The Age of Napoleon Podcast Bonus Episode: The 28th Messidor of Matt Christman
Jul 17, 2017
Podcaster, writer, and Marx enthusiast Matt Christman discusses Karl Marx's '18 Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte'. Topics include Napoleon III's rise to power, Marx's analysis of the proletariat's role in the revolution, the lack of class consciousness among rural peasants, and insights from Team Bruhmer on class rule.
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History Repeats As Tragedy Then Farce
- Marx uses the 18th Brumaire analogy to link Louis Napoleon's coup to Napoleon I's 1799 seizure of power.
- He frames history as repeating first as tragedy, then as farce to show degraded institutions enabling a lesser figure's takeover.
Proletariat As A Rising Political Force
- Marx sees the Parisian proletariat as a class transitioning to conscious political power.
- Their emerging class consciousness drove revolution but was later corralled by divided bourgeois forces.
Bourgeois Alliances Mask Deep Divisions
- Marx criticizes the worker-petite bourgeois alliance as temporary and unstable.
- He argues shared revolutionary forms masked underlying class antagonisms that doomed the alliance.