Marxist Classics: The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte

Introduction

A left-leaning friend of mine once responded to an invitation to a day-school on Marxism by firmly rejecting the idea that the works of a man dead for over 120 years had any relevance to today’s socialists. On rereading The Eighteenth of Brumaire, what is most striking is that it is packed with insights that are relevant to contemporary struggles. Perhaps it is only now, after the demise of the Soviet Union, that Marx is really coming into his own, that people are reading his works to with a view to understanding capitalist societies and in so doing helping us to organise to transform society. This short work is as good a place as any for someone to approach Marx for the first time before they take on the, somewhat daunting but hugely rewarding Capital, or the eminently readable but over-polemical Communist Manifesto. It is widely acknowledged as one of Marx’s most brilliant works and a work that still attracts much interest, because it is seen by many as a practical application of his general methodology, the archetype of the Marxist approach to history, as well as being a piece of incisive and committed journalism. The pamphlet describes and analyses the events spanning the period from the overthrow of the Orleanist monarchy in February 1848 to the coup d’etat of Louis Bonaparte (Napoleon III), Napoleon Bonaparte’s nephew, in December 1851. Written shortly after the events described, it was originally intended as a series of articles for Die Revolution, a journal aimed at left-wing German exiles in the USA, but eventually appeared in book form as the sole issue of the same journal.

The American socialist Hal Draper wrote of The Eighteenth Brumaire that ‘an outstanding characteristic is its painstaking dissection of the complexity of the historical situation’ and it certainly reveals Marx at his best, teasing out the intricate interaction of the individuals, parties, classes and class fractions operating within the overall socio-economic context of a capitalist society. Of course, contrary to the claims of academic critics, Marx’s nuanced treatment of the relationship between base and super-structure is typical of the tradition of critical analysis that he initiated and the ‘meta-narrative’ monster of their post-modern nightmares now exists only in the vulgar Marxism of the sects.

State:

In fact Marx sees politics as complicated and constantly changing in its relationship with the economic base. As Draper noted, he pays particular attention to the state, never abstracting it from its roots in the socio-economic structure of society but recognising that it can have a certain degree of autonomy, a certain dynamism that cannot be reduced solely to bending to the will of one class or another. Marx realised that this was a complex relationship and rather than hide behind simplifications, he attempted to tackle this complexity. So he grapples with this question of the state, for example locating the origin of the centralised and bureaucratic structures of the French state, what he calls ‘this appalling parasitic body’, in the development of absolutism and the original French Revolution . In relation to the state bureaucracy Marx implies on the one hand that this is a outgrowth of the bourgeois, a means to absorb its surplus members and to line its pockets with state salaries, an explanation that might well account for the senior ranks of the bureaucracy but not the vast army of petit officials and clerical workers that staff most states civil service. On the other hand, in a later reference to the bureaucracy under the second Bonaparte, he seems to suggest differently, seeing it as an ‘artificial caste’ conjured up to maintain the Imperial regime, formed alongside the ‘normal’ class structure, arising out of a preponderance of small property owners and a surplus population of unemployed. In a similar vein the question of the army acting autonomously of the ruling class is considered and Marx comes to the conclusion that ‘barracks and bivouac’ sometimes tires of rescuing the bourgeois and suppressing popular revolt and decides to ‘play state of siege in their own interest and for their own benefit and at the same time besiege the citizens purses’. Its obvious that Marx is not proposing total autonomy for state apparatus but that he is of the opinion that although these institutions generally serve the interests of the current ruling class there are complicating factors which tug at that connection and sometimes severe it, if only temporarily.

Determinism:

There have always been two Marxisms: Marxism as faith and Marxism as method of analysis. Marxism as faith is more Marxist than the man himself because it allows for no flaws or weaknesses in his writings and thought. Marx, like all humans, was fallible, and while the thrust of his analysis and methodology are an invaluable starting point, there are some points on which he got things wrong. One of these was an occasional lapse into determinism (along the lines of ‘the class struggle necessarily leads to the dictatorship of the proletariat’), evident here in the expectation that the replacement of the political rule of the bourgeois by an authoritarian regime would clear the way for the proletarian revolution. Now in one way he was right, since Napoleon III’s reign ended in the defeat of the Franco-Prussian war and the revolutionary uprising of the Paris Commune, but in another way, given that its victory was by no means assured, he was over-confident. It is one thing to say my analysis leads me to conclude that a revolution is probable; it’s another to predict that its victory is inevitable.

