Class Struggles in France 1848-50

[Catmatic Leftist]

After trying (and failing) to read Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, I turn to Class Struggles in France 1848-50 hoping to see if that would help. (Civil War in France is coming shortly in the mail).

I understand that the three works function as a sort of trilogy, but I am still struggling to make sense of all of the names and dates and numbers and organizations as I had with Eighteenth Brumaire. What is the point of the three works? What are the most salient aspects of them? Is it just an example of materialist analysis? I'm trying to understand the context, but the introduction by Engels seems to be over my head as well.

[ComradeOm]

It's journalism. Marx wasn't writing about some historical event but rather applying class analysis to a major revolutionary crisis that was happening there and then. That is the primary importance of these works within the Marxist canon. If you've no interest in this historical background then I wouldn't necessarily bother with the Eighteenth Brumaire or Class Struggles. They're worth reading but not if you're constantly struggling with the context and 1848 has been somewhat superseded as a revolutionary landmark. Civil War in France is slightly different in that it does contain some interesting theoretical insights into the state and revolution. MIA has a good annotated version online

That said, the historical events are interesting and informative but no longer loom large in the popular imagination. When Marx was writing the list of names, places and dates would have been as immediately familiar to his audience as those of Bush, Bin Laden or Sept 11 are to us today. If you are interested in the background of the Bonapartist regime then I'd recommend Prices' The French Second Empire: An Anatomy of Political Power as very solid introduction

[Catmatic Leftist]

It's journalism. Marx wasn't writing about some historical event but rather applying class analysis to a major revolutionary crisis that was happening there and then. That is the primary importance of these works within the Marxist canon. If you've no interest in this historical background then I wouldn't necessarily bother with the Eighteenth Brumaire or Class Struggles. They're worth reading but not if you're constantly struggling with the context and 1848 has been somewhat superseded as a revolutionary landmark. Civil War in France is slightly different in that it does contain some interesting theoretical insights into the state and revolution. MIA has a good annotated version online

That said, the historical events are interesting and informative but no longer loom large in the popular imagination. When Marx was writing the list of names, places and dates would have been as immediately familiar to his audience as those of Bush, Bin Laden or Sept 11 are to us today. If you are interested in the background of the Bonapartist regime then I'd recommend Prices' The French Second Empire: An Anatomy of Political Power as very solid introduction

$60 for a paperback book? That's expensive. :scared:

[ComradeOm]

Most specialist works are. And unfortunately most books written about the Second Empire are specialist in nature. There's very few works of popular history devoted to that period of French history; a few on Napoleon III himself but not the wider interaction of state and society. I think there might be a Cambridge History volume out there but I didn't think that their coverage of the Third Republic was all that great

Then again, there are more general works that cover the whole 19th C. Try Gildea's Children of the Revolution or Hobsbawm's Age of Revolution and Age of Capital for the bigger picture