The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte: A Quick Read edition

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This Quick Read edition includes both the full text and a summary for each chapter.
- Reading time of the complete text: about 4 hours
- Reading time of the summarized text: 6 minutes

"The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte" is an essay written by Karl Marx in 1852, discussing the French coup of 1851 in which Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte assumed dictatorial powers. The essay presents a taxonomy of the mass of the bourgeoisie, which Marx says impounded the republic like its property. It also shows more criticism of the proletariat than is typical of his other works, referring to the bureaucracy as a "giant parasitic body" and describing widespread perceptions of the proletariat as a "party of anarchy, socialism, and communism." The essay contains the most famous formulation of Marx's view of the role of the individual in history, often translated as: "Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please." Marx's interpretation of Louis Bonaparte's rise and rule is of interest to later scholars studying the nature and meaning of fascism. The opening lines of the book are the source of one of Marx's most quoted and misquoted statements, that historical entities appear two times, "the first as tragedy, then as farce." Marx's comment is most likely about Hegel's Lectures on the Philosophy of History (1837), Part III: The Roman World, Section II: Rome from the Second Punic War to the Emperors, regarding Caesar.