The eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte

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Title page of the first edition
Title page of the 3rd edition, Hamburg 1885

The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte , also known as The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon , is a work first published in May 1852 by Karl Marx (1818-1883). There, Marx analyzes the course of the coup d'état Louis Napoleon (1808–1873) in France in 1851. The analysis of the concrete, as yet unfinished historical event forms the basis for Marx to further develop his own theories. For him, the February revolution and the coup d'état that followed represented social class struggles . Marx developed his understanding of the class further, as did his historical-philosophical assumptions. In general, the work is considered a representation of Marxist social analysis and history theory. It contains some of the most famous quotations from Marx .

overview

To the title of the font

The phrase "the eighteenth Brumaire" is an allusion to November 9, 1799 (according to the French revolutionary calendar ). On this day, Louis Napoleon's uncle Napoléon Bonaparte became sole ruler with dictatorial powers through a coup known as the coup d'état of 18th Brumaire VIII . The title is an ironic comparison of the two coups, so the opening sentence, which is one of the best-known quotes from the eighteenth Brumaire , reads accordingly :

“Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world historical facts and persons occur twice, so to speak. He forgot to add: the one time as a great tragedy, the other time as a rude farce. "

- Karl Marx: The eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte . New York 1852, p. 1

Origin and publication history

Was written The Eighteenth Brumaire of mid-December 1851 to 25 March 1852. The approximately 100 pages long and was published in seven chapters structured text under the title The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon for the first time on May 18, 1852 the first issue in New York City ( USA ) published the monthly magazine The Revolution. A magazine in casual notebooks by Joseph Weydemeyer with a print run of 500 copies. No publisher could translate it into English by Wilhelm Pieper , then Marx's secretary. Only a small excerpt from the first chapter appeared in the newspaper “Peoples Paper” within the article “A Review of the Literature on the Coup d'Etat” on December 18, 1852, which was written by Johann Georg Eccarius with the help of Marx. A second, revised edition was published in Hamburg in 1869 with a foreword by Marx, the third after Marx's death under the editorship and with a foreword by Friedrich Engels in 1885. Both new editions appeared with the title The eighteenth Brumaire by Louis Bonaparte . The French first edition appeared after a collaboration between Engels and Édouard Fautin between January and October 1891 in a series of articles in the journal Socialiste . The article is published in volume 8 of the MEW edition (pp. 111–207). In the Marx-Engels Complete Edition , the text is published with all variants in Section I. Vol. 11, pp. 96-189.

Historical background

Barricade fight in Rue Soufflot, Paris, June 25, 1848 ( June Uprising )
Louis Napoleon , contemporary caricature

Louis Napoleon , also known as Napoléon III., Who had failed coup attempts in 1836 and 1840 , returned to France in the Second French Republic after the February revolution in 1848 against the "citizen king" Louis-Philippe of Orléans , and won the presidential elections in December the previous President Louis-Eugène Cavaignac . Three years later, by means of a coup d'état on December 2, 1851, he enforced dictatorial powers and, following a plebiscite (referendum), was proclaimed Emperor of the Second Empire in December 1852 .

During a battle of the Franco-Prussian War (1870–1871) he was captured in September 1870 and completely ousted two days later by the proclamation of the Third Republic .

Content and interest in knowledge

As Friedrich Engels explains in his foreword, Marx dealt particularly well with the history of France, since for him, as Engels writes, it represents a history of class struggles “in the sharpest outlines”. Marx wrote the text “ The Class Struggles in France 1848–1850 ” as early as 1850 and dealt with large parts of the history of France at the time of the Second French Republic . The proclamation of Louis Napoleon as emperor, and with it the end of the republic, took place a few months after the publication of the eighteenth Brumaire . Marx later commented in this regard in the foreword to the second edition: “ The final sentence of my writing: 'But when the imperial cloak finally falls on Louis Bonaparte's shoulders, the bronze statue of Napoleon will fall from the height of the Vendôme column' has already been fulfilled. “It was Marx's interest to see through the course of the coup and the February revolution as class struggles in order to develop possibilities for action on the basis of this knowledge, to move closer to a classless society that is more just according to his philosophical theories . So this study became one of his most 'sociological' writings.

