The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte

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Along with the mortgage, imposed by capital upon the farmer's allotment,
this is burdened by taxation. Taxation is the fountain of life to the
bureaucracy, the Army, the parsons and the court, in short to the whole
apparatus of the Executive power. A strong government, and heavy taxes
are identical. The system of ownership, involved in the system of
allotments lends itself by nature for the groundwork of a powerful and
numerous bureaucracy: it produces an even level of conditions and of
persons over the whole surface of the country; it, therefore, allows the
exercise of an even influence upon all parts of this even mass from a
high central point downwards: it annihilates the aristocratic gradations
between the popular masses and the Government; it, consequently, calls
from all sides for the direct intervention of the Government and for the
intervention of the latter's immediate organs; and, finally, it produces
an unemployed excess of population, that finds no room either in the
country or in the cities, that, consequently, snatches after public
office as a sort of dignified alms, and provokes the creation of further
offices. With the new markets, which he opened at the point of the
bayonet, and with the plunder of the continent, Napoleon returned to the
farmer class with interest the taxes wrung from them. These taxes were
then a goad to the industry of the farmer, while now, on the contrary,
they rob his industry of its last source of support, and completely sap
his power to resist poverty. Indeed, an enormous bureaucracy, richly
gallooned and well fed is that "idee Napoleonienne" that above all
others suits the requirements of the second Bonaparte. How else should
it be, seeing he is forced to raise alongside of the actual classes of
society, an artificial class, to which the maintenance of his own regime
must be a knife-and-fork question? One of his first financial operations
was, accordingly, the raising of the salaries of the government
employees to their former standard and the creation of new sinecures.

Another "idee Napoleonienne" is the rule of the parsons as an instrument
of government. But while the new-born allotment, in harmony with
society, in its dependence upon the powers of nature, and in its
subordination to the authority that protected it from above, was
naturally religious, the debt-broken allotment, on the contrary, at odds
with society and authority, and driven beyond its own narrow bounds,
becomes as naturally irreligious. Heaven was quite a pretty gift thrown
in with the narrow strip of land that had just been won, all the more as
it makes the weather; it, however, becomes an insult from the moment it
is forced upon the farmer as a substitute for his allotment. Then
the parson appears merely as the anointed blood-hound of the earthly
police,--yet another "idee Napoleonienne." The expedition against Rome
will next time take place in France, but in a reverse sense from that of
M. de Montalembert.

Finally, the culminating point of the "idees Napoleoniennes" is the
preponderance of the Army. The Army was the "point of honor" with the
allotment farmers: it was themselves turned into masters, defending
abroad their newly established property, glorifying their recently
conquered nationality, plundering and revolutionizing the world. The
uniform was their State costume; war was their poetry; the allotment,
expanded and rounded up in their phantasy, was the fatherland; and
patriotism became the ideal form of property. But the foe, against whom
the French farmer must now defend his property, are not the Cossacks,
they are the sheriffs and the tax collectors. The allotment no longer
lies in the so-called fatherland, but in the register of mortgages. The
Army itself no longer is the flower of the youth of the farmers, it
is the swamp-blossom of the slum-proletariat of the farmer class. It
consists of "remplacants," substitutes, just as the second Bonaparte
himself is but a "remplacant," a substitute, for Napoleon. Its feats of
heroism are now performed in raids instituted against farmers and in the
service of the police;--and when the internal contradictions of his own
system shall drive the chief of the "Society of December 10" across the
French frontier, that Army will, after a few bandit-raids, gather no
laurels but only hard knocks.

It is evident that all the "idees Napoleoniennes" are the ideas of the
undeveloped and youthfully fresh allotment; they are an absurdity for
the allotment that now survives. They are only the hallucinations of
its death struggle; words turned to hollow phrases, spirits turned to
spooks. But this parody of the Empire was requisite in order to free the
mass of the French nation from the weight of tradition, and to elaborate
sharply the contrast between Government and Society. Along with the
progressive decay of the allotment, the governmental structure, reared
upon it, breaks down. The centralization of Government, required
by modern society, rises only upon the ruins of the military and
bureaucratic governmental machinery that was forged in contrast to
feudalism.

