The 18th Brumaire of Louis Napoleon is a short book by Karl Marx. On December 2, 1851, Louis Napoleon overthrew the French Second Republic and established himself as emperor of France.

The title

"The 18th Brumaire" refers to November 9, 1799 in the French Revolutionary Calendar -- the day of the coup d'etat that had brought Napoleon Bonaparte to power as First Consul.

The work

The work, written between December 1851 and February 1852, begins with one of Marx's most famous remarks: "Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce."

External link

An online copy of Marx's The 18th Brumaire... (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1852/18th-brumaire/)