Jim.+Brumaire

Marx, Karl. 1977. The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. In Karl Marx: Selected Writings, edited by David McLellan. New York: Oxford University Press.

January 2011

**Memorable phrases**

“...the first time as tragedy, the second as farce.”

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

Peasants = “sack of potatoes”, “troglodytes”

There is plenty of lyrical Marx here, some amazing turns of phrases. This is a rant, biting prose. Culture seems to matter in these opening paragraphs, even though Marx wished it didn’t, saw it as a veil, is annoyed by the power of symbolism. There is an element of “the invention of tradition” here, when he talks about each revolution borrowing language and symbolism from the past.

**Players:** proletariat (regular and lumpen) bourgeoisie (in and out of parliament) Party of Order Petite bourgeoisie (shopkeepers) The State Small holding peasants (vs revolutionary ones) Monarchists

Timeline (see 313-314 for Marx’s periods): Feb 1848 Feb (second) revolution 10 Dec 1848 Bonaparte elected 2 Dec 1851 Bonaparte coup Second Sunday, May 1852 Scheduled end of Bonaparte’s single term

304: “A nation and a woman are not forgiven the unguarded hour in which the first adventurer that came along could violate them.”

Hmm, not very politically correct today.

The “aristocracy of finance” and the support of The Economist for the Party of Order Politics being held hostage by financial markets

European wide economic crisis, overaccumulation

308: “...the apparent crisis of 1851 was nothing else but the halt which overproduction and overspeculation invariably makes in describing the industrial cycle, before they summon all their strength in order to rush feverishly through the final phase of this cycle and arrive once more at their starting-point the general trade crisis.”

Chronicle of a coup foretold

“parliamentary cretinism”

315: “Present-day France was contained in a finished state within the parliamentary republic. It only required a bayonet thrust for the bubble to burst and the monster to spring forth before out eyes.”

“France, therefore, seems to have escaped the despotism of a class only to fall back beneath the despotism of an individual, and, what is more, beneath the authority of an individual without authority.”

316: “But the revolution is thoroughgoing.”

316-317: Evolution of the state

**Periods**: feudalism absolute monarchy (created state out of feudal privileges) first revolution (completed centralization, integration, agents) Napoleon I (perfected state machinery) restored monarchy (greater division of labor) February revolution Boneparte -> revolution

Under the absolutist state:

“The seigniorial privileges of the landowners and towns became transformed into so many attributes of the state power, the feudal dignitaries into paid officials and the motley pattern of conflicting medieval plenary powers into the regulated plan of a state authority whose work is divided and centralized as in a factory.”

“Every common interest was straightway severed from society, counterposed to it as a higher, general interest, snatched from the activity of society’s members themselves, and made an object of government activity, from bridge, a schoolhouse and the communal property of a village community to the railways, the national wealth and the national university of France

“All revolutions perfected this machine instead of smashing it. The parties that contended in turn for domination regarded the possession of this huge state edifice as the principal spoils of the victor.”

317: state vs civil society

Bonaparte is only able to rule because the state is so developed.

“Only under the second Bonaparte does the state seem to have made itself completely independent. **As against civil society, the state machine** has consolidated its position so thoroughly that the chief of the Society of 10 December suffices for its head, an adventurer blown in from abroad, raised on the shield by a drunken soldiery, which he has bought with liquor and sausages, and which he must continually ply with sausage anew. Hence the downcast despair, the feeling of the most dreadful humiliation and degradation that oppresses the breast of France and makes her catch her breath. She feels dishonored.”

317: Peasants

Interesting discuss on the nature of French peasants, explaining them as a political force, their mistaken support for Bonaparte. This could be said of peasants in general, and demagogues in general. This could be an explanation for why Americans elected George Bush or why they oppose health care reform. Urban vs. rural politics.

“The small-holding peasants form a vast mass, the members of which live in similar conditions but without entering into manifold relations with on each other. Their mode of production isolates them from one another instead of bringing in them into mutual intercourse.

“...much as potatoes in a sack form a sack of potatoes.”

No romance for the peasant. Marx is ready to impose capitalist agriculture and send him to the city.

322: “...he looks upon himself as the adversary of the political and literary power of the middle class. But by protecting its material power, he generates its political power anew.”

323: “Bonaparte would like to appear as the patriarchal benefactor of all classes. But he cannot give to one class without taking form another.”

324: “...like a conjurer, under the necessity of keeping the public gaze fixed on himself, as Napoleon's substitute, be springing constant surprises, that is to say, under the necessity of executing a coup d’etat en miniature every day, Bonaparte throws the entire bourgeois economy into confusion...”