The conditions of the French farmers' class solve to us the riddle
of the general elections of December 20 and 21, that led the second
Bonaparte to the top of Sinai, not to receive, but to decree laws.

The bourgeoisie had now, manifestly, no choice but to elect Bonaparte.
When at the Council of Constance, the puritans complained of the sinful
life of the Popes, and moaned about the need of a reform in morals,
Cardinal d'Ailly thundered into their faces: "Only the devil in his Own
person can now save the Catholic Church, and you demand angels." So,
likewise, did the French bourgeoisie cry out after the "coup d'etat":
"Only the chief of the 'Society of December 10' can now save bourgeois
society, only theft can save property, only perjury religion, only
bastardy the family, only disorder order!"

Bonaparte, as autocratic Executive power, fulfills his mission to secure
"bourgeois order." But the strength of this bourgeois order lies in the
middle class. He feels himself the representative of the middle class,
and issues his decrees in that sense. Nevertheless, he is something
only because he has broken the political power of this class, and daily
breaks it anew. Hence he feels himself the adversary of the political
and the literary power of the middle class. But, by protecting their
material, he nourishes anew their political power. Consequently, the
cause must be kept alive, but the result, wherever it manifests itself,
swept out of existence. But this procedure is impossible without slight
mistakings of causes and effects, seeing that both, in their mutual
action and reaction, lose their distinctive marks. Thereupon, new
decrees, that blur the line of distinction. Bonaparte, furthermore,
feels himself, as against the bourgeoisie, the representative of the
farmer and the people in general, who, within bourgeois society, is to
render the lower classes of society happy. To this end, new decrees,
intended to exploit the "true Socialists," together with their
governmental wisdom. But, above all, Bonaparte feels himself the
chief of the "Society of December 10," the representative of the
slum-proletariat, to which he himself, his immediate surroundings, his
Government, and his army alike belong, the main object with all of whom
is to be good to themselves, and draw Californian tickets out of the
national treasury. An he affirms his chieftainship of the "Society of
December 10" with decrees, without decrees, and despite decrees.

This contradictory mission of the man explains the contradictions of his
own Government, and that confused groping about, that now seeks to win,
then to humiliate now this class and then that, and finishes by arraying
against itself all the classes; whose actual insecurity constitutes
a highly comical contrast with the imperious, categoric style of the
Government acts, copied closely from the Uncle.

Industry and commerce, i.e., the business of the middle class, are to be
made to blossom in hot-house style under the "strong Government." Loans
for a number of railroad grants. But the Bonapartist slum-proletariat is
to enrich itself. Peculation is carried on with railroad concessions
on the Bourse by the initiated; but no capital is forthcoming for the
railroads. The bank then pledges itself to make advances upon railroad
stock; but the bank is itself to be exploited; hence, it must be
cajoled; it is released of the obligation to publish its reports weekly.
Then follows a leonine treaty between the bank and the Government. The
people are to be occupied: public works are ordered; but the public
works raise the tax rates upon the people; thereupon the taxes are
reduced by an attack upon the national bond-holders through the
conversion of the five per cent "rentes" [#9 The name of the French
national bonds.] into four-and-halves. Yet the middle class must again
be tipped: to this end, the tax on wine is doubled for the people, who
buy it at retail, and is reduced to one-half for the middle class, that
drink it at wholesale. Genuine labor organizations are dissolved, but
promises are made of future wonders to accrue from organization. The
farmers are to be helped: mortgage-banks are set up that must promote
the indebtedness; of the farmer and the concentration of property but
again, these banks are to be utilized especially to the end of squeezing
money out of the confiscated estates of the House of Orleans; no
capitalist will listen to this scheme, which, moreover, is not mentioned
in the decree; the mortgage bank remains a mere decree, etc., etc.

