A Student's Guide to
The Eighteenth Brumaire
of Louis Bonaparte

Richard L. Warms

The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonapart is a classic bit of Marx' writing.  Written in 1851/1852 and published in 1852, the "pamphlet" deals with the events of the Second French Republic.

Marx is a great but difficult writer.  Reading and understanding his work takes time and patience.  In what follows, I have tried to present, as best I can, the sense of Marx's work.  The numbers refer to the paragraphs of the essay (parts one and seven only).   In each case, I've tried to express simply and concisely the key point (or points) that Marx makes in the paragraph.

The way to use these notes is to first make a photocopy of parts one and seven of Marx's work.  Then number each paragraph.  Your numbering should then correspond to mine.  In order to understand the essay, you must first read Marx' paragraph and then read the note that goes with it.

Insofar as I am presenting my understanding of the meaning of Marx' words, this is, of course, an act of interpretation.  However, I've tried to keep other sorts of interpretation to an absolute minimum.  I don't comment on the importance of any particular passage, try to place the writing within the framework of Marxist thought, connect it with any historical actions outside those mentioned in the essay, and so on.  I simply confine myself to trying to reproduce, in a sentence or two, the sense of each paragraph.

You should be aware that Marx' writing is full of ambiguities and double entendres.  For example, the last sentence of the essay reads: "But if the imperial mantle finally falls on the shoulders of Louis Bonaparte, the iron statue of Napoleon will crash from the top of the Vendôme column."  What does he mean by that?  He could mean that the "imperial mantle" falling on Louis Bonaparte's shoulders is very unlikely...it's unlikely that the the statue of Napoleon will actually fall.  Or, he could mean that this act (again the descent of the "imperial mantle") would be such a sacrilege that the statue would fall (he could be saying something like 'Napoleon would turn over in his grave'). Or, he could be saying that such an act, which is likely (again, the descent of the "imperial mantle") would ultimately result in chaos, anarchy, and the collapse of the French state.  Or he could be saying all three at once.  I've chosen the collapse of the state as the meaning.  I think this is most likely, but you can't really exclude the others.  The point is that my analysis is an act of condensation that tends to eliminate ambiguities.  Though I hope these notes will help in scholarly analysis,  serious students of Marx must read his words in addition to any commentary.

This is very much a work in progress.  I may have misunderstood Marx on any number of occasions.  Others may see completely different meaning in Marx' words.  I welcome your comments and criticisms and will, when appropriate, add them to the notes on this page (with credit to you).  Please send all notes and comments to r.warms@txstate.edu . 

I use several conventions that you should be aware of:
1) I sometimes abbreviate Louis Bonaparte, bourgeoisie, proletariat, and so on.  These abbreviations should be obvious to the reader.
2) When I use quotation marks, I am reproducing Marx's words exactly (in translation of course).
3) In most cases words that appear in parentheses are explicit interpretive leaps that I am making.  They are not actually to be found in the paragraph.  In a few cases, they point out extremely famous passages.
4) Question marks indicate that I'm confused about the meaning of the passage.
5) I've noted whether the paragraph is in brackets.  Bracketed paragraphs were printed in the first edition of the Eighteenth Brumaire but deleted for various reasons (often censorship) from subsequent editions.

In order to understand the essay, you must first have at least a rudimentary knowledge of the basic facts of the Second Republic.  They are these:
1)     In 1848 the constitutional monarchy that had ruled France since 1830 was overthrown by mobs and Louis Philippe, its leader fled.
2)     Radicals Republicans and socialists took over and immediately enacted numerous reforms, including universal suffrage and a right to work.  But in April elections, they were thrown back, defeated by moderates and conservatives. Some of the most radical reforms were repealed.
3)     However, the mobs reacted to this and in June, there were riots.  At least 1500 were killed.  The riots were suppressed by Cavaignac, an officer brought back from the "pacification" of Algeria.
4)     The assembly gave dictatorial powers to Cavaignac who ruled until December 1848.  Under his rule, the assembly wrote a democratic constitution.
6)     Cavaignac was the favored candidate for presidential elections in December 1848, but ultimately he received only 1.5 million votes.  Louis-Napoleon-Bonaparte won in a landslide, receiving 5.5 million votes.
Louis-Napoleon-Bonaparte was the nephew of Napoleon I.  He had fled France after being involved in attempts to overthrow the government and had lived in exile in London.  He won the election using campaign slogans such as: "There is one name which is the symbol of order, of glory, of patriotism..."
7)     In elections of May 1849 the nation was divided.  The moderates who had created the 1848 constitution were all but eliminated and the legislature was split between the monarchists and radicals.  The monarchists had more seats but they were highly divided.
8)     Between 1849 and 1851, Louis-Napoleon-Bonaparte enacted a series of legislative measures that attempted to please all parties but ultimately moved the country in a conservative direction.
9)     He was forbidden by the constitution to run for a second term.  However, unwilling to lose power and encouraged by many of his supporters, in December 1851, he staged a coup, arresting 70 opposition politicians.  There were riots but these were rapidly contained and in early 1852 the electorate overwhelmingly approved a new constitution he has created, giving him 92% of the vote.
10)    The phrase "Eighteenth Brumaire" refers to November 9, 1799, the day on which Napoleon I seized power.

