx in Miliband, ‘Marx and the State’, p. 284. See also Evans, Karl
Marx, p. 118.
14. Fred Block, Revising State Theory. Essays in Politics and Postindustrialism
(Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1987), p. 54.
15. Block goes as far as to say that ‘state managers collectively are selfinterested maximizers, interested in maximizing their power, prestige
and wealth’, ibid., p. 84.
16. Ibid., p. 58 (emphasis added).
17. Jessop, State Theory, p. 159.
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Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire
18. Ibid., p. 79. This formulation closely follows the definition of determinism as ‘the thesis that for everything that happens there are
conditions such that, given them, nothing else could have happened’
by Roy Bhaskar, ‘Determinism’, in Tom Bottomore, A Dictionary of
Marxist Thought (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991), p. 139.
19. Jessop, State Theory, p. 79.
20. Ibid., p. 80.
21. Ibid., p. 11.
22. Hay, ‘Marxism and the State’, p. 171.
23. Jessop, State Theory, p. 12.
24. Ibid., p. 101.
25. Ibid., pp. 101–2.
26. Ibid., p. 102.
27. Ibid.
28. In this sense ‘relative autonomy’ is clearly not, contrary to Jessop, a contradiction in terms. In general it is not true that ‘either a system or
political agent is autonomous or it is not’ since autonomy is usually
exercised within constraints. Political agents are never completely
autonomous, and the important question concerns the nature and
strengths of the constraints. The question is ‘how far am I able to act
autonomously?’ not whether I am autonomous or not. I might express
this by saying that my autonomy is relative, meaning that it depends
on the constraints I face in particular situations or contexts. This is the
sense in which we may speak of the relative autonomy of the state – how
far is the state able to act autonomously in the face of constraints
emanating from the nature of a capitalist economy?
29. Cohen, Karl Marx’s Theory of History, p. 217 (emphasis added).
30. The issue here is not, strictly speaking, the number of determinants or
causal chains. The idea of relative autonomy is not inconsistent with
multiple determinants (equally, contingency can be emphasised even
with a restrictive catalogue of determinants). The key point is the
rejection of contingency in favour of explanatory primacy.
31. Jessop, The Capitalist State, p. 221.
32. Hay, ‘Marxism and the State’, p. 171.
Part 5
The Eighteenth Brumaire,
Classes and Class Struggle,
Then and Now
9
The Eighteenth Brumaire and
Thatcherism
Paul Blackledge
After the defeat of the revolutions of 1848, and the subsequent
massive economic boom of the 1850s and 1860s, Marx moved away
from direct political activity to work on Capital. This shift in the
focus of his activity did not represent a fundamental break in his
thought, for when in the 1860s the workers’ movement across
Europe began to re-emerge from defeat, so too did Marx return to
the political fray.1 He was able to make this shift from theoretical to
practical work because he believed that under capitalist relations of
production any defeat suffered by the proletariat could never be
absolute, workers would retain the potential to become active agents
of change; they were never mere victims of the system. In this
chapter I ask whether socialists today, in conditions where the labour
movement is recovering from the defeats of the 1970s and 1980s,
can learn anything from the shift that Marx made in the 1860s with
respect to the possibility of the re-emergence of a socialist challenge
to capitalism. To this end I survey some of the competing Marxist
accounts of the rise of Thatcherism with an eye to Marx’s method
as outlined in the Eighteenth Brumaire. My aim is to locate the basis
for contemporary strategic controversies on the Marxist left within
the framework of a matrix of competing interpretations of the
defeats suffered by the British proletariat in the late 1970s and 1980s.
My choice of explanatory frameworks from the myriad that were
made of Thatcherism is based upon a remark made by Perry
Anderson in 1980. Anderson lamented New Left Review’s (NLR) failure
to develop a comparable analysis of the ‘changing balance of class
forces in Britain today’ to the ‘substantial attempts’ made by ‘Hall,
Jacques, Gamble or Cliff’.2 These authors represented a spectrum of
opinion from the most revisionist to the most classical Marxist interpretations of Thatcherism. Without agreeing with the detail of any
of these positions Anderson was impressed by their power and
originality. He aimed to follow their lead and to publish in NLR an
analysis of Thatcherism that could underpin a viable socialist
strategic practice. To this end NLR published important essays by
Anthony Barnett and Bob Jessop et al. in the early 1980s. The core
211
212
Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire
of this chapter is then a survey of these competing attempts to
analyse Thatcherism, with a concluding comment as to their contemporary strategic implications.
In the Eighteenth Brumaire Marx argued that Bonaparte had come
to power as a consequence of two developments; the proletarian
rising of 1848 had been ‘drowned in … blood’, and the triumphant
bourgeoisie had then proved itself to be too factional to rule.3 The
actual mechanism of Bonaparte’s triumph was an election which saw
him win the vast majority of the votes of France’s enormous
peasantry.4 However, while this class had sided with reaction in 1848
it would find itself increasingly exploited under Bonaparte’s regime.
Marx located the basis for this dynamic in the changing class
structure of France. Under the ancien régime the peasantry had been
exploited by a feudal class, and therefore shared a direct material
interest with the bourgeoisie in breaking the power of feudalism.
However, with the triumph of the bourgeois revolution, the
bourgeois order became ‘a vampire which sucks out [the peasantry’s]
blood and brains and throws them into the alchemist’s vessel of
capital’.5 Herein lay the central contradiction of Bonaparte’s rule.
Unable to act as the ‘patriarchal benefactor of all classes’, he was
compelled to take from one class to give to another.6 In as far as he
acted to ‘safeguard “bourgeois order”’ he enacted programmes that
enriched the urban bourgeoisie at the expense of the peasantry. ‘The
interests of the peasants are therefore no longer in accord with the
bourgeoisie, as under Napoleon, but in deadliest opposition to the
interests of the bourgeoisie, to capital. Hence the peasants find their
natural allies and leaders in the urban proletariat.’7 France’s executive
power was thus to become increasingly isolated so that the ‘old mole’
of the revolution would continue to develop the objective basis for
its future success even through defeat.8
Paralleling Marx’s analysis of social relations in Bonaparte’s France,
all of the socialists whose ideas I discuss in this chapter interrogated
Thatcherism with an eye to the internal contradictions of her regime.
However, despite their admiration for the Eighteenth Brumaire, most
of these socialists dismissed Marx’s political theory as crude,
mechanical and reductionist.9 Unfortunately, rather than attempt to
replace this model with a more sophisticated account of the basis for
proletarian agency in the socialist revolution, they developed
versions of historical materialism which, to one degree or another,
removed working-class agency, and indeed the possibility of
socialism, from the realm of realistic politics. So, Eric Hobsbawm,
The Eighteenth Brumaire and Thatcherism
213
Stuart Hall and Bob Jessop all criticised Thatcherism, yet denied the
possibility of the development of a socialist alternative to it. By
contrast socialists around The Socialist Register and the Socialist
Workers Party, amongst others, defended, in distinct ways, a version
of historical materialism which had at its centre a sophisticated
understanding of the relationship between working-class socialist
agency and the contradictions operating at society’s economic base.
This version of Marxism left open the possibility that after the defeats
of the 1970s and 1980s a socialist labour movement could re-emerge.
MARXISM TODAY
In 1978 Eric Hobsbawm argued that the British labour movement
was experiencing a deep and protracted crisis. This he believed had
begun around 1950.10 Since then, while proletarianisation continued
apace, the weight of the manual working class within the broader
proletariat began a dramatic decline.11 Furthermore, British
capitalism had changed through a combination of a technological
revolution, increased standards of living for the majority, and an
expansion of the public sector.12 These processes led to an increased
sectionalism within the working class, undermining the traditional
homogenising forces that had taught workers a basic solidarity, and
out of which the traditional mass parties of the working class had
been born.13 Thus fragmented, sections of the new proletariat were
open to the appeal of political forces beyond traditional Labourism.
In the first half of the century, we could rely on a growing number
of workers accepting the equation: class equals support for the
workers’ party equals being against capitalism, equals for socialism
… But today we can’t rely on the automatic growth of class consciousness with these implications any more.14
Hobsbawm’s objectivist account of the rise of Thatcherism had an
important political consequence, he nowhere discussed ‘seriously’
how the actions of the Labour Party in office might have fostered
the crisis of labour.15 This lacuna opened the door for him to insist
that ‘like it or not, the future of socialism is through the Labour
Party’.16 Rather than address the anti-working-class politics of
previous Labour governments, Hobsbawm criticised their lack of
direction. The solution to this problem was for Labour to develop a
programme.17 Hobsbawm proselytised for the moderation of
Labour’s programme as a basis for the building of a broad anti-Tory
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Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire
electoral bloc.18 But a new ideology was necessary to consolidate
such an alliance. It was to this issue that Stuart Hall addressed his
key contributions to the debate on Thatcherism.
Hall based his analysis of the rise of Thatcherism on a critical
reading of Poulantzas’ State, Power, Socialism. However, whereas
Poulantzas located a general tendency towards ‘authoritarian statism’
in the West, Hall preferred the concept of authoritarian populism.19
In a magnificent book, Policing the Crisis, Hall and his co-writers
traced the evolution of the British state from the postwar settlement
to the birth of Thatcherism, arguing that Thatcher’s project was
aimed at the hegemonisation of the changing British social
formation. And while Hall argued that the changing organisation of
the British state was based upon ‘the persistent and growing weakness
of the economic structure of British capitalism’, he concentrated his
analysis on the state’s changing ‘legal and political’ aspects.20
Hall argued that from around 1966 Britain’s old order had entered
a period of crisis. Wilson had been elected in 1964 on a programme
to modernise Britain through a strategy of corporatism. Unfortunately this strategy was sacrificed to the ‘religion of sterling’, and,
with the Red scare during the Seamen’s strike of 1966, Wilson lost all
credibility with the left. From then on in consensus declined into
dissensus.21 This crisis manifested itself as a ‘passage Gramsci
describes from the “moment of consent” to the “moment of force”
… A shift from a “consensual” to a more “coercive” management of
the class struggle by the state’.22
Of particular importance to this transition was the ideological
identification of black people with crime, and in particular with the
street crime of ‘mugging’. In this respect Hall argued that Enoch
Powell’s role in articulating a popular racism was incredibly
important.23 The discourse of racism functioned to provide a
scapegoat for the long-term crisis of the British state in the 1970s, as
the crisis of the political system was translated into a moral panic
about black crime.24 From then onwards English society was not
only racist, ‘it worked through race’.25 So, in contrast to classical
Marxism’s confidence in the homogenising force of modern
capitalism, the experience of race divided workers.26 ‘Race is one of
the main mechanisms by which, inside and outside the workplace
itself, this reproduction of an internally divided labour force has
been accomplished’.27 Moreover, popular racism functioned to
legitimate a shift in the nature of the state itself, as it increased its
coercive powers. Thus the interposition of the law into class relations
The Eighteenth Brumaire and Thatcherism
215
under Heath, through the Industrial Relations Act, while to a certain
degree exposing the political role of the state, simultaneously had
the effect of ‘making it more legitimate for “public opinion” to be
actively recruited in an open and explicit fashion in favour of the
“strong state”’.28 The importation of the American racist myth of
the black mugger from around 1972 followed this, and increased the
tendencies towards a strong state.29 Heath cautiously backed off
from this project in the last years of his premiership, but Thatcher
promised to accelerate the evolution towards a strong state when she
came to office.30 Moreover, she aimed to colonise common sense
with a reactionary racism that would enable her to dictate the
political trajectory henceforward followed by modern Britain.31 How
did this ideological shift relate to the other moments of Britain’s
crisis? Hall argued that it was through the discourse of race that ‘the
economic, political and ideological factors converge’.32 Indeed, ‘the
British crisis is, perhaps, peculiar precisely in terms of the massive
displacement of the political class struggle into forms of social, moral
and ideological protest and dissent’.33
Elsewhere Hall argued that Thatcherism had ‘recuperated to the
“legitimate” terrain of parliamentary politics the extremist racism of
the National Front’.34 Indeed, while the NF may have desired a
violent revolution, Thatcher was orchestrating a ‘passive revolution’
that incorporated much of its racism.35 This passive revolution spelt
an end to any vestiges of the social democratic consensus. Andrew
Gamble outlined this interpretation of the Thatcherite Programme
most elegantly. He argued that Thatcher’s strategy was to create a
free economy and a strong state.36 Thus under Thatcher ‘the state is
to be rolled back in some areas and rolled forward in others’.37
Specifically, social democratic constraints upon the operation of the
free market were to be overthrown, while the coercive powers of the
state were to be strengthened so as to underpin those free market
operations. However, the strength of the state was not simply to be
measured in terms of its coercive capacity. For a state was stronger if
its coercive agencies were seen to be legitimate.38 It was precisely the
social democratic welfarist policies that had previously legitimised
the state’s authority. Given that since the rise of mass democracy the
Tories had relied upon working-class votes to attain power, then a
replacement for the legitimising function of the welfare state had to
be found if they were to be electable. It was Hall’s argument that the
ideology of race played this new legitimising role.
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Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire
Unfortunately, Hall’s utilisation of Althusser’s uniform concept of
ideology did not readily suggest a strategy to counter Thatcherism.
Indeed despite his protestations that he did not believe that
Thatcher’s ideological project had triumphed, he did claim that on
the key issue of economic management Thatcher had ‘already largely
won the ideological campaign’.39 As the 1980s wore on, however,
Hall looked to Laclau’s more pluralistic model of ideology to
underpin a coherent counter-hegemonic strategy.40 He argued that
Britain was entering ‘New Times’ and that Thatcherism’s strength
lay in its attempt to hegemonise this moment. Hall characterised
New Times as a qualitative transformation of the sociocultural
landscape, which included shifts from modernism to postmodernism, Fordism to post-Fordism, industrialism to post-industrialism,
and the revolution of the subject.41 Moreover, the novelty of this
period negated any attempts by the left to utilise its old Fordist
ideologies to win a struggle for hegemony. However, ‘Thatcherism’s
conception of new times is partial and inadequate … [it] increasingly
appears as a weighty and powerful anachronism.’42 A viable socialist
counter-hegemonic strategy, Hall insisted, should be based upon the
realisation that the new ‘disorganised’ capitalism tended to fragment
the population and thus demanded a new conceptualisation of
socialism as the ‘struggle for popular identities’.43 Indeed in a world
of different identities, rather than of unified classes, it was to the
idea of citizenship that Hall looked as a mechanism through which
a social consciousness could be forged in a fragmented world. His
socialism therefore had much to learn from liberalism.44 Indeed it
was perhaps through the concept of citizenship that all progressive
forces, irrespective of party affiliation, could be united in a broad
anti-Conservative alliance. So it seemed that Hall offered to
Hobsbawm’s political strategy an ideological underpinning.
NEW LEFT REVIEW
The first developed analysis of Thatcherism to appear on the pages
of NLR was made by Anthony Barnett as a stunning critique of the
Falklands War.45 However, Bob Jessop et al. penned what was
perhaps NLR’s most sophisticated account of Thatcher’s Britain:
Thatcherism: A Tale of Two Nations. The Marxism of Jessop and his
colleagues derived, like Hall’s, through Poulantzas from Althusser.
Jessop had been impressed by Poulantzas’ discussion of authoritarian statism, but unlike Hall sought to outline a more thoroughly
materialist analysis of Thatcherism. His analysis of Thatcherism grew
The Eighteenth Brumaire and Thatcherism
217
out of a critique of what he called Hall’s ideologism.46 Hall was
correct, Jessop claimed, to suggest that Poulantzas’ concept of
authoritarian statism only weakly addressed the issue of ideology.