Yet before we get carried away with the idea that Marx saw history as a gigantic conveyor belt leading in one direction, let us pause to look at what he actually writes. When describing proletarian revolution, Marx makes it clear that it is not a linear process always heading onwards and upwards but often faces set-backs and forced retreats as the workers ‘throw down their adversary only in order that he may draw new strength from the earth and rise again’. Now he does conclude that this erratic path to victory continues ‘until a situation has been created which makes all turning back impossible’ but this is not the same as saying ‘when a situation has been created’. In other words the final destination is left somewhat open. Marx acknowledges the possibility of defeat and even gets around to discussing what happens to the workers movement in those circumstances ‘In part it throws itself into doctrinaire experiments, exchange banks and workers’ associations…and seeks, rather, to achieve its salvation behind society’s back, in private fashion, within its limited circumstances, and hence necessarily suffers shipwreck’. How reminiscent of the many private salvations, including the ‘community development’ sector, the ‘alternative lifestyle’ scene etc., on which many a good activist has ended up shipwrecked!

‘Men make their own history,’ Marx writes ‘but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past’. Yet generations of both fans and critics have simply ignored the first five words of that statement, inventing a pseudo-Marx who sees humans as puppets dangling on the strings of structure. What he’s actually saying is just common sense: that we have some room for manoeuvre in our lives but that this room is constrained by the structures of the society we exist in. Indeed few could doubt that this was Marx’s approach after reading this account of the rise of the arch-opportunist Louis Bonaparte, manoeuvring his way through the structures of French society until he stood at its head, for here, if ever, was a man making his own history, but not exactly as he pleased.

The Dangers of Parliamentarianism:

In a section of chapter four dealing with the social-democratic party in the National Assembly (i.e. the workers representatives), Marx observes the ever present dangers of being caught in the parliamentary game, a danger repeatedly ignored by radical parties since then. How prescient for what was to occur in later years are his observations ‘popular passions’ being worn out in electoral games and ‘revolutionary energy’ being satiated in ‘constitutional successes’. Now Marx by no means rejected participation in elections but, unlike the modern purveyors of left-liberal popular fronts (or not so popular, as is often the case), he clearly and correctly saw it as a subordinate part of the struggle and one which entailed many dangers for the unwary. Once they entered parliament, he observed, the radicals fell victim to legalism, having to prove that they were the best boys in the class, not in the least bit dangerous. How reminiscent of the past taming of the Workers Party/Democratic Left and the current trajectory of Sinn Fein are these passages: ‘Just as the democrats had, in revolutionary fashion, agitated the minds and raged during the constitutional election contest, so now, when it was requisite to prove the serious nature of that victory arms in hand, did they in constitutional fashion preach order, majestic calm, lawful action..’. We can only wonder at the fact that generation after generation of leftists have made the same mistake of viewing parliament or indeed the state as somehow neutral or of underestimating the power of co-option entailed in bourgeois democratic institutions.

Bourgeois Democracy and Liberties:

While warning of the dangers of parliamentary entrapment, Marx repeatedly indicates the value of democratic liberties for the working class, not as an end in themselves, but as vital to the struggle for the emancipation of the working class. He exposes the shallowness of the attachment of the bourgeois and their political representatives to the democratic liberties they supposedly protected. In this age of ID cards, poster bans, Guantanamo, Patriot Acts etc. Marx’s denunciation of the hypocrisy of the bourgeois still rings true. Despite their rhetoric, their commitment to ‘liberal values’ is wafer thin, readily discarded for a good dose of authoritarianism at the first opportunity. The scare mongering of the modern security state, with its constant mantra of ‘the war against terror’ is an old trick repackaged: communism in McCarthy’s day, the bogey man of socialism for the Party of Order in mid-nineteenth century France: ‘Whether it was a question of the right of petition or the tax on wine…protection of personal liberty or the regulation of the state budget…..the verdict is ever ready and invariably reads “Socialism”!’. Marx goes further and makes a crucial point that the bourgeois are sometimes prepared to go so far as to actually surrender political power and usher in authoritarian rule, so as to ‘preserve its social power’. He knew that the defence of democratic liberties had the potential to threaten the rule of the very class that had used these same liberties as weapons in the struggle against feudalism and absolutism. Indeed the core political institutions of bourgeois democracy could reveal the contradiction of the heart of that system by raising the spectre of participatory democracy: ‘The parliamentary regime leaves everything to the decision of majorities; how shall the great majorities outside parliament not want to decide? When you play the fiddle at the top of the state, what else is to be expected but that those down below dance’.

Parties and Classes:

If the Eighteenth Brumaire is about the relationship between state and class it also has a lot to say about the related matter of party and class. Obviously political parties are not what we are taught to believe in our civics classes, that is, simply free floating associations of people joined together on the basis of adherence to common ideology/policies. Even bourgeois political scientists will acknowledge that parties represent different interests rather than just their membership/voters. Marxists on the other hand try to look deeper: What class, classes or class fraction does a party represent? Does its voting base or membership reflect its class orientation? How do other factors such as the individual party leaders, gender, ethnicity or relationship with the state, interact with this class orientation and base? Marx portrayal of political parties (in the looser nineteenth century sense of the word) in the pamphlet is certainly centred on their location in the class structure but it does not follow that he reduces everything to a simple formula of Party A = Class B, though that may sometimes be the case. Indeed, he posits the general theory that far from always belonging to the class they represent, politicians ‘according to their education and their individual position may be as far apart as heaven from heaven from earth’ from that class . ‘What makes them representatives…’ Marx tells us ‘is that fact that in their minds they do not get beyond the limits which the latter (class) do not get beyond in life, that they are consequently driven, theoretically, to the same problems and solutions to which material interest and social position drive the latter practically’. Sometimes it is even the politics that loops back and influences the class: ‘instead of gaining an accession of strength from it, the democratic party had infected the proletariat with its own weakness...’. Yet he also reiterates (when explaining the division of monarchists into two factions) that there really is a binding and ever-present relation between politics and class: ‘That at the same time old memories, personal enmities, fears and hopes, prejudices and illusions, sympathies and antipathies, convictions, articles of faith and principles bound them one to one or the other royal house, who denies this? Upon the different forms of property, upon the social conditions of existence, rises an entire superstructure of distinct and peculiarly formed sentiment, illusions, modes of thought and views of life. The entire class creates and forms them out of its material foundation and out of the corresponding social relations. The single individual, who derives them through tradition and upbringing, may imagine that they form the real motives and the starting point of his activity’. Once we come across men and women making their own history but not as individuals floating free of the ties of class.

It is especially in describing the Party of Order, that conglomeration of monarchist politicians who attempted to rule France between the end of the revolutionary period of 1848 and the victory of Bonaparte in 1851, that Marx explores the complicated class/party relationship. He draws a picture of dissonance, of representatives being out of sync with those they represent, of various fractions of the bourgeois turning away from their political leaders, for very different reasons, to look to Bonaparte as their saviour. These reasons include the specific material interests of the various parts of the bourgeois but also a plethora of inter-related factors, as is obvious from the depiction of the defection of a chunk of the conservative/monarchist majority in parliament to Bonaparte’s camp in early 1851. They deserted ‘out of fanaticism for conciliation, out of fear of the struggle, out of lassitude, out of family regard for the state salaries so near and dear to them, out of speculation on ministerial posts become vacant…out of sheer egoism, which makes the ordinary bourgeois always inclined to sacrifice the general interest of his class for this or that private motive’. The point here is not that Marx is saying that class isn’t the major factor in party politics but that it plays itself out in a variety of ways, some of which are quite unpredictable. At the same time he is anxious to strip away the ideological veils that hide raw class struggle behind them and the makes no bones about it that the great currents swirling under the surface of party politics are those of class struggle. What should not surprise anyone familiar with Marx’s writings is that he can see both the wood and the trees.