In the text, Louis Napoleon's coup d'état in 1851 is viewed from a historical, but above all from a social- analytical point of view. Marx explains the course of the February Revolution on the basis of his theories and develops them in a more concrete way. What class actually carried Louis Bonaparte up? Not the bourgeoisie. But why did it refrain from reaching for immediate rule and political representation in favor of Napoleon's authoritarian rule even after the February Revolution ? With this in mind, he writes in his foreword to the second edition that he is trying to prove “ how the class struggle in France created circumstances and conditions which enable a mediocre and grotesque personage [Louis Napoleon] to play the role of hero. "

theory

In order to explain the course of the coup d'état, Marx in his analysis expanded the class spectrum under consideration, in addition to the main classes of a bourgeois- capitalist society, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, to include the peasantry and the ragged proletariat , in which he made up decisive forces for Louis Napoleon's gain in power. He justifies this with both material and ideological factors. For example, the Lumpenproletariat class was drawn to the side of Louis Napoleon through the assurance of social and political reforms. Marx stated that the rural peasantry had traditionally worshiped Napoleon, and that this class could not develop a common class consciousness due to its mode of production in individual parcels , since its members were largely spatially separated from one another. Neither could it, therefore, assert its interests as a class , and for this purpose it would need a strong, loyal authority, which they see in Louis Napoleon.

Marx states that in addition to the power of the economic and the political (of the military and the state apparatus ), the approval and / or winning of the masses for one's own, at least predetermined goals are decisive in order to influence social developments. Louis Napoleon legitimized and expanded his authoritarian rule through electoral processes and plebiscites.

effect

The eighteenth Brumaire had an influence on totalitarianism and fascism research (see also: Bonapartism ). In political science , writing is considered an important work of political theory . The reception within Marxism and Marxism-Leninism , which gives the work an important place, emphasized above all the statement of the text that a victorious proletarian revolution must smash the bourgeois state apparatus instead of taking it over. Generally speaking, The Eighteenth Brumaire is considered a representation of Marxist social and historical theory. According to the philosopher Urs Lindner, Marx's essay combines “structure and event history, sociological explanation and historical narration”.

Well-known quotes

“Hegel noticed somewhere that all great world historical facts and persons occur twice, so to speak. He forgot to add: one time as a tragedy, the other time as a farce. "

- The eighteenth Brumaire by Louis Bonaparte, preface to the 3rd edition, I.

"People make their own story, but they do not make it of their own free will under self-chosen, but under immediately existing, given and traditional circumstances."

- The eighteenth Brumaire by Louis Bonaparte, Chapter 1 : Karl Marx 1852

“The tradition of all dead generations weighs like an alp on the brains of the living. And when they seem to be busy turning themselves and things upside down, creating something that has not yet existed, especially in such epochs of revolutionary crisis, they fearfully conjure up the ghosts of the past for their service, borrowing names, battle slogans, costumes in order to be venerable in this time Disguise and to perform the new world history scene with this borrowed language. "

- The eighteenth Brumaire by Louis Bonaparte, Chapter 1 : Karl Marx 1852

“But the revolution is thorough. She is still on her way through purgatory. She does her business with method. Until December 2, 1851 [note. Coup d'état Louis Napoleon] she had completed one half of her preparation, she is now completing the other. It first completed parliamentary power in order to be able to overthrow it. Now that it has achieved this, it completes executive power, reducing it to its purest expression, isolating it, confronting it as the sole reproach in order to concentrate all its forces of destruction against it. And when she has done this second half of her preparatory work, Europe will jump up from its seat and cheer: Well rooted, old mole! "

