The Eighteenth Brumaire of Karl Marx as Symbolic Action

Abstract

The meticulous self-consciousness which characterizes Karl Marx's presentation and interpretation of the events in France between 1848 and 1851 is evident in the famous first paragraph of The Eighteenth Brumaire: remarks somewhere that all facts and personages of great importance in world history occur, as it were, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second as farce. Caussidiere for Danton, Louis Blanc for Robespierre, the Montagne of 1848 to 1851 for the Montagne of 1793 to 1795, the Nephew for the Uncle. And the same caricature occurs in the circumstances attending the second edition of the eighteenth Brumaire!1 This passage is self-reflexive in its focus on the relationship of Marx's writing to a philosophical tradition, to a literary tradition of genres, and to a repetition in time. In it Marx simultaneously revises Hegel and provides a literary perspective for understanding the repetition. At the outset of The Eighteenth Brumaire Marx establishes for himself the role of an active commentator aware that, by his revision of the past, he makes history and partially remakes the events he narrates. The overlap between the writing of history and the events themselves is suggested in the second paragraph: Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past.2 This sentence may be read as a comment on the nature of writing history as well as on the nature of events. To write the text of history is to act within a tradition defined by earlier writings, which each new text partially recapitulates and transforms. Marx weaves into the fabric of his narrative the parallel between the making of history as events and the making of this text about those events.