The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte By KARL M A R X Published Online by Socialist Labor Party of America www.slp.org December 2003 The Eighteenth Brumaire Of Louis Bonaparte By KARL MARX Translated by DANIEL DE LEON Prefaces by DANIEL DE LEON, FREDERICK ENGELS and KARL MARX ILLUSTRATED With Glossary PUBLISHING HISTORY Translated for publication in The People, official organ of the Socialist Labor Party of America, and serialized in weekly installments from September 12 through November 14, 1897. Published in pamphlet form by the International Publishing Company, New York, December 1897, the Charles H. Kerr Company, 1907, and the New York Labor News Company, 1951. ONLINE EDITION .................................... December 2003 NEW YORK LABOR NEWS P.O. BOX 218 MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA 94042-0218 http://www.slp.org/nyln.htm ILLUSTRATIONS Louis Bonaparte was mercilessly satirized in cartoons and caricatures until the coup. The iron censorship he imposed thereafter put a temporary halt to the lampooning in France. However, the European cartoonists outside France took up where their French colleagues had been compelled to leave off. The greatest pen and pencil artists of France had meanwhile succeeded in recording the corruption and scoundrelism of the little man who, through the magic of the name Napoleon, had managed for a time to follow in his uncle’s footsteps. These great artists, true social satirists of the highest order, included such outstanding men as Honore Daumier (born 1808), Andre Gill (Gosset de Guines, born 1840), Gavarni (Guillaume Sulpice Chevalier, born 1804), Grandville, Bertall, Faustin and many others. Daumier was the greatest of these—an immortal among artists and social satirists. He was imprisoned by Louis Philippe in 1832, but carried on dauntlessly through the coup of Napoleon the Little. Balzac said of him that his genius was “Michelangelo-like.” The caricatures included here have been selected from the vast number emanating from the pens of these great European artists and social caricaturists of the early and middle 19th century. “WON’T SOMEBODY PLEASE GIVE ME A LITTLE EMPIRE?” By Bertall, Journal pour Rire, 1848. (page 17) “NEITHER THE ONE NOR THE OTHER!” By Honor Daumier, 1851. (page 39) “IN HIS OWN CIRCLE HE IS QUITE ACCURATELY REFERRED TO AS THE MELANCHOLY PARROT.” By Wilhelm Scholz, Kladderadatsch, 1880. (page 55) NAPOLEON III AND WILHELM I OF PRUSSIA. From Vienna Kikeriki. (page 73) THE HEARSE. By Wilhelm Scholz, Kladderadatsch, 1870. (page 94) “CLOTHES DON’T MAKE THE MAN.” By Faustin, 1870. (page 111) Socialist Labor Party 3 www.slp.org TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE “The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte” is one of Karl Marx’ most profound and most brilliant monographs. It may be considered the best work extant on the philosophy of history, with an eye especially upon the history of the Movement of the Proletariat, together with the bourgeois and other manifestations that accompany the same, and the tactics that such conditions dictate. The recent populist uprising; the more recent “Debs Movement”; the thousand and one utopian and chimerical notions that are flaring up; the capitalist manoeuvres; the hopeless, helpless grasping after straws, that characterize the conduct of the bulk of the working class; all of these, together with the empty- headed, ominous figures that are springing into notoriety for a time and have their day, mark the present period of the Labor Movement in the nation a critical one. The best information acquirable, the best mental training obtainable are requisite to steer through the existing chaos that the death-tainted social system of to-day creates all around us. To aid in this needed information and mental training, this instructive work is now made accessible to English readers, and is commended to the serious study of the serious. The teachings contained in this work are hung on an episode in recent French history. With some this fact may detract of its value. A pedantic, supercilious notion is extensively abroad among us that we are an “Anglo-Saxon” nation; and an equally pedantic, supercilious habit causes many to look to England for inspiration, as from a racial birthplace. Nevertheless, for weal or for woe, there is no such thing extant as “Anglo-Saxon”—of all nations, said to be “Anglo-Saxon,” in the United States least. What we still have from England, much as appearances may seem to point the other way, is not of our bone-and-marrow, so to speak, but rather partakes of the nature of “importations.” We are no more English on account of them than we are Chinese because we all drink tea. Of all European nations, France is the one to which we come nearest. Besides its republican form of government,—the directness of its history, the unity of its Socialist Labor Party 4 www.slp.org The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte actions, the sharpness that marks its internal development, are all characteristics that find their parallel here best, and vice versa. In all essentials the study of modern French history, particularly when sketched by such a masterhand as Marx’, is the most valuable one for the acquisition