Karl Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire

Over the last century and a half, Karl Marx has been at the center of world politics as a prophet to those seeking an alternative to the speedy rise of capitalism. One of the most studied graduate works today is Karl Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire, an interesting bit of political satire and social criticism aimed at Napoleon III in between 1851 and 1852. The Eighteenth Brumaire refers to November 9, 1799, when Napoleon Bonaparte took by force the title of French emperor, which demonstrates immediately how the reader should interpret Marx’s work. Several authors have detailed how Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire is not a reaction to political events but that it is a performative act of discourse, in which the book is not representative of the state of affairs but in fact brings about the events prescribed in the work.

The three authors briefly mentioned below all share overlapping concerns with performative literature, especially of the variety that Marx practices. One such concern is that there is a rejection of the preconstituted self, leaving a subject or subjects in a constant search of defining meaning without reference to the past. Another concern is over the rejection of class and economic considerations as primary starting points for an analysis of events. In performative discourse (similar to the “gonzo journalism” perpetrated by Dr. Hunter S. Thompson), there is only a narrow understanding of such considerations before work begins on defining the events because such background pieces would distract from the mission of performative language.

A final concern is that there is no possibility of a fully realized reality, as there are no closed beginning or end points to performative language. When one act of performative language has been completed, it does not lead to a direct correlation in reality but the opportunity for more performative language to be written in the wake of the last piece of discourse. Karl Marx is certainly aware of this, given that his part in the Communist Manifesto only a few years before the Eighteenth Brumaire did not lead to widespread performance of his ideas. Marx, however, was responsible for planting seeds within revolutionary minds and this allowed for further performative language down the road. While this may be a good way to keep a writer or philosopher in business, it is a difficult way to observe history in the making or run a political system.

Judith Butler, in “Gender Trouble,” acknowledges that while there are distinct differences among the sexes, the gender roles inherent within society are not naturally occurring but rather the result of social practices that are artificial in nature and meant as a controlling agent. This certainly is an indictment of the type of writing that Karl Marx practiced, though Marx and Butler may share the end result of gender equality. Author Slavoj Zizek also takes the idea of performative language to task, though it is not a full throated attack on Marx. Zizek has stated that the danger comes when individuals within a society only take certain parts of fantasy or folly as truth, because they are not recognizing that fantasy, fiction, and truth are all intertwined at times within social discourse. Zizek feels that without the reflective glass of satire or fantasy, we would have a difficult time understanding our reality. Finally, scholar Ernest Laclau steps further in Karl Marx’s wake to discuss the idea of the “chain of equivalencies,” or the idea that factions group around one common enemy or one antagonistic idea that all parts of the faction can agree requires remediation. Performative language can indeed provide the central gathering point intellectually for these factions, but a critical analysis of past history instead of an ideologically driven discourse without reflectivity would seem to be a more important organizing tool.

There are certainly quibbles to be had with Karl Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire, given that his ideology drove the social criticism within this book and his frustration with conservative governments led to his characterization of Napoleon III as a half wit prince. However, author Terrell Carver has come to the defense of Marx in terms of the purpose of his writing. Instead of dismissing Karl Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire as entirely performative, Carver feels that Marx’s criticism and sarcasm toward Louis-Bonaparte is the point of the account. Carver goes on to say that Marx shows the trajectory of history as more haggard than linear, less an equal up-and-down balance of proletariat and bourgeoisie but rather an unequal system whereby the proletariat may continue to sink as their bourgeois counterparts are on the decline. Certainly, the aforementioned arguments about performative discourse make Karl Marx’s work one that is celebrated by activists and scorned by those who see the last century as marred by pseudo-interpretations of Marx’s work.