Napoleon

[Red Flag Waver]

What are your opinions regarding Napoleon Bonaparte? As I understand it, he played a key role in modernizing Europe, but he also held back progress in many areas, and of course, thousands of people died in his wars. From a leftist perspective, is his legacy mostly positive, mostly negative, or does it need to be expressed in more nuanced terms? It would be interesting to get both Marxist and anarchist perspectives on this.

Also, I have seen the term "Bonapartism" used often on these boards. According to Wikipedia this is "a political movement that advocates the idea of a strong and centralized state, where populist rhetoric supports a strongman or caudillo," or Marx's more precise definition, "a situation in which counterrevolutionary military officers seize power from revolutionaries, and then use selective reformism to co-opt the radicalism of the popular classes." Is it fair to apply this term to leaders like Stalin and Mao? If so, what are some specific parallels that we can draw between them and Napoleon?

[TheWannabeAnarchist]

In opinion, he was just another bourgeois imperialist. He stablized France, but that's all he has going for him.

[Geiseric]

He was the friggen emperor of a third of the world, how would that make Marxists like him? He didn't actually modernize Europe, he laid waste to entire regions and put his family in charge. Bourgeois people were only worried about modernizing France if anything to match England. But there was nothing progressive about Napoleon, he was another empire builder.

[Rafiq]

I, like Beethoven would have been decieved by him. Naturally, I would have seen him as a champion of the revolution come to save the day, until of course he crowned himself emporer and licked the pope's ass.

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[Rusty Shackleford]

well the napoleonic wars did actually change the face of continental europe quite a bit. it may not have been the intention of napoleon but it actually streamlined commercial ties and swept away some duchies and so on. i think napoleon could be called a bourgeois monarchist.

[Red Flag Waver]

He was the friggen emperor of a third of the world, how would that make Marxists like him? He didn't actually modernize Europe, he laid waste to entire regions and put his family in charge. Bourgeois people were only worried about modernizing France if anything to match England. But there was nothing progressive about Napoleon, he was another empire builder.

Right, I wasn't trying to imply that he was a people's hero or anything. I've always disliked him myself. But didn't his legal code do away with tithes, serfdom, the Inquisition, church properties, etc? Weren't these acts progressive in the context of the time, regardless of what Napoleon's intentions may have been?

[Rafiq]

Napoleon was the Augustus of the French Republic. Robespierre, of course, being Caesar.

[Lev Bronsteinovich]

In opinion, he was just another bourgeois imperialist. He stablized France, but that's all he has going for him.
This is a pretty ignorant comment. His position was contradictory. Yes he was a bourgeois imperialist -- but in a period where most of Europe was semi-feudal and ruled by monarchs, this was historically progressive at the time. So when Napoleon's armies defeated other armies, the old order was often destroyed. Marx recognized the progressive nature of the Napoleonic Wars, btw.

Obviously his position vis a vis the French Revolution was to set it back and thwart its best impulses. In that way he is very similar to Stalin (or really, vice versa). Stalin's armies spread an economic system that was historically progressive to Eastern Europe. But Stalin was a not for spreading the revolution. Just extending his own power. And his rise to power represented a huge setback for the Russian Revolution. Trotsky often referred to the rise of the Stalinist bureacracy as the "Thermicor."

[DDR]

Right, I wasn't trying to imply that he was a people's hero or anything. I've always disliked him myself. But didn't his legal code do away with tithes, serfdom, the Inquisition, church properties, etc? Weren't these acts progressive in the context of the time, regardless of what Napoleon's intentions may have been?

In the case of spain it was so, the Statute of Bayonne was some how progressive at leats compared to the feudal monarchy of the Borbons at that time.

[Red Flag Waver]

Marx recognized the progressive nature of the Napoleonic Wars, btw.

I think I remember reading Marx on Napoleon (as distinct from Louis-Napoleon) in college, but I wasn't really interested in the material at the time and it's been a while at any rate. In which text(s) does Marx talk about this?

I also faintly remember reading that anarchists generally have a much more negative critique of Napoleon. Although, I did think anarcho-monarchism was a joke the first time I heard about it. Turns out, it's a real thing, so I'm sure "Anarcho-Bonapartism" exists as well in some dank corner of the web.

[ComradeOm]

From a leftist perspective, is his legacy mostly positive, mostly negative, or does it need to be expressed in more nuanced terms?Very much the latter. Far from holding up Napoleon as some inherently progressive force in history or as betrayer of revolution, Marx places him in the role of betrayer of the betrayers. That is, the last gasp of the revolutionaries acting against the 'liberal bourgeoisie. But this is Terror stripped of its revolutionary associations and dedicated above all to the preservation of the state itself.

Or as Marx puts it in the Holy Family:

Napoleon represented the last battle of revolutionary terror against the bourgeois society which had been proclaimed by this same Revolution, and against its policy. Napoleon, of course, already discerned the essence of the modern state; he understood that it is based on the unhampered development of bourgeois society, on the free movement of private interest, etc. He decided to recognise and protect this basis. He was no terrorist with his head in the clouds. Yet at the same time he still regarded the state as an end in itself and civil life only as a treasurer and his subordinate which must have no will of its own. [...] If he despotically suppressed the liberalism of bourgeois society — the political idealism of its daily practice — he showed no more consideration for its essential material interests, trade and industry, whenever they conflicted with his political interests. His scorn of industrial hommes d'affaires was the complement to his scorn of ideologists.(Emphasis in original)

(It's worth pointing out that this is 1844 and already the Marxist conception of interaction between state and class is much subtle than many today it it credit for)


Also, I have seen the term "Bonapartism" used often on these boards. According to Wikipedia this is "a political movement that advocates the idea of a strong and centralized state, where populist rhetoric supports a strongman or caudillo," or Marx's more precise definition, "a situation in which counterrevolutionary military officers seize power from revolutionaries, and then use selective reformism to co-opt the radicalism of the popular classes." Is it fair to apply this term to leaders like Stalin and Mao? If so, what are some specific parallels that we can draw between them and Napoleon?You could and many have. It's a standard Trotskyist charge against Stalinism and there's certainly some basis for that. But that's a slur more than a detailed critique; comparing Stalin and Napoleon is of limited analytical use.

Personally, I use the term in the sense used by Rene Remond (whom I'm delighted to see referenced on that Wiki page) in the sense of being an anti-liberal and highly statist strain of bourgeois throught

[Slavoj Zizek's Balls]

He's dead. I don't care for Bonaparte because he wouldn't have cared for me. His ideas on the other hand... well they would appear to be imperialist in nature and so contrary to the efforts of creating communism thus contrary to the far left. A recent example of the effects of Bonaparte's changes to the education system in France can be seen in the way that philosophy is considered to be of prime importance, to teach the citizens of France how to think. It works very well in keeping most of the French stuck nicely into recuperated thought lanes but some do pop out of the box.

[Paul Pott]

He did break down the power of feudalism in the places he conquered. The Napoleonic Code is inherently bourgeois in nature. It's not as if the old ruling classes seized back power under Napoleon.