Bonapartism

• Published in: Krisis (Amsterdam, Netherland : 2000) Netherland : 2000), 2018-01 (2)
• Main Author: de Haan, Ido
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Credibility; Democracy; Dictators; Marx, Karl (1818-1883); Marxism; Middle class; Political history; Political leadership; Political power; Presidential elections; Proudhon, Pierre-Joseph
• ISSN: 1875-7103

After the endless crisis of Marxism, the universal applicability of a materialist reading of history has lost much of its credibility, but it has opened up a new perspective on Marx as a uniquely perceptive commentator not only of his own time, but also of ours. One of the most remarkable essays in this respect is his commentary on the rise of the future French emperor Napoléon III in Der achtzehnte Brumaire des Louis Bonaparte(1852). Marx’s detailed account of French politics between 1848 and 1852 has generally been considered a “largely unintelligible compendium of anomalies”, and at best as the “untidy version of the 1859 Preface”. But in fact, this text “reveals that Marx was a pioneer analyst of the politics of representation and a first-rank theorist of contingency.” (Carver 2004 104, 108-9). In times when political leaders are ridiculed as idiots and feared as ghosts of an uncanny past, Marx’s analysis of Bonapartist rule offers what might be called a “spectral” analysis of the vicissitudes of political power.