The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte

The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (by Marx/2014/Shin Nihon Shuppansha)

A coup d'état destroyed democracy and gave birth to a military dictatorship. Why did this happen?
Marx has already described the process in detail.

At the beginning, Marx quotes Hegel's words.
"World events appear twice: once as tragedies, and once as farce."

Engels says:
At the time, this major event only shocked everyone, and no one understood it.
However, Marx wrote about the entire history of France from the February incident onwards.
Marx had already discovered the law of historical motion.
That law is that all historical struggles, even if they are driven by multiple ideologies such as politics and religion, are in fact struggles between classes in society, are the production of real life, and are determined by the development stage of the economic conditions of each class.
This is as important as the law of conversion of energy in natural science.

The translator says:
Although this book is a political history from over a century and a half ago, it has much in common with the current political farce of Japan.
As Engels also pointed out, Marx makes full use of historical materialism here.
Marx viewed the structure of history and society as centered on class struggle. In historical materialism, the economic state is the foundation, and politics, law, religion, etc. are located in the superstructure.

According to Engels, at that time historical materialism was often distorted, misunderstood and vulgarized.
He urges readers to read this book to clear up those misunderstandings.

Marx analyzed the history before the coup.
First, the bourgeois parties excluded the working class, socialists, and liberal citizens, abolished universal suffrage, and plotted to revise the constitution. At that time, Louis Bonaparte, who had control over the military, carried out a coup.
The bourgeoisie supported the military coup under the slogan "military rule or the threat of socialism".

In this way, Marx pointed out the possibility and danger of autocratic rule even in countries where universal suffrage exists.
Marx pointed out that the development of a centralized system with a vast bureaucracy and military apparatus meant that even mediocre people could lead a country.

Readers will no doubt notice that there are parallels to what is happening in Japan and other countries today.

Marx was 33 years old at the time.