The Eighteenth Brumaire a masterpiece of Marxism

Marxist Theory · 2020-11-26

Core Argument

This article argues that Marx's The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte is not merely a historical account of the 1848-51 French Revolution but a living theoretical weapon for understanding the present capitalist crisis. The central thesis is that the same class dynamics Marx identified — the bourgeoisie's willingness to sacrifice democratic forms to preserve class rule, the petty bourgeoisie's incapacity for independent revolutionary leadership, the peasantry's oscillation between reaction and revolution, and the emergence of Bonapartist regimes when class forces reach a temporary equilibrium — are recurring features of capitalist crises. The article claims that the logic of revolution and counter-revolution Marx traced in 1848-51 is being replayed today, and that the working class must draw the same conclusion: that the bourgeois state cannot be reformed but must be smashed, and that only a party of permanent revolution can prevent the masses from being delivered into the hands of a new Bonaparte.

Theoretical Grounding

The analysis is grounded in several interconnected Marxist concepts:

Historical materialism — The article presents Marx's method as the application of materialist analysis to living events, rejecting both the "Great Man" theory of history and fatalistic determinism. The famous formulation "Men make their own history, but not as they please" is treated as the methodological foundation.

Class analysis — The article systematically examines the bourgeoisie (divided into Legitimist and Orleanist factions based on material interests), the working class, the petty bourgeoisie (described as a "transition class"), and the peasantry. It draws on Marx's distinction between a class "in itself" and "for itself," particularly in relation to the atomised peasantry.

The theory of the state — The article traces Marx's development from the Communist Manifesto's general formulation through the Eighteenth Brumaire's concrete analysis of the executive power, to the Civil War in France's conclusion that the working class cannot simply seize the existing state machinery.

Bonapartism — This is treated as a distinct political phenomenon arising from a specific conjuncture: when the bourgeoisie cannot rule directly and the working class cannot take power, the executive raises itself above both classes, balancing between them while preserving capitalist property relations. The article distinguishes Bonapartism from ordinary military dictatorship (Cavaignac) by noting that Bonaparte's regime struck at the bourgeoisie itself.

Permanent revolution — The article explicitly connects Marx's 1850 Address to the Communist League with Trotsky's later theory, arguing that the Eighteenth Brumaire provided the theoretical raw material for understanding that the working class cannot limit itself to bourgeois-democratic tasks.

The article sits firmly within the Trotskyist tradition, drawing heavily on Trotsky's analyses of Bonapartism and fascism in the 1930s, and applying them to the current conjuncture.

Conjunctural Relevance

The article connects Marx's analysis to the present moment through several specific parallels:

The crisis of bourgeois democracy — The article argues that the same process of parliamentary abdication visible in 1851 is occurring today, with bourgeois parties dismantling democratic norms to preserve class rule. It cites the rise of figures like Donald Trump as contemporary Bonapartist phenomena.

Reformism and the "left" — The article draws direct parallels between the French social-democratic party of 1848-51 and contemporary formations: Syriza in Greece, Podemos in Spain, Bernie Sanders's movement in the US, and the Democracy in Europe Movement 2025 of Yanis Varoufakis. The common thread is the subordination of working-class demands to petty-bourgeois leadership and the limitation of struggle to "safe, legal channels."

The peasantry in the Global South — The article uses the Indian farmers' movement of 2020-21 as a contemporary example of the peasantry's revolutionary potential, noting the historic general strike of 250 million workers on 26 November 2020. It warns that without working-class leadership, this potential can swing to the right.

Geopolitical Bonapartism — The article identifies Putin's Russia as a contemporary Bonapartist regime, noting that the Ukraine war serves as a distraction from internal instability, and warns that such regimes can unravel rapidly in crisis conditions.

The crisis of capitalism — The article situates all this within "the deepest crisis in [capitalism's] history," arguing that the instability and corruption of the July Monarchy are being reproduced across the advanced capitalist world.

Where the Argument Continues

The article is explicitly an introduction to Marx's text, and points to several directions for further study:

Marx's own works — The article references The Class Struggles in France: 1848-1850 and the Address of the Central Authority to the Communist League (March 1850) as essential companion texts that develop the theory of permanent revolution.

Trotsky's analyses — The article cites Trotsky's Whither France? (1934) and Bonapartism and Fascism (1934) as direct applications of the Eighteenth Brumaire's method to the interwar period. These are available in the collection Leon Trotsky On France.

The Paris Commune — The article notes that Marx's Civil War in France builds directly on the Eighteenth Brumaire's analysis of the state, and that the Commune provided the "positive form" of the workers' republic Marx had anticipated.

Contemporary IDOM articles — The article's references to Syriza, Podemos, and the Indian farmers' movement suggest that these are treated in greater depth elsewhere on marxist.com. The analysis of Bonapartism in Russia and the crisis of bourgeois democracy are ongoing themes in the RCI's theoretical output.

The question of the party — The article concludes with the need for "a strong, independent and genuinely socialist party of the working class" in the United States, but does not develop this programmatically. This points toward the RCI's broader strategic orientation and its analysis of the American conjuncture.

Connections

Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte — The primary text. The article functions as an extended gloss on Marx's seven chapters.

Marx, The Class Struggles in France: 1848-1850 — The immediate predecessor to the Eighteenth Brumaire, covering the earlier period of the revolution.

Marx and Engels, Address of the Central Authority to the Communist League (March 1850) — The text in which the theory of permanent revolution is first explicitly formulated.

Marx, The Civil War in France — The culmination of Marx's thinking on the state, drawing on the Paris Commune's experience.

Trotsky, Results and Prospects and The Permanent Revolution — The systematic development of the theory Marx adumbrated in 1850.

Trotsky, Whither France? (1934) and Bonapartism and Fascism (1934) — Direct applications of the Eighteenth Brumaire's method to the interwar crisis.

Engels, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State — For the broader Marxist theory of the state.

Lenin, The State and Revolution — For the Bolshevik reception of Marx's state theory, particularly the reading of the Eighteenth Brumaire and the Civil War in France.

Key Quotes

1. "Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past."

2. "The Legitimate Monarchy was merely the political expression of the hereditary rule of the lords of the soil, as the July Monarchy was only the political expression of the usurped rule of the bourgeois parvenus. What kept the two factions apart, therefore, was not any so-called principles, it was their material conditions of existence..."

3. "The peculiar character of social-democracy is epitomised in the fact that democratic-republican institutions are demanded as a means, not of doing away with two extremes, capital and wage labour, but of weakening their antagonism and transforming it into harmony."

4. "But the revolution is thoroughgoing. It is still travelling through purgatory. It does its work methodically... It first completed the parliamentary power in order to be able to overthrow it. Now that it has achieved this, it completes the executive power, reduces it to its purest expression, isolates it, sets it up against itself as the sole target, in order to concentrate all its forces of destruction against it."

5. "Cavaignac was not the dictatorship of the sabre over bourgeois society; he was the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie by the sabre."

6. "This contradictory task of the man explains the contradictions of his government, the confused groping which tries now to win, now to humiliate, first one class and then another, and uniformly arrays all of them against him..."