Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte: Democracy, Dictatorship, and the Politics of Class Struggle

Abstract

The history of all society up to now is the history of class struggles. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto “The history of all society up to now is the history of class struggles.” (Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto ) Would Louis Bonaparte be much remembered now if it weren't for Karl Marx? Of those who might recognize the name (but almost certainly not the image) of Napoleon III, Emperor of the French, how many would correctly identify him as M. Louis Bonaparte, democratically elected President of the Second Republic (1848-51)? The “June Days” of the Revolution of 1848 and the workers' cooperatives of republican Paris have been memorialized by socialist historians, of whom Marx was the first (in The Class Struggles in France , the little-read precursor of The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte ). Indeed, even the memorialization of M. (le President) Louis Bonaparte in Marx's Eighteenth Brumaire has been rather neglected, and the circumstances of his coup d'etat hardly ever analyzed historically and theoretically. The moment of Louis Bonaparte's democratic presidency has been lost in the obscurity of the short-lived Second Republic, and the moment of his military dictatorship (from December 2, 1851) has been merged into his rather forgettable Second Empire (which began a year later) and lasted remarkably until 1870. Before examining Marx's Eighteenth Brumaire for what it has to say to us about democracy, dictatorship, and class struggle, it will be necessary to examine very closely the way the text has been framed by “all the dead generations” of commentary. This will entail a discussion of the text as history, the text as Marxism, and the text as English prose.