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Utopia and the Lumpenproletariat: Marx's Reasoning in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

Peter Hayes
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Extract

Thomas More described how Utopia held no place for criminals, beggars and vagabonds. Marx called these people “the lumpenproletariat,” and, like More, he wished to exclude them from his vision of a communist society. However, the lumpenproletariat stood outside productive society, as such, they also stood outside the dialectic. For them to be excluded from Utopia in a theory of scientific socialism they needed to be reincorporated into the dialectic. This Marx did in his analysis of Louis Napoleon's coup. Marx was simultaneously concerned to distinguish the proletariat from the violent reactionary crowds of 1848 to 1851. He did so by labeling such crowds lumpenproletarian. By focusing on lumpenproletarians as a degenerate mob, Marx precluded consideration of how they might have been victims of capitalist society. He also foreshadowed the tactics of those radical politicians who appealed to the crowd by a similar denigration of a degenerate outgroup.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 50 , Issue 3 , Summer 1988 , pp. 445 - 465
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1988

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References

Notes

1. Karl Marx Frederick Engels Collected Works (New York: International Publishers, 1975), 11:99–197Google Scholar; hereafter cited as MECW.

2. See for example, Bottomore, Tom, “Lumpenproletariat,” A Dictionary of Marxist Thought, ed. Bottomore, (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1983).Google Scholar

3. Theories of Bonapartism, class equilibrium and state autonomy have all been drawn from The Eighteenth Brumaire. See Draper, Hal, Karl Marx's Theory of Revolution (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1977)Google Scholar; Engels, Frederick, The Housing Question (New York: International Publishers, 1935)Google Scholar; Lenin, Vladimir, “The State and Revolution,” V. I. Lenin Collected Works (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1964), 25:381–492Google Scholar; Poulantzas, Nicos, Political Power and Social Classes, trans. O'Hagan, Timothy et al. (London: NLB, 1973)Google Scholar; Trotsky, Leon, The Struggle against Fascism in Germany (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1971).Google Scholar

4. For the argument that, on the contrary, Marx's expectation of revolution can be separated from his analysis of events in France, see Engels's 1895 Introduction to Marx, , The Class Struggles in France, 1848–1850 (New York: International Publishers, 1964), pp. 10–13.Google Scholar

5. MECW, 6:494.Google Scholar

6. Draper, who devoted an interesting and thorough chapter to the lumpen-proletariat, traced to The Paris Manuscripts the idea that in economic terms the lumpenproletariat were excluded from societal dynamics (Karl Marx's Theory, 2:453–78).Google Scholar

7. MECW, 7:505.Google Scholar

8. Ibid., 8: 17.

9. Ibid., 10: 311–25.

10. Ibid., p. 317.

11. Ibid., pp. 45–145.

12. Ibid., p. 76.

13. Ibid., pp. 62–63. Recent statistical studies have cast doubt on Marx's contention that the mobile guard was recruited from the lumpenproletariat rather than from among the proletariat. See Caspard, Pierre, “Aspects de la lutte des classes en 1848: le recrutement de la Garde nationale mobile,” Revue Historique 511 (07 1974): 81–106Google Scholar; Tilly, Charles and Lees, Lynn H., “The People of June 1848,” in Revolution and Reaction, ed. Price, Roger (New York: Harper and Row, 1975), pp. 170–209Google Scholar. The conclusion that the mobile guard were working class is supported by Roger Price, who has also contended that the insurgents in June included lumpen-proletarians (The French Second Republic: A Social History [Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1972], pp. 166, 185, 187).Google Scholar

14. MECW, 10:56.Google Scholar

15. Ibid., p. 51.

16. Ibid., pp. 126–27.

17. Utopia, trans. Robinson, Ralph, ed. Arbor, Edward (London: Edward Arbor, 1869), pp. 97, 157–58Google Scholar. Marx quoted from this edition of Utopia in Capital.

