Karl Marx, the self-proclaimed revolutionary socialist, almost never wrote about socialism. Instead, virtually everything he wrote and theorized about concerned the society of modern capitalism and how it worked on various levels: economic, political, social, cultural and ideological. There may be no better example of this basic reality about Marx's Marxism than this little book, originally published as a series of newspaper articles about the circumstances behind the French coup d'etat of December 1851 that overthrow a democratic republic and ushered in a the authoritarian regime of Charles-Louis Napoleon Bonaparte (nephew of his more famous name-sake).

This book should be read for its literary qualities along. The wit, style and humor is unmatched. It also serves as a primer on several key Marxian conceptions including social psychology and political ideology in its treatment of how ideology and political illusions function as self-deceptions hiding underlying motivations decades before Freud developed the concepts of the unconscious and repressed meaning; how and why under certain circumstances the ruling classes of modern capitalism opt for authoritarianism over democracy; the complex interplay of individual temperament and broad historical realities that lead most people to think that their opinions, prejudices and politics are unique expressions of themselves outside and independent from the social context in which they were formed; and the problems of a relatively late-developing and uneven form of capitalism that help explain why the 19th century French bourgeoisie had such difficulty consolidating its position as ruling class compared with its British and later, American, counter-parts. Thus the repeated revolutionary upheavals and political crises expressing their retarded hegemony that are not fully exhausted until the failed military uprising by right-wing elements of the French army in 1958! Or perhaps the left-wing Student Revolution of 1968?

"The Eighteenth Brumaire" is the definitive reply to the legions of anti-Marxists of political creeds from the neo-cons to the post-modernists who sincerely and desperately wish to believe that Marx is today irrelevant; that he is one-dimensional or reductionist in his understanding of social complexity; that his ideas were "utopian nonsense to which an end must be put" (Marx on the propertied classes' treatment of agitation for social reform leading up to the 1851 coup). I use this text often in classes I teach on modern European history, and am invariably bemused by how it reduces to dumb-founded silence all such allegations by those who have never read a line of Marx, often followed by befuddled efforts to nit-pick this or that aspect of Marx's analysis, and the broader theory of modern capitalist society it expresses, worthy of the most pusillanimous Scholasticism of the later Middle Ages or the most precious post-structuralist textual exegesis. Unfortunately for them the end of history proclaimed a generation ago is still a long way off.

… at least the metaphorical one, I figured it was long past time to read one of the works of the most influential writers of the last couple of centuries. During all those years of turmoil, before terrorism became threat #1, there was the fight against “the Communists,” which encompassed my life, with varying degrees of willingness and enthusiasm. I recently re-read Edmund Wilson’s excellent To the Finland Station: A Study in the Writing and Acting of History. Of the various works of Karl Marx, Wilson suggested that this one would pass muster as the most readable and lively polemic.

This work was first published in 1852, within a year of the coup d’état of December 02, 1851, orchestrated by Louis Bonaparte, which would end the Second Republic, and usher in the Second Empire, of which he would be the “emperor,” for almost two decades. It has been a tumultuous three years since the revolutions of 1848 had swept over Europe. Fictionally, this period in French history is depicted so well in Gustave Flaubert’s L'Éducation Sentimentale (French Edition). Marx’s title is derived from the actions of Louis Napoleon’s uncle, the “original” Napoleon, who ended the period of the French revolution on the 18th of Brumaire, Year VIII (of the French revolutionary calendar, which corresponds with November 09, 1799). Effectively, Louis Napoleon did the same, in terms of the Second Republic, of which he was President, ending it on December 02, 1851. Marx commences his work with a famous aphorism that I have heard numerous times, but never with attribution: “Hegel says somewhere that that great historical facts and personages recur twice. He forgot to add: ‘Once as tragedy, and again as farce’. Caussidiere for Danton… the Nephew for the Uncle. The identical caricature marks also the conditions under which the second edition of the eighteenth Brumaire is issued.”

Polemic, political analysis of the conflicts among the economic and social classes, and newscast. Marx’s work is all of that, and more. The “newscast” portions make it a bit difficult for the modern reader. Various (now obscure) French politicians are mentioned, with the assumption the reader will know who they are, and what role they played. Marx weaves back and forth across time, often in a disjointed way. He does recap the events of those three years towards the end of his work. Essentially, the proletariat led the revolution of 1848. All parties united against them, and they were shelved. Exclusive power of the bourgeois republic lasted only from June 24 to Dec. 10, 1848, when Louis Bonaparte was elected President, ending the dictatorship of Caviagnac. And for the next three years he would plot the Republic’s destruction, playing off the “Orleanists” and the “Legitimists”, against each other and the bourgeois. Bonaparte creates the “Society of December 10”, who are “…rag pickers, scissors grinders, tinkers, beggars – in short, that whole undefined, dissolute, kicked-about mass…” He is “Chief of the Slum-Proletariat” and would use it to: “…forestalled or dispersed counter-demonstrations.” A forerunner of the “brown shirts.”

It would be the small farmers who would provide the backbone of Napoleon’s support. Marx analyzes their isolation and self-sufficiency, a “class” of common interests. Ultimately it would not be a story that would end well, as the rule of the aristocracy of finance would be reasserted. With a Marxian flair: “the mortgage indebtedness that burdens the soil of France imposes upon the French farmer class… slavery of capital… has transformed the mass of the French nation into troglodytes…the newly instituted allotment… has become a vampire that sucks out its heart-blood and its very brain, and throws it into the alchemist’s pot of capital.” And the aristocracy of finance love him since: “The President is now recognized as the guardian of order on every Stock Exchange of Europe.”

Ancient history? Not exactly… for as Jean-Baptiste Karr fittingly first put it, ironically in this same period, 1849: “Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.” It was Adolphe Thiers who contemptuously thought that Napoleon is a cretin “whom we will lead by the nose.” Hum! Or, ripped from a fairly recent headline: “Never have lackeys been chased from service with less ceremony than Bonaparte did his ministers.” Hum, redux. The “blind submission to the will of the counter-revolution, which revealed itself as law.” And if the system is placed under just a bit of stress, say, the next “terrorist attack,” voila: “The industrial bourgeois cheer the destruction of their own parliament,” as always, only a “temporary” measure to get us through the crisis.

Sometimes it is difficult to end on an up-note, so why bother? For as Marx said: “The traditions of all the dead generations burden, like a nightmare, the minds of the living.” Overall, 4-stars.

Marx gets five stars; the edition no stars. I have the Bi Classics Pocket Edition (with the Daumier drawing on its cover)--a "first" edition from 2017. The publisher should change its name to "Bipolar Classics." It's a weird product, desultorily produced. The biggest problem? The pamphlet consists of seven sections but Bipolar has printed only six, omitting the final section, which can be found, for example, in Robert C. Tucker's Marx-Engels Reader. Another problem is that while footnotes are added to the first section, none follow the subsequent sections, as if the publisher had a sudden change of mind--hence my charge of bipolarism.

Get this translation. I recommended this book to my sister who found the Kindle translations impossible. This is a great book.

This is the second digital translation I bought on Kindle (this was $.99/the other was free), and both are terrible to the point of nonsensical. Just two paragraphs into the preface, I was thinking "Wha...the HECK is this guy trying to say?" It quickly became evident this had not been translated by a human being, but by a first-phase computer program after funding had collapsed. I was unable to find any decent translation for Kindle and will revert to an old fashioned book. Marx and I both deserve at least that.

As new Very pleased.

Public domain translation from 1897. Clumsy, terribly written, full of typos. I recommend anyone thinking of buying this book buy another translation.