Book · 1913 · France
The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
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I am going to give the final word to Karl Marx, the man whose ideology in theory spawned theirs. I'm going to read from one of Marx's most famous works, the 18th through Mayor.
Why people recommend it
The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte by Karl Marx is a classic political essay analyzing the 1851 coup d'état in France through the lens of historical materialism and class struggle. The text was frequently cited by Mia Wong and Christopher Wong across multiple episodes of the Behind the Bastards podcast between November 2022 and January 2025. The speakers turned to Marx's work to frame various political discussions, critique modern authoritarian movements, and examine historical precedents. Christopher Wong quoted one of the essay's most famous observations regarding how human beings make their own history rather than doing so entirely as they please or under self-selected circumstances, using the passage to explain the complex background inherited by political figures like Lula. In other episodes, Mia Wong read excerpts from the same text to dissect nationalist attempts to invoke past glories, referencing Marx's famous dictum that nineteenth-century social revolution must draw its poetry from the future rather than the past. Mia Wong also utilized Marx's paradigmatic discussion of the lumpenproletariat to contextualize historical organizing tactics and critique ideological movements. Across these discussions, the podcast contributors treated the nineteenth-century essay as a still-potent analytical tool for dissecting the cyclical nature of political opportunism, nationalism, and class dynamics in modern politics.
Every mention
Mia Wong I am going to give the final word to Karl Marx, the man whose ideology in theory spawned theirs. I'm going… 3
“170 years ago, Markx wrote this in the 18th premier of Louis Bonapart, his own response to a nation's nationalist attempt to restore its former glory by invoking the name of a previous leader. The social revolution of the 19th century cannot take its poetry from the past, but only from the future.”
“I am going to give the final word to Karl Marx, the man whose ideology in theory spawned theirs. I'm going to read from one of Marx's most famous works, the 18th through Mayor.”
“Here is Marx's paradigmatic discussion of the lump and proletariat from the 18th remare of Louis Bonapart. On the pretext of founding a benevolent society, the lumpen proletariat of Paris had been organized into secret sections.”
Christopher Wong I I I'm gonna I'm gonna quote here from one one of the sort of more famous Markx quotes from 18th Bair uh t… 1
“I I I'm gonna I'm gonna quote here from one one of the sort of more famous Markx quotes from 18th Bair uh that is genuinely a very good way of understanding history which is men make their own history but they do not make it as they please.”
