Works of Marx & Engels 1852

The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon

by Karl Marx


Written: Dec 1851 - Mar 1852;
Source: Chapters 1 & 7 are translated by Saul K. Padover from the German edition of 1869; Chapters 2 through 6 are based on the third edition, prepared by Engels (1885), as translated and published by Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1937.
First Published: First issue of Die Revolution, 1852, New York
Online Version: Marx/Engels Internet Archive (marxists.org) 1995, 1999
Transcription/Markup: Zodiac and Brian Basgen.

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 Napoleon between December 1851 and February 1852. The "Eighteenth Brumaire" refers to November 9, 1799 in the French Revolutionary Calendar — the day the first Napoleon Bonaparte had made himself dictator by a coup d'etat.

In this work Marx traces how the conflict of different social interests manifest themselves in the complex web of political struggles, and in particular the contradictory relationships between the outer form of a struggle and its real social content. The proletariat of Paris was at this time too inexperienced to win power, but the experiences of 1848-51 would prove invaluable for the successful workers' revolution of 1871.

See Chapter 6 for a succinct time line of the period.


Table of Contents:

Preface:   Marx 1869   5k
Chapter 1: Feb. 1848 to Dec. 1851 25k
Chapter 2: Downfall of the Republicans 29k
Chapter 3: Rise of Louis Bonaparte 37k
Chapter 4: Defeat of Petty-bourgeois democracy 26k
Chapter 5: Constituent Assembly vs. Bonaparte 45k
Chapter 6: Victory of Bonaparte 48k
Chapter 7: Summary 35k
Original Cover
deputies arrested at the Marie Building barricades on 2nd December in Saint-Antoine

“All revolutions perfected the state machine instead of breaking it.” (Ch. 7)