of that historic, social and biologic insight that our country stands particularly in need of, and that will be inestimable during the approaching critical days. For the assistance of those who, unfamiliar with the history of France, may be confused by some of the terms used by Marx, the following explanations may prove aidful. On the 18th Brumaire (Nov. 9th), the post-revolutionary development of affairs in France enabled the first Napoleon to take a step that led with inevitable certainty to the imperial throne. The circumstance that fifty and odd years later similar events aided his nephew, Louis Bonaparte, to take a similar step with a similar result, gives the name to this work—“The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte.” As to the other terms and allusions that occur, the following sketch will suffice: Upon the overthrow of the first Napoleon came the restoration of the Bourbon throne (Louis XVIII, succeeded by Charles X). In July, 1830, an uprising of the upper tier of the bourgeoisie, or capitalist class—the aristocracy of finance—, overthrew the Bourbon throne, or landed aristocracy, and set up the throne of Orleans, a younger branch of the house of Bourbon, with Louis Philippe as king. From the month in which this revolution occurred, Louis Philippe’s monarchy is called the “July Monarchy.” In February, 1848, a revolt of a lower tier of the capitalist class—the industrial bourgeoisie—, against the aristocracy of finance, in turn dethroned Louis Philippe. This affair, also named from the month in which it took place, is the “February Revolution.” The “Eighteenth Brumaire” starts with that event. Despite the inapplicableness to our own affairs of the political names and political leadership herein described, both these names and leaderships are to such an extent the products of an economic-social development that has here too taken place with even greater sharpness, and they have their present or threatened counterparts here so completely, that, by the light of this work of Marx’, we are best Socialist Labor Party 5 www.slp.org Karl Marx enabled to understand our own history, to know whence we come, whither we are going, and how to conduct themselves {ourselves?}. D.D.L. New York, Sept. 12, 1897. Socialist Labor Party 6 www.slp.org PREFACE BY FREDERICK ENGELS To the Third German Edition, 1885 [Translated By Emil F. Teichert] That a new edition of “The Eighteenth Brumaire” has become necessary, thirty- three years after its first appearance, proves that even today this booklet has lost none of its value. It was in fact a work of genius. Immediately after the event that struck the entire political world like lightning out of a clear sky; an event damned by some with loud cries of moral indignation and accepted by others as an escape from the Revolution, and as punishment for its blunders; an event that amazed all but was understood by none—immediately after this event, Marx came forth with a brief, epigrammatic expose which revealed the entire course of French history in its inner connections since the February days; reduced the miracle of December 2 to a natural, necessary result of these inner connections, and thus did not need to treat the hero of the coup d’état other than with the contempt he so well deserved. And the sketch was drawn with such a master hand that every disclosure made since only added additional proof of the accuracy with which it reflected reality. This eminent understanding of history in the making, this clear recognition of events at the moment of their unfolding is, in fact, without equal. But Marx’s thorough knowledge of French history was required for this. France is the country where, more than any place else, the historic class struggles were fought through each time to a decision, where the changing political forms within which they occurred, and in which their results were summed up, have also been marked with the sharpest outlines. The central point of feudalism In the Middle Ages, the model country of a monarchy based on unified estates since the Renaissance, France destroyed feudalism in the great Revolution, and established the untrammeled rule of the bourgeoisie in a classical manner unequaled by any other European country. And the struggle of the rising proletariat against the ruling bourgeoisie also manifested itself here in an acute form unknown anywhere Socialist Labor Party 7 www.slp.org Karl Marx else. This was the reason why Marx not only studied the past history of France with particular preference, but also the current history in all its aspects, gathered his material for future use, and was therefore never taken by surprise by events. There is another circumstance to be added to this. It was precisely Marx who first discovered history’s great law of motion, according to which law all historical struggles, whether they take place on the political, religious, philosophical or any other ideological domain, are, in fact, more or less clear expressions of the struggles of social classes, and that the existence and resulting collisions of these classes are, in turn, determined by the degree of their economic development, by the manner and methods of their production and the resulting methods of exchange. This law, which has