nm0088: the subject of today's lecture is [0.2] Karl Marx's text Eighteenth 
Brumaire [0.3] er [0.5] next week namex will talk about Marxism after Marx look 
at what s-, w-, what happened to the Marxist legacy [0.3] er after the eighteen-
eighties [0.4] er what i want to do today largely is concentrate [0.3] er on 
the text itself which is [0.3] a very complicated text and i think not a from 
slightly difficult text [0.7] well i'll just begin by a a slight sort of er [0.
3] introduction when i arrived at namex er what seems like a lifetime ago but 
was only thirty-one years ago in nineteen-sixty-eight [0.7] er i would think 
probably about forty per cent of the members of staff [0.5] were [0.3] Marxists 
E P Thompson of course was the the doyen of the er [0.2] of Marxist British 
Marxist historians and was was here in the social history centre [0.8] and a 
straw poll conducted amongst er first year basic one students in a lecture in 
nineteen-sixty-nine [0.6] revealed that something like forty per cent of the 
students er saw themselves as either Marxist or sympathetic to Marxism [0.8] er 
[0.9] times 
have obviously changed and n-, [0.2] er now when Marx is brought up as a topic 
er i'm wheeled out as one of the [0.2] surviving dinosaurs as it were in the 
department [0.3] er most of the remaining Marxists either being dead or long 
departed or have become Liberal Democrats [laughter] or whatever [0.7] er i 
conducted a similar sort of poll er last year [0.3] in this this sort of er 
session [0.3] and found that unsurprisingly nought per cent of historiography 
students [0.2] er identified themselves as Marxists [0.5] er i tried one with a 
postgraduate er [0.2] historiography group the same year and found one out of 
thirty [0.3] but he didn't count 'cause he was an Italian [0.4] er er [0.3] but 
er [0.2] i could perhaps begin this lecture therefore with a sort of 
McCarthyite question are you now or have you ever been [0.2] [laughter] a 
Marxist and the camera will pick you out [laugh] [0.3] and er sort of 
[laughter] s-, sort of send your name 
straight to M-I-five [0.5] [laughter] er [0.8] clearly the world of the 
nineteen-seventies and eighties has been [0.6] eighties and nineties has been 
[0.3] singularly unkind [0.4] both to [0.5] Marxists linked social and 
political movements [0.4] and also to Marxist modes of analysis the collapse of 
the Soviet system [0.5] the sharp decline of socialist and trade union 
movements in the industrial West [0.4] the apparent disintegration [0.4] of the 
industrial heartlands of the er organized working class in Western Europe [0.4] 
the apparent disintegration of any clear sense of class identity as being the 
sort of basic building block [0.3] of one's [0.3] er personality as it were [0.
3] the apparent triumph of [0.3] free market globalized international 
capitalism [0.4] has all clearly [0.5] changed the world [0.2] drastically [0.
8] but before writing the final obituary of Marxism one should perhaps ponder 
[0.4] certain ironies noted by John Gray in a recent er Times Literary 
Supplement review [0.3] of a series of [0.6] er writings on the hundred-and-
fiftieth 
anniversary of the Communist Manifesto which came last year [0.9] John Gray is 
no Marxist he he was a Thatcherite for a while in the eighties he's now sort of 
[0.4] New Labour i think [0.4] but Gray insists that [1.0] Marx clearly got all 
sorts of things wrong he's sub-, subsequent si-, [0.2] subsequent experiences 
have clearly questioned the viability of large-scale planned economies as being 
more rational and efficient than market economies [1.0] Marx was clearly blind 
to a whole series of ecological consequences of industrialization which have [0.
2] marked our own perceptions of the world in the last few years [0.8] but Gray 
insists that one striking central paradox [0.4] is that [1.0] some of Marx's 
central predictions [0.4] were in actua-, were have in fact been in a sense 
delayed [0.4] b-, [0.2] in their implementation [0.3] by the [0.4] intervening 
rise of Marxist and social democratic movements in the late nineteenth early 
twentieth century [0.9] and Gray goes on to argue that now [0.3] that Marxism 
and social democracy are clearly 
in d-, in retreat [0.8] the global capitalism which Marx predicted [0.3] is now 
at last in a sense coming into being [0.4] the world described by Marx in the 
Communist Manifesto [0.5] is Gray says recognizably the world we live in [0.2] 
a hundred-and-fifty years later [0.5] to take just one quote from the Communist 
Manifesto [0.8] all old established national industries [0.2] have been 
destroyed [0.3] or daily are being destroyed [0.3] they are being dislodged by 
new industries [0.3] whose introduction becomes a life and death question [0.3] 
for all civilized nations [0.4] by industries that no longer work up indigenous 
raw materials [0.3] but raw material drawn from the remotest zones [0.4] 
industries whose products are consumed [0.2] not only at home [0.7] er but in 
every quarter of the globe [0.2] in place of old wants satisfied by productions 
of the country [0.3] we find new wants requiring for their satisfaction [0.3] 
the products of distant lands and climes [0.3] in place of the old local and 
national seclusion and self-sufficiency [0.3] we have intercourse in every 
direction [0.3] universal interdependence of nations [1.1] moreover [0.4] the 
long term impact [0.3] of this as Marx predicted [0.5] may well be in the 
twenty-first century [0.4] not only the dominance of the world economy by a 
handful of capitalist multinational firms [0.5] but a predatory capitalism read 
in tooth and claw from which the [0.2] inhibitions of socialism and Marxist 
movements and trade unions and welfare states [0.3] have been removed [0.6] a 
polarization on a global scale between the affluent minority [0.4] and the 
destitute majority of the world's population [0.5] endless uncontrollable 
change and uncertainty and flux [0.4] in technologies [0.5] which makes the 
hopes for certainty and security futile [0.9] even [0.2] increasingly perhaps 
among broad strata [0.3] of the middle class [0.7] to quote the Communist 
Manifesto again [0.7] constant revolutionizing of production uninterrupted 
disturbances of all social conditions everlasting uncertainty [0.3] and 
agitation [0.3] distinguish the bourgeois epoch [0.2] from all 
earlier ones [0.5] all fixed fast frozen relations with their train of ancient 
and venerable prejudices and opinions [0.3] are swept away [0.5] all new formed 
ones become antiquated because before they can ossify [0.4] all that sol-, is 
solid melts into air [0.4] all that is holy [0.2] is profaned [0.5] and man is 
at last compelled to face with sober senses [0.2] his real condition of life [0.
3] and his relations with his kind [1.1] in nineteen-forty-eight in the the 
centenary of the Communist Manifesto [0.5] Joseph Schumpeter [0.2] again no 
Marxist but a leading sort of economic theorist [0.6] claimed that capitalism 
[0.3] left to itself and left unchecked [0.3] would make [0.2] intact 
civilization as Schumpeter called it [0.4] impossible [1.0] many conservatives 
in our own society believe in the need to restore family values traditional 
values [0.5] but at the same time they espouse free markets [0.6] this Gray 
insists is actually impossible combination it's quixotic to try and combine the 
two [0.4] for global free markets [0.4] are in the process of undermining [0.8] 
not only families but local 
cultures car-, c-, whole career structures [0.4] who today [0.3] in the face of 
constant downsizing delayering technological change [0.3] conte-, contemplate a 
stable career for life [0.5] and very soon university lecturers will be 
replaced by [laugh] videos as it were of past lectures or [0.2] interactive [0.
