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[Parts
I and VII of The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte are
translated by Saul K. Padover from the German edition of 1869; Parts
II to VI are based on the third edition, prepared by Engels (1885),
as translated and published by Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1937.]
The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
Introduction | Preface | Part I | Part II | Part III | Part IV | Part V | Part VI | Part VII
By KARL MARX
Introduction
On December 2 1851, followers of President Louis Bonaparte (Napoleon's nephew) broke up the Legislative Assembly and established a dictatorship. A year later, Louis Bonaparte proclaimed himself Emperor Napoleon III.
Marx wrote The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte between December 1851 and February 1852. The "Eighteenth Brumaire" refers to November 9, 1799 in the French Revolutionary Calendar -- the day Napoleon Bonaparte made himself dictator by a coup d'etat.
Originally published in Die Revolution (a New York German-language monthly established by Joseph Weydemeyer). Later editions (such as a 1869 Hamburg edition) were titled The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte.
Marx concludes, in this work, that if a revolution is to survive, it must eliminate the bourgeois machinery of state: "All revolutions perfected this machine instead of breaking it." Lenin later wrote: "This conclusion is the chief and fundamental point in the Marxist theory of the State."
Introduction | Preface | Part I | Part II | Part III | Part IV | Part V | Part VI | Part VII
WSCR:
Resources The
WSCR Archive: List of Papers