the same significance for history as the law of the transformation of energy has for natural science, also gave Marx the key to an understanding of the second French Republic. He put this law to a test in this history, and even after thirty-three years we can still say that it has brilliantly stood that test. FREDERICK ENGELS 1885. Socialist Labor Party 8 www.slp.org PREFACE BY KARL MARX [Translated By Emil F. Teichert] My friend Joseph Weydemeyer,1 whose death was all too untimely, had planned to publish a political weekly paper in New York beginning January 1, 1852. He requested me to furnish for that paper a history of the coup d’état. I thence wrote weekly articles for him, until mid February, under the title, “The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte.” In the meantime, Weydemeyer’s original plan came to naught. Instead, in the spring of 1852, he published a monthly paper, Die Revolution, the second issue of which consisted of my “Eighteenth Brumaire.” Several hundred copies of this issue found their way to Germany at the time without, however, getting into the book trade proper. A German bookdealer of avowed radical pretensions, to whom I offered my work for the trade, rejected it—being most virtuously shocked at “presumptions so contrary to the times.” It is apparent from the foregoing that this work originated under the immediate pressure of events, and its historical data do not go beyond the month of February (1852). The present republication of the work is in part due to the demand for it from bookdealers, and in part to the pressure of my friends in Germany. Of the works that dealt with the same subject at approximately the same time as mine there are but two worthy of note: Victor Hugo’s “Napoleon le Petit” and Proudhon’s “Coup d’état.” Victor Hugo confines himself to bitter and witty invective against the responsible instigator of the coup d’état. The event itself appears to him like a bolt out of the blue. He sees in it only the despotic act of a single individual. He is not aware that, instead of minimizing, he magnifies this individual, in that he attributes to him a personal power of initiative without example in the history of the world. Proudhon, for his part, seeks to explain the coup d’état as the result of a preceding historical development. Unwittingly, however, his historical treatment of 1Military Commandant of the St. Louis district during the American Civil War. Socialist Labor Party 9 www.slp.org Karl Marx the coup d’état transforms itself into a historical apologetic essay for its hero. He thus falls into the error of our so-called objective historians. I, on the other hand, point out how the class struggles in France created circumstances and conditions that made it possible for a mediocre and grotesque personality to play the part of a hero. A revision of this text would have robbed it of the coloring peculiar to it. I have therefore confined myself solely to the correction of typographical errors and to the striking out of allusions now no longer intelligible. The forecast in the concluding sentence of my work: “But when the imperial mantle finally falls upon the shoulders of Louis Bonaparte the iron statue of Napoleon will tumble from the Vendome column,” has already been fulfilled.2 Colonel Charras initiated the attack on the Napoleon cult in his work on the 1815 campaign. Since then, and particularly during recent years, French literature has put an end to the Napoleon legend through the weapons of historical research, criticism, satire and wit. Outside of France this forceful rupture with the traditional popular belief, this great intellectual revolution, was noticed but little and still less understood. Finally, I hope that, particularly in Germany, my work will contribute toward eliminating the current stock phrase of Caesarism. In superficial historical analogy the main point is forgotten, namely, that in the class struggles of ancient Rome, between the free rich and the free poor, only a privileged minority played a part, whereas the great productive mass of the population, the slaves, served only as a passive support for these combatants. The significant remark of Sismondi—the Roman proletariat lived at the expense of society, whereas modern society lives at the expense of the proletariat—is forgotten. With such a complete difference in the material and economic circumstances between the ancient and the modern class 2As Marx noted in this 1869 preface, this forecast was fulfilled a few short years after the imperial mantle fell upon the shoulders of Louis Bonaparte (December 2, 1851). By order of Emperor Louis Napoleon (Louis Bonaparte), the military statue of the first Napoleon, which originally surmounted the Vendome column, was taken down and replaced by one of Napoleon I in imperial robes. Fifteen months after Marx noted the fulfillment of his forecast, the imperlal mantle fell from the shoulders of Louis Bonaparte. Half a year later, the Vendome column was condemned by the Paris Commune as a symbol of chauvinism and international enmity. it was demolished on May 16, 1871, before a cheering multitude. Its replacement after the defeat of the Commune failed to restore the Napoleonic legend. Socialist Labor Party 10 www.slp.org