4] courses on on on on the web and so on and so forth u-, the university 
lecturer [0.3] will be a thing of the past [0.8] i'm too old to bother but 
those of you who are aspiring to be university lecturers er in the future [0.3] 
er might have some cause for s-, concern [0.7] there is in short [0.7] Gray 
argues an acute contradiction between capitalism's promise [0.2] of a liberal 
society and a good life [0.5] and the actual realities lived in a globalized 
market society [0.6] Gray's argument is that Marx's achievement [0.4] despite 
all the errors that he made and there are there are countless Gray says [0.3] 
his achievement was to identify the contradictions [0.2] at the heart of 
liberal 
civilization [0.4] to which no solution [0.4] has yet been found 
nm0088: what i want to do now is to look [0.2] er [0.3] at [0.2] Marx's the the 
wer-, [0.2] the emergence of Marxism [0.3] the relationship between Marxism and 
other paradigms of historical explanation which we look at this term [0.4] and 
then look at the text itself [1.5] this term in a sense we're dealing [0.2] 
above all with perhaps three major historiographical paradigms which emerged in 
nineteenth century Europe [0.4] we've done one of them s-, already [0.3] the 
Rankean paradigm [0.4] Ranke is clearly significant [0.5] er [0.3] for his 
insistence on professional standards his use of archives his scrutiny of 
evidence [0.4] his insistence that historians should [0.2] tr-, er try as far 
as possible to eliminate [0.3] their own prejudices [0.4] for claiming that the 
historian should seek to empathize with people who lived in the past verstehen 
to understand er what was going on inside their heads [1.3] er in emphasizing 
the individual event and the individual [0.3] historical actor great man great 
person [0.4] that one should not [0.7] move from the [0.2] 
general to the particular but one should perhaps tentatively try to move from 
the particular to the general [0.7] he rejected much of the Enlightenment 
emphasis on progress to a world of reason and peace [0.5] arguing that wars 
between powers had always occurred and would always occur [0.5] and the best 
one could hope for was a balance of power [0.7] and b-, and he insisted that 
great states each represented in a sense an idea er America represents 
democracy and freedom the United st-, the U-S-S-R represented [0.3] Soviet 
totalitarianism et cetera et cetera [0.6] and he insisted that a strong state 
was necessary as a prerequisite for internal order and the freedom of man to 
worship [0.4] now clearly ran-, the Rankean paradigm is still enormously 
powerful it's [0.5] clearly informs the writings of people like Geoffrey Elton 
in Britain [0.4] er [0.8] er there's a whole school of neo-Rankean historians 
[0.2] er in still in in in West in what was West Germany [1.2] the second 
paradigm [0.2] is [0.7] a French school of [0.3] positivist structuralist 
historians [0.4] 
er we used to have a lecture at this stage in the course on either Comte or 
Durkheim both of these have [0.2] been cast into the rubbish bin of history [0.
3] but you will fairly soon be doing the Annales who are in a sense the 
twentieth century heirs of this [0.2] French positivist tradition [1.2] and the 
key figure [0.3] in the nineteenth century in this who is virtually a 
contemporary [0.3] er of Ranke [0.4] is a man called Auguste Comte the founder 
of the discip-, of the word and the discipline of sociology [0.9] Ranke as you 
[0.2] found out was a Prussian a Lutheran a monarchist a conservative hostile 
to the Enlightenment [0.7] Comte [0.4] is in a sense a reverse of Ranke he's a 
claddic classic product of the [0.2] world of the French Revolution [0.3] 
educated in the grande école set up by [0.2] Napoleon after the French 
Revolution [0.2] to train the post-revolutionary elite [0.4] in France [0.6] 
Comte viewed the Enlightenment [0.3] as a stage on the path of humanity [0.3] 
from the age of religion [0.4] through the age of 
philosophy [0.4] finally to the age of science the age of positivism [0.3] er 
which he saw as emerging in the nineteenth century [1.0] he therefore shared 
the Enlightenment French Revolution emphasis on progress which Ranke rejected 
[0.5] but he was worried that the French Revolution [0.4] er [0.3] because of 
the [0.3] social un-, er upheaval which was created [0.3] would create 
instability therefore [0.2] what the post-revolution world needed [0.3] was [0.
4] Comte said a science of mankind [0.2] I-E sociology in-, he in-, invented 
the term [0.6] which would [0.2] diagnose social problems [0.2] and su-, 
suggest solutions [0.7] Comte saw society [0.4] as an entity it was a reality 
it was a thing [0.5] and society could be studied [0.2] using the methodology 
of natural sciences [0.2] something which Ranke rejected [0.5] and one could [1.
1] discern its laws there were laws of motion as it were of society which could 
be [0.3] er [0.2] worked out [0.8] and Comte envisaged a world where [0.3] 
experts [1.0] economists sociologists demographers scientists technologists and 
so forth [0.3] would [0.8] uncover these social laws [0.4] and utilize 
their knowledge of society to run society in a more efficient productive [0.4] 
er way for for as it were a more productive [0.3] er [0.3] more prosperous 
future [0.4] and the masses would not really understand this science but they 
would be taught to accept [0.2] and welcome the rule of this technocratic elite 
[1.9] now Marx is the figure clearly of a a third paradigm [0.4] Marxism 
differs from Comtean positivism because [0.5] positivists' approach [0.6] 
emphasized understanding deep structures and the laws of motion in society [0.
4] in order [0.4] that modern a sort of modern technocratic elite [0.3] could 
manage and stabilize society and achieve social integration and harmony [0.7] 
the positivists in sort er in short sought to control and eliminate social 
conflict [0.9] Marxism was clearly [0.6] more revolutionary in it it saw 
previous [0.2] m-, mar-, Marx famously said that previous philosophers [0.4] 
had sought to interpret the world [0.3] that his task [0.2] was to change it [0.
6] and he saw revolution as a sort of locomotive of history class conflict [0.
3] as what drove history forward [1.0] 
subsequent Marxists er have often criticized the positivists ce-, Comte and his 
disciples [0.2] for their [0.2] overemphasis on social structures and laws [0.
5] saying this this was too deterministic [0.3] er it undermined man's capacity 
to have an agency as it were i-, an input [0.2] into how history moved [1.1] 
but what it i think is important here to register is that for [0.3] much of the 
late nineteenth and early twentieth century [0.5] Marxism [0.2] certainly 
shared or ki-, appeared to share many of the features [0.3] of this positivist 
sociological approach [0.8] indeed Karl Popper in another book that we used to 
do in historiography which has again been cast into the dustbin of history [0.
2] a book called the Poverty of Historicism [1.1] er [0.4] argued that [0.3] er 
[1.5] both Comte and Marx should be lumped together [0.4] as believers in 
deterministic laws of history they both in a sense shared [0.3] many features 
in common he asked [1.1] and why was this confusion possible well first of all 
because Marxists and positivists [0.2] both [0.4] unlike Ranke [0.4] appeared 
to share a common interest 
in [0.2] society they weren't so concerned with [0.2] individuals getting 
inside the heads of individual great people [0.6] but they were concerned with 
society social structures econ-, economics [0.7] er [1.3] secondly Marx was 
clearly influenced [0.5] if less directly by Comte himself [0.3] certainly by 
Comte's great [0.4] er [0.2] teacher was a who's a [0.2] rather eccentric 
French [0.3] er aristocrat who actually espoused the the re-, French Revolution 
a man called Saint-Simon [0.6] Saint-Simon was [0.8] an eccentric genius he 
dreamed he in he in his m-, [0.2] multitude of writings round about the turn of 
the century in the early eighteen er early early eighteen-hundreds [0.4] he 
dreamed of for example the Panama and Suez canals it was actually one of his 
disciples de Lesseps who built the Suez Canal [0.3] sixty years later but [0.3] 
er [0.3] er Saint-Simon dreamed of a single global market in order to have one 
one needed [0.2] er these canals to link the oceans of the world [0.2] he 
dreamed of the [0.5] he said [0.2] it was l-, logical that Europe should form a 
single [laugh] [0.5] 
European market [laugh] [0.2] and should have a single currency and all the [0.
