“History happens first as a tragedy and then as a farce”, said Marx: download the free book in which he explains why

(“Le 18 Brumaire by Luis Bonaparte” can be downloaded for free on Bajalibros by clicking here)

The story takes place twice: the first time as a tragedy and the second as a farce. he said Karl Marx at the beginning of The Eighteenth Brumaire by Louis Bonaparte. It was one of his most famous phrases, one of the most repeated, albeit with the logical variants they bring citing time or translations or ignorance or snobbery.

The German author, whose death marks 140 years on Tuesday and whose book downloadable for free on the Bajalibros platformwrite this in response to the philosopher George Wilhelm Hegel. Hegel did say that great historical events and characters appear twice, that history tends to repeat itself. And that makes sense, if ultimately human beings have (we have) many characteristics in common that remain beyond the passage of time, beyond geographies. What changes is the interpretation that is given to these events and these characters at a given moment: a tragedy or a farce.

At the end of the 18th century, the French Revolution led to the end of the monarchy, the rise of the bourgeoisie and the creation of the First Republic, whose national motto is that which still exists today: “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity”. But it also involved a social change so significant that it led to lay the foundations of modern democracyas well as the consolidation of regulations aimed at equality between human beings.

Yes, these were somewhat utopian and perhaps too naive slogans. And it is also true that this naivete collided with reality when the revolution began to crumble under its own weight. It was the time of the Jacobin terror Maximilien Robespierre as well as his murder in the guillotinethrough which the extinct monarchs had already passed Louis XV there Marie Antoinette, and his former ally Georges-Jacques Danton, among many others. Until 18 Brumaire.

The revolution brought with it the establishment of a new calendar, a republican calendar, as innovative and disruptive as anything this new world has brought. The 12 months, of 30 days each, were divided into 10-day weeks, and the year began in September, with the autumnal equinox in the north, and coinciding with the proclamation of the Republic. In addition, any religious reference was discarded. Among many other curiosities, the months adopted names related to agriculture or meteorology. The second of the year, between October and November of the Gregorian calendar, was called Brumaire: the month of mist and mist in the French autumn.

It was 18 Brumaire, Year VIII, or 9 November 1799, when Napoleon Bonaparte put an end to the revolution.. He had returned from a military campaign in Egypt (that mission in which he found the Rosetta Stone, the gateway to the translation of ancient hieroglyphs) and he had the army on his side, but also a large part of civil society, already tired of a weak government and a chaotic context of persecution.

It would not be wrong to consider 18 Brumaire as the first modern coup. Or, in French, the first Rebellion. The Empire would follow, the wars, the occupation, the defeat of Waterloo, death on this island of Saint Helena in the middle of the Atlantic.

But Marx does not focus on Napoleon or the fall of the revolution. In 1852 he published 18 Brumaire by Louis Bonaparte in the German magazine La Revolución and it was not until 1869 that it was available in book form, also in English and with a new prologue. The author focuses on this shot to trace a relationship with another cutaccidentally committed by another Bonaparte, Louis also known as Napoleon IIIand nephew of the first.

In reality it was a self-shot, because Luis Bonaparte was President of the Second French Republic, established in 1848. And this until December 2, 1851, the date on which he dissolved the National Assembly and assumed supreme powers. One year later proclaimed himself emperorjust as his uncle had done nearly half a century ago. History happens twice, says Hegel. “Once as a tragedy and the other as a farce,” adds Marx.

At that time, Marx was 33, had already published 13 books, was already a doctor of philosophy, and had been debating Hegelian philosophy for some years. It was based on Hegel’s dialectic, but replaced Hegel’s idealism (ideas in the foreground) with a materialist conception. So he came to talk about how economic forces constitute an underlying structure which ultimately determines ‘superstructural’ phenomena, such as social, political and cultural order. The confrontation does not originate in the ideas or in the spirit but in the productive role.

The 1851 coup found him alive in London, having been expelled from Prussia by King Frederick William IV and also from Paris, which was then facing uprisings against the Second Republic. This insurrection, Marx defines it as “the most gigantic event in the history of European civil wars” and as “the first great civil war in history between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie”. Bonaparte then presents himself as capable of restoring the law and the uprisings end up serving as an excuse for the coup d’etat.

Marx followed the self-proclaimed Louis Bonaparte of the British capital and wrote in his role as a philosopher, but also as a historian. He then says that history repeats itself, but partially or, rather, only in appearance. Because what differentiates 18 Brumaire Year VIII from December 2, 1851, are the historical circumstances, which do not depend on the men who participate in these events: “men make their own history, but they do not make it of their own free will. , in circumstances chosen by themselves, but in circumstances which they encounter directly, which exist and which have been bequeathed to them in the past”.

The evolutionary perspective helps to understand why similar events can have completely different consequences. In Marx’s terms, the bourgeoisie was the revolutionary subject at the time of the first coup; but, by the time the second occurs, it had already risen and the absolutist monarchy had already been literally decapitated. In other words, the French Revolution involved a collapse of the feudal system and the beginning of the transition to a capitalist economic system, which already existed, in one form or another, in 1851.

Marx also widens the spectrum of classes beyond the bourgeoisie and the proletariat: he adds the peasants and what he calls the lumpen proletariat., two sectors that supported the rise of Luis Bonaparte. The first, due to a traditional devotion to Napoleon and the high costs entailed by the Revolution of February 1848, which established the Second Republic. The seconds, the lumpenproletariatfor promises of social and political reform.

The new Napoleon, says Marx, “sets himself up as the leader of the lumpenproletariat” because he finds in this sector the massive reproduction of interests which he himself pursues. Something like what is pejoratively called today “downgraded”.

The reigns of Louis XVI, who fell in 1789, and that of Louis Philippe, in 1848, could only be followed by a republic dominated by at least a certain part of the bourgeoisie. In any case, in line with Marx, the two revolutions and the two coups d’etat left the proletariat asidewhose reaction was in June 1851: a handful of days, but “the first great civil war in history between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie”.

The 1799 revolution involved a real change in the superstructure, made up of feelings, ideas, conceptions of life created by society from its material bases and its social relations. If there was a transformation there, in 1848 there could not be. The ruling social class was the same.

Napoleon’s first coup was the end of an attempt at change, but his nephew’s reconfirmed and reinforced what already existed. A coup on the political level, because yes, it dissolves the Assembly and takes control of a centralized and dictatorial power; but also a symbolic coup de force, And cut against himself, against what he represented, for the sole purpose of strengthening it. First tragedy, then farce.

Marx then wonders why a certain sector of the bourgeoisie, the peasantry and the lumpenproletariat they discarded a direct and representative republican government in favor of an authoritarian regime dominated by Louis Bonaparte. His answer appeared in 1869, in the prologue to the second edition of The Eighteenth Brumaire by Louis Bonaparte and when Napoleon III still had a year to cease being Emperor of France: “I show how the class struggle was created in France the circumstances and conditions that allowed a mediocre and grotesque character to play the role of hero”.

Circumstances beyond the control of humans determine their behavior, but also how they are judged in the present or in the future. As many actions are repeated. It doesn’t matter how much the story happens two, five or a hundred times.

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