However, where Poulantzas had begun to address this issue in his
later work, Hall had refused to learn from him the importance of
discussing the new form of state.47 In this vein Jessop sought, in his
analysis, to integrate the economic, political and ideological
moments of Thatcherism.48
At the core of Jessop’s analysis lay the claim that Thatcher’s rise
was premised upon the ‘demise of the social democratic power bloc’
through the crisis of the Keynesian welfare state.49 Social democracy
represented a ‘one nation expansive form of hegemony’,
underpinned by a Fordist regime of accumulation.50 Thatcherism,
by contrast, represented the ‘two nation polarisation of society’
premised upon a limited movement towards a post-Fordist accumulation strategy.51 At the heart of Thatcher’s successes was a
‘formidable capacity to work with, rather than against, powerful
social and economic trends’.52 Thus, contra Hall, Jessop firmly
integrated economic developments at the centre of his analysis.53
Moreover, he argued that Thatcher’s ‘future support depends on the
effectiveness of the government’s accumulation strategy’.54
For Jessop, while Thatcher’s accumulation strategy was obviously
bourgeois, it differed from other capitalist accumulation strategies as
it served a social base that was made up of both the petty bourgeoisie
and ‘significant sections of workers’.55 Moreover, while agreeing with
Hall that authoritarian populism was the ideological means through
which the Thatcherites had attempted to hegemonise society, he
denied Hall’s implication that this hegemonic project had yet been
successful.56 Indeed he claimed that Powell’s original racist discourse,
because it was linked to constitutionalism and Manchester
liberalism, was cut ‘off from a broader base of popular support’, that
was, in the 1960s, broadly social democratic.57 Jessop insisted that
there was little evidence that the hegemony of this ideology had
been overturned in the 1980s, and in fact the electorate appeared, if
anything, to have moved to the left.58 Thatcher’s strength lay in her
ability to forge an alliance that was based upon a material stake in
popular capitalism, which she offered to workers in core industries.
It was this material basis that underpinned any incipient trends
towards the growth in ideological support for popular capitalism
against the welfare state.59 Jessop claimed that these tendencies were
weak, but could easily grow.60 The strength of Hall’s analysis lay in
218
Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire
his attempt to address this novel issue, his weakness was that he, like
Gramsci, ‘neglected the structural determinations of hegemony’.61
His Marxism could thus too easily foster a deep sense of political
pessimism.62 It was to avoid this pitfall that Jessop challenged the
methodological basis of his work.63
Unfortunately Jessop’s own work was not able to underpin a
realistic, yet ultimately more optimistic political perspective. Jessop
was able to show how Hall’s implied pessimism was ill judged, but
his own obituary of the Keynesian Welfare State implied an equally
pessimistic perspective. This was less apparent in the earlier essays
that make up his book, for these chapters were written before the
collapse of municipal socialism and the defeat of the miners’ strike.64
Unfortunately, as Jessop accepted that Thatcher’s electoral triumphs
were underpinned by a new accumulation regime that generated a
division within the labour force between a core and periphery, he
appeared to be incapable of imagining a socialist alternative to
Thatcherism. Thus the most radical goal he envisaged was based
upon the development of a reformist socialist version of flexible accumulation.65 Returning to this issue in the months just prior to
Thatcher’s resignation, Jessop suggested ‘it is difficulties and contradictions in the economic strategy of the Thatcher government which
seem to have precipitated the current crisis’.66 Indeed, ‘the very
dynamic of Thatcherite neo-liberalism is undermining its social base
… even the privileged nation has growing doubts about the
Thatcherite project’. 67 However, this process did not suggest to Jessop
the possibility of the growth of a socialist working-class opposition to
neo-liberalism. Indeed, from a rejection of the ‘orthodox expectation
that economic crisis would generate political radicalism’, Jessop
seemed to go to the opposite extreme of denying the possibility of
any socialist political consequences rising from the crisis. 68 In effect
the working class had ceased to be Marx’s potential agents of change
and had instead become simple victims of capitalism. Thatcherism’s
weaknesses would not favour the rebirth of a socialist movement,
rather they would strengthen the neo-statist radicals, in particular
the ‘more statist forces within the Conservative Party’. 69
ALTERNATIVES
If Jessop had begun his analysis of Thatcherism as a critique of Hall’s
idealism and pessimism, he ended with an equally pessimistic, if
more materialist, perspective for the future of the left. A more
militant critique of the pessimism associated with the Marxism Today
The Eighteenth Brumaire and Thatcherism
219
wing of the Communist Party came from within the same party’s
Morning Star faction. Unfortunately, this group premised their
analysis of Thatcherism with a dismissal of the claim that the left
was in retreat.70 In contrast, others did defend classical Marxism,
while keeping their feet firmly on the ground. Amongst these were
the editors of The Socialist Register. John Saville for instance suggested
that Marxism Today had ‘misread the history of the 1980s in quite
remarkable ways … They have … examined only the surface
phenomenon’.71 His collaborator Ralph Miliband suggested that the
‘new revisionism’, with which he associated Marxism Today, ‘far from
offering a way out of the crisis, is another manifestation of that
crisis’.72 He argued that there was not ‘any good reason to believe
that this recomposed working class is less capable of developing …
“class consciousness”’.73 Against a pessimistic reading of the
operation of the ideology of racism Miliband suggested that Hall had
failed to ‘recall that [it] has on many occasions been at least partially
overcome in struggle’.74 Finally he argued that Hobsbawm’s call for
the politics of moderation was ‘certain to disable and disarm the
labour movement, and nullify, precisely, its ability to be the
organising force of a set of alliances which would encompass that
‘vast majority of Britains who earn wages and salaries’.75 Similarly,
Bob Looker insisted that ‘capitalism is fundamentally built upon
class exploitation and necessarily produces class conflict’.76
Thatcher’s economic strategy included using the slump to
‘undermine the strength and combativity of organised labour’.77
Thatcher could win victories using this strategy only because the
social contract of the previous Labour government ‘had sapped both
shop floor organisation and economistic militancy’.78 If the labour
movement were to turn this situation around, Looker argued, it must
‘reject and transcend the politics of Labourism’.79 This would include
rejecting Hobsbawmism, for the whole ideology of Labour’s forward
march, halted or otherwise, was a reformist myth.80 Ellen Wood
similarly pointed out the irony of a situation where just as the ruling
class were becoming increasingly clear that they were class warriors,
the left was rejecting the concept of class struggle.81
If Miliband, Saville, Looker and Wood were amongst those within
the academy who challenged Marxism Today’s pessimistic reading of
Thatcherism, on the activist left it was the Socialist Workers Party
(SWP) that combined a continuing affiliation to classical Marxist
politics with a realistic assessment of the balance of class forces under
Thatcher. In the late 1970s Tony Cliff argued that there had been a
220
Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire
threefold crisis of ideas, leadership, and organisation in the labour
movement which had underpinned the defeats of the left, and thus
opened the door to Thatcherism.82 Cliff argued that the recommendations of the 1968 Donovan Commission, that stewards should
be integrated into the full-time union machine, far from being
dropped for more authoritarian approaches to industrial relations,
had proved the decisive weapon in the bureaucratisation of sections
of the steward movement.83 This organisational process served to
isolate stewards from their fellow workers and, in the period of the
Social Contract, reinforced their existing social democratic consciousness. This in turn left them ill equipped to struggle against a
Labour government. Indeed many stewards acted as media for the
government’s message of national unity during the years of the
Social Contract, thus helping to defuse sectionalist militancy. This
was especially true of those stewards, influenced by the Communist
Party, who were recognised nationally as the leadership of the shop
stewards’ movement.84 For Cliff the mid to late 1970s was the
decisive moment when the burgeoning militancy of the early 1970s,
that underpinned a real if limited growth in socialist consciousness
within the working class, was broken by the hegemonic Labourist
ideology. Overviewing the crisis of the 1970s from the vantage point
of the defeated miners’ strike, Cliff summarised the 1970s thus:
In the years 1968–74 there was an unstable balance between the
political generalisation on the employers side – incomes policy
and industrial relations legislation – and the industrial militancy
on the workers’ side. Such a situation cannot last for long. The
unstable equilibrium can lead to one of two outcomes: to political
generalisations of the industrial militancy, or to decline of
sectional militancy. In fact the unstable equilibrium [was]
destroyed by the policies [of] Labourism.85
In was in the context of this chaos that Thatcher could appear to be
so strong. She could also be much firmer with the unions because
they had, prior to her victory, alienated many of their own members.
However, the unions were not a spent force, and Thatcher had failed
subsequently to break them completely.
So in contrast to Hall’s picture of an authoritarian approach to
industrial relations, undertaken by a strong state, and underpinned
by a reactionary populist ideology, the SWP insisted that the crisis
of the labour movement had been fundamentally underpinned
The Eighteenth Brumaire and Thatcherism
221
through the organisational incorporation of shop stewards into the
union bureaucracy, and policed by a Labourist trade union
bureaucracy, whose ideas were hegemonic within the labour
movement. This did not mean that the SWP refused to
acknowledge anything new in Thatcherism. Alex Callinicos
partially agreed with Hall that Thatcherism represented a novel
form of rule.86 However, he denied that Thatcherism represented
an exceptional form of capitalist state; under Thatcher the social
content of democracy was still underpinned by the negotiating
function of the trade union bureaucracy.87
Thatcher’s project is not to destroy workers’ organisation, but to
create an Americanised trade union movement … The Eurocommunists thus confuse the emergence of a new capitalist political
current with a change in the form of bourgeois domination. They
are led to this because of a pre-occupation with ideological factors.88
This did not signify that the SWP denied that the Tories were
attempting to make an important shift towards a more authoritarian
approach to industrial relations.89 Rather, they insisted that this shift
remained confined within the parameters of traditional bourgeois
democratic power structures. Indeed Sparks insisted that while a
popular authoritarian ideology did exist, this was only one of a
number of ideologies competing for the hearts and minds of the
British public, strongest amongst which was an adherence to the
traditional social democratic consensus.90 This level of continuity
between Thatcherism and other postwar governments allowed
Harman to place her crucial defeat of the miners’ strike of 1984/85
in context. While the defeat was very real, it was as nothing when
compared to those suffered by the left in Germany in 1933 or Chile
in 1973. After these defeats the working class required decades to
rebuild its organisation from scratch. Thatcher, on the contrary, had
won an expensive victory, but had failed to break the back of the
British working class.91 Moreover, the continued resilience of
workers coincided with Thatcher’s failure to improve significantly
‘the performance of the British economy relative to its major
rivals’.92 Britain’s economic weakness had underpinned Thatcher’s
initial assault on the British working class, and as a consequence of
her failure to solve this problem the SWP expected repeated assaults
upon the wages of the British workers as attempts were made to
‘compensate for the productivity gap’ between Britain and its
222
Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire
competitors.93 In these conditions socialists could begin the slow
process of rearming the movement from the bottom up, in the
expectation of future confrontations between capital and the
working class.94
RESULTS AND PROSPECTS
The defeat of the revolutionary wave of 1848, and the ensuing
economic upswing of the 1850s and 1860s marked a decisive turning
point in world history. It also marked a key point in Marx’s learning
curve. After this date his initial over optimistic perspectives for
socialism were mediated by a growing realisation that the struggle
for socialism would involve a long hard slog.95 However, in these
conditions, Marx analysed the continuing contradictions within
society which meant that socialism could never be abolished as
capitalism’s spectral other, even if its victory could never again be
assumed as the automatic working out of these contradictions. A
century and a half later a smaller defeat for the British proletariat
and a weaker economic boom have left Marxists less sure about
future prospects for socialism. In the decade and a half after the
defeat of the miners’ strike the internal debates on the Marxist left
may have appeared to become increasingly irrelevant to a world
dominated by neo-liberalism. However, over the last few years there
has re-emerged a growing anti-capitalist movement that has once
again put the possibility of building a socialist alternative to
capitalism onto the political agenda. In these circumstances the
interpretations of the past made by Marxists will necessarily inform
their relationship to the new movement.
Hobsbawm’s obituary of the socialist labour movement relied,
despite his own criticisms of Marx’s supposed reductionism, on a
mechanical and economistic history of postwar Britain. Moreover,
it led him to accept a deeply pessimistic strategic perspective; ‘I
cannot look to the future with great optimism.’96 Hall’s ideological
explanation for the rise of Thatcherism underpinned an account of
the ideological contradiction between Thatcherism and New Times
that might be exploited by a modernised left. This perspective,
however, negated the Marxist hope for a break with capitalism. In
place of this perspective Hall proselytised what was in effect a reinvigorated liberalism in the guise of citizenship theory.97 More
recently, a special issue of Marxism Today confined its remarks on
Blair’s government to a series of moderate criticisms of his policies,
with no sense that they might be the logical consequence of the
The Eighteenth Brumaire and Thatcherism
223
right-wing trajectory that Marxism Today had itself proselytised in
the 1980s.98 Jessop developed a more materialist reading of
Thatcherism, and therefore was much more acutely aware of the
limitations of Thatcher’s hegemonic project. However, his
materialism did not immunise him from essentially concurring with
Hall’s pessimistic obituary of socialism. Indeed, Jessop moved to
imply that the socialist struggle could no longer be against capitalism
but would rather remain within it, for a fairer regulative regime.99
Jessop came to this conclusion, because, like Hobsbawm and Hall,
he rejected the argument that members of the working class could
move from being victims of the system to actors fighting for a
socialist alternative to it. Similarly Perry Anderson has recently
signalled NLR’s profoundly pessimistic reading of the present
conjuncture.100 For all of these thinkers, the falsification of Marxist
‘orthodoxy’, which they understood to imply a mechanical relationship between class location, economic crisis and the growth of
socialist class-consciousness, implied the falsification of Marx’s
project of a socialist overthrow of capitalism.
Other socialists agreed that there existed no mechanical relationship between the evolution of socialist working-class agency and
economic crises, but refused to move from this position to its obverse
of denying the possibility of the growth of a strong working-class
socialist movement in the future. Thus, the present editors of The
Socialist Register insist that the ‘essence of the socialist project – the
idea of transcending the alienation and escalating risks of capitalist
accumulation – is anything but finished’.101 More recently Alex
Callinicos defended the idea of the continuing relevance of the
socialist project, especially under conditions of rampant postThatcherite neo-liberalism.
The very intensity of pressures in the workplace, and the
pervasive job insecurity that is a consequence of economic liberalisation, can generate resistance … [And] despite all their efforts
to out-source, contract out and atomise their workforces, multinational corporations remain vulnerable to strategically placed
groups of workers.102
That the optimistic perspectives of Panitch and Leys, and Callinicos
are closer to that which one would expect Marx to have made in
similar circumstances is palpable, but are Hall’s, Hobsbawm’s and
Jessop’s perspectives ultimately more realistic? Without making a
224
Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire
definitive judgement on this issue we can perhaps say that it is a
testimony to the vitality of historical materialism that it has proved
itself capable of fostering such a range of intelligent, yet competing,
perspectives on one of the key political issues of the last few decades.
Conceivably Marx’s answer to the question as to which of these perspectives is closest to the truth would begin with a detailed analysis
of the present conjuncture, but who could deny that he would
finally call for the reality of his answer to be proved, one way or
another, in practice.
NOTES
Thanks to Matthew Caygill, Graeme Kirkpatrick, Zoë Anne Marsden and the
contributors to a debate at Colin Barker’s Alternative Futures conference in
Manchester in the spring of 2001 for comments on this chapter in draft. For
a suggestive use of the Eighteenth Brumaire to analyse Thatcherism see
Christopher Norris, What’s Wrong with Postmodernism (Hemel Hempstead:
Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1990), p. 39ff.
1. Henry Collins and Chimen Abramsky, Karl Marx and the British Labour
Movement (London: Macmillan, 1965), pp. 14–30.
2. Perry Anderson, New Left Review 1975–1980, New Left Review Internal
document 1980, p. 14.
3. Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, this volume,
pp. 95 and 106.
4. Ibid., p. 100.
5. Ibid., p. 104.
6. Ibid., p. 108.
7. Ibid., p. 104.
8. Ibid., p. 98.
9. Stuart Hall, The Hard Road to Renewal (London: Verso, 1988), pp. 3 and
41, and Bob Jessop et al., ‘Farewell to Thatcherism? Liberalism and
“New Times”’, New Left Review (hereafter NLR), 179 (1990), pp. 81–102,
p. 83.
10. Eric Hobsbawm et al., The Forward March of Labour Halted (London:
Verso, 1981), pp. 1 and 16.
11. Ibid., p. 3.
12. Ibid., p. 8.
13. Ibid., p. 14.
14. Eric Hobsbawm, Politics for a Rational Left (London: Verso, 1989), p. 83.
Cf. Eric Hobsbawm, ‘The State of the Left in Western Europe’, Marxism
Today (October 1982), pp. 8–15, p. 10.
