The+Eighteenth+Brumaire+Of+Louis+Bonaparte.

Taking Notes...

Key paragraph, pg 26 "Where it forbids these liberties entirely to "the others" or permits enjoyment of them under conditions that are just so many police traps, this always happened solely in the interest of the 'public safety,' that is, the safety of the bourgeoisie, as the Constitution prescribes. In the sequel, both sides accordingly appeal with complete justice to the Constitution, the friends of order, who suspended all these liberties, as well as the democrats, who demanded them back. Each paragraph of the Constitution, namely, contains in itself its own antithesis, its own Upper and Lower House, namely liberty in the general phrase, suspension of liberty in the marginal note. So long, therefore, as the name of freedom was respected and only its actual realisation prevented, of course in a legal way, the constitutional existence of liberty remained intact and inviolate, however mortal the blows dealt to its everyday existence."

Key paragraph, pg 41-42 "They do their real business as the Party of Order, that is, under a social; not under a political title; as representatives of the bourgeois world-order, not as knights of errant princesses; as the bourgeois class against other classes, not as royalists against the republicans. And as the party of Order they exercised more absolute and sterner domination over the other classes of society than ever previously during the Restoration or during the July Monarchy, a domination which, in general, was only possible under the form of the parliamentary republic, for only under this form could the two great divisions of the French bourgeoisie unite, and therefore put the rule of their class instead of the regime of a privileged section of it on the order of the day. If, nevertheless, they, as the Party of Order, also insult the republic and ecpress their repugnance to it, this happens not merely from royalist memories. Instinct taught them that the republic, indeed, perfects their political rule, but at the same time undermines its social foundation, since they must now confront the subjugated classes and contend against them without intermediation, able to divert the national interest through their subordinate struggle with one another and with the monarchy."

Key point, pg 43 "The peculiar character of Social Democracy is epitomised in the fact that democratic-republican institutions are demanded not as a means of doing away with both the extremes, capital and wage-labour, but of weakening their antagonism and transforming it into harmony. However diferent the means proposed for the attainment of this end may be, however much it may be trimmed with more or less revolutionary notions, the content remains the same. This content is the transformation of society in a democratic way, but a transformation within the bounds of the petty bourgeoisie. Only, one must not form the narrow-minded notion that the petty bourgeoisie, on principle, wishes to enforce an egoistic class interest. Rather, it believes that the special conditions of its emancipation are the //general// conditions under which modern society can alone be saved and the class struggle avoided."

Key paragraph, pg 47 "But the democrat, because he represents the petty bourgeoisie, therefore a transition class, in which which the interests of two classes are simultaneously deadened, images himself elevated above class antagonism generally. The democrats concede that a privileged class confronts them, but they, along with all the rest of the surrounding nation, form //the people//. What they represent are the //people's rights//; what interests them are the //people's interests//. Accordingly, when a struggle is impending, they do not need to examine the interests and positions of the different classes. They do not need to consider their own resources too critically. They have merely to give the signal and the people, with all its inexhaustible resources, will fall upon the //oppressors//. If in the performance their interests now prove to be uninteresting and their power to be impotence then either the fault lies with pernicious sophists, who split the //indivisible people// into different hostile campus, or the army was too brutalised and blinded to apprehend the pure aims of democracy as best for itself, or the whole thing has been wrecked by a detail in its execution, or else an unforeseen accident has for this time spoilt the game. In any case, the democrat comes out of the most disgraceful defeat just as immaculate as he went into it innocent, with the newly-won conviction that he is bound to conquer, not that he himself and his party have to give up the old standpoint, but, on the contrary, that conditions have to ripen in his direction."

pg 70 "France demands Tranquility" - a phrase that discredited any attempt to call Bonaparte on his wrongdoings because it disturbed the tranquility.

pg 72 "the most ridiculous matters of form" - ie bureaucratic squabbles - became the focus of the Party of Order, when their interests were actually being substantially taken away, they chose to focus on these ridiculous matter rather than their true grievances.

Pg 77 "Whomever one seeks to persuade one acknowledges as master of the situation."

78-79 It proved, therefore, that the Party of Order had lost in conflicts with Bonaparte not only the ministry, not only the army, but also its independent parliamentary majority, that body of representatives had deserted from its camp, ... out of the shallow egoism which makes the ordinary bourgeois always inclined to sacrifice the general interest of his lass for this or that private motive."

88 "He therefore acted in the sense of parliament, when he tore up the Constitution, and he acted in the sense of the Constitution, when he dispersed parliament."

101-103 Time-line recap