Theory of History

[¿Que?]

I didn't know where this should go, in history or theory. But I will put it in history because of a specific question I'm asking.

There's a quote that just came into my head, and I can't remember where it's from. It goes something along these lines (although I don't remember it exactly):

Even if someone where to have assassinated Napoleon(?), there would be another Napoleon to take his place.

The question mark signifies that I am not sure who the exact political figure was in the quote. Furthermore, I am not sure what the full implications of the quote/saying are. Would Marx agree or disagree here (for some reason I think the quote might go back to Hegel).

Thanks for your help!

[iskrabronstein]

In the historical materialist conception, the great leaders revered by historians are not important solely because of their personal characteristics or capabilities, but because of the social interests that they represent. With reference to the quote - the essential idea is that Napoleon, despite the personal genius and ability that distinguished him, was only capable of taking power because he represented the interests of a discrete coalition of class forces - the new bourgeois military officer corps, burgeoning capitalist interests within France, and a peasantry tired of the rigors of social revolution.

Essentially, if Napoleon had been hit by a stray bullet at Lodi and never lived to take power, the class interests that he represented would have found another standard bearer - the personal characteristics of a leader can influence the course of a revolutionary struggle, but not determine them.

[Invader Zim]

This is basically a structuralist/functionalist position, arguing that individuals play only a minor role subserviant to structures within society. i.e. cultural and economic forces would have led post-revolutionary France to begin an imperial expansionist policy, and that Bonaparte only played a function within this process, and that another individual could quite as easily played a similar role (though arguably without the same degree of initial military success). This argument can be expanded into arguing that Bonaparte was the way he was, and did what he did, because the enviroment in which he lived dictated his actions. This can be argued as occuring on both a conscious political, economic and social level, but also on a sub-conscious level. And Marx, did indeed, produced a similar argument in the Preface to 'A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy':

"In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter into definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces of production. The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness."

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/preface.htm

[¿Que?]

It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness.
That's the Russian translation you're using. I think the British and American translation use being instead of existence. In any case, I don't speak German, so I am in no position to say which one is right, if it is even worth discussion.