Comparison of Marx's Communist Manifesto and The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte

Introduction

Karl Marx’s “Manifesto of the Communist Party” and “The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte” comprise an interesting binary of literary binaries. The first work presents ideas and abstracted elaborations of history, while the latter offers Marx’s lesser-known journey through “revolutionary” France adjacent to the publication period of the “Manifesto.” Therefore, as per Marx’s specialty, it provided an excellent resource for criticism of the social relations of class which had preceded, or in his opinion, caused the current situation, since history capitulates in the present, according to his scholarly dialect on the subject. These works discuss, among many other topics, the relations of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie to historic modes of production and the social relations entwined therein. To be general and brief, these two publications share the common theme that the result of history is the capitalist system, which has manifested the bourgeoisie and its subsistence, the proletariat—a phantom which exists outside of culture while maintaining every other structure of society, including the heteronomy of the state, the economy, and the controlling bourgeois class itself.

Historical Context and the Communist Manifesto

Referring to a brief preceding excerpt in “The Manifesto of the Communist Party,” wherein he states the primeval aims of communism, Marx asks, “What does this accusation reduce itself to? The history of all past society has consisted in the development of class antagonisms, antagonisms that assumed different forms at different epochs. But whatever form they may have taken, one factor is common to all past ages, viz., the exploitation of one part of society by the other” (Marx & Engels, 1848, p. 489). The “accusation” he mentions initially refers to his exposition that clearly stipulates that Communism is truly revolutionary, not only in appearance as in the bourgeoisie. Instead of conforming to the past with minor benefits to the bourgeoisie, Marx aims Communism at the future. To elaborate further whilst drawing from the “Manifesto,” as history has elapsed, currency has pulled out of the feudal era as the driving force of its master class, the bourgeoisie, which Marx characterizes as the leaders of industry, “revolution” (of material means, mostly), and capital. In his own words, “The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his ‘natural superiors,’ and has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous ‘cash payment’” (Marx & Engels, 1848, p. 475). This illustrates the deconstruction of social relations in favor of economic ones.

The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte

To digress, whilst still introducing the denser content of “The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte,” Marx draws a clear line between the developmental processes of the revolutions of both the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, the under-goings by which the classes attempt to reform society or manipulate it respectively. He states, “Bourgeois revolutions, like those of the eighteenth century, storm from success to success; their dramatic effects outdo each other…but they are short-lived; soon they have attained their zenith, and a long depression lays hold of society before it learns soberly to assimilate the results of its storm and stress period” (Marx, 1852, p. 597). After the high-browed, idealistic actionary phase, there is a relaxation phase which follows in every bourgeois revolution, wherein the principles which drove the force of the action, be they vague abstractions like “universal rights,” or “freedom,” are dissolved to the core of bourgeois intentions, which are driven by profit.

Proletariat Revolution

Speaking in contrast, “Proletariat revolutions, on the other hand, like those of the nineteenth century criticize themselves constantly, interrupting themselves continually in their own course, come back to the apparently accomplished in order to begin it afresh, deride with unmerciful thoroughness the inadequacies, weaknesses and paltriness of their first attempts…” (Marx, 1852, p. 597). Meanwhile, they waste precious time that the bourgeoisie takes advantage of constantly. The two classes seem impossibly, disproportionately matched, as those of the proletariat “seem to throw down their adversary only in order that he may draw new strength from the earth and rise again more gigantic before them, recoil ever and anon from the indefinite prodigiousness of their own aims, until the situation has been created which makes all turning back impossible” (Marx, 1852, p. 597). Therefore, the wheel of history is accelerated by the bourgeoisie, out of control of the proletariat, which actually pushes the wheel forward. No longer serfs or slaves, the proletariat are “free” workers, free in the sense that they are free to attempt sustaining their own living without the provisions of society, which demand labor, almost by coercion.

The Role of Peasantry

Only one vestige remains in Marx’s historical documentation of “The Eighteenth Brumaire…” which is the small peasantry, small since it consists of land-owning peasants who only have enough land to not be able to survive from its potential. Referring to these lands as holdings, Marx claims “what is now causing the ruin of the French peasant is his dwarf holding itself, the division of the land, the form of property which Napoleon consolidated in France. It is precisely the material conditions which made the feudal peasant into a small peasant and Napoleon into an emperor” (Marx, 1852, p. 610). Unfortunately, out of what Marx calls a “peasant religion,” the voting peasants owe Napoleon their support for letting them keep their miniscule holdings, which, as he states above, are causal for the peasants’ permanent downfall as a class. Marx remarks on this that, “the roots that this small holding property struck in French soil deprived feudalism of all nutriment,” making way for the new organizations to come from modern wealth (Marx, 1852, p. 611). This dried up the well of feudalistic organization of economic and social structure to the point that the only remaining portion still under its watery spell was the vestigial peasant class. These peasants refused to give up the little land which was theirs to own privately even though it was not subsistent enough for the means of living of peasant families.

Formation of the Bourgeoisie

Simultaneously, those who cannot retain a standard of living or a small holding join the proletariat, like the rest of the conglomerated classes from the feudal age. The formation of the bourgeoisie, a precisely subjugative class, manifested a symbiotic relation between it and the proletariat through the transition from feudalism to modernity. Marx puts this quite succinctly in the “Manifesto,” stipulating that “the essential condition for the existence and for the sway of the bourgeois class, is the formation and augmentation of capital; the condition for capital is wage-labour,” making the labourer a mere tool, a means of production for the end of capital (Marx & Engels, 1848, p. 483). Therefore, as opposed to the modern bourgeois individual, “the Modern labourer, on the contrary, instead of rising with the progress of industry, sinks deeper and deeper below the conditions of existence of his own class,” as the bourgeoisie destroy traditions, pagan productivity, and individual products (Marx & Engels, 1848, p. 483).

Conclusion

At the contemporary moment of these publications, these observations of history were very recent and thence were extremely decisive for the future of Marx and the collegiate communists. Therefore, a “Manifesto” examining issues of class struggle in a chronological context was a parallel to the demanding times of Marx’s era. After much examination of the systemic creation of a state around France and its gradual adaptation to the mechanical organism of the bourgeoisie, after much “revolution” of industrial means, there are a few concise truths which Marx arrives at on the topic of class evolutions, or rather, the breaches class has created in society. Namely among them is this excerpt from the “Manifesto”: “In bourgeois society, living labour is but a means to increase accumulated labour. In communist society, accumulated labour is but a means to widen, to enrich, to promote the existence of the labourer,” meaning that as history has reached the present, proletarians have been constricted by progress instead of liberated by bourgeois changes to society (Marx & Engels, 1848, p. 485). Marx continues, “In bourgeois society, therefore, the past dominates the present; in communist society, the present dominates the past,” distinguishing bourgeois historical relations from proletarian developments (Marx & Engels, 1848, p. 485). Alas, after so much division and subjugation, modernity sees the full evolution of a functioning proletariat, created, designed for the sole purpose of sustaining different masters than those before.

References

Marx, K., & Engels, F. (1848). The Communist Manifesto. In The Marx-Engels Reader (2nd ed., pp. 469-500). W. W. Norton & Company.

Marx, K. (1852). The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. In The Marx-Engels Reader (2nd ed., pp. 594-617). W. W. Norton & Company.