18. Ibid., p. 86.

19. Ibid., p. 96.

20. Ibid., pp. 121–22, 127–28, 160. More's attitude toward property and crime is expanded in “In Lutherum,” in Utopia, trans. Turner, Paul (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1961), p. 149.Google Scholar

21. Utopia, trans. Robinson, , p. 43.Google Scholar

22. Ibid, pp. 97, 112.

23. Ibid., pp. 159–60.

24. Ibid., p. 158.

25. Ibid., pp. 40–42.

26. Ibid., p. 39.

27. Ibid., p. 137.

28. Marx's recognition of the incompatibility of such prescriptions with “scientific socialism” is mentioned in “The Eighteenth Brumaire,” MECW, 11:142.Google Scholar

29. Ibid., pp. 109–110, 129, 131–33, 137, 140, 146, 181–82, 187–89.

30. Ibid., p. 111.

31. Ibid., p. 182.

32. Ibid., p. 197.

33. Ibid., p. 112.

34. Ibid., pp. 182, 183 note c. This contrasts with Poulantzas's interpretation of the lumpenproletariat as a supporting class of a bourgeois power bloc under Bonapartism (Political Power, p. 243).Google Scholar

35. MECW, 11:194–96.Google Scholar

36. Ibid., p. 185. The translation quoted here actually renders the final phrase as “well burrowed, old mole!” But if Marx intended to remind the reader of Hamlet, “grubbed” — the more usual translation — agrees with the words used by Shakespeare, Hamlet, act 1, scene 5. The allusion may also have been one intended to remind the reader of the aristocratic toast to “the little gentleman in black velvet,” of which it was the proletarian equivalent.

37. MECW, 11:177.Google Scholar

38. Ibid, pp. 143, 184.

39. Ibid., pp. 175–76.

40. Ibid., pp. 139, 141–43.

41. Ibid., p. 139.

42. Ibid., p. 137.

43. Lakatos, Imre, “Falsification and the Methodology of Scientific Research Programs,” in Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge, ed. Lakatos, I. and Musgrave, Alan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), p. 118.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

44. MECW, 5:202.Google Scholar

45. Ibid., p. 69.

46. Ibid., 6: 495.

47. This point is well made by Poulantzas, , Political Power, pp. 174–75.Google Scholar

48. MECW, 10:120–21, 11: 189–93.Google Scholar

49. Ibid., 11: 163, 173–75.

50. Ibid., p. 187.

51. Ibid., p. 191.

52. Ibid.

53. Ibid., pp. 191–92, 191 note b.

54. For another interpretation, see Poulantzas's argument that the bureaucracy Marx described in The Eighteenth Brumaire held a “juridicio-political bourgeois ideology” that could be traced back to More and Machiavelli, and that “Bureaucratism” not “simple material interests” conditioned the state apparatus's support for Napoleon, Louis (Political Power, pp. 216–18, 358–59).Google Scholar

55. MECW, p. 193Google Scholar note b. This implies that in The Eighteenth Brumaire, Marx viewed the question of the perpetuation of the capitalist economic system only in terms of the time it would take before the peasants became radicalized. This can be contrasted with the argument that Marx was explaining how a capitalist system perpetuated itself under an apparently independent state apparatus, by distinguishing between political and social power. See Draper, , Karl Marx's TheoryGoogle Scholar; Poulantzas, , Political PowerGoogle Scholar, Trotsky, , The Struggle.Google Scholar

56. This interpretation differs both from Jean-Paul Sartre's view that The Eighteenth Brumaire confirmed Marx as an analyst of unique events, and from Lenin's view that it outlined a model. Citing Engels's introduction to the third edition of The Eighteenth Brumaire, Lenin argued that France from 1848 to 1851 was a model of development for the entire capitalist world. However, it is argued here that Marx's belief in the systemic consequences of French events meant that the events were seen, primarily, not as a model but as an agent of universal historical development. Therefore, the analysis was not one that affirmed Marx's interest in the event as such, as Sartre argued, as events were seen by Marx in the context of their inexorable, universal consequences. Lenin, , “The State and Revolution,” pp. 409–410Google Scholar; Sartre, , Search for a Method, trans. Barnes, Hazel E. (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1963), p. 124Google Scholar. Marx's idea that a European revolution would begin in France has been traced to his early writings on Hegel by Talmon, J. L., Political Messianism (New York: Frederick Praeger, 1960), pp. 213–14.Google Scholar

57. Capital (Chicago: Charles Kerr, 1912), 1:806.Google Scholar

58. Ibid., pp. 790, 791 note 1, 808 note 2.

59. Utopia, trans. Robinson, , p. 37Google Scholar. The conception of the lumpenproletariat as victims of capitalism occurred in some of the early writings of Engels. In one of his “Speeches in Elberfeld,” he described how people who could find no work were forced into “prostituting themselves in one way or another, begging, sweeping the streets, standing on corners [Marx might have had them loafing on corners], only barely keeping body and soul together by occasional small jobs, hawking and peddling …” (MECW, 4:251)Google Scholar. Similarly, in “The Constitutional Question in Germany,” Engels included the lumpenproletariat among the members of the working class, holding common working-class interests (ibid., 6: 83–84).