3] er for those of you who are Europhobes and don't want want us to get out of 
Europe [0.2] can blame Saint-Simon as being well as it were well the founder of 
the [0.3] of the European idea [0.8] and Saint-Simon divided history into 
economic stages from him Marx derived the idea of a sort of teleology [0.4] of 
history progressing from slavery to feudalism to capitalism and so forth [0.8] 
and also Saint-Simon was responsible in a sense for the [0.4] er [0.6] notion 
which is [0.3] kind of central to sort of [0.3] er subsequent labour movements 
of the distinction as it were between productive [0.3] and parasitic [0.3] er 
social groups [0.2] there's a famous parable [0.3] er by Saint-Simon in which 
he says [0.3] imagine [0.4] er [0.2] a Europe in which [0.2] all the crowned 
heads [0.3] all the princes and princesses and bishops and so forth and 
aristocrats [0.3] are s-, are called to a [0.3] a wedding in Lisbon of a of a 
royal princess [0.3] and they happen to be walking across a bridge one day [0.
3] er to go to the cathedral and the bridge 
collapses and they're all [0.2] thrown into the river and drown [0.4] what is 
the impact on Europe [0.3] answer [1.4] zilch [0.3] er these people are totally 
useless they're unproductive they're parasitic [0.3] if that bridge however 
contained [1.1] scientists doctors er [0.4] technologists managers [0.3] er 
useful people [laugh] [0.4] then it would indeed be serious those are in a 
sense the productive classes [0.3] and it was [0.2] Saint-Simon's er students 
in the grandes écoles who took part in the [0.2] eighteen-thirty revolution in 
Paris which overthrew the [0.3] returned Bourbons [0.3] and some [0.2] radical 
Saint-Simonians actually spread their ideas among the workers in Paris in the 
early eighteen-thirties [0.3] and some French workers got the [0.4] er idea 
that actually they were the productive classes it was actually the workers 
[laugh] not the managers and the [0.3] and the and the industrialists who were 
the 
the true who actually er as it were the tr-, were the truly productive class [0.
3] so much of Marx's er [0.3] structure of thinking as it were [0.3] er comes 
from the-, these sorts of Saint-Simonian influences [0.9] moreover Marx was 
drawn into the [0.6] what [0.2] some have seen as a trap [0.4] of seeking the 
laws of historical development [0.4] in Das Kapital written in nine-, eighteen-
sixty-seven [0.9] Marx said that he was seeking [0.3] the economic laws of 
motion [0.4] of modern society [0.6] and this led him certainly on occasions to 
[0.2] appear to write as if [0.5] society has moved inevitably inexorably [0.2] 
from feudalism to capitalism [0.3] and that capitalism too was inexorably 
doomed by [0.2] certain internal contradictions [0.7] and there were [0.2] 
clearly problems with this many of Marx's liberal critics [0.3] er Karl Popper 
for example [0.4] er a leading philosopher of science er [0.5] er argued in The 
Poverty of Historicism that Marx was [0.8] wedded to what had become an 
outmoded nineteenth century notion of science a concept of scientific laws [0.
5] er whereas twentieth 
century science after er ei-, [0.2] Einstein and relativity and so forth was 
much more [0.3] operating on the grounds of provisional hypotheses as it were 
which could be tested and falsified [0.7] and Isaiah Berlin who E H Carr [0.2] 
er refers to occasionally in his pamphlet histor-, [0.2] Historical 
Inevitability [0.4] argued that Marx's deterministic model [0.4] is a denial 
ultimately of human free will [0.3] and human agency [0.6] but certainly for a 
century or so after eighteen-fifty [0.5] Marxist historiography one could argue 
i think [0.3] was held back in some ways by this sort of positivist overlay [0.
8] and this was in part because Marx himself clearly wasn't in a technical 
sense a historian [0.4] and wrote relatively little [0.4] history [0.8] he was 
known for much of the late nineteenth early twentieth century for two major [0.
4] writings as it were first the [0.3] brief polemical [0.4] Communist 
Manifesto written on the eve of the European revolutions of eighteen-forty-
eight [0.2] predicting them [0.3] and setting out a strategy for them [0.6] and 
secondly for Das Kapital 
written [0.2] nearly twenty years later [0.4] a huge attempt er er one of our 
great prime ministers Harold Wilson said he [0.2] he gave up on page two [0.4] 
er but er he b-, he b-, he'd done an economics degree at Oxford but [0.4] a 
huge attempt to construct a model [0.3] of the capitalist system [0.4] 
conceived almost like a machine with a sort of central [0.3] er sort of floor 
at er at its heart as it were [0.3] E P Thompson's [0.3] er book The Poverty of 
Theory which you'll look at next term in in conjunction with [0.2] Thompson's 
other writing [0.5] argues that er [0.7] that there is something unsatisfactory 
about this rather mechanistic [0.3] er version [0.3] er [0.2] of history which 
which which Marx gets drawn into he was trying to as it were refute [0.4] the 
capitalist economi-, [0.2] econ-, economists on their own ground [0.3] er and 
there's something rather unsatisfactory about this particular [0.3] er approach 
[1.8] the result of this concentration on the Communist Manifesto on the one 
hand and kas-, Das Kapital on the other was that many of the insights available 
in Marx's other writings in other 
texts [0.4] er where he does write some contemporary history and he does so in 
ways which are more suggestive [0.4] of a less deterministic [0.3] a-, approach 
[0.5] er where he allows some room for agency for class consciousness for 
beliefs ideologies cultures and so forth [0.4] er [0.7] these texts were 
relatively neglected [0.2] and it was only the rediscovery of such texts in the 
twentieth century [0.4] er a-, as together with the works of the so-called 
young Marx in the eighteen f-, early eighteen-forties [0.4] which inspired the 
[0.3] new Marxist new left of of the eighteen nineteen-sixties of which E P 
Thompson in a sense wa-, was a part [0.9] until then [0.3] Marxist 
historiography often reflected a rather crude [0.4] vulgar positivistic Marxism 
[0.4] and it's i think also [0.2] important to recognize that [0.6] it's only 
very late as it were in the nineteen-sixties [0.3] that Marxist historians get 
a s-, any sort of [0.7] toehold on most European university systems [0.3] er 
there is the odd maverick like Georges Lefebvre one of the c-, [0.2] classic 
historians of the French 
Revolution who has a post at the Sorbonne [0.3] in the nineteen-thirties [0.4] 
but in Germany clearly of in in the era of i-, Wilhelmine Germany or Nazi 
Germany [0.2] or even post-nineteen-forty-five [0.3] west West Germany [0.3] er 
[0.3] Marxists were largely excluded from the entire university system [0.3] 
Gramsci perhaps the greatest Marxist theorist of this century who namex will 
talk about next week [0.5] died of course in one of Mussolini's prisons in the 
nineteen-thirties [0.5] er British Marxists were very marginal George Rude one 
of the great British Marxist historians of the French Revolution [0.2] never er 
suc-, succeeded in getting a job in a British university and had to go to [0.3] 
Australia or some godforsaken place to [laugh] [0.2] and actually r-, wrote a 
book about the the Tolpuddle martyrs and [0.2] people being deported to 
Australia as it were [0.4] er in order to find a job [0.3] er [0.2] e-, even E 
P Thompson of course had only [0.3] about four or five years here [0.3] in his 
entire career he he 
was a sort of lecturer in a sort of worker's education in [0.2] in the West 
Riding of Yorkshire for most of his career [0.4] he had three or four years 
here [0.3] fell out with the Vice Chancellor wrote a famous book called Warwick 
University Limited [laugh] [0.3] which i recommend you to read [0.3] er it's 
all about how business interests control the the University of Warwick er [0.2] 
an implausible thesis but [0.4] er [0.3] er [0.2] and er [0.9] and then of 
course left and and there's i-, i-, there wa-, there was therefore not very 
much space as it were for Marxist historiography to develop [0.3] within the 
univer-, the university systems of Europe until [0.4] till the nineteen-sixties 
[1.3] but this vulgar Marxism as it were which was dominant was nevertheless [0.
