The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte is an essay written by Karl Marx between December 1851 and March 1852, and originally published in 1852 in Die Revolution, a German monthly magazine published in New York City and established by Joseph Weydemeyer. The essay discusses the French coup of 1851 in which Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte assumed dictatorial powers. It shows Marx in his form as a social and political historian, treating actual historical events from the viewpoint of his materialist conception of history. The title refers to the Coup of 18 Brumaire in which Napoleon Bonaparte seized power in revolutionary France (9 November 1799, or 18 Brumaire Year VIII in the French Republican Calendar), in order to contrast it with the coup of 1851. Eighteenth Brumaire is a principal source for understanding Marx's theory of the capitalist state. Using the viewpoint of his materialist conception of history, Marx discussed the French coup of 1851 in which Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte assumed dictatorial powers. In this book, Marx also presented the most famous formulation of his view of the role of the individual in history that "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 book is also credited by later scholars to explain the nature and meaning of fascism that the coup as a forerunner of the phenomenon of 20th-century fascism. Daniel De Leon, an American politician and Marxist, highly praised the book as “one of Karl Marx' most profound and most brilliant monographs. It may be considered the best work extant on the philosophy of history, with an eye especially upon the history of the Movement of the Proletariat, together with the bourgeois and other manifestations that accompany the same, and the tactics that such conditions dictate.” This is a must-read book to understand the foundational thought of a communist party and the nature of a socialistic country by Karl Marx.
The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte is an essay written by Karl Marx between December 1851 and March 1852, and originally published in 1852 in Die Revolution, a German monthly magazine published in New York City and established by Joseph Weydemeyer. The essay discusses the French coup of 1851 in which Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte assumed dictatorial powers. It shows Marx in his form as a social and political historian, treating actual historical events from the viewpoint of his materialist conception of history. The title refers to the Coup of 18 Brumaire in which Napoleon Bonaparte seized power in revolutionary France (9 November 1799, or 18 Brumaire Year VIII in the French Republican Calendar), in order to contrast it with the coup of 1851. Eighteenth Brumaire is a principal source for understanding Marx's theory of the capitalist state. Using the viewpoint of his materialist conception of history, Marx discussed the French coup of 1851 in which Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte assumed dictatorial powers. In this book, Marx also presented the most famous formulation of his view of the role of the individual in history that "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 book is also credited by later scholars to explain the nature and meaning of fascism that the coup as a forerunner of the phenomenon of 20th-century fascism. Daniel De Leon, an American politician and Marxist, highly praised the book as “one of Karl Marx' most profound and most brilliant monographs. It may be considered the best work extant on the philosophy of history, with an eye especially upon the history of the Movement of the Proletariat, together with the bourgeois and other manifestations that accompany the same, and the tactics that such conditions dictate.” This is a must-read book to understand the foundational thought of a communist party and the nature of a socialistic country by Karl Marx.