So ends Marx’s keen-eyed chronicle of the events in France from 1848-1851 that resulted in the brutal crushing of the French proletariat, along with rise of Napoleon III, first as President (very temporarily) and eventually as Emperor. In the midst of our consternation and concern to understand our own present slide into these dark times, we might look to Marx’s analysis for some much-needed guidance. As Marx himself characterized his goal (in an 1869 preface to a second edition) for the series of articles that became the pamphlet, he was not interested in glorifying Bonaparte or telling a “great man of history” kind of tale, but rather he wanted to “demonstrate how the class struggle in France created the circumstances and relationships that made it possible for a grotesque mediocrity to play a hero’s part.” Sound like anyone/anything we know?

“[People] make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past.”