2] in a sense quite powerful in that it argued [0.9] Hobsbawn er suggests five 
major things [0.9] in the last instan-, first of all in the last instance [0.2] 
that economic factors were determining [0.3] that [0.6] hypothetically [0.2] 
our world of the nineteen-nineties is being shaped by 
the globalization [0.2] [laugh] of the world economy [0.3] er and the spread of 
new technologies of [0.4] to take one example as it were [0.6] secondly a model 
of base and superstructure that the economic base of society the mode of 
production [0.7] er [0.2] determines in some sort of ways in the last instance 
[0.3] the superstructure of [0.4] politics ideas culture laws [0.2] and so 
forth that these are in some some ways [0.3] reflect [0.4] er what is going on 
er as it were underneath [1.1] thirdly a notion [0.2] that class is central 
that each as it were mode of production develops a distinctive set of classes 
and class relations [0.4] and that history's motor as it were is the [0.2] 
relationship and conflict between [0.3] these classes which is again as i say 
related to [0.2] to the m-, the modes of production [0.9] fourthly and i 
mentioned this already that there are in a sense certain historical laws [0.4] 
which [0.4] er [0.3] e-, [0.7] ensure that or which should suggest that his-, 
history [0.4] er moves societies from stages from slavery to feudalism to 
capitalism and so forth [0.7] and finally and this is quite [0.2] significant 
for the Eighteenth Brumaire which is partly about this [0.3] that the state [0.
5] is [0.2] in some ways either directly or indirectly [0.3] the instrument of 
the [0.4] dominant economic class at a given moment in the Ancien Régime [0.3] 
you had a feudal society with the [0.2] feudal aristocracy as the dominant [0.
7] class in a capitalist society it's the capitalist bourgeoisie which are [0.
2] hegemonic [0.6] er [0.2] and y-, [0.2] not only are they sort of were in 
control of the economics but also their ideas [0.2] er are the ones that 
circulate most freely and are [0.3] dominant within a given society [1.8] in 
other words the state is not as Ranke seemed to think of it er necessarily good 
[0.6] necessary needed to achieve s-, internal stability to fight wars [0.4] 
nor is it [0.2] the state as Comte and the positivists suggested [0.4] an 
instrument w-, whereby disinterested experts and technocrats maximize 
efficiency and produc-, productivity [0.3] and the public [0.2] well-being [0.
3] the state for Marx is the instrument 
ultimately [0.2] of the dominant class er at a given moment [1.6] now even this 
rather crude vulgar Marxism as it's sometimes known [0.4] had an explosive 
impact on Rankean [0.6] Rankeanism as it were wa-, was the dominant paradigm [0.
6] er eri-, Eric Hobsbawn in one of his essays in the nineteen-sixties said [0.
8] this even this sort of vulgar Marxism was a concentrated charge of 
intellectual dynamite which demolished the fortifications of traditional 
Rankean history this perhaps [0.3] overstating it because Rankean history [0.4] 
er is still with us as it were but er [0.2] as it were there is a a certain 
element of truth in it [1.0] many of the neo-Marxists of the twentieth century 
argued that the [0.2] the real Marx as it were the fully [0.3] fully sort of 
rounded Marx [0.4] was actually more nuanced more subtle [0.4] er if if more 
difficult to get at as it were that he was found only in brief texts such as 
The Eighteenth Brumaire [0.5] er dealing with [0.2] short specific periods [0.
4] that er many of the 
ideas from the as it were alternative Marx had to be teased out of incomplete 
texts [0.4] er [0.6] and there was an need therefore in the twentieth century 
for [0.3] Marxists to read and reread these different sort of fragmented 
writings of Marx to [0.2] to tease out [0.3] as it were the the authentic [0.3] 
voice of Marx [0.5] and cle-, clearly a what a lot of the historiography of the 
s-, nineteen-sixties and seventies was about was [0.6] Marxist historians [0.4] 
attempting to find an alternative [0.3] both t-, on the one hand to sort of the 
Rankean model [0.4] of great men or the positivist model of determinism [0.6] 
stressing [0.4] er a world [0.8] suggested in Marx's [0.2] shorter texts [0.2] 
where men make their own history [0.3] but do so [0.5] only under circumstances 
given and transmitted from the past [1.7] but to turn to the text itself [1.0] 
the Communist Manifesto [0.3] was written on the eve of eighteen-forty-eight on 
the eve of the revolutions of eighteen-forty-eight [0.6] and in it Marx 
appeared to claim that [0.7] two or three main th-, main things first of all 
that developments [0.3] within European 
capitalism [0.5] were already [0.2] in well advanced in the process [0.4] of 
polarizing society into [0.3] a dominant capitalist bourgeoisie [0.5] and [0.2] 
a growing working class [1.1] that the existing ruling elite therefore was 
increasingly capitalist [0.3] and that therefore the coming revolutions which 
he predicted and which occurred within weeks almost of the [0.3] publication of 
of the Communist Manifesto [0.2] that the coming revolution [0.2] which would 
sweep Europe [0.4] would be dominated [0.3] above all by [0.2] a central 
conflict between capitalists and workers [1.4] The Eighteenth Brumaire is 
written [0.4] nearly four years later [0.9] and it's written in a sense in 
defeat [0.5] and it's written to explain [0.8] why the revolutions did occur [0.
4] but also from unfortunately from a Marxist point of view why [0.5] the 
workers had been defeated [0.3] why the victor in France had been [0.4] a new 
sort of authoritarian centralized Bonapartist state er er a sort of [0.2] a 
second empire [0.4] a sort of r-, r-, some some ways sort of repeating the the 
pattern of [0.3] of er of Napoleon the 
First [0.3] and what this new state signified in in class terms [0.8] and to 
enquire whether his theories in the of the Communist Manifesto were [0.4] 
completely wrong or whether one could [0.2] as it were nuance them modify them 
[0.3] use them to explain as it were what had happened [1.3] the history of the 
text i think is significant it was written as i say [0.2] in [0.4] eighteen-
fifty-two [0.3] it wasn't actually f-, [0.2] published until eighteen-sixty-
nine [0.5] and it was largely ignored for fifty years or so after that you 
might wish it had been ignored for [laugh] [0.3] sort of [0.2] a hundred-and-
thirty years after that but [0.2] it wasn't [0.3] er [0.2] it was taken up by 
[0.7] Marxists in the nineteen-twenties and thirties [0.2] as they grappled [0.