- The eighteenth Brumaire by Louis Bonaparte, Chapter 7 : Karl Marx 1852

Trivia

See also

expenditure

  • Karl Marx: The eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. 2nd Edition. Otto Meißner, Hamburg 1869 ( digitized version and full text in the German text archive )
  • Karl Marx. The eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte . New supplemented edition with a foreword by Friedrich Engels. Edited and introduced by D. Rjazanov . Publishing house for literature and politics, Vienna 1927.
  • Karl Marx. The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte . Introduced by Jakob Peter Mayer . New edition 6th edition JHW Dietz, Berlin 1932. (= Small Library 31)
  • Karl Marx. The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte . Foreword by Otto Bauer . Prager, Bratislava 1936 (= Social Library )
  • Karl Marx. The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte . Afterword by Herbert Marcuse . Insel-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1965 (= collection insel 9)
  • Natalja Kudrjaschowa: On the history of the second German edition of Karl Marx's book 'Der eighteenth Brumaire des Louis Bonaparte' from 1869 . In: Marx-Engels-Jahrbuch 6. Dietz Verlag, Berlin 1983, pp. 251-264.
  • Marx-Engels Complete Edition . Department I. Volume 11. Dietz Verlag, Berlin 1983, pp. 96-189 and pp. 679-761.

literature

  • Contributions to Marx-Engels research. New episode 2002. Class - Revolution - Democracy. On the 150th anniversary of the first publication of Marx's The 18th Brumaire by Louis Bonaparte . Argument, Hamburg 2003 ISBN 3-88619-689-5 Contains nine papers on the topic.
  • Karl Marx: The eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte . Comment by Hauke ​​Brunkhorst . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 2007. ISBN 978-3-518-27003-5 .

Web links

The eighteenth Brumaire by Louis Bonaparte (digital text)
The eighteenth Brumaire des Louis Bonaparte (factory scan)
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List of sources and notes

  1. ↑ Marx-Engels-Gesamtausgabe, Section I. Volume 11, p. 96
  2. ↑ a b Class Revolution Democracy. The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. (PDF; 67 kB) - Hoff, Jan: in: UTOPIE Kreativ, H. 141/142 (July / August 2002), pp. 743-745
  3. ^ IISG Marx Engels estate Q 16 Wilhelm Pieper: "Translation of the '18. Brumaire ', chap. II u. III. ca September 1852, 51 pages, "and one of Jenny Marx made" copy of Chap. VI “(RGASPI, Moscow Fond 1 opis 1 delo 703).
  4. ↑ Marx-Engels-Gesamtausgabe, Division I, Vol. 11, pp. 515-521.
  5. ↑ In the preface to the second edition, Marx explains that printing errors have been corrected and “allusions that are no longer understandable” have been deleted (see marxists.org ).
  6. ↑ Engels made stylistic changes based on the second edition (see mlwerke.de )
  7. ^ German Historical Museum
  8. ^ Foreword to the 3rd edition , Friedrich Engels 1885
  9. ↑ a b Karl Marx: 18. Brumaire d. Louis Bonaparte (preface to the 2nd edition). Retrieved September 2, 2019 .
  10. ↑ Knowledge of historical persons and events could largely be assumed by the author in the eighteenth Brumaire due to its topicality at the time.
  11. ↑ Here Marx engages in subtle analyzes of the social structure of the time , especially of rural France.
  12. ↑ a b c d Theo Stammen , Gisela Riescher , Wilhelm Hofmann (ed.): Main works of political theory (= Kröner's pocket edition . Volume 379). Kröner, Stuttgart 1997, ISBN 3-520-37901-5 , pp. 320-322.
  13. ↑ a b cf. http://www.marxists.org/deutsch/archiv/marx-engels/1852/brumaire/index.htm
  14. ↑ This statement refers to an edition of the GDR publishing house Dietz. Source: Theo Stammen, Gisela Riescher, Wilhelm Hofmann (eds.): Major works of political theory. Kröner, Stuttgart 1997, ISBN 3-520-37901-5 , p. 322.
  15. ↑ Urs Lindner: Marx and philosophy. Scientific realism, ethical perfectionism and critical social theory. Stuttgart 2013, p. 217.