15. Leo Panitch, Working Class Politics in Crisis (London: Verso, 1986),
p. 12.
16. Hobsbawm, Politics for a Rational Left, pp. 38 and 78.
17. Ibid., pp. 169–79
18. Ibid., pp. 2–3 and 240.
The Eighteenth Brumaire and Thatcherism
225
19. Bob Jessop et al., Thatcherism: A Tale of Two Nations (Cambridge: Polity
Press, 1988), p. 100.
20. Stuart Hall et al., Policing the Crisis (London: Macmillan, 1978), pp. 263
and 201.
21. Ibid., pp. 235–8.
22. Ibid., pp. 239 and 218.
23. Ibid., p. 246.
24. Ibid., p. 234.
25. Ibid., p. 254.
26. Ibid., p. 256.
27. Ibid., p. 346.
28. Ibid., p. 304.
29. Ibid., p. 305 ff.
30. Ibid., pp. 309 and 315.
31. Ibid., pp. 156 and 163.
32. Ibid., p. 343.
33. Ibid., p. 320.
34. Stuart Hall, ‘Popular-Democratic vs Authoritarian Populism: Two ways
of “Taking Democracy Seriously”’ in Alan Hunt (ed.), Marxism and
Democracy (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1980), pp. 181–2.
35. Ibid., p. 182.
36. Andrew Gamble, ‘The Free Economy and the Strong State’, The Socialist
Register 1979, pp. 1–25 and Andrew Gamble, The Free Economy and the
Strong State (London: Macmillan, 1988).
37. Andrew Gamble, ‘Thatcherism and the Conservative Party’ in Stuart
Hall and Martin Jacques (eds), The Politics of Thatcherism (London:
Lawrence & Wishart, 1983), p. 121.
38. Gamble, The Free Economy, p. 31.
39. Hall, The Hard Road to Renewal, p. 205 and Jessop et al., Thatcherism,
p. 103. Cf. Hobsbawm, Politics for a Rational Left, p. 177.
40. Colin Sparks, ‘Stuart Hall, Cultural Studies and Marxism’ in David
Morley and Kuan-Hsing Chen (eds), Stuart Hall: Critical Dialogues in
Cultural Studies (London: Routledge, 1996), p. 86.
41. Stuart Hall, ‘The Meaning of New Times’ in Stuart Hall and Martin
Jacques (eds), New Times (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1989),
p. 117 and Stuart Hall and Martin Jacques, ‘Introduction’ in Hall and
Jacques, New Times, p. 17.
42. Hall, ‘The Meaning of New Times’, p. 127.
43. Hall, The Hard Road to Renewal, pp. 275–82.
44. Stuart Hall and David Held, ‘Citizens and Citizenship’ in Hall and
Jacques, New Times, p. 178.
45. Anthony Barnett, Iron Brittannia (London: Allison and Busby, 1982). A
slightly shorter version of this essay was originally published as a
special edition of NLR in July/August 1982, NLR, 134, pp. 5–96.
46. Jessop et al., Thatcherism, p. 117.
47. Ibid., p. 111.
48. Ibid., p. 69.
49. Ibid., p. 178.
50. Ibid.
226
51.
52.
53.
54.
55.
56.
57.
58.
59.
60.
61.
62.
63.
64.
65.
66.
67.
68.
69.
70.
71.
72.
73.
74.
75.
76.
77.
78.
79.
80.
81.
82.
83.
84.
85.
86.
87.
88.
Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire
Ibid., pp. 179 and 129.
Ibid., p. 151.
Ibid., p. 16.
Ibid., p. 97.
Ibid., p. 96.
Ibid., pp. 137 and 73.
Ibid., p. 60.
Ibid., pp. 149 and 137.
Ibid., pp. 61 and 167.
Ibid., p. 150.
Ibid., p. 113.
Ibid., p. 96.
Ibid., p. vii.
Ibid., p. 189.
Ibid., p. 140.
Jessop et al., ‘Farewell to Thatcherism?’, p. 83.
Ibid., p. 86.
Ibid.
Ibid., p. 102.
Ben Fine et al., Class Politics: An Answer to its Critics (London: Leftover
Pamphlets, 1984), p. 62.
John Saville, ‘Marxism Today: An Anatomy’, The Socialist Register 1990,
pp. 35–59, p. 48.
Ralph Miliband, ‘The New Revisionism in Britain’, NLR, 150 (1985),
pp. 5–26, p. 6. For Miliband’s earlier analyses of the left under Thatcher
see the last two chapters of State Power and Class Power (London: Verso,
1983).
Ibid., p. 9.
Ibid., p. 10.
Ibid., p. 22.
Bob Looker, ‘Class Conflict and Socialist Advance in Contemporary
Britain’ in David Coates et al. (eds), A Socialist Anatomy of Britain
(Cambridge: Polity Press, 1985), p. 237.
Ibid., p. 229.
Ibid., p. 245.
Ibid.
Ibid., p. 223.
Ellen Wood, The Retreat from Class (London: Verso, 1986), p. 182.
Tony Cliff, ‘The Balance of Class Forces in Britain Today’, International
Socialism, 6 (1979), pp. 1–50, p. 42.
Ibid., p. 27 ff.
Tony Cliff, ‘Patterns of Mass Strikes’, International Socialism, 29 (1985),
pp. 3–61, p. 52.
Ibid., p. 48.
Alex Callinicos, ‘The Politics of Marxism Today’, International Socialism,
29 (1985), pp. 128–68, p. 147.
Ibid., p. 149.
Ibid., p. 150.
The Eighteenth Brumaire and Thatcherism
227
89. Chris Harman, ‘1984 and the Shape of Things to Come’, International
Socialism, 29 (1985), pp. 62–127, p. 103.
90. Colin Sparks, ‘Towards a Police State?’, International Socialism, 25
(1984), pp. 69–90, p. 80.
91. Harman, ‘1984 and the Shape of Things to Come’, p. 115.
92. Pete Green, ‘British Capitalism and the Thatcher Years’, International
Socialism, 35 (1987), pp. 3–70, p. 64.
93. Ibid., p. 9.
94. Harman, ‘1984 and the Shape of Things to Come’, p. 123.
95. Karl Marx, ‘Revelations Concerning the Communist Trial in Cologne’,
C.W., Vol. 11, p. 403.
96. Eric Hobsbawm, The New Century (London: Little, Brown, 2000), p.
167.
97. For a version of this argument see Andrew Gamble, ‘The Legacy of
Thatcherism’ in Mark Perryman (ed.), The Blair Agenda (London:
Lawrence & Wishart, 1996), pp. 36–7.
98. Martin Jacques, ‘Good to be Back’, Marxism Today (November–
December 1998), pp. 2–3, p. 3.
99. Bob Jessop, ‘Capitalism and its futures: Remarks on Regulation,
Government and Governance’, Review of International Political Economy,
Vol. 4, No. 3 (Autumn 1997), pp. 561–81, p. 577.
100. Perry Anderson, ‘Renewals’, NLR (Second Series), 1 (2000).
101. Leo Panitch and Colin Leys, The End of Parliamentary Socialism
(London: Verso, 1997), p. 262. Cf. Ralph Miliband, Socialism for a
Sceptical Age (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1994).
102. Alex Callinicos, Against the Third Way (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2001),
p. 115.
10 Marx’s Lumpenproletariat
and Murray’s Underclass:
Concepts Best Abandoned?
Mark Cowling
The Eighteenth Brumaire features Marx’s most extended discussion of
the lumpenproletariat. In this chapter I shall give a brief account of
his analysis of the lumpenproletariat and their political role. I shall
then challenge the coherence of this account and argue that Marx
uses the concept as a way of vilifying the part of the proletariat
which supported Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte on the one hand and
vilifying and trivialising Bonaparte himself on the other. Finally I
shall point out that there is a considerable similarity in both
definition and function between Marx’s view of the lumpenproletariat and Charles Murray’s contemporary theory of the underclass.
The account of the lumpenproletariat which follows is not
original, but is needed to make subsequent discussion clear.1
Although possibly presaged in Engels’ account of the Irish
immigrants in The Condition of the Working Class in England, the
lumpenproletariat make their initial appearance in the Communist
Manifesto:
The ‘dangerous class’, the social scum, that passively rotting mass
thrown off by the lowest layers of old society, may, here and there,
be swept into the movement by a proletarian revolution; its
conditions of life, however, prepare it far more for the part of a
bribed tool of reactionary intrigue.2
Mobile Guards, each a thousand strong, composed of young men
from fifteen to twenty years old. They belonged for the most part
to the lumpenproletariat, which in all big towns forms a mass
sharply differentiated from the industrial proletariat, a recruiting
ground for thieves and criminals of all kinds living on the crumbs
of society, people without a definite trade, vagabonds, gens sans feu
et sans aveu [men without hearth or home], varying according to
the degree of civilisation of the nation to which they belong, but
never renouncing their lazzaroni character – at the youthful age at
228
The Lumpenproletariat and Murray’s Underclass
229
which the Provisional Government recruited them, thoroughly
malleable, as capable of the most heroic deeds and the most exalted
sacrifices as of the basest banditry and the foulest corruption.3
From the aristocracy there were bankrupted roués of doubtful
means and dubious provenance, from the bourgeoisie there were
degenerate wastrels on the take, vagabonds, demobbed soldiers,
discharged convicts, runaway galley slaves, swindlers and cheats,
thugs, pickpockets, conjurers, card-sharps, pimps, brothel-keepers,
porters, day-labourers, organ grinders, scrap dealers, knife grinders,
tinkers and beggars, in short the whole amorphous, jumbled mass
of flotsam and jetsam that the French term bohemian … 4
To summarise what emerges from these lively definitions, the
lumpenproletariat is:
1. apparently, a tightened-up version of the common ideas of the
time about the ‘dangerous classes’, although the proletariat itself
tended to be identified in the terms reserved by Marx and Engels
for the lumpenproletariat before socialists including Marx and
Engels managed to revise common meanings5
2. people drawn from both pre-capitalist and capitalist social
formations but who had left or been evicted from their previous
social class
3. people who do not accept the idea of making their living by
regular work
4. a source of criminals
5. importantly, for Marx, comprised of people who are liable to be
tempted by illicit pickings into the service of the right, particularly of the finance aristocracy, who share the approach to life
and morality of the lumpenproletariat.
Anyone not totally degenerate would hate to be identified as a
lumpenproletarian, which leads on to the use Marx makes of the
concept. One way the concept functions is to dissociate the
proletariat from supporting the bourgeoisie or Bonaparte: the
Mobile Guards are lumpenproletarians, not proletarians;6
proletarian support for the regime is actually lumpen elements; the
members of the Society of 10 December are lumpenproletarians.7
The other is to use the disreputable lumpenproletariat to impugn
first the finance aristocracy:
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Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire
The finance aristocracy, in its mode of acquisition as well as in its
pleasures, is nothing but the rebirth of the lumpenproletariat on
the heights of bourgeois society … in 1847, on the most
prominent stages of bourgeois society, the same scenes were
publicly enacted that regularly lead the lumpenproletariat to
brothels, to workhouses and lunatic asylums, to the bar of justice,
to the dungeon, and to the scaffold.8
And also Bonaparte: the central puzzle of the Eighteenth Brumaire is
how a swindling nonentity managed to become President of France
and to get rid of the National Assembly. Bonaparte’s association with
the Society of 10 December enables Marx to stress the shallowness of
Bonaparte and the relative insubstantiality of his regime.9 Take away
his lumpen characteristics and other explanations have to be found,
such as the ones put forward by Geoff Watkins and Roger Price
elsewhere in this volume, respectively that the Bonaparte legend was
very powerful in French politics, and that Bonaparte’s regime offered
an effective path to modernisation. Elsewhere Marx’s conspiratorial
rivals for leadership of the working class are tarred with the lumpenproletarian brush.10 In a well-researched and comprehensive article
Bovenkerk argues that a major function of the lumpenproletariat in
Marx and Engels is to explain away parts of the proletariat which
failed to behave in a proper revolutionary fashion.11
Let us move on to look at the problems with Marx’s definitions
above. To start with, we are left unclear who the lumpenproletariat
really are. ‘That passively rotting mass thrown off by the lowest
layers of old society’ sounds as though we might be dealing with, for
example, peasants displaced from the land by enclosure or by the
problems Marx charts in the Eighteenth Brumaire.12 Historically these
gravitated towards the cities and formed, often reluctantly, the
beginnings of the industrial proletariat. So the difference between a
recent ex-peasant who is becoming a proletarian rather than a
lumpenproletarian seems to be a matter of attitude rather than of
relation to the means of production: the proletarian has become
more resigned to selling his labour power. Displaced peasants could
also feature as ‘people without a definite trade, vagabonds, gens sans
feu et sans aveu’, but again one would expect such people to turn into
proletarians over time.
What about displaced proletarians – people whose industries have
closed for one reason or another, people who cannot easily find work
because they are old, sick, injured? These are definitely not the
The Lumpenproletariat and Murray’s Underclass
231
lumpenproletariat, we learn in Capital. The lumpenproletariat are
‘vagabonds, criminals [and] prostitutes’, the ‘“dangerous” classes’;
instead displaced proletarians are the ‘lazarus-layers’ of the
proletariat.13 And yet, mightn’t at least some displaced proletarians
turn to crime or to temporary jobs sometimes, particularly if the
alternative was the workhouse? Marx is ambivalent about how easy
it would be for a proletarian thrown out by one branch of industry to
find employment in another. Some of his writing about the worker
as a mere appendage of the machine suggests that one might turn
easily from the appendage of one machine into the appendage of
another; on the other hand, there are suggestions that people become
so distorted by one machine that they are not suitable to work with
another. Again, there may be problems about accepting factory life at
all, which mean that one has to start life in a factory young, although
perhaps moving to another factory might not be so difficult.14
Perhaps this ambiguity corresponds to real life in the mid-nineteenth
century: one factory might involve more training or more distortion
of the person or worse conditions than another; the demand for
hands would be greater at one time than another. Any difficulties
would surely lead some proletarians towards lumpen expedients.15
Coming to Marx’s most detailed definition, ‘porters, day-labourers,
scrap dealers, knife grinders [and], tinkers’ all make their living
through labour. They are seen as lumpenproletarians because they
are self-employed and because their forms of work are very easy to
take up and abandon. The question of how easy it would be to take
up proletarian employment is discussed in the previous paragraph.
On the face of things, if it was easy to become a proletarian there is
nothing to stop at least some lumpenproletarians making the
transition; if it was hard to enter a new proletarian job then lumpenproletarians would be more stuck but would tend to be joined by
displaced proletarians.
‘Conjurers, card sharps and brothel keepers’ and ‘prostitutes’ raise
another question. Let us assume that cardsharps are actually professional gamblers rather than fraudsters. Conjurers provide legitimate
entertainment; professional gamblers are part of a substantial
industry which is basically legal in modern Britain, although forms
of gambling are certainly banned by some governments; and prostitution can be seen as sex work although, again, there is much debate
about whether prostitution or forms of it is exploitative of women’s
sexuality. However, whether we use Marx’s attempts at distinguishing productive and unproductive labour or whether we rely on
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Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire
various arguments about the legitimacy of particular activities we are
unlikely to get a list of illegitimate activities which would command
widespread agreement, whether in the society generally or amongst
socialists. As a personal example I would put people who slaughter
animals and sell meat, estate agents, people who pressurise children
to buy useless toys and people who send spam emails or do
telephone cold calling on my list of dubious characters deserving to
be part of the lumpenproletariat, but remove from it people who
offer services such as prostitutes and drug dealers. What is going on
here seems to be that Marx is including an assortment of occupations
which command widespread dislike to make the lumpenproletariat
seem less reputable rather than engaging in any kind of serious social
(or socialist) analysis.
Marx’s account of the finance aristocracy is also problematical.
