The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1852

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Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 1

Chapters 2-3

Chapters 4-5

Chapters 6-7

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Background

Historical Context: The French Revolution

As Karl Marx suggests, France had been in a state of revolutionary change since 1789, when the French Revolution began. At first, the French Revolution had forced the king of France, King Louis XVI, to relinquish some of his power. The monarchy became a constitutional monarchy, which means that the monarchy’s political power was restrained by a strong elected legislative representative body (in France, this was called the National Assembly) and a written constitution. However, by 1792, King Louis XVI was put on trial and executed, with the monarchy abolished. It was replaced by a republican government, known to historians today as the First Republic of France.

By 1799, the republic came under the control of a general, Napoleon Bonaparte. Soon, Napoleon abolished the republic and made himself the Emperor of the French, Napoleon I. After Napoleon was defeated and overthrown for the last time in 1815, the Bourbons, Louis XVI’s family, were brought back to power. The new king, Louis XVIII, was placed at the head of a new constitutional monarchy. Louis XVIII’s government was based on a constitution called the Charter of 1814, which guaranteed rights such as press freedoms, religious rights, and due process. It guaranteed some right to vote and hold political office, called suffrage, although this right was granted only to men who paid a certain amount in taxes, limiting the right to only the wealthy. Even so, the old nobility of France lost nearly all of its old political and social influence, and more political representation had been extended to the middle classes than had existed before the French Revolution.

After King Louis XVIII died in 1824, he was succeeded by his brother, Charles X. A reactionary king who hoped to reverse the French Revolution, Charles X issued the July Ordinances in 1830, which ended the freedom of the press and reduced the amount of political representation in the government. The latter restriction especially impacted members of the upper rank of the bourgeoisie, who found their ability to vote and run for elected offices severely restricted. Charles X was soon overthrown in the July Revolution. His cousin from the Orleans branch of the French royal family replaced him as King Louis-Philippe I.

The Orleans family was long known for being the more progressive and pro-revolution members of the royal family. A new constitution, the Charter of 1830, limited the lawmaking power of the monarchy, reestablished religious tolerance and press freedoms, and extended the right to vote and run for office (although even after that extension, less than 1% of the male population of France had suffrage). Louis-Philippe’s monarchy was particularly supported by the upper bourgeoisie, especially rich business owners, industrialists, and bankers. However, Louis-Philippe was also seen as supporting policies that harmed the working class and gradually reduced people’s rights of assembly and expression.

In 1848, an economic downturn, anger over the lack of political representation and voting rights, and widespread poverty among the urban working-class brought about another revolution, the February Revolution. It began with protests by urban workers, although they were quickly fought by the bourgeoisie, who took over leadership of the revolution. They forced Louis-Philippe I to flee the country for Britain. Then, they set up a new republic, known today as the Second Republic of France. The overthrow of Louis-Philippe I would spark a series of revolutions across western and central Europe. Throughout the years 1848 and 1849, widespread unrest and demands by middle-class activists for new constitutions and more political representation would occur in the Netherlands, Naples, Tuscany, Scandinavia, some of the various German states, Austria, and Hungary.

Some of the 1848 revolutions did lead to reforms, like Denmark establishing a constitution that curtailed the power of its monarchy, the abolition of serfdom in the parts of Germany’s and Austria’s domains where serfdom still survived, and Austria granting more political autonomy to Hungary, a country it then controlled. However, these changes largely benefited mostly the middle class by giving them more political representation and guarantees for their rights. Hopes by people like Karl Marx that the Revolutions of 1848 would lead to the overthrow of the old monarchies and the establishment of permanent and truly socialist governments were disappointed.

Philosophical Context: Karl Marx

Karl Marx was not the first socialist writer and thinker. He was preceded by many socialist intellectuals, such as the French intellectual Henri de Saint-Simon (1760-1825) and the British writer Robert Owen (1771-1858). Marx drew on their works as well as of economists like Adam Smith (1723-1790) and John Stuart Mill (1806-1873). In works like Capital, whose first volume was published in 1867, Marx argues that the bourgeoisie who own industrial businesses inevitably exploit workers, especially the proletariat (urban workers), by exposing them to unsafe working conditions, giving them little pay, and extending their working hours. The bourgeoisie who own factories and workshops are middlemen who contribute nothing to production themselves, but they claim more of the money generated by their workers’ labor than is necessary to keep things running or even just for their own basic comfort. Marx believed that, as industrialization put more underpaid and overworked workers together, they would eventually take control of the means of production, by which he means control over goods and services and how they are made or provided.

Marx viewed history through the lens of his economic thought. His concept of history was heavily influenced by the German philosopher Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831). Hegel believed that human history was full of contradictions that clash against each other and lead to new stages in social development. Eventually, through that conflict, people obtain more freedom as each contradiction clashes and is resolved. For example, Hegel might say that the United States Civil War was the result of the contradiction between racial enslavement and US ideals of freedom and liberty. Once that contradiction was dealt with through the end of the war, there was some improvement in people’s rights and freedoms in the United States.

For Marx, capitalism was also defined by tensions and contradictions. For example, there was the contradiction between the fact that even as newly invented industrial machines did more labor and production for humans, workers nonetheless found themselves working longer hours and in worse conditions for lower pay. Just as feudalism gave way to capitalism, Marx argued that eventually capitalism would also collapse, leading to a new economic and social system where the proletariat will have control over production and distribution.

Furthermore, Marx described history in terms of base and superstructure. The base is the system of production, meaning how a society organizes the production and distribution of its goods and services. The superstructure consists of all social, cultural, religious, and political institutions in a society. Just as the structure of a building is built on a foundation or a base, Marx argued that everything that makes the superstructure of a society emerges from the economic and social base of production and distribution. For example, Marx might argue that racism in the Americas developed to defend and justify the economic system of enslavement. For Marx, history is a series of systems of production and the resulting social systems emerging, spreading, and declining, such as the transition from feudalism to capitalism—he argues that these transitions shape politics and cultures.