2] with [0.3] fresh defeats [0.5] at the hands of not Bonapartism this time but 
fascism [0.4] why did the Italian working class go down to feat [0.3] defeat at 
the hands of Mussolini [0.2] why did the German working class [0.5] with a huge 
sort of communist party a huge socialist party a hu-, [0.5] tens of m-, 
millions of of o-, unionized workers [0.2] why had these movements gone down de-
, [0.2] defeat [0.2] at the hands of of fascism [0.6] and [0.3] there's a quite 
interesting book on [0.3] th-, theories of fascism by [0.2] a man called 
Kitchen published in the nineteen-seventies [0.2] very short book and the [0.3] 
one of the very short chapters in this very short ch-, book [0.2] is [0.3] 
Fascism as a Bonapartism and what [0.3] Kitchen does is use [0.4] The [0.2] 
Eighteenth Brumaire [0.3] as a way of reflecting on [0.3] th-, the nature of 
fascism [0.4] er [0.7] and the text certainly influenced [0.3] the new er 
Gramsci in his sitting in Mussolini's jail reflecting on why the Italian left 
had been defeated by Mussolini [0.5] er [0.9] took an interest in in the sort 
of ideas that that Marx had put forward in this text [0.7] now how does The 
Eighteenth Brumaire modify [0.2] the Communist Manifesto well it does so in a 
number of ways first of all [0.5] it argues that capitalism [1.1] is actually 
only developing slowly gradually unevenly in the Europe of of mid-nineteenth 
century [0.5] that older modes of 
production [0.2] both in industry and with artisan producers [0.2] and in the 
countryside with peasant farming [0.3] are still there therefore [0.5] one does 
have industrialists and one does have industrial workers but there is a much 
more [0.3] diverse economy [0.4] er with er m-, many more sort of different 
sort of s-, u-, subordinate social groups [1.2] there is a class war that goes 
on in Paris and Lyon and Berlin and Cologne and so forth in Europe in eighteen-
forty-eight between [0.3] capitalists and workers [0.3] but there are lots of 
other conflicts going on in Europe as well between other sort of [0.3] social s-
, social groups [0.8] and because the co-, there is a very complex [0.4] class 
structure and an unevenly developed economy [0.9] er the [0.5] social and 
political divisions of Europe [0.4] in eighteen-forty-eight are much more 
complicated than Marx suggested in the Communist Manifesto [0.7] at the level 
of elite politics it's difficult to form a single coherent [0.4] conservative 
party because [0.7] on the one hand one still has remnants of the old 
aristocracy er who still survive and are still yearning for some sort of return 
to the Ancien Régime [0.6] still imperfectly assimilated into the new [0.4] 
bourgeois world [0.6] and the bourgeoisie itself Marx says is fragmented on all 
sorts of grounds between [0.5] finance industry trade land [0.3] er [0.4] th-, 
th-, the professions [0.2] politically between royalists Bonapartists 
republicans [0.2] culturally between Catholics Jews Protestants [0.3] 
Freemasons and [0.2] Voltaireans and so forth [0.4] in other words the [0.3] 
the world of the elites is much more fragmented on all sorts in all sorts of 
grounds [0.3] than Marx suggested in this notion of a sort of single capitalist 
ruling class [1.3] and these intraclass divisions divisions as i say are within 
the leading classes [0.4] make it difficult for the elites to achieve a united 
front [0.4] even in the face of the threat of workers and peasants in the 
revolutions of eighteen-forty-eight [0.7] and Marx concludes in the end [0.3] 
these fragmented social elites in the er in the end need Bonapartism some sort 
of strong authoritarian military backed regime [0.4] to come in to [0.3] sort 
out their difficulties for them [0.4] er to or as it were [0.3] counteract the 
their own fragmentation [0.2] just er er as later Marx has said [0.3] as the [0.
2] German bourgeoisie which was squabbling [0.2] over all sorts of things 
needed the Nazis [laugh] [0.2] to come and save them from communism and the 
depression [0.3] er in the early nineteen-thirties [1.2] the title The 
Eighteenth Brumaire derives from Marx's [0.2] ironic view of eighteen-forty-
eight [0.5] a tragicomic replay of the heroic revolution of seventeen-eighty-
nine and the seventeen-nineties history repeating itself as farce [0.6] er in 
place of as it were the great Napoleon one has Napoleon the Little er his his 
nephew [0.4] er in place of a [0.2] a heroic and successful bourgeois 
revolution [0.3] in the seventeen-nineties [0.2] one has [0.2] a stuttering and 
ultimately failed [0.2] working class revolution [0.2] in eighteen-forty-eight 
[0.6] and this revolution fails Marx argues because [0.3] the working class 
is still too small [0.4] er [0.3] er that er it's forced to ally with er [0.3] 
other social groups artisans and peasants and petits bourgeois [1.6] the style 
of the text i think is significant er Marx is in a sense a [0.7] a one of the 
many things that makes him interesting to read but also often difficult to read 
is he is that he [0.4] he [0.2] i-, is enormously learned in world literature 
from Greece and Rome and nineteenth century literature and Cervantes and [0.3] 
and everything else [0.3] er and er he [0.2] scatters the the text with all 
sorts of literary references to all sorts of different [0.4] periods [0.5] and 
i think when you read the text that perhaps it's useful to concentrate on [0.2] 
the first third [0.3] and perhaps the last fifteen pages or so i think there's 
the meat of the argument i-, is is there and the middle sec-, [0.2] sections 
are rather [0.6] complex overcomplex perhaps [0.3] account of the [0.6] int-, 
in-, internal squabblings of the various elites [0.3] which may be fascinating 
if you're interested in right wing elite politics in France but probably [0.3] 
fairly 
bewildering [laughter] [0.2] er if you're not [0.4] er [0.3] and [0.5] but much 
of the middle section has the the various actors er the various sort of 
aristocrats and different sections of the bourgeoisie and various sorts of 
bourgeois and aristocratic parties [0.7] er [0.2] he has them sort of dressing 
up they're endlessly putting on masks and [laugh] putting on costumes and 
[laugh] [0.2] as it were d-, adopting er different sort of historical guises [0.
3] er adopting the roles and the postures of of previous historical epochs [0.
5] and the irony the savage irony the of the text derives from Marx's [0.5] 
dialectical mode of argument his [0.2] sense that his conviction that [0.4] 
objective historical processes are in fact occurring [0.4] in a sense despite 
[0.2] not because of the actions of individuals parties classes [0.6] unlike 
Ranke who says [0.3] you understand history by getting inside the heads of 
people [0.3] and [0.2] finding out what they thought they were doing [0.4] Marx 
says that's only part of the 
process because [0.3] lots of times people do things which they think are going 
to have one sort of impact [0.2] and in fact they have [0.2] completely the 
opposite [0.2] er er impact [0.4] for example Marx says the newly enfranchised 
peasantry who've got the vote for the first time [0.2] in eighteen-forty-eight 
[0.4] in the midst o-, middle of a revolution in the middle of a huge agrarian 
crisis of indebtedness and [0.4] and and so on and so forth [0.5] er they feel 
threatened from all sides they feel worried about urban socialism [0.4] er 
they're f-, worried about the ha-, hanging on to their small farms they're in 
debt the crops have failed [0.5] cash prices are falling whatever [0.5] they 
vote Louis napol-, er Marx says er in December eighteen-forty-eight for Louis 
Napoleon as somebody as a sort of [0.2] charismatic saviour who will come and 
rescue them from their [0.3] their [0.3] problems [0.4] but Marx says and this 
is the the irony [0.7] if you actually get a Bonapartist regime [0.3] which 
stabilizes French capitalism [0.7] the development of capitalism inexorably 
will in the long 
term [0.2] destroy small-scale peasant agriculture [laugh] [0.2] in other words 
the peasants vote for [0.2] somebody who they think will save them [0.5] but [0.
4] in the long term [laugh] [0.3] the type of regime that Bonaparte er [0.2] 
ism-, introduces by [0.3] spreading agrarian capitalism will actually [0.2] 
undermine small peasant agriculture [0.4] er [0.8] and er this sort of [0.2] 
the the the certain sort of similar sort of arguments you make about the German 
petit bourgeoisie and Hitler [0.4] or or indeed some-, some-, someone suggested 
to m-, Mrs Thatcher and small grocers in the er [0.3] in the nineteen-eighties 
and nineteen-nineties the the sort of sign which i [0.3] usually mention in my 
seminars which was [0.2] painted on a bridge in namex in namex where i live [0.
3] in the early nineteen-eighties at the height of Thatcherism [0.3] er you 
know [0.2] Mrs Thatcher helps small businesses get smaller and smaller and the 
actual [0.3] er sign was 
started off in very large letters [laugh] [0.2] itself got smaller as [0.3] er 
towards the end of the [0.3] the sentence [0.5] er [0.7] now clearly one could 
say that in the long term [0.3] the French peasantry have [0.2] largely 
disappeared or well there are still some of them around blockading channel 
ports [laugh] [0.2] yesterday if you've read your Daily Mail and your Sun you 
might [0.2] might have noticed this [0.4] er but that's this is the remem-, 
remnants of a er a once much larger [0.3] class the the the peasantry has has 
steadily been eroded [0.2] in Europe over the last hundred-and-fifty years [0.