Whilst manipulating large amounts of money can certainly spill over
into gambling and into illegalities such as fraud, stealing pension
funds or insider trading there is a legitimate function in capitalist
economies for people who move capital from less to more profitable
investments, assess levels of risk in investments, offer advice to
others etc. In other words, this activity is part of the general evils of
capitalism rather than a specially serious excrescence, and it is hard
to see how a capitalist economy could function without at least some
role for a stock exchange, futures markets, currency trading etc. There
may well be scope for socialists to benefit from splits amongst the
bourgeoisie. For obvious reasons they would tend to side with manufacturing capital which employs people and develops the forces of
production against finance capitalists simply concerned with shortterm profits. This presents a particularly difficult problem for British
socialists given the size and relative success of the City of London
compared with British manufacturing. But short of an unlikely
worldwide revolutionary expropriation of capital the way forward
would seem to be to try to reduce speculation (perhaps in the British
case by joining the euro), and encourage long-term socially and environmentally responsible investment rather than eliminating
financial capital. In this context the simple identification of city
financiers with lumpenproletarian pleasures and vices is not helpful.
My analysis of Marx’s main definitions leads me to sympathise
with Bovenkerk’s conclusion, based on a wider range of references:
In their [Marx and Engels’] more theoretical works, their definition
of the term lumpenproletariat is unclear and inconsistent. Anyone
The Lumpenproletariat and Murray’s Underclass
233
who tries to base further study upon their interpretation of the
term will soon be at his or her wits’ end.16
Marx has also been challenged on the grounds that the lumpenproletariat is not always associated with the right. Historically the
workers most willing to engage in revolutionary activity have been
those who have recently left the land and experience factory work
as inhuman and unnatural. Thus revolutions have typically
happened in newly industrialised countries rather than those which
are more mature. A common observation in Russia was that the more
established skilled workers supported the Mensheviks whilst more
recent arrivals tended to support the Bolsheviks. And it would be the
new arrivals whose relatives would tend to be living a hand-tomouth urban existence as knife grinders and porters, but who would
in many cases sympathise politically with revolutionary socialism.
There are similar comments in Mao17 and Fanon.18 The most
credible group of revolutionary socialists in the US since the Second
World War were the Black Panthers, who also thought of much of
their following as lumpenproletarian, and even boasted a supporting
rock group entitled the Lumpen.19
I now turn to a modern version of the idea of the lumpenproletariat, the idea of the underclass. I want to consider this idea as found
in one of its most prominent exponents, Charles Murray. What sort
of people, according to Murray, are the underclass? Murray says that
he first noticed the underclass in the town where he grew up. ‘Their
homes were littered and unkempt. The men in the family were
unable to hold a job for more than a few weeks at a time.
Drunkenness was common. The children grew up ill schooled and ill
behaved and contributed a disproportionate share of the local
juvenile delinquents.’20 Murray sees this kind of person as distinct
from blue-collar workers. This description lacks the picaresque
features of Marx’s definitions of the lumpenproletariat, but seems to
be a description of a similar social group.
Murray made his reputation with analyses of the United States,
but was then invited to the UK by The Sunday Times. He offered two
accounts of the underclass here, which were published together with
British criticisms of his ideas in Charles Murray and the Underclass: The
Developing Debate. In brief, Murray argues that areas of Britain have
come to be inhabited by an underclass. There are three interlocking
features of his account, illegitimacy, crime and idleness. Illegitimacy
has been increasing substantially. From the time of Henry VIII to
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Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire
that of Elizabeth II English illegitimacy rates stayed around 4.5 per
cent. They then moved up somewhat in the 1950s and 1960s, but
went up dramatically in the late 1970s and after so that by 1994 they
hit 31.2 per cent. Alongside this the rate of divorce has increased to
a record high, and the rate of marriage, particularly first marriage,
has declined. People are setting less value on being married. Illegitimate children are concentrated in the poorest areas where there are
most mothers from social class V, areas such as Middlesbrough.
Obviously cohabitation has risen as an alternative to marriage, but
Murray sees this as an unstable relationship, probably leading on to
serial cohabitation. Murray argues that professional people are
continuing to marry and that amongst professionals there will be a
reversion to Victorian values and thus the ‘new Victorians’ will be
surrounded by the New Rabble.21 The decline in marriage has
occurred because of a cultural assault from feminists and because
state benefits have made it too easy to raise children outside
marriage.22 One might wonder to what extent this is a black
problem: isn’t there a tradition of illegitimacy amongst people who
originate from the West Indies? Murray acknowledges that there is,
but says there are so few blacks in Britain that this boosts the illegitimacy statistics by a mere 1 per cent.23 Apart from the general change
in British culture a major reason for the increase in illegitimacy
amongst the poorest is the benefit system which makes it easier to
bring up children in the absence of fathers than it was in the past.
Murray’s image of these families is that they essentially lack
fathers. They thus tend to become unruly, and well-behaved children
who live in communities where there are many single-parent
families have to be violent in self-defence. This is all made worse by
the other two features of the underclass.
Murray says that the prevalence of crime in areas where there is an
underclass is damaging in two ways: it makes life difficult for lawabiding people who live there, and it gives children growing up there
the wrong kind of socialising norms. One tends to think of England
as more law-abiding than the US, but it has a higher rate of burglary
and probably of motor theft.24 Violent crime in England is rising very
rapidly even if the homicide rate is well below that in the US, and
overtook the US in 1996.25 This is not surprising because: ‘in every
respect – the chances of getting caught, the chances of being found
guilty and the chances of going to prison – crime has become dramatically safer in Britain throughout the post-war period, and most
blatantly safer since 1960’.26
The Lumpenproletariat and Murray’s Underclass
235
The third major feature of the underclass is the number of ablebodied young men unwilling to work. Young men see
unemployment benefit as a ‘right’, and are not willing to work at
realistic rates of pay. If offered work they tend to decline and are
insufficiently self-disciplined to hold down a job. This is potentially
a disaster as they are ‘barbarians’ who need the civilising influence
of work and supporting a wife.
For Marx the major immediate worry concerning the lumpenproletariat was that they might be used as foot soldiers by the right,
notably by the finance aristocracy. Murray describes his politics as
those of a Whig,27 and not surprisingly his worries are different. The
main concerns which come out of his British writings are that the
underclass costs a lot in welfare benefits and in paying for police and
prisons; that the underclass culture tends to spread and is pernicious:
obviously most men need to work; and that underclass habits make
life very difficult for people trying to bring up children well in areas
where the underclass is the main class. He adds, but does not really
explain, that the underclass is a threat to the survival of ‘free institutions and a civil society’.28
Why has an underclass been developing in Britain? Murray’s
explanations are: the increased cultural acceptability of illegitimacy;
the way in which the welfare state makes it possible for single
mothers to bring up children without fathers; the way that benefits
make low paid work unattractive, particularly for men and the way
that crime has become an easier way of life. Murray’s account
obviously immediately raises many theoretical and empirical
questions. As a matter of theory, do Murray’s three aspects really
hang together?29 Would an underclass be pretty much the same
thing as a lumpenproletariat, and if we wish to retain a Marxist
framework of analysis but reject the concept of the lumpenproletariat, does this also point to rejecting the idea of an underclass? As
a matter of fact, have we, as he claims, been developing an
underclass in Britain? Is there really such a phenomenon in the US?
A British empirical reply to Murray is easy to construct, and is
politically important. The most important riposte is in terms of the
relationship of cause and effect. Back in the 1960s Britain had
virtually full employment. I can recall from my days in the student
Socialist Society at Manchester University a leading light predicting
in 1968 that unemployment was likely to go over 250,000 shortly
and that this would lead to a revolutionary situation … Unemployment at that level, before the numerous statistical adjustments of
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Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire
the 1980s designed to disguise the extent to which unemployment
had grown, left little scope for an underclass. Unemployment then
grew in the 1970s thanks to increased international competition, the
oil crisis and, arguably, the unrestrained use of trade union power.
Then came the Thatcher victory in 1979, followed by a range of
specific policies which led to massive rises in unemployment: the
vigorous application of monetarism even at the height of the 1983
recession; specific anti-union measures in a series of five Acts of
Parliament; cuts in benefits and in higher rates of tax and the
promotion of an individualist ideology most notoriously encapsulated in ‘there is no such thing as society’. Thatcherite policies,
which have continued in a less abrasive form under Major and Blair,
left Britain more exposed than, for example, France, to increasing
international competition and at least some shifting of manufacturing jobs to Third World countries offering cheap labour.30
Middlesbrough is specifically cited by Murray as a venue where
the underclass has developed. The starting point of a local study fits
the above analysis well: in the late 1960s there was a stable social
structure underpinned by ‘near full employment in relatively well
paid, long-term and skilled jobs in Teesside’s chemical, steel and
heavy engineering industries’. However, ‘between 1975 and 1986
one quarter of all jobs and half of all manufacturing jobs were lost
on Teesside’.31 This is at a time when living off the state was
generally being made harder.32 Indeed, by 2000 although overall
unemployment on Teesside had fallen, in Middlesbrough those
unemployed and claiming benefit, people on training schemes and
people who would like to work but were not formally unemployed
totalled some 35 per cent of the labour force.33 In these circumstances it is plain that the major problem was unemployment
facilitated by the policies of new right politicians. These same
politicians found Murray’s doctrines appealing in that they shift the
blame for unemployment and deprivation to ‘generous’ welfare
measures on the one hand and features of the communities suffering
unemployment on the other.
There are a series of more general ripostes to Murray published
alongside his articles and elsewhere which are worth rehearsing
briefly.34 He argues that illegitimacy is much greater in areas
inhabited by the underclass than amongst the population generally
and specifically amongst well-paid young people who are in work,
who, he says, are the ‘new Victorians’, whereas actually there has
been a major tendency for couples to live together and have children
The Lumpenproletariat and Murray’s Underclass
237
across all social classes; and single mothers tend to remarry
eventually.35 The idea that there is a culture of deprivation which
reproduces itself was a pet theme of an early adviser to Mrs Thatcher,
Sir Keith Joseph (his eugenic ideas led to the nickname ‘Sir Sheath’).
A substantial research programme failed to produce much support
for his views.36 In fairness to Murray his American writings seem to
be based more on the idea of the immediate rational choices of the
poor than of a culture of poverty on the lines of Oscar Lewis.37
In the Teesside study there was strong evidence of the persistence
of working class rather than underclass values amongst young people
living in Willowdene, an estate which would certainly be a home of
the underclass if one really existed on Teesside:
a consistent finding of the research was that, whatever the nature
of individual experiences, young people shared a conventional
outlook and aspiration to marry, settle down and have children
themselves. This aspiration was found throughout the sample,
including among persistent criminals and drug users who had had
the least positive experiences of family life. For virtually all young
people in the sample the future is seen conventionally as ‘nice
husband or wife, nice house and nice car’.38
Because getting a steady job was very difficult in the area:
people worked outside the formal labour-market: caring for
children and in the home, in more informal economic activities,
on youth training schemes or New Deal programmes, or in a
criminal enterprises. There was a general resistance to living a life
on benefits.39
It was striking how far these values extended. Thus the sons of a
heroin dealer unable to carry on because of imprisonment took over
the family business; thieving is termed ‘grafting’, and often
approached in the same way in the sense of establishing regular
hours of work; one thief commented: ‘I’m not a dole-waller. I never
sign on. I was a thief, that’s my own occupation.’40
Thus although Murray comes from a very different part of the
political spectrum from Marx, and the political impact of the idea
of the underclass is very different from that of the proletariat, the
same comment can be made on both of them: the concept is being
used for its political impact rather than because it provides good
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Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire
explanations. The political impact of both concepts is pernicious and
both are an obstacle to clear analysis.
This general rebuttal of Murray (and indeed, Marx on the lumpenproletariat) is not the end of the story because it leaves too many
loose ends. Going back to the empirical account of Britain there may
not be an underclass as a group sharply distinguished from the
working class, but there are certainly geographical areas where the
problems alluded to by Murray are experienced: there is such a level
of crime that it is not possible to go out to work to acquire things in
the normal way, because your house will probably be burgled in your
absence;41 where the schools are so bad that the chances of leaving
literate, numerate and with a decent set of GCSEs is very low; and
where the local economy provides so little demand that it is difficult
to operate businesses successfully. In the same way, to the extent
there are people with lumpenproletarian characteristics they might
well present a problem under Marx’s socialism in which all work and
are paid accordingly. Here the discussion has basically moved from
a discussion of the underclass to that of social exclusion, a situation
where the impact of a whole range of poor facilities and problems
interact to make for a poor quality of life and for difficulties in any
attempts to ameliorate them.42 Without commenting on Labour’s
actual attempts to deal with social exclusion the idea that it is a
problem and that a coordinated solution is needed is plainly valid.
A dimension of these problems which Murray does not discuss in
his British writings is the problem caused by acquisitive crime aimed
at keeping up addicts’ drug supplies. In the Middlesbrough study the
coming of heroin in the early 1990s was widely seen as worsening
the quality of life on the estate, and plainly requires specific
attention be it more effective policing or legalisation.43
Moreover, there is such a lot more to Murray which relates to his
ideas about the underclass and which would repay attention by
socialists. To start with, his specific claim about the underclass in the
US is that it developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s at a time
when the general economy was booming, so that the ready British
answer above won’t wash, although a very specific response
discussing the job situation in the inner city might.44 It is very
important to get this right because Murray’s claim is that enhanced
welfare and less effective policing led to the growth of an underclass,
and this idea has been used by the right in US politics as a justification for cuts in welfare and more imprisonment. Part of Murray’s
appeal is that he uses a very straightforward rational choice
The Lumpenproletariat and Murray’s Underclass
239
explanation for the choices of poor people. Thus men drifting in and
out of work, women having children outside marriage on welfare
and students failing at school are all explained by Murray in terms
of changes in US state policy as they would impact on any ordinary
person in that situation. For socialists there must be something
wrong with these arguments, and it would benefit us to pinpoint
what. And while there is some pleasure in reading Murray’s recent
arguments to the effect that the underclass has not gone away even
though unemployment and crime in the US have gone down very
substantially, one feels that he may still be making some points
worth discussing.45
Beyond this there is a range of claims about race made by Murray.
In Losing Ground he claims that US blacks have been particular
victims of foolishly generous welfare policies, compounded with the
pernicious effects of affirmative action programmes which pass
students and promote individuals beyond their current merits, thus
discrediting blacks generally.46 In The Bell Curve he claims that
general intelligence or g is something real and measurable; that US
society is increasingly meritocratic in that people’s position in
society is now closely aligned with their intelligence; that black
people are on average less intelligent than whites; and that
affirmative action frequently takes particular groups of blacks
beyond their abilities in dangerous and discrediting ways. Apart from
the pleasure of seeing someone dare to engage in so much political
incorrectness in so many directions at once, Murray’s obvious
concern not to be thought simplistically racist, or simply hostile to
welfare makes him someone worth attending to and criticising.
Equally, however, there is the problem that Murray makes three
common-sense assumptions about human nature: of rational
calculation, chiefly in Losing Ground; of the idea of a dependency
culture, as found in his British writings on the underclass; and of
crime being linked to stupidity in The Bell Curve.47 Then in In Pursuit
of Happiness and Good Government we find Aristotelian ideas about
happiness followed by the use of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs
analysed as preconditions of happiness, combined with explicitly
classical liberal ideas about the role of the state.48 It is difficult to
make these compatible.49
Thus although the lumpenproletariat/underclass should be seen
as invalid as a substantive concept, there are plenty of issues
surrounding it which need attention. For socialists these include the
following. Do people who have developed some lumpen character-
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Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire
istics simply get back to work when offered decent opportunities? If
not, what should be done about it? How much does it matter if some
unskilled people choose to live on welfare benefits rather than do
boring jobs? Is it genuinely true that the services of some less skilled
and less able people are becoming superfluous in capitalist society?
What should socialists aim to do about this? Particularly if it is
because unskilled manufacturing jobs have shifted to third world
countries which this work is helping to develop?
NOTES
1. For the best scholarly account of the lumpenproletariat in Marx see Hal
Draper, ‘The Concept of the Lumpenproletariat in Marx and Engels’,
Economies et Sociétés, Vol. 6, No. 12 (December 1972), pp. 2285–312.
2. C.W., Vol. 6, p. 494.
3. Karl Marx, Class Struggle in France, C.W., Vol. 10, p. 62.
4. Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, this volume, p. 63.
