Karl Marx’s The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte is a text published in 1852 to analyze Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte’s coup d’état in France.
The text begins with a famous sentence: “Hegel remarks somewhere that all the great events and personages of history repeat themselves, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as a tragedy, the second time as a farce.” Marx sees Louis-Napoleon’s coup d’état as a “farce,” a weakened copy of Napoleon I’s great Empire, where imperial ambition turns into theater.
A “farce”: How not to think of the Trump-Musk duo, their theatrical behavior, their taste for provocation, their irreverent style? …
Popular anger and distrust of the elites
One of Marx’s central points is the analysis of the anger of the working classes in France between 1848 and 1851. The Republic of the time, although having put an end to the monarchy, failed to meet the needs of workers and peasants, who felt betrayed by the urban elites. Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte capitalized on this discontent to present himself as the “savior” of the people.
The comparison with the Trump of 2016 is tempting: he too was able to capture the feeling of frustration of the working classes, and in particular of the white working class hit by the effects of globalization and deindustrialization. Trump’s voters felt abandoned by a political system that favored big cities and economic elites.
Promising to “drain the swamp” of Washington and restore a prosperous America, Trump, like Louis Napoleon, was able to turn this frustration into political support.
The State as an Autonomous Machine
Marx describes how Louis Napoleon relied on bureaucracy and the military to create a state that seemed to function autonomously, independent of social class. This coup, according to Marx, embodied a moment when the state became an instrument at the service of a single man, placing itself above class divisions to assert his authority.
In Trump’s case, although American institutions had proven solid up until then, we find this tendency to emancipate themselves from traditional constraints, to circumvent established norms. During his first term, Trump issued numerous decrees to strengthen his executive authority and often ignored or defied institutions… to the point of having his supporters march on Capitol Hill.
This centralization around his person sometimes raised fears of an authoritarian drift, an “autonomous” State acting in the service of a charismatic figure, which Marx described in the case of Louis-Napoléon.
Populism and nostalgia for past greatness
In The 18th Brumaire, Marx highlights how Louis-Napoléon was able to seduce the French working classes by playing on the nostalgia for the Empire of Napoleon I. Many French people, especially peasants, saw this Empire as a golden age, an era of stability and greatness. Louis-Napoléon exploited this nostalgia to pose as his uncle’s successor, even though the context had radically changed.
This recourse to the past was also one of Trump’s most powerful weapons. With his slogan “Make America Great Again,” he promised a return to an idealized past where America dominated the world and offered stable jobs to its population.
In both cases, the past serves as a mobilizing myth, drawing voters to a simplistic but reassuring vision of the future.
The failure of the opposition forces
Finally, Marx shows how the political opposition to Louis-Napoleon was fragmented and powerless to counter his rise. The French revolutionary left of the time was divided, preventing any organized response to the coup d’état.
We will long wonder why the Democratic Party ran the disconnected campaign in 2024 that had caused it to lose in 2016. But the facts are there: disconnected from the realities of the working classes, it was unable to channel their discontent, while the Republican elites were divided on the Trump phenomenon.
Rereading The 18th Brumaire in the era of Trump means rediscovering a text that, although focused on the 19th century, sheds light on the springs of populist excesses… on both sides of the Atlantique.
Iconography : Emperor Napoleon III, Alexandre Cabanel, oil on canvas H 2.38, L 1.70, Chateau de Compiègne
After working as an international banker for emerging countries, Laurent Lascols became global head of country risk / sovereign risk (from 2008 to 2013) then global director of public affairs (from 2014 to 2019) for Societe Generale. Since early 2023, he is managing partner at ARISTOTE, an advisory firm and training organization dedicated to corporate social responsibility, sustainable finance and impact finance.