Most contemporary interpretations of Karl Marx's analyses of European politics of the second half of the nineteenth century share both the suppression of all references to the "economy" and its substitution either for the idea of the autonomy of the political (in heterodox views), or for the idea of the performative aspect of language (in post-modern views). This article argues that Marx's Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonapart contains an interpretation of politics that can be reduced, from the theoretical point of view, to two explanatory principles of the materialist conception of history: the primacy of economics, and the opposition between essence and appearance. The article seeks to verify the incidence of these two fundamental propositions within that text.
Karl Marx; The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte; Historical Materialism; Postmodernism