Epilogue: After Marx published this pamphlet:
1) In December 1852, Louis Bonaparte was crowned emperor Napoleon III.  The action was endorsed in a plebiscite in which Louis Bonaparte received 97% of the vote.
2) He led France for two decades of relative prosperity but highly authoritarian rule
3) He led the country to defeat in the Franco-Prussian war, lost power, and fled back to exile in England.

The Notes (part one)

1) Men are weighted by history and use its symbols and forms for their present action. However, they can produce new forms freely only by forgetting the old. (Begins with very famous line "...all great, world-historical facts and personages occur...twice...the first time as tragedy, the second as farce.")

2) The heroes of the French revolution smashed feudal society and created the preconditions for the emergence of bourgeois society. This having been accomplished bourgeois society became engrossed in "the production of wealth and in the peaceful struggle of competition." It forgot the struggles and heroic metaphors that were part of its origin.  ( Begins with very famous line: "Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please...")

3) Thus, the metaphors of the French revolution served to glorify, not parody... to help find "the spirit of revolution."

4) Louis Bonaparte, from 1848 to 1851 has appeared to the French public in the guise of the heroes of the revolution, but this time with the direct implication that the public should bear the expenses and live in servitude to the greatness of these heroes. (hard to understand here).

5) 19th century revolution must not look to metaphors from the past but must "let the dead bury their dead."

6) The revolution of Feb. 1848 promised freedoms but these were taken by the electoral coup 1851. If such a revolution is going to succeed it must create "the situation, the relationships, the conditions, under which modern revolution alone becomes serious." So, the revolution of 1848 failed because it lacked the appropriate conditions.

7) 19th century proletarian revolutions not only seem to fail but seem to make their enemies stronger.

8) Liberals misunderstood their situation in the early 1850s. They believed that Louis Bonaparte would have to step down and were thunderstruck when he performed an end run around this rule. They were living a fantasy.

9) Louis Bonaparte has been able to quell all opposition. Universal suffrage has not survived.

10) The intellectuals say that the nation was "taken by surprise" but this is not an adequate answer (or really any kind of answer).

11) Marx will now describe the stages of the revolution 1848-1851.

12) There were three distinct periods.

13) The February period 2/24/48-5/4/48 was "provisional" and included all parties to the revolution.

14) Every party understood the February revolution in their own way. The revolution had been won by the proletariat but all the other elements...the bourgeois elements, got the lions share of the rewards. The result is many fine words and superficial harmony but underlying "estrangement of its [society's] elements.

15) Second period 5/4/48 - 5/49 is the constitution, or the foundation of the bourgeois republic. In this phase, the bourgeois outflanked the proletariat, removing their leaders and establishing control over the National Assembly.

16) In this phase, the bourgeois republic replaces the bourgeois monarchy and, backed by powerful sectors of society, claims to rule in the name of the people. The proletariat tries to resist this (sometimes violently) but is increasingly crushed and pushed into the background...bringing its allies down with it. Here Marx mentions the June insurgency of the proletariat crushed by the bourgeois government.

17) All of this reveals that "bourgeois republic" signifies "the unlimited despotism of one class over other classes." The republic is a political change but not a real structural change. It could be structural in the US because classes are still in flux.

18) However, the bourgeois, in thus triumphing over the proletariat align themselves with the traditionalists under the slogan "Property, family, religion, order." This leads to the crushing of all liberal attitudes "Every demand of the simplest bourgeois financial reform, of the most ordinary liberalism..." is seen as an attack on the sanctity of property, family, religion, and order... and "the hero Crapulinsky installs himself in the Tuileries as the savior of society." (Crapulinsky is from a Heine poem and refers to crapule...greediness, gluttony).