5. See Robert L. Bussard, ‘The “Dangerous Class” of Marx and Engels: The
Rise of the Idea of the lumpenproletariat’, History of European Ideas, Vol. 8,
No. 6 (1987), pp. 675–92, pp. 678–9. Stallybrass points out that Marx’s
exotic lists are similar to those compiled by journalists at the time – see
Peter Stallybrass, ‘Marx and Heterogeneity: Thinking the Lumpenproletariat’, Representations, Issue 31 (Summer 1990), pp. 69–95, p. 72. For the
link to generally used ideas, see Huard on the distinction between le
peuple and la populace, the latter corresponding to the lumpenproletariat:
Raymond Huard, ‘Marx et Engels devant la marginalité: la découverte du
lumpenproletariat’, Romantisme, Vol. 18, No. 59 (1988), pp. 4–17, p. 4.
6. For a series of references to work which shows the Mobile Guard actually
comprised proletarians see Frank Bovenkerk, ‘The Rehabilitation of the
Rabble: How and Why Marx and Engels Wrongly Depicted the Lumpenproletariat as a Reactionary Force’, The Netherlands Journal of Sociology,
Vol. 20, No. 1 (1984), pp. 13–41, and Peter Hayes, ‘Utopia and the
Lumpenproletariat: Marx’s Reasoning in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis
Napoleon Bonaparte’, Review of Politics, Vol. 50, No. 3 (1988), pp. 445–65,
p. 462–3, n. 13. Huard points out Marx’s own verbal ambiguity here,
suggesting he was aware this move does not entirely work (‘Marx et
Engels devant la marginalité’, p. 10).
7. Cf. Bussard, ‘The “Dangerous Class” of Marx and Engels’, p. 687.
8. Karl Marx, The Class Struggles in France, 1848 to 1850, C.W., Vol. 10, p. 51.
9. Hayes interprets this in terms of the dialectic of history, ‘Utopia and the
Lumpenproletariat’, p. 452.
10. Ibid., p. 447; cf. Hayes on Marx and crowds, ibid., p. 460.
11. Bovenkerk, ‘The Rehabilitation’, p. 37.
12. For example, p. 104.
13. Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. 1, Ch. XXV, in C.W., Vol. 35, pp. 637–9.
14. Ibid., Ch. XIV, Sect. 3, pp. 347–55; Ch. XV, Sect. 4, pp. 420–30.
The Lumpenproletariat and Murray’s Underclass
241
15. And, indeed, Huard suggests on the basis of one brief comment that
Marx came to accept this – Huard, ‘Marx et Engels devant la marginalité’,
p. 13.
16. Bovenkerk, ‘The Rehabilitation’, p. 34.
17. Mao says these elements, including Triads, can become revolutionary
given proper leadership: Mao Tse Tung, ‘Analysis of the Classes in
Chinese Society’, Selected Works (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1967),
Vol. 1, p. 19.
18. Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, trans. Constance Farrington
(Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1969), pp. 102–3.
19. For a careful survey of the cases where Marx and Engels attribute a
political role to the lumpenproletariat, with the conclusion that they
were invariably wrong about its reactionary role, see Bovenkerk, ‘The
Rehabilitation’, pp. 22–34.
20. Charles Murray, Charles Murray and the Underclass: The Developing Debate
(London: IEA Health and Welfare Unit in association with the Sunday
Times, 1996), p. 22.
21. Ibid., p. 114.
22. Ibid., p. 111.
23. Ibid., p. 29.
24. Ibid., p. 34.
25. Ibid., p. 35. See also Charles Murray, Underclass + 10 (London: Civitas,
2001), p. 6.
26. Murray, Underclass, p. 43. For further reflections in this vein see Charles
Murray et al., Does Prison Work? (London: IEA Health and Welfare Unit,
1997).
27. More specifically: ‘on the right (though more libertarian than conservative)’. See Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray, The Bell Curve (New
York: Free Press, 1996), p. 555.
28. Murray, Underclass, p. 127.
29. See, for example, Ken Roberts, ‘Is There an Emerging British
“Underclass”’? in Robert MacDonald (ed.), Youth, the ‘Underclass’ and
Social Exclusion (London: Routledge, 1997), pp. 39–54.
30. Obviously Thatcher’s New Right policies were generally paralleled by
those of Reagan in the US. For an analysis of the resulting growth in
inequality see Norman Fainstein, ‘A Note on Interpreting American
Poverty’ in Enzio Mingione (ed.), Urban Poverty and the Underclass
(Oxford: Blackwell, 1996), pp. 152–9.
31. Les Johnston et al., Snakes and Ladders: Young People, Transitions and Social
Exclusion (Bristol: The Policy Press/Joseph Rowntree Foundation, 2000),
p. 1.
32. For a summary of the cuts in welfare provisions affecting young people
at this time, see Hartley Dean, ‘Young People and Social Citizenship’ in
MacDonald, Youth, the ‘Underclass’, pp. 55–69, pp. 59–60.
33. Johnston et al., Snakes and Ladders, p. 1.
34. The most trenchant being the wonderfully titled P. Bagguley and K.
Mann, ‘Idle Thieving Bastards? Scholarly Representations of the
“Underclass”’, Work, Employment and Society, Vol. 6, No. 1 (1992),
pp. 113–26.
242
Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire
35. Melanie Phillips in Murray, Underclass, pp. 156 ff. Buck points out that
from 1979 to 1986 the number of inactive couple households grew by
350 per cent, far outstripping the rise in inactive single parent
households – see Nick Buck, ‘Labour Market Inactivity and Polarisation’
in David J. Smith (ed.), Understanding the Underclass (London: Policy
Studies Institute, 1992), pp. 9–31, esp. p. 16.
36. Alan Walker in Murray, Underclass, p. 68.
37. For example, Oscar Lewis, La Vida (New York: Random House, 1966).
38. Johnston et al., Snakes and Ladders, p. 26; cf. Dean, ‘Young People and
Social Citizenship’, p. 58; Gill Jones in MacDonald, Youth, the
‘Underclass’, p. 112; Anthony Heath, ‘The Attitudes of the Underclass’, in
Smith, Understanding the Underclass, pp. 32–47 – see pp. 35–6.
39. Johnson et al., Snakes and Ladders, p. 26; cf. Rob MacDonald, ‘Fiddly Jobs,
Undeclared Working and the Something for Nothing Society’, Work
Employment and Society, Vol. 8, No. 4 (December 1994), pp. 507–30.
40. Johnston et al., Snakes and Ladders, p. 29.
41. Cf. ibid., p. 9.
42. Indeed, one British response to Murray has been to define the underclass
as the ‘socially excluded’, thus including, for example, poor pensioners
and the disabled in it (see, for example, Field in Murray, Underclass;
Debbie Baldwin et al., ‘The Formation of an Underclass or Disparate
Processes of Social Exclusion’ in MacDonald, Youth, the ‘Underclass’,
pp. 83–95). This is plainly not Murray’s intent. For the idea of a link
between US liberalism and the idea of an underclass on the one hand
and European collectivism and the concept of social exclusion on the
other, see Hilary Silver, ‘National Discourses of the New Urban Poverty’
in Mingione, Urban Poverty, pp. 105–38.
43. Johnson et al., Snakes and Ladders, pp. 27–8.
44. See, for example, Loic J.D. Wacquant and William Julius Wilson, ‘The
Cost of Racial and Class Exclusion in the Inner City’, pp. 25–42 of
William Julius Wilson (ed.), The Ghetto Underclass (Newbury Park: Sage,
1993). Their description of what happened to the Black Belt in Chicago
bears a striking resemblance to what happened in Middlesbrough,
although against a background of less state intervention – see ibid.,
p. 30. For a more general account of the collapse of unskilled
employment in US inner cities, see John D. Kasarda, ‘Urban Industrial
Transition and the Underclass’ in Wilson, The Ghetto Underclass,
pp. 43–64. For Murray’s claim that black youth idleness has grown
despite a booming economy, see Charles Murray, ‘The Underclass
Revisited’, at <http://www.aei.org/ps/psmurray.htm>
45. Murray, ‘The Underclass Revisited’.
46. Charles Murray, Losing Ground: American Social Policy, 1950–1980 (New
York: Basic Books, 1984).
47. Herrnstein and Murray, The Bell Curve, Ch. 11.
48. Charles Murray, In Pursuit of Happiness and Good Government (San
Francisco: ICS Press, 1994).
49. See, for example, the brief critique by Jock Young in Murray, Does Prison
Work?, pp. 31–2.
11 Here Content Transcends
Phrase: The Eighteenth
Brumaire as the Key to Understanding Marx’s Critique of
Utopian Socialism
Darren Webb
The key to understanding Marx’s critique of utopian socialism lies
in the pages of The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, and more
specifically in one particular sentence drawn from those pages. The
sentence in question is this: ‘There phrase transcended content, here
content transcends phrase’, and the key to understanding Marx’s
critique of utopian socialism lies, or so I shall argue in what follows,
in comprehending why phrase had to transcend content in both the
English and French Revolutions (‘there’) but why the content of the
social revolution of the nineteenth century (‘here’) was so real that
no utopian phrase could do it justice. The key lies in understanding
why the spokespersons of the English and French Revolutions could
not inspire action without the aid of deceptive and utopian language
but why theoreticians of the proletarian class such as Marx could
now set people in motion without having to provide them with
utopian descriptions of anything. The key lies in understanding how
Marx considered himself able to generate radical hope and invoke
the spirit of revolution without foreclosing the future or
undermining the principles of proletarian self-emancipation and
self-determination. The key lies in understanding why, in this
context, the utopians’ recourse to fantastic speculation was nothing
short of silly, stale and reactionary.
UTOPIAN SOCIALISM
For Marx, as for others at the time, the term ‘utopian socialism’
referred primarily to the thought of Charles Fourier, Robert Owen
and Henri Saint-Simon – ‘the big three’ as it were – together with
lesser lights such as Etienne Cabet and Wilhelm Weitling. In what
sense, however, were these thinkers regarded as ‘utopian’? What, in
other words, did Marx consider ‘utopian’ about the utopian
243
244
Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire
socialists? The answer to this question is supplied by Marx when he
accounts for the utopian form taken by socialist thought at the time
of its first articulation:
The first socialists (Fourier, Saint-Simon, etc.), since social
conditions were not sufficiently developed to allow the working
class to constitute itself as a militant class, were necessarily obliged
to limit themselves to dreams about the model society of the
future ...1
Here Marx indicates what he considers a utopia to be, namely, a
dream about the model society of the future. What was ‘utopian’
about the utopian socialists, therefore, was that they busied
themselves constructing utopian models of future society. Marx also
indicates that utopian socialism as a movement was relevant to,
because it was a product of, the early stages of capitalism, a period
during which the proletariat lacked both historical autonomy and
political initiative. This point is developed in the Communist
Manifesto, where Marx and Engels say of the utopians’ utopias that:
Such fantastic pictures of future society, painted at a time when
the proletariat is still in a very undeveloped state and has but a
fantastic conception of its own position, corresponded with the
first instinctive yearnings of that class for a general reconstruction
of society.2
Whilst the undeveloped state of capitalism, the proletariat and the
class struggle accounts for the utopian form taken by socialism at
the time of its emergence, the original utopian socialists were
nonetheless still criticised by Marx for their utopianism. Or rather
they were criticised for disguising their fantastic systems beneath the
cloak of science. Indeed, it is precisely because the first socialists –
and this applies equally to Fourier, Saint-Simon and Owen –
proclaimed their respective visions of emancipated humanity to be
the product of rigorous scientific ardour that Marx spent so much
time pointing out that, in spite of their repeated claims to the
contrary, the ‘doctors in social science’ had succeeded in concocting
nothing more than ‘idealistic fantasies’;3 that their ‘new social
science’ boiled down to introducing ‘an organisation of society
specially contrived by these inventors’;4 and that they each sought
science ‘in their minds’ rather than in a critical interrogation of the
Marx’s Critique of Utopian Socialism
245
real movement of the present.5 In short, Marx was at pains to
emphasise the utopian – in the sense of fantastic, conjured,
contrived, imagined and dreamed – nature of the utopians’ utopias.
This is not to deny Marx’s obvious admiration for the original
utopian socialists and their occasional flashes of inspiration. One
must nevertheless be careful not to overstate the importance
attached by Marx to their ideas. When it came to their utopian
descriptions of society the best Marx could say was that they had
once possessed ‘propaganda value as popular novels’.6 True, these
novels were ‘full of the most valuable materials for the enlightenment of the working class’7 but the value of this material – indeed
the value of utopian systems full stop – was transient and ephemeral:
In proportion as the modern class struggle develops and takes
definite shape, this fantastic standing apart from the contest, these
fantastic attacks on it, lose all practical value and all theoretical
justification.8
As the party develops, these systems lose all importance and are at
best retained purely nominally as catchwords.9
It was in this context that Marx attacked his contemporaries for
continuing to peddle utopian fantasies at a time when the
proletariat, the class struggle and the party had each developed to
the extent that such fantasies had lost all importance, all theoretical
justification and all practical value. In a letter to Sorge of 1877 Marx
could barely contain his frustration:
In particular, what we had been at such pains to eject from the
German workers’ heads decades ago, thereby ensuring their
theoretical (and hence also practical) ascendancy over the French
and English, – namely Utopian socialism, the play of the imagination
on the future structure of society, – is once again rampant and in a
far more ineffectual form, not only as compared with the great
French and English Utopians, but with – Weitling. It stands to
reason that Utopianism which bore within itself the seeds of critical
and materialist socialism, before the advent of the latter, can now,
post festum, only seem silly, stale and thoroughly reactionary.10
Marx thus defined as ‘utopian’ those socialists who indulge in ‘the
play of the imagination on the future structure of society’ and he
246
Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire
criticised contemporary utopians – with Eugen Dühring being the
specific target of Marx’s scorn here – because they were still playing
with these pictures now. Whilst the fantasies of utopians such as
Fourier and Owen had possessed a certain propaganda value, the
belated fantasies of Dühring were not only futile (and the
unfavourable comparison with Weitling meant they were very futile
indeed) – they were silly, stale and reactionary from the roots up.
The key to understanding why Marx regarded them as such lies in
The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte.
CONTENT AND PHRASE IN THE EIGHTEENTH BRUMAIRE
In the Eighteenth Brumaire Marx offers a brief historical analysis of
the role played by utopian imagery in the process of social and
political transformation. The principal conclusion reached by Marx
is that utopian phrases have played a compensatory role, serving to
disguise the lack of radical emancipatory content in the historical
and political movements they have been called upon to justify. What
distinguishes the social revolution of the nineteenth century from
those of the seventeenth and eighteenth, however, is precisely the
fact that its content is so real that no utopian phrase can do it justice.
Marx famously begins his analysis by bemoaning the fact that revolutionaries have always felt the need to disguise their actions in
clothes borrowed from the past:
Thus Luther masqueraded as the Apostle Paul, the revolution of
1789–1814 draped itself alternately as Roman republic and Roman
empire, and the revolution of 1848 could come up with nothing
better than to parody 1789 at one point, the revolutionary
inheritance of 1793–5 at another.11
The disguises of 1789–95 differed from those of 1848, however, in
that they formed a necessary part of the revolutionary process:
unheroic as bourgeois society is, it nevertheless required heroism,
sacrifice, terror, civil war and national conflict to bring it into the
world. And in the strict classical traditions of the Roman republic
its gladiators found the ideals and the art forms, the selfdeceptions that they needed, in order to hide from themselves the
constrained, bourgeois character of their struggles, and to keep
themselves emotionally at the level of high historical tragedy.12
Marx’s Critique of Utopian Socialism
247
The revolutionaries required heroic Roman ‘phrases’ in order to
conceal from themselves the unheroic nature of the revolution’s
‘content’. Indeed, without these phrases the revolutionaries’
enthusiasm would have waned and the revolution itself would have
come to nought. The same is true of the English Civil War, argues
Marx, in which ‘Cromwell and the English had borrowed Old
Testament language, passions and delusions for their bourgeois
revolution.’13 As a consequence, ‘the resurrection of the dead in
those revolutions served to glorify new struggles, not to parody the
old; to magnify fantastically the given task, not to evade a real
resolution; to recover the spirit of revolution, not to relaunch its
spectre’.14 The disguises of 1848, on the other hand, had served to
parody old struggles, evade real resolutions, etc., because:
The social revolution of the nineteenth century cannot create its
poetry from the past but only from the future. It cannot begin till
it has stripped off all superstition from the past. Previous
revolutions required recollections of world history in order to dull
themselves to their own content. The revolution of the nineteenth
century must let the dead bury their dead in order to realise its
own content. There phrase transcended content, here content
transcends phrase.15
In arguing that the revolution of the nineteenth century cannot
draw its inspiration from the past, Marx is attacking those revolutionaries who, in 1848, had attempted to do exactly that, and who,
as a consequence, had been ‘evading real resolutions’. In addition,
however, he was pointing out that it did not matter that the content
of the future could not be phrased because, by virtue of transcending any phrases that could be conjured now, it would attract support
without the aid of utopian self-deception. The content of the
revolution of the nineteenth century thus transcended the phrase
in two senses: first, in the sense that a knowledge of this content lay
beyond anyone’s epistemological reach; and second in the sense that
the magnificence of the coming content itself defied representation
in terms of the phrases available to one now – it was to be so qualitatively different that it lay beyond even our most imaginative
attempts to phrase it.
