A whole lot of the historical background of this long essay went over my head- I must admit that my knowledge of 19th century French politics isn’t exactly broad. I came to this book from a podcast called “The Age of Napoleon” which deals with the subject of this book’s much more famous and consequential uncle. One episode features a discussion of this work by Marx and mentions that it may be a little hard for contemporary readers to “get” because Marx was writing about current events, and assumed that his readers would be up to date on the latest news coming out of France. However, for us, this news has been watered down by an extra century and a half of intervening history.

Even coming in so ignorant, there’s a lot to be had from this book. Something I never hear mentioned is how fun Marx is to read. He was a extremely talented writer (or polemicist, depending on your perspective) with great skill for a turn of phrase or an biting piece of wit to draw into contrast the absurdity of the social phenomena he is describing. Its also refreshing to read a brilliant thinker speaking with such confidence and passion about these issues - when reading Marx you feel like the right answer is so clear, so unavoidable, only by deliberate misdirection have we missed the mark. This is partially 19th century intellectual hubris, but I think it does show how impotent modern political discourse has become. It’s still shocking how radical his opinions were, and how so long ago he was presciently able to diagnose many problems we are still struggling to understand today. When you actually read Marx, you realize how misconstrued he has become, and how different the contemporary “left” in the USA is from the agenda he is putting forward. Case in point is his criticisms of taxes towards the back of the essay, which runs totally counter to the depiction of “liberals” in mainstream American discourse as spendthrifts always ready to raise taxes on the hard working people. In this book Marx articulates much the same criticism of big government as an American style conservative might, albeit with a much different endgame in mind. What were these taxes for? What were they going towards supporting? Would they actually improve the status of the working class or only to fund further distractions and misdirections to make it seem like the government was actually doing something? (It is after all the ultimate goal of classic Marxism to dissolve the state after the means of production has been secured by the workers) Always basing his work in hardcore research and study (evinced by the thousands of hours spent researching Das Kapital in the libraries of London), Marx, despite his reputation as an ideologue, always seeks the no bullshit, practical path forward. In this book we see him rail against meaningless political grandstanding in the service of obfuscating revolutionary energy. What Louis Napoleon was able to do, and what sets him directly in Marx’s sights, was skillfully manipulate (or take advantage of) the political winds blowing after the stymied revolutions of 1848. By playing all sides against each other, and using the powers of office to put forward the most pandering political projects that would ultimately do nothing to improve the situation of the working class, Napoleon III was able to enrich himself, his cronies, and the entire bourgeois class that profited from “stability” at any cost.

There's a reason why Marx got as big as he did. My man could write. Lots of bangers in this one:

"History weighs on the brains of the living like a nightmare." Amazing. Shivers.

"First as tragedy then as farce." 10/10, classic.

"..make the vacation of the National Assembly permanent, and substitute its inscription—'Liberty, Equality, Fraternity'—by the unequivocal words, 'Infantry, Cavalry, Artillery'." Hilarious.

"Thus the large mass of the French nation is constituted by the simple addition of equal magnitudes—much as a bag with potatoes constitutes a potato-bag." Blamo. Gottem. Hey lumpenproles? You're on notice.




( )

Idiosyncratic and often tough to follow but ultimately valuable as an example of Marx's historical method. Sometimes loses focus or doesn't really make itself clear - there were quite a few sentences that seemed to be missing a clause, a few times he describes a class acting against its class interest as if it's normal, some other stuff I should have noted down. The last couple sections are the best, I think, although I might just have been in a better mood reading them. He often assumes knowledge of events which is a bit annoying.

At the same time, it does give an interesting perspective, gives a useful idea of class analysis and does provide a decent amount of information on the era. It contains a few bits of brilliance too.

It's quite possible that my reading of this was terrible, I'll admit I didn't read it under the best of circumstances. I recommend reading if you're a Marxist, anyway. I'll end with one of my favourite Marx quotes which are the opening words.

Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce. Caussidière for Danton, Louis Blanc for Robespierre, the Montagne of 1848 to 1851 for the Montagne of 1793 to 1795, the nephew for the uncle. And the same caricature occurs in the circumstances of the second edition of the Eighteenth Brumaire.

Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living. And just as they seem to be occupied with revolutionizing themselves and things, creating something that did not exist before, precisely in such epochs of revolutionary crisis they anxiously conjure up the spirits of the past to their service, borrowing from them names, battle slogans, and costumes in order to present this new scene in world history in time-honored disguise and borrowed language.

2 years later: I really really want to read this again sometime. The first chapter has made a massive impact on me and I think of some of the quotes over and over. It's massively influenced how I view a lot of politics and it's inspiring and good. I dunno. I think I underrated it last time ( )

Sardonic wit mixed with acute analysis of class interests, throw in a bevy of literary allusions and you get Marx at his best writing.

It is important to remind oneself that this analysis is only relevant to the circumstances that arose in France at this time. It would be tragic for Leftists to assume these class interests and conflicts could be arranged for our benefit in every situation and at any time. One only has to look at the Russian civil war between the Green and Red armies(the urban proletariat and the peasantry) which promulgated the Soviet ideological retreat away from socialism back into state capitalism. If in France the urban proletariat and the small holding peasants had the same oppressor in the bourgeoisie, it does not follow they would pursue the same ends as Marx succinctly portrays with the schism within and humiliation of the Party of Order through the socio-political maneuvering of Napoleon.

In both cases the tyrant of the State imposed itself against the civil society in the name of civil society. In other words, one could rewrite Msrx's last sentence as "As soon as Stalin assumed the mantle of General Secretary, the bronze statute of Marx will crash down from atop the Kremlin." ( )

RBB-2