The same issue is also discussed in relation to the bourgeois republican faction. Now we find an explicit statement that, though no party is autonomous of economic base, sometimes the relationship is quite extended. This faction, we are told, was not ‘held together by great common interests and marked off by specific conditions of production’ but was only ‘a clique of republican-minded bourgeois, lawyers, officers and officials that owed its influence to the personal antipathies of the country to Louis Philippe (the King overthrown in 1848), to memories of the old republic, to the republican faith of a number of enthusiasts, above all, however, to French nationalism,…’. In other words, though it was a bourgeois political force and thereby rooted in the class structure of that period, the glue that held the party together was a range of ideological and historical factors. It is important to note though that later on Marx explains that the demise of the bourgeois republicans occurred because they had played out their usefulness to their class by May 1849, having defeated the revolutionary working class, and that the monarchist politicians then came to the fore, representing the different fractions of that class. While this Party of Order was most certainly a bourgeois formation, representing the material interests of that class, it could also garner the support of other classes, such as the peasantry and the petit bourgeois. Such an observation should come as no surprise to those of us living in a state where parties that serve the interests of capital still have the support of something in the order of 70% of the electorate (and that’s not including Labour and the Greens!).

Humour and Wit:

Marx if often portrayed as a dour figure, an old bore poring over parliamentary reports or plotting revolution with other exiles. Anyone who has read Francis Wheen’s biography of Marx will guess how far from the truth this caricature is . Sometimes cutting to the point of cruelty, rarely tolerant of fools, he displayed a sharp sense of humour which surfaces throughout his works. Hence he declares that the Constitution of 1848 ‘was not overthrown by a head, but fell down at the mere touch of a hat; this hat, to be sure, was a three-cornered Napoleonic hat.’ Then there is his priceless description of rural reaction: ‘In the countryside it becomes dull, coarse, petty, tiresome and vexatious, in a word, the gendarme.’ We’ve all met that plonker in uniform sometime in our lives! Or in another glorious worded barb targeting another reactionary element whom today’s feeble and politically-correct left fear to criticise: ‘The priest then appears as only the anointed bloodhound of the earthly police’. True for nineteenth century France, twentieth century Ireland and twenty first century Iran!

Populism: Bonaparte as Haughey:

Marx’s cutting descriptions of Bonaparte and his populist antics may seem like some comic farce but they show a solid grasp of the phenomena of authoritarian populism. Rereading these sections with an eye on modern Ireland, the late Charlie Haughey comes to mind again and again. Indeed Haughey and Bonaparte had much in common as political outsiders who clawed their way to the centre of power, posing as men of the people but always intent on living the high life, courtesy of the state: ‘And in Bonaparte the imperial pretender was so intimately bound up with the adventurer down on his luck that the one great idea, that he was called to restore the empire, was always supplemented by the other, that it was the mission of the French people to pay his debts’. Marx’s characterisation of Bonaparte’s proposal to set up an ‘honour system loan bank’ for workers brings today’s SSIAs to mind: ‘Money as a gift and money as a loan, it was with prospects such as these that he hoped to allure the masses’. This type of populist mass bribery was Bonaparte’s speciality, something that obviously tickled Marx as can be seen in this reference to the President (soon to be emperor) plying the troops with goodies : ‘As a fatalist, he lives in the conviction that there are certain higher powers which man, and the soldier in particular, cannot withstand. Among these powers he counts, first and foremost, cigars and champagne, cold poultry and garlic sausage’ . Like Haughey, Bonaparte wanted to be seen as the ‘patriarchal benefactor of all classes’ but just like Haughey he could not ‘give to one class without taking from another’. In a passage at the end of the book Marx details the complicated relationship between Bonaparte and the various classes: he has broken the political power of the middle class but he protects its material power. Yet, given his support base amongst the peasantry, he wants to, and needs to, ‘make the lower classes of the people happy within the frame of bourgeois society’ but in the final analysis his true loyalty lies with himself , his clique and the army who keep him in power . Such is the shifting sand upon which populism bases itself and these glaring contradictions are its fatal weakness.