For Marx this new-found understanding of the content of the
social revolution of the nineteenth century spelled the end for
utopian socialism. No longer in need of utopian prophets and their
248
Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire
stale fantasies to dull themselves to the content of their own
revolution, the proletarians would mobilise around the promise of
a content that was destined to exceed and confound all fantastic
attempts to phrase it. This is not to say that Marx sought to inspire
radical hope on the basis of a blind faith in the promise of future
redemption. For such chiliastic excitement was a defining feature,
not of proletarian revolutions, but rather of previous bourgeois
revolutions in which ‘people and events seem to have a jewel-like
sparkle, ecstasy is the feeling of the day’.16 In stark contrast, however,
proletarian revolutions, such as those of the nineteenth century,
engage in perpetual self-criticism, always stopping in their own
tracks; they return to what is apparently complete in order to
begin it anew, and deride with savage brutality the inadequacies,
weak points and pitiful aspects of their first attempts; they seem
to strike down their adversary, only to have him draw new powers
from the earth and rise against them once more with the strength
of a giant; again and again they draw back from the prodigious
scope of their own aims, until a situation is created which makes
impossible any reversion.17
The strength of the proletarian revolution lies in its refusal to seek
‘refuge in a belief in miracles’, its refusal to ‘conjure away’ the enemy
‘in fantasy’ and its refusal to sacrifice an understanding of the
present ‘to an ineffectual glorification of the future’.18 In lieu of
ecstatic excitement one thus finds perpetual self-criticism; in lieu of
utopian fantasies which lend events a jewel-like sparkle one finds an
understanding of the present which again and again draws the
proletariat back from the prodigious scope of its aims; in lieu of
phrases which transcend, belie and disguise a paucity of real content
one finds a content which transcends and defies all attempts to
phrase it. Drawn on by the promise of such a phrase-defying content
the proletarian revolution of the nineteenth century hides behind
no disguises, deceives itself with no fancies and evades no real
resolutions. In this context, to appeal to the proletariat with fantastic
pictures of the future structure of society would be nothing short of
silly, stale and reactionary.
UTOPIAN POLITICS AND THE DEFEAT OF 1848
For Marx, utopian systems had no place in the political landscape
of the mid-nineteenth century. Utopian system-building had lost all
Marx’s Critique of Utopian Socialism
249
importance, all practical worth and all theoretical justification. For
this reason the proletariat’s ultimate recourse to ‘doctrinaire
experiments’ is taken as a key indicator of its own terrible defeat
following the June insurrection of 1848, a symbol of its inability ‘to
rediscover revolutionary prowess’.19 Like the utopian disciples
criticised in the Communist Manifesto for clinging on to the ‘dream
of an experimental realisation of their social utopias’,20 so the
proletariat is mournfully criticised in the Eighteenth Brumaire because
it throws itself into doctrinaire experiments, cooperative banks and
workers’ associations, hence into a movement renouncing an overthrow
of the old world by means of its own great resources, and instead seeks
to attain its salvation behind society’s back, privately, within its own
limited conditions of existence, and hence necessarily coming to
nought.21
In other words, the proletarians were evading a real resolution to
social conflicts, and were opting instead to conjure the enemy away
through ineffectual flights of fancy.
Of course, ‘that the revolution was in for an unprecedented
humiliation’ was clear to ‘any competent observer’.22 With every
class and party united against it (as the party of order), and with ‘the
organisation of bourgeois class rule’ as yet incomplete, yet to find
‘its purest political expression’, the great struggle of the proletarian
class (the party of anarchy) could not itself ‘emerge in a pure form’
and was thus foredoomed to failure.23 Nonetheless, proletarian
revolutions engage in perpetual self-criticism and the proletariat’s
recourse to utopianism was for Marx one of the more pitiful aspects
of its first attempt at revolution. This becomes clearer still if one
reads the Eighteenth Brumaire in conjunction with Marx’s earlier
analysis the proletariat’s first attempt at revolution, namely, The
Class Struggles in France 1848 to 1850. There he refers repeatedly to
the utopian self-delusions of the revolutionaries, to the ‘petty figures’
of ‘the socialist doctrinaires of the proletariat’;24 to the way in which
their illusions, poetry and rhetoric lent the February revolution an
‘imaginary content’;25 to the way in which the utopian fantasy of
universal brotherhood engendered a ‘pleasant dissociation from class
antagonisms’ and a ‘visionary elevation above the class struggle’;26
to the fact that the February revolution could usher forth nothing
more than a bourgeois republic because ‘the Paris proletariat was still
incapable of going beyond the bourgeois republic otherwise than in
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Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire
fancy, in imagination’.27 Only with its defeat in June 1848 does the
proletarian struggle attain the status of proletarian revolution proper
because there ‘the phrases have given place to the real thing’.28 This
fleeting glimpse aside, however, the real thing defers to the phrases
of ‘utopia, doctrinaire Socialism’, which exalts ‘the cerebrations of the
individual pedant’ and views the emancipation of humanity ‘as an
application of systems, which the thinkers of society, whether in
companies or as individual inventors, devise or have devised’.29
Crucially, the party of anarchy is criticised here for
proclaiming itself the means of emancipating the proletariat and the
emancipation of the latter as its object. Deliberate deception on
the part of some; self-deception on the part of others, who give
out the world transformed according to their own needs as the
best world for all ...30
Because the spokespersons of the party were giving out their own
pedantic cerebrations as ‘the best world for all’, they were deceiving
the masses (and often themselves) at the same time as they were
heralding themselves as prophets. In proclaiming that the emancipation of humanity lay in the realisation of their own particular
visions, in a transformation of the world in accordance with their
own particular needs, the spokespersons of the party of anarchy were
subscribing to a utopian model of socialist politics ‘which was the
theoretical expression of the proletariat only as long as it had not
yet developed further into a free historical movement of its own’.31
But of course the proletariat had developed into a free historical
movement of its own. Indeed, Marx cites the presidential election
of 10 December 1848, in which the revolutionary proletariat put
forward and voted for its own candidate Raspail in opposition to the
petty-bourgeois Ledru-Rollin, as ‘the first act by which the
proletariat, as an independent political party, declared its separation
from the democratic party’.32 Having achieved political independence, ‘doctrinaire Socialism is ceded by the proletariat to the petty
bourgeoisie’ whilst ‘the proletariat increasingly organises itself around
revolutionary Socialism, around Communism’.33 At least in theory
anyway. For in practice this theoretical and organisational shift had
not taken place to the extent that Marx had either expected or hoped
for. Neither the spokespersons for the proletariat nor the proletariat
itself had let the dead bury the dead in order to realise the content
of their own revolution. Instead, they were still parodying old
Marx’s Critique of Utopian Socialism
251
struggles and evading a real resolution to their own. In short, they
had yet to come to terms with the fact that here, in the social
revolution of the nineteenth century, content transcends phrase.
In both the Class Struggles in France and the Eighteenth Brumaire
Marx bemoans the fact that the party of the revolutionary proletariat
is still engaging in utopian phrasemongery. Nor was this a minor
issue of petty party tactics. Rather it was an issue of profound
theoretical and political importance. For whilst previous revolutionary leaders had of necessity conjured fantastic utopian phrases
in order to disguise and conceal the banal and unheroic content of
their respective revolutions, the content of the social revolution of
the nineteenth century transcends all attempts to phrase it. More
than this, to continue to adhere to a utopian mode of politics which
sees the contrived fantasies of false prophets given out as the best
world for all is to sacrifice an understanding of the present to an
ineffectual glorification of the future whilst assuming that the proletarians comprise only gaping asses incapable of determining for
themselves what their own best world might be. With the insurrection of June and the presidential election of December 1848,
however, the proletariat constituted itself as an independent class
and in so doing dispensed with the need for utopian fantasies.
Henceforth the proletariat becomes capable of developing its own
emancipatory strategy, of letting the dead bury the dead in order to
realise the content of its own revolution. To appeal to the proletariat
with fantastic pictures of the future structure of society is, in this
context, silly, stale and reactionary.
PHRASE-DEFYING CONTENT AND THE MATERIAL CONDITIONS
FOR EMANCIPATION
Whilst it can be argued that Marx himself painted a fantastic picture
of the future structure of society, it can scarcely be suggested that he
did so in a systematic fashion or that his aim in so doing was to
construct a utopian vision with which to appeal to the proletariat.
Indeed, the unsystematic manner in which Marx’s ‘utopian’ vision
is articulated and presented, together with its lack of detail and
substance, has been recognised by virtually ever scholar who has
discussed it.34 The issue of his own ‘utopia’ aside, what is certain is
that Marx sought at every opportunity to highlight the differences
between his own approach to the realisation of socialism and that
which he associated with the utopians. The key difference was
summarised by Marx and Engels thus:
252
Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire
Communism is for us not a state of affairs which is to be
established, an ideal to which reality [will] have to adjust itself.
We call communism the real movement which abolishes the
present state of things. The conditions of this movement result
from the now existing premises.35
Communism was conceived by Marx as a movement, the premises
of which were now in existence, rather than an ideal ‘end’, the
realisation of which would demand adjustments being made to
reality by some independently conceived ‘means’. In his own mind
at least, therefore, what distinguished his ideas from those of the
utopians was that he had established a real and necessary link
between the capitalist present and the communist future. Never
before had this link been made, or, to put it another way, all previous
attempts to make this link had been utopian ones – fantastic images
of the classless society abstracted from the horrors of contemporary
class divisions and heralded as ‘oughts’. What Marx thought he was
doing that was new, then, was superseding the fantastic abstractions
and wishful thinking that typified utopianism by grounding the
socialist future in the present. In this way Marx considered himself
able to argue that ‘here’ content does indeed transcend phrase, and
he explains how theoreticians of the proletarian class such as himself
are able to articulate the phrase-defying content so tantalisingly
hinted at in the Eighteenth Brumaire:
So long as the proletariat is not yet sufficiently developed to
constitute itself as a class, and consequently so long as the very
struggle of the proletariat with the bourgeoisie has not yet
assumed a political character, and the productive forces are not
yet sufficiently developed in the bosom of the bourgeoisie itself to
enable us to catch a glimpse of the material conditions necessary
for the emancipation of the proletariat and for the formation of a
new society, these theoreticians are merely utopians who, to meet
the wants of the oppressed classes, improvise systems and go in
search of a regenerating science. But in the measure that history
moves forward, and with it the struggle of the proletariat assumes
clearer outlines, they no longer need to seek science in their
minds; they have only to take note of what is happening before
their eyes and to become its mouthpiece.36
One thus finds that phrase transcended content – that is, theoreticians were necessarily obliged to limit themselves to the
Marx’s Critique of Utopian Socialism
253
improvisation of utopian systems – just so long as the material
conditions for the emancipation of the proletariat remained obscure.
Once the productive forces had developed sufficiently to allow a
glimpse of these material conditions to be had, however, theoreticians could do away with the inventions of the mind and could focus
instead on the radical content developing before their very eyes.
Marx presents the same argument in his obituary to Proudhon.
Here he tells us that ‘the utopians are hunting for a so-called
“science” by means of which a formula for the “solution of the social
question” is to be devised a priori’.37 Immediately following this,
however, and directly contrasting his position to utopian a priori
derivation, he says that he derives his ‘science from a critical
knowledge of the historical movement, a movement which itself
produces the material conditions for emancipation’.38 An important
point to note is that both here and in The Poverty of Philosophy it is
‘the material conditions for’ the emancipated society that are
grounded in the present and not the nature of that society itself. The
same phrase reappears in the Manifesto, appears again during Marx’s
critique of the Jacobins, again in Grundrisse and elsewhere as well.39
From this it seems reasonable to conclude that the fundamental
distinction (as perceived by Marx) between his own position and
those of the utopians – that is, the distinction which allowed him
to displace the false promise held out by utopian phrases with the
real promise of a content transcending all attempts to phrase it – was
that he had discovered ‘the material conditions for the emancipation of the proletariat’.
With hindsight, we can probably all agree that Marx’s claims to
have made such a discovery were based less on science than they
were on wishful thinking. What interests us here, however, is what
Marx thought he had discovered and the significance he attached to
it. What he thought he had discovered – expressed in categories used
by Marx himself when specifically contrasting his position to
utopianism – can be summarised as follows: that the ‘mounting fury’
of the masses and ‘the positive development of the means of
production’, which together comprise ‘the material conditions for
the emancipation of the proletariat’, offer a ‘sufficient guarantee’
that when ‘a real proletarian revolution’ breaks out it will be the
‘classless society concealed within’ these conditions that will follow.
Because, therefore, ‘present society is irresistibly tending by its own
economical agencies’ towards a ‘higher form’, a science based upon
the critical knowledge of these facts allows one to avoid the ‘idealistic
254
Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire
fantasies’ and ‘a priori derivations’ which define the utopian
methodology. If science ‘takes note of what is happening before its
eyes’ it can also show why ‘here content transcends phrase’.40
In articulating this discovery and directly contrasting it to utopian
philanthropy, Marx was engaging in something more than petty
party politics. His aim was not merely to rubbish his political rivals
or to develop a distinct political line that would distinguish himself
from them. His aim instead was to demonstrate that his own brand
of critical communism had superseded utopian socialism; that
socialist thought itself had developed such that critical communism
had both preserved and developed the radical, inspirational aspects
of utopian socialism whilst resolving and suppressing its more
reactionary dimensions. Thus, the idea that the theoreticians of the
proletarian class can discover ‘the material conditions for emancipation’ by merely taking note of what is happening before their eyes
serves several distinct purposes for Marx: first, by establishing that
the emancipation of the proletariat is grounded in the material
conditions of the present, Marx’s claims are kept safely within the
epistemological confines of the present; second, by establishing,
through mere observation, that the emancipation of the proletariat
is grounded in the material conditions of its own existence, Marx
avoids the idea that these conditions have to be imported from
outside; third, because it is the material conditions for the
emancipated society, and not the nature of that society itself, which
are grounded in the present, the future is not foreclosed; and finally,
by emphasising that the material conditions for the emancipated
society of the future are grounded in the present, the theoreticians
are able to glorify and magnify the struggle of the present and
thereby capture the spirit of revolution.
Marx’s critique of utopian socialism, his historical method and his
political project thus become inextricably entwined. Historical
materialism becomes more than just a theory of history; it becomes
a theory of history capable – as utopian socialism had been in the
seventeenth, eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries – of setting
people in motion by imbuing them with the future optimism
required in order to invoke the spirit of revolution. By sufficiently
grounding the existence of a future world of human emancipation
in the material conditions of the present, Marx not only (in his own
mind) enabled the workers to conceptualise a better future but he
did this without foreclosing the future or resorting to the deceitful
exhortations of the utopian prophet. As a consequence, utopian
Marx’s Critique of Utopian Socialism
255
socialism, in the era of Marx’s materialistically critical socialism, had
become silly, stale and reactionary from the roots up.
