Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon by Karl Marx - Essay Example

Written and published in the year 1852, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon Bonaparte by Karl Marx has originally founded in the New York-based ‘Die Revolution. It was a monologue written by Marx on the political and historical opinions that he contained with respect to the growing age under Bonaparte and his military coup d’etat. It is the basis for comprehending the theory of what a capitalist state was, written on the basis of English politics by Marx.

The main objective of the writing composition was to help the world understand the kind of hardships that the various (lower) classes in France were undergoing, and the kind of trauma that they were subject to in their lies in order to survive with the rule that had been established by force under the Bonaparte dictatorship. He intended to help the readers understand the kind of pain that these classes were being placed into by the rule that had been established in France at the time, and how the dictatorship failed to notice the plight of the commoners, which further led to a pitfall in the politics as well as the economy of the country.

Through his writing, Marx tried to help the people to understand that even a commoner could come to terms with the entire situation and circumstance and play the rightful part of a hero by lifting the pressure that the lower classes had been engulfed into because of the rule that persisted in the country at the time. It was leading to a major deterioration in the economy’s cycle, not to forget the happiness factors of society at large. One of his most famous quotes helps to provide readers of the Brumaire with Marx’s views on an individual’s life within society at the time in France.

“Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given, and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all the dead generations weighs like a nightmare upon the brain of the living and just when they seem engaged in revolutionizing themselves and things, in creating something that has never yet existed, precisely in such periods of revolutionary crisis they anxiously conjure up the spirits of the past to their service and borrow from them names, battle cries, and costumes in order to present the new scene of world history in this time-honored disguise and language.”

By this, Marx means to throw light on how the rise of Bonaparte led to the downfall of the people and how the country suffered on the basis of their social aspects because of harsh and unfair decisions taken by a single man. This quote means that a man has the destiny to follow, and thus he must follow the path of his life with respect to the same while creating new opportunities for himself.

Most people are under the impression that whatever is in store for them will happen eventually, however, a man must try and create a solution for himself to live his life with ease and peace. Life throws a number of situations and circumstances towards a person during his lifetime, and these are the opportunities that a person perceives. He must have the ability to figure out on his own what must be done in a given situation because otherwise, he might end up regretting and hurting himself as well as others around him.

According to Marx following a set tradition laid down by ancestors was not the way by which life was meant to be lived. He writes that it is this tradition that weighs people down in the present as they are hell-bent on trying to imitate the lives that their forefathers had undergone. Even though some men try and break free from such a historical presence present in their lives, they somehow fall short at the very last moment as the past catches up with them and weighs them down.

A man must be strong in his will and determination to be able to live a life for himself despite whatever he must have gone through earlier, or despite whatever hardships his family must have suffered in the past. The main gist of the given quote teaches people to not look back and instead to move forward and create a new future for them.

He writes that even though people create revolutions and spark new ideas, they somewhere down the line forget about their enthusiasm and suffer a blow due to such past living. Read More