7] but mar-, what Marx is is [0.3] concentrating on is the contradiction 
between [0.7] what men [0.4] actually are and who they think they are what they 
[0.4] are doing and what they think they're doing or what the im-, impact of 
what they're doing is [0.2] mor-, er [0.3] what they think that it's going to 
be and what what it actually is [0.5] er for example [0.9] er the aristocracy 
in the post- [0.3] seventeen-eighty-nine world Marx says [0.4] still see 
themselves as [0.4] heirs of a long sort of aristocratic pedigree going back to 
the Middle Ages [0.3] enemies therefore of the revolution and the and the 
bourgeoisie [0.9] and yet Marx says really if you look at these people in 
eighteen-forty-eight [0.4] they no longer have [0.2] seigneurial privileges 
they no longer have aristocratic tax exemptions [0.3] they've lost most of the 
things which actually distinguish them as a [0.4] as a er class [0.2] in the 
Ancien Régime [0.5] they're still quite rich but their ri-, their income comes 
from land it comes from [0.2] railway investments [laugh] shares in coal mines 
and so forth [0.2] in all sorts of [0.4] ways they are objectively [0.2] p-, 
part of the part of the bourgeoisie their their income actually comes from [0.
2] the same sort of sources [0.3] as that of the upper middle class [0.4] 
they're really de facto part of the bourgeoisie [0.7] and therefore they should 
in a sense share a common interest to defend property against socialism [0.6] 
but subjectively Marx says some of them are still 
locked in the past subjectively s-, they're still locked in this sort of world 
of of [0.2] hereditary privilege and and [0.3] and and family heritage and so 
on and so forth [0.5] and Marx sees them therefore as a sense schizophrenic [0.
4] er endlessly [0.6] putting on and taking off costumes and masks posing one 
moment as [0.2] sort of feudal seigneurs and the next moment as [0.4] defenders 
of property against against working class socialism [0.6] and er one recent 
criti-, er sort of [0.4] er er [0.2] sort of of study of The Eighteenth 
Brumaire by [0.2] by chris-, Christopher Norris in the context of post-
modernism which is something you'll come to next term [0.4] suggested that 
eighteenth cent-, The Eighteenth Brumaire is in a sense the first [0.4] as it 
were protopostmodernist text because one has these characters as it were 
endlessly [0.2] changing identity changing costumes [0.2] choosing identities 
[2.9] one of the things that clearly distinguishes Marx's approach from from 
that of Ranke is his treatment as it were of great [0.4] men [0.4] er Marx has 
clearly no time at all 
for the notion that [0.9] well then Ranke as as it were [0.2] p-, p-, largely 
attributed the German Reformation to to Luther that Luther was the this great 
man who came along and thought [0.3] in a different way about the [0.2] about 
the church about er theology and so on and so forth the [0.2] the [0.2] in a 
sense the Reformation and indeed [0.4] subsequent German national identity was 
conceived in the mind [0.3] of this of this great man in in in the early 
sixteenth century [0.6] Marx rejects the sort of Rankean emphasis on which whi-,
whi-, [0.3] w-, would it be possible as it were to write a Rankean account [0.
3] of the period that Marx is writing about [0.2] in terms of Louis Napoleon as 
a great man who comes along and [0.2] saves the state against chaos in and and 
and revolution and so forth and [0.3] revives France's economic and political 
power in the eighteen-fifties [0.4] after the crisis [0.7] er [0.8] but 
although Marx refuses to take that line he also says that the [0.4] some of the 
lines taken by l-, [0.2] Louis Napoleon's Republican critics people like the 
novelist Victor Hugo who 
wrote a pamphlet called Napoleon le Petit Napoleon the Little [0.4] er which he 
sort of ridiculed Louis Napoleon as a complete [0.3] idiot a nincompoop a sort 
of pale shadow of his uncle and so on and so forth [1.0] Marx said that's not 
good enough either because if this man is such an idiot [0.3] [laugh] er [0.3] 
so incompetent and so forth how come he's managed just to seize power in one of 
the most powerful states [laugh] [0.2] in Western Europe [0.7] er [1.2] Marx's 
answer to this if it is an answer and there are things wrong with it 
undoubtedly is that [0.3] the significant [0.6] reading of why Louis Napoleon 
and Bonapartism came to power [0.3] in France in eighteen-fifty-one [0.5] is [0.
5] in terms of the a sort of [0.7] paralysis in the class war as it were the [0.
2] the French elites [0.3] are too [0.2] divided as i've tried to describe [0.
2] to rule themselves [0.7] the masses workers and peasants [0.3] are too 
mobilized too angry too radicalized to allow the elites to rule [0.4] but the 
masses 
are also soo-, too [0.4] immature too unorganized [0.3] er to actually seize 
power effectively themselves [0.2] and it's in this sort of [0.5] stalemate in 
a class war as it were [0.2] which allows this [0.2] er figure as it were w-, 
[0.2] with various sorts of backers and various sorts of er thing [0.2] to to 
to come to power [1.5] what Marx is trying to do here is to [0.9] constantly in 
a sense decode [0.5] French politics [0.7] in class terms he says you've got a 
variety of parties you've got Republicans Radicals [0.3] Montaignards [0.3] er 
Legitimist Royalists or Lyonist Royalists Bonapartists and so on and so forth 
[0.3] these are the were the political labels [0.4] who [0.7] in class terms do 
these various parties represent [0.9] and the bourgeois elites he says are 
fragmented [0.4] er there is in a sense a ruling block rather than a single 
capitalist ruling class [0.5] er [1.0] er many of the as it were financiers and 
so forth have backed [0.2] the Orleanist regime till eighteen-forty-eight [0.5] 
the conservative wing of the er nobility are still yearning for the return of 
the Bourbons who've been 
displaced in eighteen-thirty [0.7] er and there are all sorts of [0.2] er 
divisions as it were within the the the the ruling elites [0.2] er [0.8] and er 
as i i tried to describe the er [0.2] er the the aristocracy are sort of [0.3] 
s-, schizophrenic about their identity [0.6] er [0.8] on the one hand they the 
aristocracy are [0.6] as it were [0.2] er [1.9] objectively in terms of their 
income part of the bourgeoisie but nevertheless [0.2] they're still swayed by 
family traditions dynastic loyalties [0.4] family memories [0.3] er they still 
obstinately feel themselves to be distinct from the bourgeoisie [0.6] er and 
Marx goes on to say distinction is made in private life [0.4] between what a 
man thinks and says of himself [0.3] and what he really is and does [0.4] in 
historical struggles [0.3] one must [0.2] make a still sharper distinction [0.
