Bonapartist Despotism

[Matty_UK]

I heard someone a while back refer to the USSR as Russia's "Bonapartist Despotism" stage. Could someone explain how this is, and explain to me the significance of Napoleon in the development of European countries?

[RevolutionaryMarxist]

I could only see it as because Napoleon focused highly on some revolutionary ideals but also despotic ones. The correlation I could imagine between both states would be:

a.) Popular elections for every decision (Napoleon had a poll in France whether he should become Emperor, etc. Perhaps rigged like Stalin's)
b.) Populist policies and rhetoric
c.) Useless Legislature
d.) "Equality of all citizens" before the law

[Lamanov]

"Bonapartist" refers to Louis Bonaparte, the Napoleon III.

For the origin of the term I suggest you to read Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte by Marx. An exellent work.

"Bonapartist despotism" - initially one of Louis Bonaparte after his coup d'etat in 1851 - is a form of goverment established in a crisis ridden capitalist system by the help of vast bureaucratic and military machinery. In this way, it pacifises the class struggle by taking political control out of the hands of the bourgeoisie, but reatains its [bourgeois] economic power over the society.

When we talk about USSR as a "Bonapartist despotism", we usually mean a bureaucratic-military system, only where the bourgeoisie has been expropriated. But this, obviously, doesn't explain much, especially not the expropriation of the bourgeoisie itself, and it does not explain the shift in the economic relations [at all], so that's why I prefer the term "state capitalism".

[gilhyle]

Back to basics: when we talk about the State as a class state, we dont say what the class character of the Government is. All states rely on a Governing clique who have a certain relationship to the class on whose behalf they act. For example, in Marx's writings on England in the 17 and 18 and 19 century he writes about how the emerging capitalist class purposely abstained from manning the corridors of power with one of their own cliques and allowed representatives of landed gentry take on that role.

It is a form of reductionism to ignore this issue of the class and social nature of the cliques who occupy government. But Marxists often like to ignore it because it can seem as if they are allowing their understanding of the Class nature of the State to be diluted if they are willing to characterise the ruling clique as anything other than the 'ruling class'.

But actually this has a lot to do with the determination of the different forms of Government (dictatorship or limited or universal suffrage) because what is at stake in that process is how the class's interests congeal into a political policy.

Bonapartism is a key concept in the Marxist view of the State.

Louis Bonaparte - and Napoleon Bonaparte before him - offered France strong government based on the suppression of democratic forms. They each achieved this by balancing between the classes.

Does that mean that the State had ceased to be a class state and become a State balanced between the classes ? No. It continued to be a capitalist state, but it was balanced between the artisanate working class in the cities, the emerging (mainly financial sector) bourgeoisie and the vast mass of peasantry in the countryside newly empowered by the resolution of the French land question by the French revolution. Thus the ruling clique was not an out and out capitalist governmental clique. Rather it was a clique committed to dictatorial rule based on the capitalist state, which used dictatorial power to retain the confidence of the peasant masses and to limit the use of state power to erode the rights of the artisanate working class (finally eliminated with the defeat of the paris Commune) - while always defending capitalist social relations, of course !

Thats bonapartism