Bonaparte would like to appear as the patriarchal benefactor of all
classes; but he can give to none without taking from the others. As was
said of the Duke of Guise, at the time of the Fronde, that he was the
most obliging man in France because he had converted all his estates
into bonds upon himself for his Parisians, so would Napoleon like to be
the most obliging man in France and convert all property and all labor
of France into a personal bond upon himself. He would like to steal the
whole of France to make a present thereof to France, or rather to be
able to purchase France back again with French money;--as chief of the
"Society of December 10," he must purchase that which is to be his.
All the State institutions, the Senate, the Council of State, the
Legislature, the Legion of Honor, the Soldiers' decorations, the public
baths, the public buildings, the railroads, the General Staff of the
National Guard, exclusive of the rank and file, the confiscated estates
of the House of Orleans,--all are converted into institutions for
purchase and sale. Every place in the Army and the machinery of
Government becomes a purchasing power. The most important thing,
however, in this process, whereby France is taken to be given back to
herself, are the percentages that, in the transfer, drop into the
hands of the chief and the members of the "Society of December 10."
The witticisms with which the Countess of L., the mistress of de Morny,
characterized the confiscations of the Orleanist estates: "C'est le
premier vol de l'aigle," [#10 "It is the first flight of the eagle" The
French word "vol" means theft as well as flight.] fits every fight of
the eagle that is rather a crow. He himself and his followers daily call
out to themselves, like the Italian Carthusian monk in the legend does
to the miser, who displayfully counted the goods on which he could live
for many years to come: "Tu fai conto sopra i beni, bisogna prima far il
conto sopra gli anni." [#11 "You count your property you should rather
count the years left to you."] In order not to make a mistake in the
years, they count by minutes. A crowd of fellows, of the best among whom
all that can be said is that one knows not whence he comes--a noisy,
restless "Boheme," greedy after plunder, that crawls about in gallooned
frocks with the same grotesque dignity as Soulonque's [#12 Soulonque was
the negro Emperor of the short-lived negro Empire of Hayti.] Imperial
dignitaries--, thronged the court crowded the ministries, and pressed
upon the head of the Government and of the Army. One can picture to
himself this upper crust of the "Society of December 10" by considering
that Veron Crevel [#13 Crevel is a character of Balzac, drawn after Dr.
Veron, the proprietor of the "Constitutional" newspaper, as a type of
the dissolute Parisian Philistine.] is their preacher of morality, and
Granier de Cassagnac their thinker. When Guizot, at the time he was
Minister, employed this Granier on an obscure sheet against the dynastic
opposition, he used to praise him with the term: "C'est le roi des
droles." [#14 "He Is the king of the clowns."] It were a mistake to
recall the days of the Regency or of Louis XV. by the court and the kit
of Louis Bonaparte's: "Often did France have a mistress-administration,
but never yet an administration of kept men." [#15 Madame de Girardin.]

Harassed by the contradictory demands of his situation, and compelled,
like a sleight-of-hands performer, to keep, by means of constant
surprises, the eyes of the public riveted upon himself as the substitute
of Napoleon, compelled, consequently, everyday to accomplish a sort of
"coup" on a small scale, Bonaparte throws the whole bourgeois social
system into disorder; he broaches everything that seemed unbroachable
by the revolution of 1848; he makes one set people patient under the
revolution and another anxious for it; he produces anarchy itself in the
name of order by rubbing off from the whole machinery of Government the
veneer of sanctity, by profaning it, by rendering it at once nauseating
and laughable. He rehearses in Paris the cult of the sacred coat of
Trier with the cult of the Napoleonic Imperial mantle. But when the
Imperial Mantle shall have finally fallen upon the shoulders of Louis
Bonaparte, then will also the iron statue of Napoleon drop down from the
top of the Vendome column. [#16 A prophecy that a few years later, after
Bonaparte's coronation as Emperor, was literally fulfilled. By order
of Emperor Louis Napoleon, the military statue of the Napoleon that
originally surmounted the Vendome was taken down and replaced by one of
first Napoleon in imperial robes.]