CONCLUSION
Whilst utopian visions had once possessed propaganda value as
popular novels they had, for Marx, lost all importance, all theoretical
justification and all practical worth by the time that he himself was
writing. Utopians contemporaneous with him were ridiculed for
peddling outdated fantasies which had become silly, stale and
reactionary. The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte helps us better
to discern the theoretical and political dimensions of Marx’s radical
critique of utopian system-building. It allows us to perceive clearly
that contemporary utopians had become silly because utopian
politics itself had become counter-productive, sacrificing (as was
evident following the defeat of June 1848) an understanding of the
real movement of the present to an ineffectual glorification of the
future. It allows us to recognise that utopian phrasemongering had
become stale because Marx had revealed that the content of the
social revolution of the nineteenth century transcended all attempts
to phrase it. And finally it makes it clear that the utopian mode of
politics had become reactionary because it ignored, denied and
stifled the political creativity of the proletarian class.
One interpretation of Marx’s own political project would see it as
an attempt to capture and retain the radical and inspirational core
of utopian socialism whilst simultaneously resolving and transcending its more reactionary – paternalistic, messianic, deceitful –
dimensions. This remains a project awaiting completion. For on the
one hand Marx’s critique of utopian socialism was both sophisticated
and accurate (to the extent that one would be hard pressed to
identify a political utopian in the socialist tradition who did not
parade his or her own pedantic cerebrations as the best world for all)
whilst on the other the political significance of radical hope – of
igniting and harnessing it – hardly requires stating. Indeed, one
could even say that the problem (methodological and political) of
generating radical hope and of thereby capturing the spirit of
revolution without the aid of deceptive utopian phrases – in other
words, the problem of persuasively arguing that there exists an
emancipatory content which is there to be gained but which
transcends all prophetic attempts to phrase it – is one of the most
complex and significant of those bequeathed to us by Marx.
256
Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire
NOTES
1. Karl Marx, ‘Political Indifferentism’, C.W., Vol. 23, p. 394.
2. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party, C.W.,
Vol. 6, pp. 515–16.
3. Marx, ‘Political Indifferentism’, p. 394.
4. Marx and Engels, Manifesto, p. 515.
5. Karl Marx, The Poverty of Philosophy, C.W., Vol. 6, p. 177.
6. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The German Ideology, C.W., Vol. 5, p. 462.
7. Marx and Engels, Manifesto, p. 515.
8. Ibid.
9. Marx and Engels, The German Ideology, p. 461.
10. Marx to Friedrich Adolf Sorge, 19 October 1877, C.W., Vol. 45, p. 283.
11. Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, this volume, p. 20.
12. Ibid., pp. 20–1.
13. Ibid., p. 21.
14. Ibid.
15. Ibid., p. 22.
16. Ibid.
17. Ibid., pp. 22–3.
18. Ibid., p. 23.
19. Ibid., p. 26.
20. Marx and Engels, Manifesto, p. 516.
21. Marx, Eighteenth Brumaire, p. 26. Italics in original.
22. Ibid., p. 23.
23. Ibid., p. 56.
24. Karl Marx, The Class Struggles in France, 1848 to 1850, C.W., Vol. 10, p. 98.
25. Ibid., p. 53.
26. Ibid., p. 58.
27. Ibid., p. 66.
28. Ibid., p. 69.
29. Ibid., p. 126.
30. Ibid.
31. Ibid.
32. Ibid., p. 81.
33. Ibid., p. 127.
34. See, for example, David McLellan, ‘Marx’s View of the Unalienated
Society’, in Review of Politics, Vol. 31, No. 4 (1969), p. 98; Bertell Ollman,
‘Marx’s Vision of Communism: A Reconstruction’, in Critique, Vol. 8
(1977), p. 8; Ruth Levitas, The Concept of Utopia (Hemel Hempstead:
Philip Allen, 1990), p. 40; Terrell Carver, The Postmodern Marx
(Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998), p. 98.
35. Marx and Engels, The German Ideology, p. 49.
36. Marx, The Poverty of Philosophy, pp. 177–8.
37. Marx to J.B. Schweitzer, 24 January 1865 (‘On Proudhon’), C.W., Vol. 20,
p. 29.
38. Ibid.
39. See Marx and Engels, Manifesto, p. 514; Karl Marx, ‘Moralising Criticism
and Critical Morality’, C.W., Vol. 6, p. 319; Karl Marx, Grundrisse, C.W.,
Marx’s Critique of Utopian Socialism
257
Vol. 28, p. 97; Karl Marx, First Draft of The Civil War in France, C.W., Vol.
22, p. 499.
40. Quotations in this paragraph taken or adapted from: Marx to Ferdinand
Domela-Nieuwenhuis, 22 February 1881, C.W., Vol. 46, pp. 67; ibid.;
Marx and Engels, Manifesto, p. 515; Marx to Ferdinand DomelaNieuwenhuis, 22 February 1881, p. 67; ibid.; Marx, Grundrisse, p. 97; Karl
Marx, The Civil War in France, C.W., Vol. 22, p. 335; Marx, ‘Political Indifferentism’, p. 94; Marx to J.B. Schweitzer, 24 January 1865 (‘On
Proudhon’), p. 29; Marx, The Poverty of Philosophy, p. 117; Marx,
Eighteenth Brumaire, p. 22.
Notes on the Contributors
Paul Blackledge is lecturer in the School of Cultural Studies, Leeds
Metropolitan University.
Terrell Carver is Professor of Political Theory at the University of
Bristol. He is the author, editor and translator of several books and
articles on and by Marx and Engels, including The Cambridge
Companion to Marx (ed., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1991), Rational Choice Marxism (edited with Paul Thomas,
Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1995), The Postmodern Marx (Manchester:
Manchester University Press, 1998), Engels after Marx (edited with
Manfred B. Steger, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999),
Karl Marx: Later Political Writings (ed. and trans., Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1996).
Mark Cowling is a Principal Lecturer in Criminology at the
University of Teesside. His previous publications include: Approaches
to Marx (edited with Lawrence Wilde, Milton Keynes: Open
University Press, 1989), The Communist Manifesto: New Interpretations
(ed., Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1998), Date Rape and
Consent (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998), Marxism, the Millennium and
Beyond (edited with Paul Reynolds, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan,
2000).
Bob Jessop is Professor of Sociology at Lancaster University. His
books include: Traditional Conservatism and British Political Culture
(London: Allen and Unwin, 1974), The Capitalist State: Marxist
Theories and Methods (Oxford: Robertson, 1982), Nicos Poulantzas:
Marxist Theory and Political Strategy (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1985),
State Theory: Putting the Capitalist State in its Place (Cambridge: Polity,
1990), Karl Marx’s Social and Political Thought: Critical Assessments, 4
Vols, (ed., London: Routledge, 1990).
James Martin is lecturer in politics at Goldsmiths College, University
of London. He is author of Gramsci’s Political Analysis: A Critical Introduction (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1998), co-author of Contemporary
Social and Political Theory: An Introduction (Milton Keynes: Open
258
Notes on the Contributors
259
University, 1999) and editor of Antonio Gramsci: Critical Assessments,
4 Vols (London: Routledge, 2002).
Roger Price is Professor in the Department of History, University of
Wales, Aberystwyth. His publications include 1848 in France (ed.,
London: Thames and Hudson, 1975), Revolution and Reaction: 1848
and the Second French Republic (ed., London: Croom Helm, 1975), An
Economic History of Modern France, c.1730–1914 (London: Macmillan,
1981), The Modernization of Rural France: Communications Networks
and Agricultural Market Structures in 19th Century France (London:
Hutchinson, 1983), A Social History of Nineteenth Century France
(London: Hutchinson, 1987), The Revolutions of 1848 (Basingstoke:
Macmillan, 1988), A Concise History of France (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1993), Documents on the French Second Republic (ed.,
Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1996), and Napoleon III and the Second Empire
(London: Routledge, 1997).
Geoff Watkins is Principal lecturer in History at the University of
Teesside and is a specialist in the Napoleonic legend. He is currently
completing an illustrated history, Napoleon: Life and Legend (for
Tempus Publishing), and has recently published on Bonapartist
propaganda in 1848.
Darren Webb is a researcher at Coventry University. His publications include Marx, Marxism and Utopia (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000).
Paul Wetherly is Principal Lecturer in Politics and Public Policy at
Leeds Metropolitan University. He is the author of several articles on
Marxism and editor of Marx’s Theory of History: The Contemporary
Debate (Aldershot: Avebury, 1992). His forthcoming book on
Marxism and the State will be published by Palgrave Macmillan.
Index
A Contribution to the Critique of
Political Economy (Marx, K.,
1859), 5, 7, 117, 118, 180
Achilles, 31, 32
affirmative action, 239
Ailly, Cardinal P. d’, 106
Alais, L.P.C., 64, 68
Alexander (Emperor), 65
alienation, 25, 160, 223
Althusser, L., 216
Ancien Régime, 150, 185, 212
Anderson, P., 211, 223
Angély, General St-J. d’, 72
Anglès, F. E., 84
army, 1, 3, 4, 8, 9, 24, 26, 30, 34,
35, 38, 41, 45, 47, 48, 50, 51,
58, 59, 60, 63–7, 71–4, 82, 90,
91, 94, 95, 97–109, 146, 149,
151, 156, 160, 163, 169, 179,
184
Artois, Count d’, 81
Aubert, P.E., 170
Austerlitz, Battle of, 1805, 50
Austin, J. L., 11, 129, 135
Austrians, 19, 34, 50
authoritarian populism, 214, 217
Azy, Benoit d’, 76, 80
Bacchus, 65
Bailly, J.S., 21
Barnett, A., 211, 216
Baroche, P.J., 58, 68, 72, 76
Barrot, O., 36, 37, 38, 40, 52, 53, 54,
61, 74, 76, 81, 89, 164
bastards, idle thieving, 13
Baze, J.D., 81, 93
Beauharnais, H. de, 114
Bedeau, M.A., General, 41, 73
Bell Curve, The (Murray, C. and
Herrnstein, R.), 239
Benoit, 80, 159
Bernard, St., Pass, 19, 34
Berryer, P.A., 44, 58, 74, 80, 81, 83,
86
Billault, A.A.M., 76
Black Panthers, 233
Blair, T., 222, 236
Blanc, L., 19, 169
Blanqui, L.A., 25, 97, 157
Block, F., 199, 200
Bluche, F., 169
Bodies That Matter (Butler, J.), 135
Bolsheviks, 233
Bonapartism, 10, 38, 41, 54, 62, 63,
64, 72, 74, 76, 77, 82, 83, 89,
90, 108, 146-153, 157, 159,
160, 163, 164, 165, 166, 168,
169, 172, 173, 179, 188, 190,
191, 196, 198
bourgeoisie, 7
and state, 86
base egoism, 74
big, 3
commercial, 96
industrial, 4, 26, 28, 79, 84, 92,
188, 196
interests threatened by
parliamentary democracy, 57
manufacturing, 3, 8, 232
republican, 1, 3, 8, 9, 24, 35, 39,
44, 94, 125, 132
Bovenkerk, F., 230, 232
Broglie, A.C., 58, 81
Brutus, M.J., 20, 121
Bugeaud, Marshal, 149
Butler, J., 11, 134, 135, 136, 140
Cabet, E., 243
Caesar, J., 20, 120, 121
Callinicos, A., 221, 223
Capital (Marx, K.), 8, 118, 145, 180,
211, 231
capitalist class, 9, 195, 196, 197,
198, 199
capitalist state, 12, 179, 191, 202,
221
Carlier, P., 54, 64, 70, 90
Cassagnac, G. de, 109
Catholic party, 74
Cato, 109
260
Index
Caussidière, M., 19
Cavaignac, General L.E., 3, 6, 29,
33, 34, 35, 41, 74, 85, 93, 152,
165
Cévennes, 101
Chambord, Count H.C. (Henri V),
80
Changarnier, General N.A.T., 37,
38, 40, 46, 50, 51, 64, 65, 66,
68, 71, 72, 73, 74, 77, 82, 84,
89, 91, 93
Charles Murray and the Underclass:
the developing debate (Murray,
C.), 233
China, 9
church, 26, 35, 43, 50, 80, 95, 97,
102, 104, 107, 150
citizenship, 216, 222
civil society, 186, 187, 189, 235
Civil War in France, The (Marx, K.),
115, 189, 191, 258
Civil War, English, 5, 247
Civitavecchia, 38
Claremont, 43, 52, 80, 81
Clark, T.J., 132
class balance, 159, 196, 197
class conflict, 9, 48, 219
class fractions, 186, 187
class struggle, 1, 2, 7, 12, 42, 45, 61,
68, 76, 116, 118, 146, 151,
161, 179, 181, 183, 185, 189,
191, 214, 215, 219, 244, 245,
249
Class Struggles in France 1848 to
1850, The (Marx, K.), 249
Cliff, T., 211, 219, 220
Cohen, G.A., 204
collectivisation, 9
commune, 191
Communist League, 1
Communist Party (British), 219,
220
communists, 25, 32
Concordat, 168
Condition of the Working Class in
England, The, (Engels, F.), 228
Constant, B., 20
Constituent Assembly, 24, 25, 26,
28, 29, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38,
261
40, 42, 45, 46, 52, 53, 61, 66,
71, 76, 94, 183
cooperative banks, 26, 249
corporatism, 214
Corps législatif, 153, 155, 157
coup of 1851, 1
Cousin, V., 20
Crapulinski see Louis Napoleon
Bonaparte III
Crédit Mobilier, 191
Creton, N.J., 79
crime, 62, 214, 231–5, 238, 239
Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right
(Marx, K.), 186
Cromwell, Oliver, 21, 93, 122, 247
culture of poverty, 237
Danton, G. J., 19, 20, 123
de Leon, Daniel, 119
Deflotte, P., 58
Desmoulins, C., 20, 123
Development of Capitalism in Russia,
The (Lenin, V.I.), 8
discourse, 12, 129, 133–40, 180,
186, 214, 215, 217
Donovan Commission (1968), 220
Duchâtel, C., 80
Dühring, E., 246
Dupin, A. M., 64, 68
Duprat, P., 70
economic base, 5, 131, 134, 138,
187, 191, 213
economic crisis, 76, 87, 88, 218,
223
economic determination, 195, 201,
202, 204, 207
Economist, The, 83, 84, 86, 88, 172
Education Act, France, 1849, 55
Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis
Napoleon Bonaparte, 1, 2, 4, 5,
6, 7, 9–14, 111–20, 127, 129,
130, 132, 133, 140, 146, 147,
164, 172, 173, 179, 180–90,
196, 198, 211, 212, 228, 230,
243, 246, 249, 251, 252, 255,
258
262
Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire
election of 10 December 1848, 3,
29, 34, 35, 100, 102, 163, 164,
250
electoral democracy, 10
Elster, J., 196
Emperor Napoleon III see LouisNapoleon Bonaparte III
empty signifier, 139
Ems, 43, 52, 158
Engels, F., 1, 6, 7, 10, 12, 114, 115,
116, 117, 118, 120, 145, 151,
152, 159, 160, 185, 190, 228,
229, 230, 232, 244, 251, 258
English Revolution, 1642, 243
Estates, 185
Eurocommunists, 221
Excitable Speech (Butler, J.), 135
Extinction of Pauperism. The
(Bonaparte, L.-N.), 169
Falloux, A., 40, 52, 53, 81, 83
Fanon, F., 233
farce, 5, 19, 120, 121, 129, 130, 131,
184, 190
Faucher, L., 59, 76, 77, 81
Faust, 24, 124
Favre, J., 157
February Period (February 1848), 3
February Revolution (1848), 22, 24,
25, 29, 34, 60, 93, 95, 96, 148,
249
feminism, 9
feudalism, 20, 43, 56, 99, 103, 106,
123, 124, 125, 190, 212
finance aristocracy, 3, 4, 8, 9, 24,
26, 28, 35, 83, 84, 188, 229,
230, 232, 235
and the state, 84
finance capital, 4, 188
floating signifier, 182
Fordism, 216
Fould, A., 54, 72, 76, 83
Fourier, C., 243, 244, 246
freedoms of 1848, 30
French nationalism, 28, 187
French Revolution of 1789, 5, 6, 20,
28, 39, 99, 101, 121, 122, 130,
153, 187, 243, 246
French Revolution, 1848, 1, 20, 39,
109, 121, 130, 163, 246
French Second Republic, The
A Social History , 172
Friedland, P.A., 185
Fronde, 40, 108
Gambetta, L., 157
Gamble, A., 211, 215
Gaulle, General C. de, 160
Gazette de France, 172
Gender Trouble (Butler, J.), 134
general intelligence, 239
German Ideology (Marx, K., and
Engels, F.), 6, 117, 145
Girardin, D. de, 109
Girardin, E. de, 70
Giraud, C. J. B., 90
Girondins, 39
Goethe, J.W., 24, 124
Gracchuses, G.S. and T.S., 20, 121
Gramont, Duke de, 158
Gramsci, A., 138, 145, 181, 214, 218
Grundrisse der Kritik der politischen
Ökonomie (Rohentwurf), 1857–8
(Marx, K.), 253
Guerard, A., 169
Guise, Duke de (Henri II of
Lorraine), 108
Guizot, F.P.G., 20, 31, 80, 81, 97, 98,
109
Habakkuk, 21
Halévy, L., 157
Hall, S., 13, 211, 213, 214, 215, 216,
217, 218, 219, 220, 221, 222,
223
Harman, C., 221
Haussmann, E.J., 151, 153, 154
Hautpoul, A.H. d’, 54, 58, 65, 66, 67
Hautpoul, General A.H. d’, 54
Hay, C., 202, 207
Heath, E., 215
Hegel, G.W.F., 19, 120, 186
Hegelianism, 126
Hegemony and Socialist Strategy
(Laclau, E., and Mouffe, C.),
138
Henri V, 44, 62, 79, 80, 83
Index
Hic Rhodus, 23, 124
Hilliers, General B. d’, 72, 73, 82
Hindess, B., 133
historical materialism, 6, 115, 116,
119, 212, 213, 224
Hitler, A., 147, 174
Hobsbawm, E., 212, 213, 216, 219,
222, 223
Holy Family, The (Marx, K and
Engels, F.), 146
Hotel de Ville (Town Hall), 3
Hugo, Victor, 53, 116, 163
idleness, 233
illegitimacy, 233, 234, 235, 236
illocutionary sarcasm, 118
Imperial Almanac, 166
In Pursuit of Happiness and Good
Government (Murray, C.), 239
Industrial Relations Act (Heath),
215
International Working Men’s
Association, 113
Jacobins, 39, 253
Jacques, M., 136, 211
Jessop, Bob, 11, 12, 13, 179, 195,
201, 202, 203, 205, 211, 213,
216, 217, 218, 223
Joinville, Duke F.F.P.L.M, 81, 89
Joseph, Sir K., 237
Journal des Débats (Orleanist
newspaper), 28
July Monarchy, 2, 3, 4, 25, 29, 35,
40, 42, 44, 55, 79, 96, 130,
148, 156, 164, 166
June 1848, revolt, 3, 6, 34, 35, 48,
58, 60, 94, 97, 132, 148, 149,
151, 163, 173, 191, 212, 249,
250, 251, 255
June days see June 1848, revolt.