4] between th-, [0.7] er between the [0.2] phrases [0.2] and fantasies of the 
parties involved [0.2] and their real interests between their conceptions [0.2] 
of themselves [0.2] and what they really are [1.5] and similarly [0.3] er 
looking at the [0.4] the f-, the left in France in eighteen-forty-eight 
which is trying to make a more popular egalitarian revolution of in the 
interests of the [1.4] workers peasants artisans the lower classes of society 
[1.3] Marx attributes their [0.2] er [0.3] you see he basically says that they 
are a sort of composite group they're an uneasy alliance of a certain number of 
sort of bourgeois radical leaders you know lawyers and doctors and journalists 
[0.5] together with sections of the lower middle class sections of the skilled 
artisans [0.2] sections of the peasantry [0.4] and the new emerging working 
class [0.6] er and Marx argues that it's precisely this preponderance within 
this [0.2] popular coalition [0.4] of [0.4] petit producers you know small 
artisans small peasant [0.2] proprietors [0.4] which makes [0.4] their ultimate 
strategy their ultimate ideology [0.2] slow confused and ultimately Marx argues 
such a failure [0.5] because what Marx argues and this is part of Marx's sort 
of [0.5] historical ruthlessness [0.2] is that [0.5] much of this popular 
alliance actually represents people like small independent craftsmen [0.2] and 
small 
peasants [0.2] who are doomed [0.2] to [0.5] to disruption the capitalist 
process [0.2] is too powerful [0.2] to allow these sorts of [0.2] intermediary 
groups [0.2] to survive much longer [0.3] their modes of production are archaic 
[1.3] and one could argue and p-, certain historians have argued [0.3] that 
Marx is here allowing his in a sense his teleological conviction [0.3] of the 
long term cap-, you know in the long term these people are going to be defeated 
[laughter] therefore [0.2] in a sense their struggles are doomed and therefore 
in a sense they're futile [0.3] one could nevertheless argue that in the real 
world of the France of eighteen-forty-eight [0.3] since there are millions of 
peasants and [0.2] hundreds of thousands of small artisans and you know these 
people actually exist [0.3] they're not actually factory workers [0.3] er [0.4] 
nevertheless they they will actually try to construct a world where where y-, 
wh-, based on you know cooperative credit and mutual aid societies and [0.3] 
various sorts of mutua-, er er sort of er [0.3] er [0.3] institutions of this 
sort cooperative production [0.3] 
which would actually try and prolong their existence [0.4] and indeed Bernard 
Moss in quite an interesting article in the Socialist Register nineteen-ninety-
eight which should be on the reading list and isn't [0.4] er has argued that [0.
4] Marx himself [0.3] a year or two earlier in eighteen-forty-eight forty-nine 
had actually urged [0.3] in both France and Germany [0.2] a sort of broad 
populist coalition in worker [0.2] which workers allied with peasants and 
artisans [0.3] and the petit bourgeoisie [0.3] it's only [0.4] when he comes to 
The Eighteenth Brumaire when [0.2] when they when they've actually been 
defeated that he says well it's inevitable they would be defeated because they 
[0.2] represent as it were the the forces of backwardness and the forces of the 
past 
nm0088: what i want to do finally if i've got time is to look [0.4] briefly at 
[0.4] the relationship between class and politics i-, in in in in in to 
summarize it as it were [0.4] and then if i have time and if i don't have time 
then you've got it written down on the on the 
sheet i've give-, given you [0.2] look a bit about the [0.2] the role of the 
state [0.5] first of all to summarize in a sense what i think Marx is trying to 
say er about [0.2] the relationship between class and politics [1.0] he's 
arguing i think that class doesn't in itself represent [0.3] a category of 
absolute political unity [0.4] there are endless [0.3] squabbles within classes 
ideological cultural political and so forth [0.2] if one thinks of our own [0.
4] period of the nineteen-eighties and nineties the [0.2] the English 
bourgeoisie is divided between some who believe in a sort of libertarian [0.3] 
[laugh] er moral code and some who believe in Christian family values [0.4] er 
some believe you know bankers and financiers and people in the city in the 
London like [0.3] interest rates to go up because they make their money through 
[0.2] lending money [0.3] on high rates of interests which are harmful to 
northern and midland industrialists [0.4] er 
there are [0.2] sections of the Tory Party that are in favour of [0.5] the 
single European currency and the common market and there are sections of the 
Tory Party that are [0.2] against it [0.2] sections of British business which 
are [0.3] take different lines [0.3] the in other words the [0.2] the 
bourgeoisie is is fragmented on all sorts of of lines [0.4] but mar-, what is 
Marx is arguing is that [0.4] ultimately class dictates a certain line of 
material interest beyond which [0.3] no political fraction [0.3] of the 
bourgeoisie will actually cross [0.4] the bourg-, no bourgeois party will in 
the last instance [0.6] attack private property or call call for the wholesale 
nationalization of the the banks or the city of London [laugh] [0.2] or [0.3] 
or the renationalization of the railway system or or whatever [0.4] er but 
until that line is reached [0.4] class fractions will f-, actually fight [0.2] 
quite bitterly amongst themselves [0.8] such squabbles might well be about 
religion if you one [0.3] one looks at the British bourgeoisie in the 
nineteenth century [0.3] the most bitter conflicts were often between [0.2] the 
Church of England and non-conformists [0.2] these were very real [0.4] through 
a cultural and often politic-, you know the [0.2] non-conformists tended to be 
Liberals [0.4] er [0.3] er Church of England [0.2] tended to be Tories these 
are very real conflicts [0.3] such ideas [0.5] such conflicts actually exist in 
a certain plane [0.2] er in in the superstructure as it were [0.6] er but may 
be explained in the sense [0.4] in that plane you don't need to constantly 
return to the [0.4] mode of production or the underlying economic base [0.4] to 
necessarily explain all these [0.2] er [0.3] er [0.3] conflicts or some of them 
might be [0.3] might be done that way [0.5] the line of class therefore in a s-,
in a sense establishes a ring [0.5] around possible activities what goes on 
inside the ring [0.5] can have non-material causes can be conflicts about 
religion or whether or not one supports a [0.2] particular dynasty or whatever 
[0.7] and conflicts over such issues may be subjectively deeply felt [0.4] er 
as deeply felt even more 
deeply felt than class divisions [0.6] but such conflicts rarely in the last 
instance cross the line [0.3] of certain common material interests [1.0] Marx 
later insisted that it is not the consciousness of men which determines their s-
, social existence [0.4] but on the contrary [0.3] their social existence which 
determines their consciousness [1.0] and one [0.5] of the [0.3] complicated 
lessons i think of The Eighteenth Brumaire [0.5] is that [0.3] in the [0.2] 
complicated transitional society of France of eighteen-forty-eight a world [0.
2] moving towards capitalism but in which [0.4] peasants artisans petits 
bourgeois aristocrats all sorts of [0.3] older social groups are still present 
[0.6] then [0.6] social existence is determined [0.5] by in a sense a 
coexistence of the new capitalist mode of production [0.2] but also with older 
modes of production [0.8] and hence the superstructure of ideas ideologies 
consciousness [0.4] reflects in the France of eighteen-forty-eight [0.3] not [0.
2] a single dominant capitalist mode of production [0.3] but also various [0.4] 
subsidiary perhaps declining but 
still very powerful [0.3] er [0.2] as it were [0.2] al-, alternative modes of 
production [2.1] the idea moreover the study of the aristocracy suggests the 
ideas and attitudes generated by an earlier feudal society [0.3] may in a sense 
have an afterlife the feudal system may have gone by seventeen-eighty-nine [0.
4] er [0.2] but [0.3] it still lives on in a sense in the consciousness [0.3] 
of aristocratic families and may outlast might outla-, outlast the mode of 
production [0.3] which gave rise to it 
nm0088: i'll just summarize the last bit very bries-, briefly [0.7] Marx [0.3] 
er Marx's final er focus was on the [0.3] Bonapartist state [0.8] er [0.7] in a 
superb often quoted [0.4] and i i'll link this with the analysis of the 
peasantry because he sees the peasantry as in some way the [0.3] the mass base 
[0.3] of the Bonapartist state [0.8] in a superb and often quoted passage at 
the end towards the end about ten pages from the end [0.4] Marx portrays the 
French peasantry as [1.1] objectively a class there are millions of these 
smallholders and and sort of small tenant farmers and share croppers [0.4] 
living 
in provincial rural France each of them farming a few acres [0.3] er [0.2] 
distinct clearly from other classes they are in a sense [0.2] er you know 
clearly a c-, a a a a c-, they have a class with certain things in common [0.8] 
but subjectively Marx says their level of class consciousness [0.8] is very low 
[0.4] they are not fully a class for itself as it were [0.4] because they were 
geographically dispersed they have low lates of rates of literacy [0.4] they [0.
