Chapter 8: The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (1852)

Marx begins this chapter by adding his own ideas onto the statement that everything important that happened in world history will in fact repeat itself. He believes the first time is tragedy and the second time is simply a mockery.

People create their own histories, but never the way that they intend them to be. Marx considers that society and environment play key roles in shaping one’s own history. The events that occur in life contribute to the past that is created. Those who have past on in life before us have left a trail of customs that present day society has to learn to survive off of.- as well as learn to NOT survive off of (if things turned out badly). Marx is just trying to prove that what happened in the past is bound to repeat itself and turn out foolishly if we do not educate ourselves with past experiences.

This chapter also talks much about the proletarians (workers- usually the poorest class) and the modern bourgeois society (conventional middle class). He continues to remind readers about the importance of class and how it can affect the difference of one’s past history. He focuses on comparing the revolutions of the bourgeois and of the proletarian. The bourgeois (18^th century) revolutions consisted often of drunken brief successes which settle down into sober sessions in order to start new again (this sentence could be WAY off, but that is how I understood it from reading and dissecting the sentences on dictionary.com- I apologize in advance for any confusion). The proletarians (19^th century), on the other hand, analyze themselves and come back to their already finished work and start again. They wish to rise again bigger and better than they did before.

At this point, Marx begins to discuss how Bonaparte sees himself as chief of the “true Socialists.” He was the representative of the lowest level of the proletarians calling them his army and his government. The chapter goes on to say that Bonaparte would like to represent all classes, but cannot give to one without taking from another.