The fact that a new edition of the Eighteenth Brumaire* has 
become necessary, thirty-three years after its first appearance, 
proves that even today this little book has lost none of its value. 

It was indeed a work of genius. Immediately after the event that 
struck the whole political world like a thunderbolt from the blue, 
that was condemned by some with loud cries of moral indignation 
and accepted by others as a salvation from the revolution and a 
punishment for its errors, but was only wondered at by all and 
understood by none—immediately after this event Marx appeared 
with a concise, epigrammatic exposition that laid bare the whole 
course of French history since those February days in its inner 
connection, reduced the miracle of December 2'™ to a natural, 
necessary result of this connection and, in so doing, did not even 
need to treat the hero of the coup d’état otherwise than with the 
contempt he so well deserved. And the picture was drawn with 
such a masterly hand that every fresh disclosure since made has 
only provided fresh proof of how faithfully it reflects reality. This 
eminent understanding of the living history of the day, this 
clear-sighted appreciation of events at the moment they occur, is 
indeed without parallel. 

But this also called for Marx’s thorough knowledge of French 
history. France is the land where, more than anywhere else, 
historical class struggles were each time fought out to a decision 
and where, consequently, the changing political forms within 
which they move and in which their results are condensed have 

a See present edition, Vol. 11, pp. 99-197.— Ed. 

Preface to 3rd German Ed. of The 18th Brumaire 303 

been stamped in the sharpest outlines. The focus of feudalism in 
the Middle Ages, the model country of unified estate monarchy 
since the Renaissance, France demolished feudalism in the Great 
Revolution and established the unalloyed rule of the bourgeoisie 
in a Classical purity unequalled by any other European land. And 
the struggle of the rising proletariat against the ruling bourgeoisie 
manifested itself here in an acute form unknown elsewhere. This 
was the reason why Marx not only studied the past history of 
France with particular predilection, but also followed her current 
history in every detail, collected material for future use and was 
consequently never surprised by events. 

But there was yet another circumstance. It was the very same 
Marx who had first discovered the great law of motion of history, 
the law according to which all historical struggles, whether they 
proceed in the political, religious, philosophical or some other 
ideological domain, are in fact only the more or less clear 
expression of struggles between social classes, and that the 
existence and thereby the collisions, too, of these classes are in 
turn conditioned by the degree of development of their economic 
position, by the nature and mode of their production and of their 
exchange as determined by it. This law, which has the same 
significance for history as the law of the transformation of energy 
has for natural science—this law gave him here, too, the key to 
understanding the history of the Second French Republic. He put 
his law to the test on these historical events, and even after 
thirty-three years we must still say that it has stood the test 
brilliantly.

F. E.