The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte

by Karl Marx

Overview

Marx stated that the purpose of this essay was to "demonstrate how the class struggle in France created circumstances and relationships that made it possible for a grotesque mediocrity to play a hero's part." In doing so he applies the method of Historical Materialism and besides it's many other points of interest and importance it can serve readers as a practical instance of this particular method of historical analysis

In this essay one finds Marx's famous formulation of the role of the individual in history, "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."

Marx's interpretation of Louis Bonaparte's rise and rule is also of interest to later scholars studying the nature and meaning of fascism, among whom the coup is regarded as a forerunner of the phenomenon of 20th-century fascism.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780717800568
Publisher:	International Publishers Company, Incorporated
Publication date:	01/28/1963
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	161
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 7.90(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

Karl Heinrich Marx (5 May 1818 - 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, economist, historian, sociologist, political theorist, journalist and socialist revolutionary. Marx completed his doctoral thesis, titled The Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature, in 1841 and submitted it to the University of Jena. He was awarded a Ph.D. in April 1841. In 1844, Marx befriended Friedrich Engels, the German socialist and became a revolutionary communist. Marx's The Poverty of Philosophy was published in 1847. Marx and Engels published ""The Communist Manifesto"", a political pamphlet summarizing their theories about the nature of society and politics, in 1848. One of the most important political documents of the world, this monumental text is highly influential and continues to remain widely read. The first volume, Capital, Volume I, of his magnum opus Capital (Das Kapital) was published in 1867. Marx continued to work on the remaining two volumes which were published after his death by Engels. Capital, Volume II was published in 1885 and Capital, Volume III in 1894. Considered to be his masterwork, Capital has been translated into all the major languages.