2] don't meet each other very often in market centres they are [0.3] too 
fragmented in all sorts of ways to [0.2] act together [0.4] as a class [0.8] 
and therefore Marx argues they are unable to generate a level of class class 
organization [0.4] er achieved by say even by urba-, urban workers or by urban 
bourgeois [0.8] they are therefore unable Marx says to defend their own class 
interests in this crisis of eighteen-forty-eight [0.3] and turn to a 
Bonapartist messiah [0.4] er who will [0.4] as Marx says [0.2] send the rain to 
s-, and the sunshine from above in other words they turn to a charismatic 
figure [0.2] to 
save them because they are [0.2] too [0.4] er [0.3] unorganized to save 
themselves Marx says [0.3] and this is a phrase which Edward Said uses in in 
the beginning of Orientalism which you'll be studying next term [0.4] they 
cannot represent themselves [0.3] they must be represented [1.2] now Marx i 
think is [0.5] actually aware that er the the peasantry of France in in in the 
[0.6] eighteen-forty-eight er to eighteen-fifty-one is actually quite mobilized 
quite radicalized in some some areas [0.4] er some of the peasants vote for 
Louis Napoleon in ei-, [0.2] in December eighteen-forty-eight shouting [0.3] 
aristocrats and usurers to the guillotine which is not the [laugh] the normal 
sort of conservative [0.4] er sort of response er [0.3] er that one might im-, 
imagine [0.3] and he notes the the way that some peasants are actually 
attracted by the left er in in in in as the second republic [0.4] er progresses 
[0.8] but Marx is also almost wilfully myopic about er about the possibilities 
of peasant consciousness and peasant 
organization [0.5] he talks elsewhere in his writings about the idiocy of rural 
life [0.6] he sees peasants as almost irredeemably backward and ignorant [0.3] 
doomed ultimately by the growth of agrarian capitalism [0.3] it's only the 
workers [0.3] gathered together in factories and cities [0.2] who are capable 
of organizing as a potential radical revolutionary class [0.7] er and i think 
he therefore largely ignores what was actually quite substantial peasant 
resistance to the Bonapartist coup d'état in December eighteen-fifty-one he 
talks about France being [0.3] delivered [0.2] unresisting into captivity [0.6] 
and if one looks at [0.2] if one looks at this more broadly [0.3] er [0.9] it's 
i think an interesting question to pose Marx says the history of [0.3] 
societies is the history of class and class conflicts [0.7] while the history 
of most er most people in Europe over [0.4] a thousand years and more have 
actually been peasants [0.3] well if peasants have such a low level of class 
consciousness [0.3] what role i mean if you 
look at the [0.3] German peasant revolt of fifteen-twenty-five or the [0.3] 
French peasant revolt of seventeen-eighty-nine or the Russian peasant revolt of 
nineteen- [0.3] five or nineteen-seventeen or the Chinese peasants [0.2] are 
are peasants irredeemably backward [0.2] incapable of of political [0.4] 
consciousness and action this is a [0.3] a question that [0.2] that Marx er in 
a sense er [0.7] poses [0.2] and perhaps doesn't provide an entirely 
satisfactory answer to [2.1] what i think Marx i-, is arguing is that [0.4] all 
societies are divided into classes but the level of class consciousness [0.4] 
varies widely [0.3] and so does the capacity for effective class action [1.1] 
the later [0.3] Marxist theorist the [0.2] er Hungarian Georg Lukacs [0.4] 
argued that Marxists should be aware [0.6] of three levels of class [0.2] one 
is the objective class position as it were one's actual place in the social 
structure [1.2] the second is the actual level of subjective class 
consciousness which Marx claims for the French peasants is fairly low [0.9] and 
thirdly [0.2] what Lukacs arg-, argues that Marxist 
historians should be [0.6] aware of what he called ascribed class consciousness 
I-E what a class [0.3] would think if it could perceive its interests more 
clearly [0.3] er perhaps it's something a bit like Rousseau's general will as 
it were [0.4] and he [0.2] Lukacs argued that Marxists should be aware of this 
third [0.5] er er as it were sort of [0.2] category [0.2] because the contrast 
between [0.4] people's actual and their rational behaviour [0.3] affects the 
historical effectiveness of their actions 
nm0088: Marx sees the peasant electors [0.9] as a sort of mass [0.2] passive 
base [0.2] of the Bonapartist state the [0.3] Bonapartism is strong in part 
because it's able to attract the support [0.3] of at least a sizable proportion 
[0.3] of France's [0.4] mass rural er peasant electorate [0.9] but Marx argues 
there's no necessary correlation between [0.3] the interests of the peasantry 
and the longer term interests of the Bonapartist regime [0.4] just as there's 
no necessary correlation [0.5] later Marxists will argue between the interests 
of the German petit bourgeoisie who voted for the 
Nazis [0.4] and the actual [0.4] er sort of [1.0] programmes and policies of 
the Nazi regime [0.2] in power which are often more favourable to [0.3] to I G 
Farben and German big business [1.2] Marx sees the bourgeois elites in France 
as turning to Bonapartism again [0.6] later Marxists would say like the 
bourgeoisie in Italy in the nineteen-twenties or the bourgeoisie in Germany in 
the nineteen-thirties [0.6] because they grow impatient of the divisions and 
squabbles [0.3] within their own political class [0.3] because in the face of 
economic depression and p-, possible [0.5] working class socialism or 
revolution [0.4] er the bourgeoisie bourgeois politicians are squabbling among 
themselves [0.3] the bourgeoisie say to hell with that lot [laugh] [0.3] we're 
fed up with parliamentary government we're fed up with elections it's all too 
[0.3] messy it's all too dangerous [0.2] what we need is a strong man [laugh] 
[0.2] who can restore law and order and and so forth [0.3] and er [0.8] and in 
a sense er therefore the the the the there are 
certain parallels i think er between er [0.4] between Bonapartism fascism there 
[0.5] and then there is the question that is the resultant state the 
Bonapartist state the fascist state [0.4] a capitalist bourgeois state [0.6] 
well yes and no and yes it's not because it is not [0.4] directly run by the 
capitalists it's not actually [0.4] financiers and [0.2] industrialists and so 
forth who [0.2] run the state machine in the in France in the eighteen-fifties 
[0.2] or in Germany in the nineteen-thirties [0.5] and to some degree the 
bourgeoisie relies on protection from the police and the bureaucracy and the 
army [0.5] er er to in order to [0.2] to to to preserve it its its wealth and 
its power and its investments [0.8] but Marx argues that [0.4] yes it is a you 
know capitalist bourgeois state it's not a state he says [0.2] not a state 
suspended in a void [0.6] because by suppressing the left [0.6] by dismantling 
the workers' movement after eighteen-fifty-one [0.2] just as the 
Nazis dismantled the communists and the trade unions [0.2] after nineteen-
thirty-three [0.6] er one [0.2] allowed the capitalist [0.3] regime to survive 
[0.3] and to expand to make profits for the b-, for the bourgeoisie [0.3] and 
that the state machine itself [0.3] recruits from the elites the bureaucracy is 
actually recruited from the [0.2] educated sons of the propertied elites [0.2] 
and lives in a sense off the surplus value [0.3] created by [0.2] capitalism 
and by [0.2] the taxation system [0.6] and therefore [1.2] what Marx is 
postulating is an idea of a state which is both [0.5] on the one hand [0.3] 
semi-autonomous is [0.2] it's not directly controlled by [0.2] the capitalists 
they've in sense abandoned that [0.5] but yet it's functioning [0.3] in the 
long term to protect their their interests [0.3] and as i say [0.2] in that 
sense the analysis of fascism [0.3] er [0.2] er in nineteen-twenties and 
thirties [0.3] relied heavily on Marx's analysis of Bonapartism [0.3] er in The 
Eighteenth Brumaire [0.4] thank you very much