The notes (part seven)

19) Briefly outlines the history: Feb Revolution to June, then democratic republic for a year then parliamentary republic. Power transfers from proletariat back to bourgeoisie/royalists.

20) The bourgeoisie has brought in the lumpen proletariat. Louis Bonaparte pretends to represent the lumpenproletariat but in reality takes repressive measures against the people in the people's name. Lots of famous statements: "It has apotheosized the sword; the sword rules it."

21) The present corrupt dictatorship was implied in the parliamentary republic "It only required a bayonet thrust for the bubble to burst."

22) This is a section in brackets. Since 1830, France had been ruled by the Orleans dynasty which represented one section of the bourgeoisie. The December coup fully dispersed these people. The February revolution got rid of the immediate members of the government, but it led to the parliamentary republic which fully represented all the bourgeoisie. In the coup of 1851, all the bourgeois power was swept away, including the Orleanists of the 1830s.

23) Still brackets. With the December coup, the judgment of the proletariat implied in the February revolution was fully released. Blanqui was an important French radical who called for the destruction of the bourgeoisie in 1848 but it took the coup of 1851 to really establish this destruction.

24) Out of brackets. So, why didn't the prol. rise up after December. Marx says because it would have driven the bourg. back into alliance with the army which would then have crushed the prol.

25) The bourgeois and petty bourgeois threatened to fight back against the coup, but Bonaparte outflanked them. The appeared to have won a battle but they lost the war.

26) The prol. had lost its leaders and memories of previous defeats made it discouraged from fighting. The bourg. had given up without any real fight.

27) Guizot was a leader of the monarchists. Here he announces the complete defeat of socialism. All groups have fallen before Louis Bonaparte who is a tool of foreign powers (?)...a man with no authority but that derived from his outside backers(?)

28) Marx sees the coup as eliminating parliamentary power that it may set up a single dictatorial executive power that this may in turn be overthrown by revolution.

29) From the medieval days to the present the French governmental bureaucracy has grown. Hereditary rights became government positions and these expanded, taking over the tasks formerly allotted to local authorities. The result has been a huge, centralized bureaucracy that has only grown larger and more entrenched over successive revolutions and governmental changes. Control of this bureaucracy is the chief prize for those who wish to rule.

30) Since Louis Philippe and until Louis Bonaparte, the government has increasingly become the instrument of the ruling bourg.

31) However, under Louis Bonapart this state has become independent of the bourg. and is controlled by L.B. through the lumpenprol. "which he has bought with "liquor and sausages"

32) L.B. does represent a class: the small peasants.

33) Ultimately the Feb. revolution was the revolution of the peasants. The bourg. attempted to control it, but it was "consummated only by the coup d'etat of December 2, 1851."

34) The mode of production of the French peasants was many similar more-or-less self sufficient and isolated farmers. Because they all have similar interests they form a class...but because they do not communicate with each other they do not form a class. The result is that they can not represent themselves as a class. Their representative must appear as their godlike master. Thus, their political expression is in an executive that subordinates society.

35) The French peasants believed in Napoleon the emperor. Louis Bonaparte, "a vagabond for twenty years" uses this belief to pass himself off as the rightful heir to Napoleon.

36) But what about all the actions taken by the government against peasants?

37) These are far worse than they have been since the time of Louis XIV (?)

38) Louis Bonaparte represents the conservative peasant who wants to see their traditional livelihood "saved and favored by the ghost of the empire." He does not represent those few peasants who rise in revolt.

39) The bourg. republic took actions against the peasants, radicalizing them in the direction of empire. "The bourgeoisie, to be sure, is bound to fear the stupidity of the masses, as long as they remain conservative, and the insight of the masses as soon as they become revolutionary."

40) After the vote ratifying Louis Bonaparte's coup, some of peasants realized that they were not really representing their own interests. However, they were caught in history's grasp. Their vote was against the republican parliament that represented the bourg. interest, not their. But, in so doing, they handed themselves over to the dictatorship of L.B. They voted openly for L.B. even in the most socialist peasant locations.

41) Napoleon transformed feudal peasants into freeholders. This was a popular move but was economically unstable. In the short run it produced wealth but in the longer term it produced an indebted peasantry. The peasants do not understand that the cause of their poverty is their conditions of production. L. B. must come to understand this or fail. (However, L.B. emerged speaking for the peasants' misunderstanding so will be unable to address the root causes of their misery)

42) Under Napoleon bourg. interests and peasant interests were aligned. Freeing peasants favored the emergence of industry in the cities. Both peasants and bourg. were united in opposition to the landed aristocracy.