June insurrection see June 1848,
revolt
Jura, 19
Kautsky, K., 9
Kershaw, I, 147
Kinkel-Brentano, coalition of, 19
kulaks, 8
263
L’Atelier, 169
La Presse, 60
La Revue de l’Empire, 166
La Rochejaquelin, Marquis H.A.G.,
81
Labourism, 213, 219, 220
Lacan, J., 136, 137
Laclau, E., 12, 134, 137, 138, 139,
140, 216
Lahitte, General J.E., 58
Lamartine, A., 76
Lamoricière, C.L.L., General, 41,
93
landowners, 3, 4, 8, 9, 26, 35, 99,
150
Las Cases, 170
‘lazarus-layers’ of the proletariat,
231
Le Flô, General A.E.C., 38, 93
Le National (republican newspaper),
28, 165
Ledru-Rollin, A.A., 29, 41, 46, 49,
250
Legislative Assembly, 1, 31, 37, 84
Legitimists (supporters of the
Bourbons), 3, 4, 6, 24, 36,
39–43, 52, 55, 74, 78, 81, 83,
89, 93, 188, 189
material basis of, 42
Léhon, Countess, 109
Leninism, 8
Lewis, O., 237
Leys, C., 223
Locke, John, 21
Looker, B., 219
Losing Ground (Murray, C.), 239
Louis Bonaparte, brother of
Napoleon I, 114
Louis Philippe see Louis XV
Louis XV, 2, 24, 25, 28, 29, 34, 36,
41, 51, 52, 62, 79–83, 96, 99,
109, 183, 186
Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte III, 1–7,
10–12, 19, 21, 23, 24, 28,
34–41, 44–6, 50–78, 81–109,
114, 115, 116, 118, 120, 124,
125, 129, 131, 140, 145–54,
163–65, 168, 179, 180, 182,
264
Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire
183, 188, 190, 191, 198, 212,
228–30, 258
class basis, 109
lumpenproletariat, 4, 6, 8, 9, 13,
26, 58, 63, 69, 95, 106–8, 151,
152, 163, 187, 228–39
as supporters of the left, 233
definition, 229
Luther, M., 20, 121, 246
Magnan, General B.P., 82, 90, 93
Major, J., 236
Maleville, L., 76
Manifesto of the Communist Party
(Marx, K., and Engels, F.), 1, 7,
10, 123, 145, 180, 185, 195,
196, 228, 244, 249, 253, 258
Mao, 233
Marengo, Battle of, 19
Marrast, A., 21, 29, 38
Marx, Karl, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9,
10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 110, 113,
114, 115, 116, 117, 118, 119,
120, 121, 122, 123, 124, 125,
126, 127, 129, 130, 131, 132,
136, 140, 141, 145, 146, 147,
151, 152, 154, 159, 160, 161,
163, 164, 165, 168, 169, 172,
173, 174, 179, 180, 181, 182,
183, 184, 185, 186, 187, 188,
189, 190, 191, 195, 196, 198,
204, 211, 212, 218, 222, 223,
224, 228, 229, 230, 231, 232,
233, 235, 237, 238, 243, 244,
245, 246, 247, 248, 249, 250,
251, 252, 253, 254, 255, 258
Marx as a historian, 6
Marxism Today, 213, 218, 219, 222,
223
Masaniello, 92
materialist conception of history see
historical materialism
materialist interpretation of history
see historical materialism see
historical materialism
materialistic conception of history
see historical materialism
Maugin, F., 68, 69
Maupas, C.E. de, 90
MEGA2 (The Marx Engels Gesamtausgabe, i.e. the new critical
edition of Marx and Engels’
collected works), 113, 120
Mehlma, 179
Memorial of Saint Helena (Las Cases),
170
Ménager, B., 169
Mensheviks, 233
Metternich, Prince K., 42, 159
middle classes, 26, 107
Middlesbrough, 234, 236, 238
Miliband, R., 196, 219
miners’ strike, 218, 220, 221, 222
Mobile Guards, 228, 229
Modernisation, 7
modes of production, 7, 206
Molé, L.M., 58, 81
Moniteur, 38, 72, 75, 93
Monk, General G., 65
montagne, 19, 38, 39–50, 59, 60, 69,
72, 74, 75, 77, 82–4, 91, 94
Montaigne, 4
Montalembert, C., 74, 81, 105
Montoja, Empress Eugénie de, 114
Morning Star, 219
Morny, Duc de, 24, 109, 163
Mouffe, C., 137, 138
mugging, 214
municipal socialism, 218
Murray, Charles, 13, 228, 233
Nancy, Bishop of, 150
Napoleon Bonaparte (First
Emperor), 1, 6, 19, 20, 21, 110,
114, 120, 171, 181, 183, 228
Napoléon le Petit (Hugo, V.), 163
Napoleon on the Rock of Saint Helena
(Aubert, P.E.), 170
Napoleonic Ideas (Bonaparte, L.-N.),
165, 166, 167, 168, 170, 172
Napoleon-Jérôme, 148, 156
National, 60
national assembly, 23, 24, 29, 31,
32, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41,
44–82, 85, 89, 90, 91, 93, 94,
102, 124, 149, 183, 185, 230
National Front, 215
Index
national guard, 24, 31, 37, 40, 46,
47, 48, 50, 51, 65, 72, 73, 95,
97, 98, 108
nationalised workshops, 64
National-Zeitung, 19
Neumeyer, General M.G.J., 65
New Economic Policy, 8
New Left Review (NLR), 135, 211,
216, 223
new middle class, 9
New Rabble, 234
New Times, 216, 222
new Victorians, 234
Ney, E, 53
non-necessary correspondence, 201,
202
Oeuvres de Louis-Napoléon (ed.
Tremblaire, C.E.), 169
Old Testament, 5, 21, 82, 122, 123,
247
Ollivier, 156
Orleanists, 3, 4, 6, 24, 39, 40, 42,
43, 52, 55, 74, 80, 81, 82, 89,
93, 188, 189
material basis of, 42
Oudinot, General N.C.V., 38, 50, 53
Owen, R., 243, 244, 246
Panitch, L., 223
Paris Commune, 115, 160, 258
Paris, Comte de (Albert, Louis
Philippe), 79, 80
parliamentary cretinism, 75, 92, 187
parliamentary republic, 4, 38, 39,
44, 49, 62, 74, 77, 78, 79, 89,
95, 96, 98, 99, 101, 102, 189
Party of Order, 4, 8, 27, 35–53,
56–86, 91–4, 184, 188, 249
Paul, Apostle, 20
Peasant War in Germany, The
(Engels, F.), 190
peasantry, 3, 8, 9, 25, 34, 55, 100–8,
131, 172, 187, 191, 212, 230
and Napoleon I, 102
as basis of French state
bureaucracy, 104
conservative, 101, 164, 187
French and the army, 106
265
French peasantry and mortgages,
103
French peasantry not a class
which represents itself, 100
potential alliance with
proletariat, 104
relation to the bourgeoisie
following 1789, 103
revolutionary, 101, 164, 187
small-holding, 100
performative utterances, 11, 121–3,
127, 129, 130, 133, 134, 135,
137, 139, 140, 180, 183
performativity, 11, 135, 136
Periodisations, 184
Perrot, General B.J., 73
Persigny, Count J.G.V., 77, 89
petty bourgeoisie, 3, 8, 9, 24, 25, 26,
29, 34, 35, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48,
51, 58, 95, 151, 187, 217, 250
and democracy, 48
Philosophy of History, The (Hegel,
G.W.F.), 120
Philosophy of Right (Hegel, G.W.F.),
186
Policing the Crisis (Hall, S. et al.), 214
Polignac, Prince A.J.A.M., 81
political conjuncture, 190
political economy, critique of, 2,
118, 136, 182
populism, right wing, 173
post-Fordism, 216
postmodernism, 9, 10, 11, 129, 133,
140
potato blight, 3
Poulantzas, N., 214, 216, 217
Poverty of Philosophy, The (Marx, K.),
253
Powell, E., 214, 217
Price, R., 12, 145, 167, 172, 173,
230, 258
primitive accumulation, 145
proletariat, 1, 3, 6, 7, 8, 13, 24–6,
29, 35, 45–51, 58, 60, 70, 86,
94, 95, 97, 104, 124, 125, 126,
151, 163, 182, 190, 191,
211–13, 222, 228–30, 237, 244,
245, 248–54
in Britain, 211
266
Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire
Proudhon, P.-J., 49, 116, 253
Publicola, P.V.P., 20, 121
pure republicans, 4, 28, 29, 34, 35,
41, 74, 77
racism, 214, 215, 219
Raspail, 250
rational choice, 238
real movement, 245, 252, 255
relations of production, 7, 12, 103,
121, 181, 186, 211
relative autonomy, 13, 179,
195–206
of state, 13
within structural view of state,
200
Rémusat, Count C.F.M., 73, 147
republican faction of the
bourgeoisie, 28, 29
Restoration, 4, 164
restoration monarchy (of Charles
X), 51
revolution
bourgeois, 21, 22, 122, 123, 212,
247
proletarian, 22, 98, 106, 123, 124,
130, 228, 248, 250, 253
Russian, October 1917, 8
Robespierre, M., 19, 20, 123
Roman antecedents of French
Revolution, 20
Roman Republic, 5, 120
Rome, 36, 38, 46, 48, 50, 52, 105,
123
Rouher, E., 24, 68, 76, 163
royalists, 32–44, 75, 77, 78, 188,
189
Royer-Collard, P.-P., 20
Ruge-Darasz, coalition of, 19
Sadowa, battle of, 157
Saint-Arnaud, A.J.A.L. de, 38
Sainte-Beuve, P.H., 84
Saint-Hilaire, E.M. de, 166
Saint-Just, L.-A., 20, 123
Saint-Priest, Viscount E.L.M, 80
Saint-Simon, H., 243, 244
Sallandrouze, C.J., 93
Salvandy, Count N.A., 80
Saville, J., 219
Say, J. B., 20
Schoelcher, V., 147
Schramm, General J.P.A., 66
scientific method, 117, 118
Seamen’s strike of 1966, 214
Second Empire, 115, 147, 153,
158–60, 173
Second French Republic, 1, 2,
114–16, 173
Sedan, 158
senatus consultum, 151
Senior, N.W., 172
separation of powers, 31
social categories, 3, 9
Social Contract (British Labour,
1970s), 220
social exclusion, 238
social-democratic party, 41, 44, 59
‘Socialism’ in French National
assembly, 1849, 56
Socialist Register, The, 13, 213, 219,
223
Socialist Revolutionaries, 8
Socialist Workers Party (formerly
International Socialists), 213,
219, 220, 221
Society of 10 December, 63–77, 90,
93, 95, 99, 106–9, 163, 229, 230
Sorge, F.A., 245
Soulouque, F., 109
Sparks, C., 221
speech act, 129
state
apparatus in France, 10, 53, 98,
146, 163
autonomous state thesis, 196
bureaucracy, France, 53
instrumentalist view of, 195
independence, 99
officials, 4, 8, 9
strong state, 215, 220
‘strategic-relational’ analysis, 201
structural analysis, 199
theories of, 179
State, Power, Socialism (Poulantzas,
N.), 214
Strasbourg coup, 164
Sue, Eugene, 59
Index
suffrage, manhood, 23, 31, 39, 59,
60, 61, 62, 68, 75, 76, 89–91,
106, 124, 147, 148, 155, 173
Sunday Times, 233
superstructure, ideological and
political, 5, 6, 43, 131, 132,
182, 201, 204
Teesside, 236, 237
Thatcher, M., 13, 118, 214–37
Thatcherism, 13, 206–23
Thiers, A., 38, 44, 46, 49, 58, 74, 81,
82, 84, 86, 89, 92, 93, 149, 155
Thorigny, P.F.E., 90
To the Shade of the Emperor
(Bonaparte, L.-N.), 170, 171
Tocqueville, Alexis de, 82, 146, 165
Tories, 43, 215, 221
translation problems, 127
Tremblaire, C.E., 166, 169
Tuileries (Palace), 28, 37, 50, 66, 81,
125
Two Tactics of Social Democracy in the
Democratic Revolution (Lenin,
V.I.), 8
underclass, 13, 228, 233, 234, 235,
236, 237, 238, 239
conventional values in, 237
United States, 27, 233
utopian socialism, 14, 243, 244,
247, 254, 255
Vaïsse, C.M., 75, 76
Vatimesnil, A., 76
Vendée, 101
Vendôme, Place, 109, 116
Véron-Crevel, L.D., 109
Vidal, F., 59
Vietnam, 9
Vieyra, General, 50
Villèle, J., 81
Voltaire, F.M., 55
Wallachians, 49
War Communism, 8
war of manoeuvre, 181, 190
war of position, 181, 190
Watkins, G., 12, 163, 230, 258
Weitling, W., 243, 245, 246
Wilson, H., 214
wine tax, 55, 108
Wood, E., 219
workers’ associations, 26, 249
working-class agency, 212, 223
Yon, 64, 68
Zettel, K., 63
Zizek, Slavoj, 11, 134, 136
267