Definitions of Class:

In chapter VII, Marx attempts to define class, not in an abstract way but in reference to the situation of the French peasantry. Although his entire works are imbued with the concept, he rarely gets as close to a precise definition of class as he does here: ‘In so far as millions of families live under economic conditions of existence that separate their mode of life, their interests and their culture from those of the other classes, and put them in hostile opposition to the latter, they form a class. In so far as there is merely a local interconnection among the small-holding peasants, and the identity of their interests begets no community, no national bond and no political organisation among them, they do not form a class.’ Now most socialists will be familiar with the idea of a ‘class-in-itself’ versus a ‘class-for-itself’ with the implied importance of class-consciousness arising out of struggle as the key element of the transition from the former to the latter. Marx clearly had this idea in mind since he goes on to state that because of the lack of class consciousness and organisation the peasants saw the ‘unlimited governmental power’ imposed by Louis Bonaparte as their representative and saviour. But a closer glance will reveal a more layered view of class. Note that while class is firmly grounded in the economic base, what glues people together as a class, in the objective sense, is not only their relationship to the means of production but cultural factors that arise from the mode of production and the opposing interests of other classes. Marx rarely misses a chance to tease out the contradictions, to spell out the dialectic: it is not that classes are like pop-corn lying inert in their kernels waiting to be popped by the heat of the struggle (or the all-knowing vanguard!) but that they exist and do not exist at the same time. What Marx contends is stunting the maturity of the class is a lack of awareness of a broader as opposed to local commonality with people of the same class. They may well be an ‘identity of interests’ but it has not resulted in a sense of being part of a wider class community. Political organisation is clearly seen as an important factor in the emergence of a class, though not the sole one.

As well as casting an analytical eye on the peasantry Marx refers a number of times to the ‘lumpenproletariat’, a class he saw as playing an important role in Bonaparte’s rise. We are treated to a rather subjective, and gloriously venomous, description of the ranks of what he calls an ‘indefinite, disintegrated mass’. It contained everything from ‘decayed roués’ to brothel keepers, swindlers to discharged soldiers, in a word all the flotsam and jetsam of life. Marx unscientific use of this term, allowed generations of vulgar Marxists to throw it around like a schoolyard nick name, using it indiscriminately to label any section of the working class who were up to no good, whether it be football hooligans or the unemployed or those who didn’t vote. Yet despite the imprecision of his jumbled up, odds and ends grouping, it is of contemporary interest since it sounds look a lot like the types that form the foot soldiers of the populist European far right and though these may not constitute a class in the sense that Marx generally used the term, there is no doubting that reactionary and authoritarian movements often attract an amalgam of what might be called in teenage parlance ‘losers’.

Conclusion:

Traditional far-left organisations are notorious for the ‘education’ they force feed their new members, usually a few unappetising morsels of Lenin, Trotsky taken with a large dollop of the truth according to the guru. They rarely prescribe raw Marx, as opposed to their authorised summaries, and for good reason, because if you read Marx you soon get to realise how shallow the Marxism of much of the far-left is. Derivative of Marx these tracts may be, in much the same way as cringe inducing slogans bear some distant relationship to worked out political positions, but they bear little relation to the depth and breadth, the clarity and the contradictions, the incisiveness and complexity of the man’s work. Reading Marx is incompatible with the dictatorship of the leading few, because the ideas swirl round, the interpretations are manifold, the lessons varied, the party line missing and most of all the Holy Book dissolves into the grand messy multiple thought of a real human being, brilliant, flawed and committed as he was. Marx is still essential reading for serious socialists and for those approaching his work for the first time where better to start with the Eighteenth Brumaire.