The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
In this course we continue our review of the Marxist analysis of 1848 and its aftermath and discuss the crucial concept of Bonepartism.
Session One: From February 1848 to the Defeat of Petty Bourgeois Democracy
In this session we discuss the obscuration that results from equating superficially similar political phenomena with different economic bases, the value of historical knowledge in the formulation of strategy and how a class can imagine itself as playing the role of its predecessors. We further ask what were the weaknesses of the February Government, the contradictions between the general content of the modern revolution and the specific circumstances of France and why the bourgeois and not the proletariat won leadership over the nation. Finally we ask what is the ascending and the descending line of a revolution.
Readings: from the 1869 Preface to Chapter Three of The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte.
Session Two: The Rise and Victory of Louis Bonaparte
In this session we discuss the contradictory relation between the bourgeois and bourgeois democracy and the conditions required for the bourgeois to master this relation, the character of the December 10th Society and Bonaparte as a defender of social reform and universal suffrage. We further discuss the difference in class content between the dissolution of the English Parliament by Cromwell and the French Parliament by Louis Bonaparte. Last but not least we discuss the apparent independence of the bureaucracy and the contradictory relation of the state to the peasants.
Readings: Chapter Four to Chapter Seven of The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte.
Further Reading for Course Five
John Burt Halsted: December 2, 1851- Contemporary Writings on the Coup D’etat of Louis Napoleon
Thomas R. Forstenzer: French Provincial Police and the Fall of the Second Republic – Social Fear and Counterrevolution
The Virginia Worker 