43) Complete paragraph in brackets reads: If it was favored above all, it, above all, offered the point of attack for the restoration of the feudal lands.

44) After the revolution, the small landholder was the bulwark of the bourgeoisie against the return of the feudal aristocracy. However, through the course of the 19th century, the bourgeoisie have come to replace the feudal aristocrats as the oppressors of the peasantry. "The bourgeois order, which at the beginning of the century set the state to stand guard over the newly arisen small holding and manured it with laurels, has become a vampire that sucks out its blood and marrow and throws them into the alchemistic cauldron of capital." The result is that the peasantry is now united with the urban proletariat against the bourgeoisie. However the second Napoleonic idea is strong and unlimited government and L.B. uses this to repress rebellious peasants.

45) The peasantry supports strong central government through taxes. Their situation is ideal for control by a powerful central authority and their can be a sort-of direct connection between strong state power and peasants. Additionally employment in minor state posts provides a sort of social net for unemployed peasantry (and this furthers the direct connect between the state and the peasant).

46) Paragraph in brackets. Under Napoleon, the state used the peasantry for the creation of public works. Additionally, taxation compelled the peasants into economic relations with the town. Without them, peasants would have withdrawn from the economy into self-sufficient isolation.

47) Taxes paid to Napoleon by the peasantry was money well spent since he opened new markets and brought the plundered wealth of Europe to France. Taxes paid to L.B. rob the peasantry in order to create a large government bureaucracy which forms an artificial class but one whose support is fundamental to the regime.

48) Domination by the clergy was another Napoleonic idea. Peasants, especially those who newly own their land, are naturally religious but when saddled with debt become irreligious. The clergy under Napoleon protected the peasants but, L.B. has set the clergy to discover his enemies in the countryside. The result will be a peasant revolt against the clergy.

49) Another Napoleonic idea was the army as a peasant institution. However, now peasants must defend themselves against the army, which has become an institution of the lumpenproletariat. This army will surely be defeated when it attempts foreign wars (because it's purpose is the suppression and control of the peasant masses?).

50) Thus, the Napoleonic ideas that were appropriate to newly freed smallholders collapse when applied to current peasants. However, the first Napoleonic era was necessary to destroy the feudal aristocracy and establish a relationship between centralized government and society. The current indebted peasantry can not support the centralized state. Instead, it is supported by its own bureaucracy (?)

51) In brackets. When the peasantry understands its oppression by the state, it joins with the proletarian revolution. In peasant nations, this must happen or proletarian revolution is doomed.

52) Understanding the relationships of the French peasantry enables us to understand why it voted overwhelmingly to give power to L.B.

53) in brackets. Believers in democracy were caught in a powerful contradiction by the election. On the one hand they have powerful faith that the ballot box expresses the spirit of the people (Marx claims that this is a powerful religious belief). On the other hand, the people have voted both in favor of a despot and in favor of the repeal of universal suffrage.

54) The bourgeois voted for LB because he represented order as opposed to anarchy (and the bourg. hate anarchy). Thus, they voted for despotism to save democracy.

55) LB sees himself as both the representative of the middle class and the enemy of its political and literary power. This is because he protects bourg. material wealth, but rejects middle class intellectual output. This results in confusion compounded by the fact that LB also sees himself as the representative of the peasants. He wants to make them happy within bourg. society. But, above all, he sees himself as the representative of the lumpenproletariat and his government (and Marx says he and his government belong to the lumpenproletariat) and all his actions, both official and non-official, go to enrich this group.

56) These contradictions explain the acts of the government which mixes uncertain and contradictory actions with imperial sounding decrees.

57) A listing of some of the contradictory actions taken by the government.

58) LB wants to tie all classes of society to him through personal obligations. He can't do this as the result of his great achievements, for he has none...he must do it through purchase. Thus, he ties all to himself by trying to give financial benefits to all. However, he and his cronies take a cut of every transaction. They realize that the situation is unstable and steal as fast as they can. LB has created a government of thieves and "kept men."

59) The contradictory policies of the government are made possible by the cult of Napoleon. While claiming to be a Napoleon bringing order, LB and his cronies delegitimize the government, plunder the public wealth, and bring actual chaos while they claim to bring order. The result will ultimately be chaos and disaster.