The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
by Karl Marx
Contents
| Translator’s Preface |
| I. |
| II. |
| III. |
| IV. |
| V. |
| VI. |
| VII. |
Translator’s Preface
“The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte” is one of KarlMarx’ most profound and most brilliant monographs. It may be consideredthe best work extant on the philosophy of history, with an eye especially uponthe history of the Movement of the Proletariat, together with the bourgeois andother manifestations that accompany the same, and the tactics that suchconditions dictate.
The recent populist uprising; the more recent “Debs Movement”; thethousand and one utopian and chimerical notions that are flaring up; thecapitalist maneuvers; the hopeless, helpless grasping after straws, thatcharacterize the conduct of the bulk of the working class; all of these,together with the empty-headed, ominous figures that are springing intonotoriety for a time and have their day, mark the present period of the LaborMovement in the nation a critical one. The best information acquirable, thebest mental training obtainable are requisite to steer through the existingchaos that the death-tainted social system of today creates all around us. Toaid in this needed information and mental training, this instructive work isnow made accessible to English readers, and is commended to the serious studyof the serious.
The teachings contained in this work are hung on an episode in recent Frenchhistory. With some this fact may detract of its value. A pedantic, superciliousnotion is extensively abroad among us that we are an “Anglo Saxon”nation; and an equally pedantic, supercilious habit causes many to look toEngland for inspiration, as from a racial birthplace. Nevertheless, for weal orfor woe, there is no such thing extant as “Anglo-Saxon”—ofall nations, said to be “Anglo-Saxon,” in the United States least.What we still have from England, much as appearances may seem to point theother way, is not of our bone-and-marrow, so to speak, but rather partakes ofthe nature of “importations.” We are no more English on account ofthem than we are Chinese because we all drink tea.
Of all European nations, France is the on to which we come nearest. Besides itsrepublican form of government—the directness of its history, the unity ofits actions, the sharpness that marks its internal development, are allcharacteristics that find their parallel her best, and vice versa. In allessentials the study of modern French history, particularly when sketched bysuch a master hand as Marx’, is the most valuable one for the acquisitionof that historic, social and biologic insight that our country standsparticularly in need of, and that will be inestimable during the approachingcritical days.
For the assistance of those who, unfamiliar with the history of France, may beconfused by some of the terms used by Marx, the following explanations mayprove aidful:
On the 18th Brumaire (Nov. 9th), the post-revolutionary development of affairsin France enabled the first Napoleon to take a step that led with inevitablecertainty to the imperial throne. The circumstance that fifty and odd yearslater similar events aided his