Marx's 'Eighteenth Brumaire' (Post)modern Interpretations

by Cowling, Mark; Martin, James

• ISBN13: 9780745318318
• ISBN10: 0745318312
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2002-09-20
• Publisher: Pluto Press

Summary

Marx's account of the rise of Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte is one of his most important texts. Written after the defeat of the 1848 revolution in France and Bonaparte's subsequent coup, it is a concrete analysis that raises enduring theoretical questions about the state, class conflict and ideology. Unlike his earlier analyses, Marx develops a nuanced argument concerning the independence of the state from class interests, the different types of classes, and the determining power of ideas and imagery in politics. In the Eighteenth Brumaire he applies his ‘materialist conception of history' to an actual historical event with extraordinary subtlety and an impressive, powerful command of language.This volume contains the most recent and widely acclaimed translation of the Eighteenth Brumaire by Terrell Carver, together with a series of specially commissioned essays on the importance of the Brumaire in Marx's canon. Contributors discuss its continuing significance and interest, the historical background and its present-day relevance for political philosophy and history.

Author Biography

Mark Cowling is a Principal Lecturer in Criminology at the University of Teesside. His previous publications include The Communist Manifesto: New Interpretations (editor, Edinburgh University Press, 1998), Date Rape and Consent (Ashgate, 1998) and Marxism, the Millennium and Beyond (ed. with Paul Reynolds, St. Martin's Press, 2000).

James Martin lectures in politics at Goldsmiths College and is the author of Gramsci’s Political Analysis (Palgrave, 1998) and editor of Antonio Gramsci: Critical Assessments of Leading Political Philosophers (Routledge, 2001).

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements	p. vii
Introduction	p. 1
The Text
The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte	p. 19
The Eighteenth Brumaire as Discourse
Imagery/Writing, Imagination/Politics: Reading Marx through the Eighteenth Brumaire	p. 113
Performing Politics: Class, Ideology and Discourse in Marx's Eighteenth Brumaire	p. 129
The Eighteenth Brumaire as History
Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte: 'Hero' or 'Grotesque Mediocrity'?	p. 145
The Appeal of Bonapartism	p. 163
The Autonomy of the State?
The Political Scene and the Politics of Representation: Periodising Class Struggle and the State in the Eighteenth Brumaire	p. 179
Making Sense of the 'Relative Autonomy' of the State	p. 195
The Eighteenth Brumaire, Classes and Class Struggle, Then and Now
The Eighteenth Brumaire and Thatcherism	p. 211
Marx's Lumpenproletariat and Murray's Underclass: Concepts Best Abandoned?	p. 228
Here Content Transcends Phrase: The Eighteenth Brumaire as the Key to Understanding Marx's Critique of Utopian Socialism	p. 243
Notes on the Contributors	p. 258
Index	p. 260
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