12. Preface to the Third German Edition of The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte by Marx
The fact that a new edition of the Eighteenth Brumaire* has become necessary, thirty-three years after its first appearance, proves that even today this little book has lost none of its value.
It was indeed a work of genius. Immediately after the event that struck the whole political world like a thunderbolt from the blue, that was condemned by some with loud cries of moral indignation and accepted by others as a salvation from the revolution and a punishment for its errors, but was only wondered at by all and understood by none — immediately after this event Marx appeared with a concise, epigrammatic exposition that laid bare the whole course of French history since those February days in its inner connection, reduced the miracle of December 2 [164] to a natural, necessary result of this connection and, in so doing, did not even need to treat the hero of the coup d'état otherwise than with the contempt he so well deserved. And the picture was drawn with such a masterly hand that every fresh disclosure since made has only provided fresh proof of how faithfully it reflects reality. This eminent understanding of the living history of the day, this clear-sighted appreciation of events at the moment they occur, is indeed without parallel.
But this also called for Marx's thorough knowledge of French history. France is the land where, more than anywhere else, historical class struggles were each time fought out to a decision and where, consequently, the changing political forms within which they move and in which their results are condensed have been stamped in the sharpest outlines. The focus of feudalism in the Middle Ages, the model country of unified estate monarchy since the Renaissance, France demolished feudalism in the Great Revolution and established the unalloyed rule of the bourgeoisie in a classical purity unequalled by any other European land. And the struggle of the rising proletariat against the ruling bourgeoisie manifested itself here in an acute form unknown elsewhere. This was the reason why Marx not only studied the past history of France with particular predilection, but also followed her current history in every detail, collected material for future use and was consequently never surprised by events.
But there was yet another circumstance. It was the very same 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 between social classes, and that the existence and thereby the collisions, too, of these classes are in turn conditioned by the degree of development of their economic position, by the nature and mode of their production and of their exchange as determined by it. This law, which has the same significance for history as the law of the transformation of energy has for natural science — this law gave him here, too, the key to understanding 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.
F. E.
Der Achtzehnte Brumaire des Louis Bonaparte, Hamburg, 1885
Endnotes
[164] On December 2, 1851 Louis Bonaparte carried out a coup d'état by dissolving the Legislative Assembly. On January 14, 1852 a new constitution was introduced which conferred all state power upon the President, elected for ten years; the composition and legislative functions of the Council of State, the Legislative Corps and the Senate were placed under his direct control. This constitution in fact restored the regime of the empire in France. On December 2, 1852 the Second Republic was abolished and the Prince-President was formally proclaimed Emperor of the French under the name of Napoleon III. Thus the coup d'état of December 2, 1851 had led to the establishment of the Bonapartist Second Empire in France.