The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte

“Hegel remarks somewhere that all facts and personages of great importance in world history occur, as it were, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second as farce.”

Hegel was a large influence on Karl Marx. This particular quote suggests Marx’s attitude toward several personages he discusses in the essay, like Napoleon III (who is the “farce” to Napoleon I) and the Montagne party in the Second Republic (which is a “farce” to the Jacobins).

“Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all the dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living.”

This is essentially a thesis statement of Marx’s own philosophical view of The Role of the Individual in History. Individuals may have an impact on events, but even when they have an influence, they are bound to the past and to ongoing social and economic trends and circumstances.

“During the June days all classes and parties had united in the party of Order against the proletarian class as the party of Anarchy, of Socialism, of Communism. They had ‘saved’ society from ‘the enemies of society.’”

Marx notes throughout The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte that accusations of socialism, anarchy, and radicalism were used to discredit working-class revolutionaries, aiding The Bourgeoisie and the Rise of Authoritarianism. Eventually, such accusations would be employed against the bourgeois opponents of Napoleon III themselves (53).