60. MECW, 10: 51.

61. Capital, 1:694–701.Google Scholar

62. Ibid., p. 706. For an alternative interpretation of this passage see Draper, , Karl Marx's Theory, 2:470.Google Scholar

63. An example of how later marxists have used the concept of the lumpenproletariat is found in Poulantzas's comment on Nazi recruits being “declassed lumpen elements” rather than workers who happened to be unemployed (Fascism and Dictatorship, trans. White, Judith [London: NLB, 1974], p. 189).Google Scholar

64. Rude, George, The Crowd in the French Revolution (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1951).Google Scholar

65. See for example Memoirs of Count Horace de Viel Castel, trans. Bousfield, Charles (London: Remington, 1888), 1:15.Google Scholar Addressing Lamartine, and accusing him of having “lied knowingly” about the crowd, Viel Castel wrote: “the people are robbers, and every successful revolt, since glorified in your writings, was achieved by persons who looked to disorder for means of larceny.”

66. More, Marx and Lamartine are discussed in Mannheim, Karl, Ideology and Utopia, trans. Wirth, Louis and Shils, Edward (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1936), pp. 200–203.Google Scholar Marx and Lamartine are discussed extensively in Talmon, Political Messianism.

67. MECW, 10:53.Google Scholar

68. Lamartine, , History of the French Revolution of 1848, trans. Durivage, Francis A. and Chase, William S. (Boston: Phillips, Sampson and Co., 1851).Google Scholar

69. Ibid., 1: 184–88.

70. Lamartine's description of the June revolutionaries can be further compared with Marx's description of the lumpenproletarian “Society of December 10” organized by Louis Napoleon: “Alongside decayed roues with dubious means of subsistence and of dubious origin, alongside ruined and adventurous offshoots of the bourgeoisie, were vagabonds, discharged soldiers, discharged jailbirds, escaped galley slaves, rogues, mountebanks, lazzaroni, pickpockets, tricksters, gamblers, marquereaus, brothel keepers, porters, literati, organ-grinders, rag-pickers, knife grinders, tinkers, beggars …[the] scum, offal, refuse of all classes” (MECW, 11:149).Google Scholar

71. Ibid., 10: 62.

72. Engels, translated “lumpenproletariat”Google Scholar as “mob” in his summary of Marx, 's work in “Two Years of a Revolution, 1848 and 1849”Google Scholar (ibid., pp. 358–65).

73. This is not to say that systematic study of the distinct features of crowds is necessarily incompatible with the conception of the lumpenproletariat held by Marx and Lamartine. Gustave LeBon, an early crowd theorist, held such a concept in The Psychology of Revolution, trans. Miall, (New York: Putnam, 1913), pp. 99–101.Google Scholar

74. In this respect it is interesting that Lamartine described the composition of the youthful mobile guard in a way similar to Marx, insofar as he described them as “without cause,” and as having been coopted by the Provisional Government to prevent them from siding with the communists (History, 1:170–72).Google Scholar Marx, for his part, concurred with Lamartine in stating that the mobile guard, somewhat like Utopia's mercenaries, could be brave and self-sacrificing just as they could be corrupt (MECW, 10:62–63).Google Scholar Both descriptions are consistent with the view that the mobile guard exhibited distinct crowd behavior.

75. Capital, 1:778.Google Scholar

76. MECW, 10:471.Google Scholar

77. Ibid., 11: 104–106.

78. For other interpretations of the significance of the language of The Eighteenth Brumaire, see LaCapra, Dominick, Rethinking Intellectual History (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983), pp. 268–90Google Scholar; Mehlman, Jeffrey, Revolution and Repetition (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977), pp. 5–41Google Scholar; Riquelme, John Paul, “The Eighteenth Brumaire of Karl Marx as Symbolic Action,” History and Theory 19, no. 1 (02 1980): 58–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar