Karl
Marx
The 18th
Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
Modern
dictatorship
§ Marx asserts
that self-maintenance by property owners causes modern dictatorship
§ Why is
democracy unstable in France after 1848?
§ Why is it
replaced by a dictatorship in December 1851?
Sequence
of events 1848-1851
§ Rebellion in February 1848 forces the abdication of King Louis Phillippe
§ A provisional government declares universal male suffrage electing a
National Assembly
§ It adopts a constitution that takes effect on Dec. 10, 1848, with the direct election of both a parliament (also called the National
Assembly) and a president of the Republic
–
The winner of the election for the
presidency is Louis Bonaparte, the nephew of Emperor Napoleon I
§ Dec. 2, 1851, Bonaparte arrests the leaders of parliament, dissolves the National
Assembly, and then arrests those deputies who assemble to object
§ Marx likens Dec. 2 to the 18th Brumaire, the date when the
first Napoleon overthrew the Directory and established himself as First Consul
–
Brumaire was the name of a month in
the new calendar established by leaders of the French Revolution
–
It derives from the word for “fog”
typical of late fall in France
§ Like his uncle, Louis Bonaparte then declares himself Emperor, styling
himself Napoleon III
The
puzzle
§ Marx wants
to explain why men would use universal suffrage to elect a dictator who
abolishes it by declaring himself emperor
§ He makes
four suppositions
Marx’s
four suppositions
§ (1) Political institutions depend on approval or disapproval by society
§ (2) Society is divided into economic classes defined by how the members
of those classes make their living, plus a residual category of the unemployed
§ (3) Each class possesses a political organization called a “party”
through which it approves or disapproves political institutions, although one
class and one residual category are unable to form political organizations
§ (4) Each class decides what institutions to approve solely by evaluating
the institution’s effect on the prospects for its members to continue making a
living in their accustomed manner
Approval
of Institutions
§ Marx
supposes that political institutions depend on approval or disapproval by
society
– Political
institutions mean democracy and dictatorship
§ Thus his
question becomes: who in France approves of
dictatorship?
§ This is not
the same question as who votes for dictatorship
Division
into economic classes
§ 1) The proletariat makes
its living by selling its labor to private employers; it owns no property
§ 2) The petty bourgeoisie
makes its living by using its own labor to work small amounts of property
§ 3) The bourgeosie makes
its living by owning property and allowing the proletariat to use the property
in return for owning the product
§ The lumpenproletariat
consists of persons who have no fixed means of making a living and therefore
are not a class
Sections
of the petty bourgeoisie
§ The petty
bourgeoisie is divided into an urban and a rural petty bourgeoisie
§ Urban petty
bourgeoisie inhabits cities where its members own small shops that they work by
their own labor
§ Rural petty
bourgeoisie inhabits the countryside where its members own small farms that
they work by their own labor
Sections
of the bourgeoisie
§ The bourgeoisie is also known as “Capital” and consists of three sections
§ Members of finance capital own banks that lend money to the rural petty
bourgeoisie and to the agricultural and industrial bourgeoisie
§ Members of industrial capital own factories worked by the urban
proletariat
§ Members of agricultural capital own large farms worked by the rural
proletariat; they are usually nobles
§ Living in the same cities, industrial and financial capital act together
in opposition to agricultural capital
Imagination
§ Seriously, I
remember this cast of characters by imagining a story with stock Frenchmen as
characters
§ The two sections
of the petty bourgeoisie matter a lot in Marx’s story
§ The sections
of the bourgeoisie receive a lot of discussion but ultimately don’t matter
§ Therefore I
imagine a cast with five characters
The
imaginary cast
§ “Bourgeoisie” has an enormous protruding belly, wears a vest and tie, and
smokes a fat cigar held by hands with a thick ring on every finger
–
If you’ve ever seen Rodin’s Balzac,
that’s what he looks like
§ “Urban Petty Bourgeoisie” is a grandfather wearing an apron and holding a
broom that he is using to sweep out his shop
§ “Rural Petty Bourgeoisie” is a middle-aged guy with bad posture wearing
blue work pants and a denim shirt and a blue beret
§ “Lumpenproletariat” is a thin slouchy guy with shifty eyes and a Gauloise
drooping from his lips
§ “Proletariat” is a handsome muscular young athlete with a jaunty stride,
an erect posture, and good teeth
Political
Organizations
§ Classes are
represented in politics by parties
§ The
proletariat is represented by socialists
§ The urban
petty bourgeoisie is represented by democratic republicans; in coalition with
the proletariat they form the social democrats, whom Marx sarcastically calls
the Montagne
Meaning
of Montagne
§ The Montagne or Mountain was the name given to the
anti-monarchical deputies after 1789
§ They chose seats at the back of the hall where the National Assembly met
§ They chose these seats were to be close to the gallery which was occupied
by their popular supporters who shouted down their opponents
§ Since the hall sloped upward from the front to enable everyone to see,
the seats at the back were elevated, hence the name “the Mountain”
§ The deputies of the Montagne were less radical than the Jacobins who
succeeded them
§ Marx attaches the name to the 1849 social-democrats to deride them for
being less radical than the socialists
Representatives of the bourgeoisie
§ The financial-industrial bourgeoisie is represented by Orleanist
supporters of the junior branch of the Bourbon family (the family of Louis
Phillippe, who took the throne after the revolution of 1830 and whose reign is
also called “the July monarchy”)
§ The agricultural bourgeoisie is represented by the Legitimist supporters
of the senior branch of the Bourbon family, whose scion occupied the throne
from 1815 to 1830
§
Because they disagree over who should
be king, the urban and rural bourgeoisie can unite only by forming the “party
of Order” in the National Assembly in opposition to the Montagne
§ The party of Order and the bourgeoisie as a whole supports democracy only
because it cannot agree on who should be king
§ There are also “pure republicans” who briefly receive support from the
bourgeoisie while the party of Order forms
Unrepresented
Groups
§ No party
represents the rural petty bourgeoisie or the lumpenproletariat
§ The
lumpenproletariat lacks a party because it is not a class and parties only
represent classes
§ The rural
petty bourgeoisie lacks a party for the same reason that the bourgeoisie, the
urban petty bourgeoisie, and the proletariat can form parties
Parties
and “Material” Conditions
§ Material conditions are the circumstances of earning a living
§ They affect the presence and strength of parties
§ The proletariat is especially able to form strong parties because mutual
work in factories teaches proletarians to cooperate
–
“Proletariat” is the whole class,
–
“proletarian” is a member of the
class;
–
“proletarian” is also the adjective
§ The urban petty bourgeoisie can form weak parties because its members
associate with each other in cities but do not learn to cooperate as each
member works his own property separately
§ The bourgeoisie forms an effective party because its members act as a
cartel to keep wages low and prices high
§ The rural petty bourgeoisie cannot form a party because its members work
separately too far away to associate with each other
The Material Condition of Peasants
§ Marx compares peasants to potatoes
§ “A smallholding, a peasant and his family; next to them, another
smallholding, another peasant and another family. A few score of these make up a village, and a
few score of villages make up a Department.
In this way the great mass of the French nation is formed of homologous
magnitudes, much as potatoes in a sack form a sack of potatoes.” (124)
Peasants’
Material Condition, II
§ “In so far as millions of families live under economic conditions of existence
that separate their mode of life, their interests and their culture from those
of the other classes, and put them in hostile opposition to the latter, they
form a class. In so far as there is
merely a local interconnection among these small-holding peasants, they do not
form a class. They are consequently
incapable of enforcing their class interest in their own name, whether through
a parliament or through a convention.
They cannot represent themselves, they must be represented.” (124)
§ Now you know who approves the dictatorship, and why
Choosing Democracy or Dictatorship
§ A class chooses which institution to approve solely by considering
whether that institution will perpetuate the means of making a living common to
the members of the class
–
This not an assumption of
self-interest
–
An assumption of self-interest would
hold that each person made political choices by considering what actions would
be most favorable for himself or herself
–
Marx assumes people simply try to
keep what they have
Property
§ Marx also
assumes that only he knows how people choose
§ Each class,
and the lumpenproletariat as well, chooses by forming an attitude toward
property
§ By
“property” Marx means items that can be used to produce: land, tools, buildings
§ Not personal
property or land or buildings used as residences
Property
and Institutional Choice
§ Property
causes irreconcilable conflict over institutions
§ Proletarians,
who own no property, oppose institutions guaranteeing ownership of property
§ All other
classes own property and therefore favor institutions guaranteeing property
Property and Institutional Choice, II
§ Commitment to property is weaker, however, among the smallholders
–
Rural smallholders are deeply in debt
and are losing their farms
–
Urban smallholders who do not employ workers
are less afraid of proletarians
§ Only the bourgeoisie is firmly committed to property
§ Lumpenproletarians, having no means of making a living, therefore also
have no political attitudes
§ Lumpenproletarians support whoever will pay them
From
Democracy to Dictatorship
§ France moves from democracy
in 1848 to dictatorship in 1851 by passing through three stages
§ In the first stage, the property-owning classes ally against the
property-less class
§ The bourgeoisie’s money is used to hire the lumpenproletariat to form the
army
§ The urban petty bourgeoisie belongs to the National Guard
§ The army and the National Guard join in suppressing the socialist
proletarians in the “June days” of 1849
Conflict
between property owners
§ Defeat of the proletariat opens the second stage of conflict between the
party of Order representing the bourgeoisie and the Montagne or
social-democrats representing the petty bourgeoisie in alliance with the
proletarians
–
Marx thinks the Montagne is what
delicately used to be called a mesalliance or mismarriage
–
The petty bourgeoisie will not fight,
but the proletariat should fight
Petty-bourgeois
democracy
§ Because the petty bourgeoisie outnumbers the bourgeoisie, a universal
male franchise and democratic rights give the petty bourgeoisie the advantage
§ Full use of this advantage requires them to ally with proletarians who
will vote against the property ownership by which members of the petty
bourgeoisie live
§ Therefore, the petty bourgeoisie is conflicted about democracy
Unarmed
Action
§ Conflictedness
of the petty bourgeoisie causes its military organization, the National Guard,
to protest against the Party of Order but to engage in a demonstration on June 13,1849, that is
unarmed
§ The
lumpenproletarians in the army paid by tax receipts from the bourgeoisie feel
no such hesitation, and they suppress the demonstration without bloodshed
(52-58)
National
Assembly vs. President
§ The party of
Order confirms its victory by abolishing universal suffrage in the law of May 31, 1850 (70-72)
§ Having
defeated the urban petty bourgeoisie, the party of Order confronts President
Bonaparte
§ Conflict
concerns control of the bureaucracy, which in France is
exceptionally large and powerful
Sources
of conflict
§ The National Assembly is powerful only if it can veto appointments of
ministers who control the bureaucracy
§ The bourgeois party of Order controls the National Assembly and wants it
to be powerful
§ Bonaparte wants to control the bureaucracy himself by appointing the
ministers who head it without regard to the Assembly
§ Conflict begins between the party of Order and Bonaparte
Bourgeoisie
and Bureaucracy
§ In France the
bourgeoisie wants a strong bureaucracy
§ The
bureaucracy provides jobs for the bourgeoisie and makes rules that increase its
income
§ The
bureaucracy represses political opposition to the bourgeoisie
§ The
bourgeoisie does not care who runs the bureaucracy as long as it stays big (62)
Consequences
of the fight
§ The fight between president and parliament threatens the gains won by the
bourgeoisie in June 1848 and June 1849 and confirmed by the withdrawal of
universal suffrage in May 1850
§ A struggle against the president will cause both sides to appeal for
votes from the petty bourgeoisie and proletariat
§ President Bonaparte threatens to make this appeal by calling for restoration
of universal suffrage on October 10, 1851 (112)
§ Seeing this threat coming, the bourgeoisie has already withdrawn its
support from the party of Order (102-107)
Process
of elimination
§ We now know who supported Bonaparte’s coup d’etat of December 1851
§ The proletariat has been suppressed
§ The urban petty-bourgeoisie has refused to fight
§ The bourgeoisie has withdrawn
§ This leaves the rural petty bourgeoisie and the lumpenproletariat
§ They approve dictatorship because neither can form a party that can
represent its interest in a democracy
Motives
for supporting Bonaparte
§ The rural petty bourgeoisie is in debt to the financial bourgeoisie whose
members hold mortgage on peasant farms
§ When peasants see the fight between the party of Order (representing
bankers) and Louis Bonaparte, they mistakenly believe Louis Bonaparte must be
on their side, especially since he is also in debt
§ The lumpenproletariat correctly believes Louis Bonaparte will expand the
army and give them employment
Marx’s
explanation
§ 42-3: “The proletarian party appears as an appendage of the
petty-bourgeois-democratic party. It is betrayed and dropped by the latter....
The democratic party, in its turn, leans on the shoulders of the
bourgeois-republican party. The bourgeois republicans no sooner believe
themselves well established than they shake off the troublesome comrade and
support themselves on the shoulders of the party of Order. The party of Order
hunches its shoulders, lets the bourgeois republicans tumble and throws itself
on the shoulders of armed force. It fancies it is still sitting on its
shoulders when, one fine morning, it perceives that the shoulders have
transformed themselves into bayonets. Each party kicks from behind at that
driving forward and in front leans over toward the party which presses
backwards. No wonder that in this
ridiculous posture it loses its balance and, having made the inevitable
grimaces, collapses with curious capers.
The revolution thus moves in a descending line.”
Theoretical
Practices
§ Three
stylizations: fact, question, answer
§ Hypothesis
§ Construction
of a dependent variable by contrast to an ideal of natural order
§ Construction
of an independent variable
§ Selection of
a unit of analysis with an attendant conception of human motivation and an
attendant resolution of the problem of collective action
The
Stylized Fact in Marx
§ How does
Marx reduce complexity enough that he knows what to explain?
§ (21): “Three
main periods are unmistakable: the February period; May 4, 1848, to May 28, 1849: the period
of the constitution of the republic…; May 28, 1849, to December 2, 1851: the period
of the constitutional republic [emphasis deleted].”
Stylized
Question
§ “It remains
to be explained how a nation of thirty-six millions can be surprised and
delivered unresisting into captivity by three chevaliers d'industrie.”
§ Notice the
similarity to Weber’s “It will be our task to investigate…”
§ How can a
few rule many?
Marx’s
Stylized Answer
§ (25): “in countries with… a developed formation of classes… the republic
signifies in general only the political form of revolution of bourgeois society
and not its conservative form of life“ [emphasis deleted]
–
If classes “have not yet become
fixed, but constantly change and interchange in constant flux,” a republic may
endure
–
“republic” here refers to what we
would call democracy, i.e., elected government
–
“conservative form of life” is
permanency
Marx’s
Hypothesis
§ (25):
“Society is saved just as often as the circle of its rulers contracts, as a
more exclusive interest is maintained against a wider one.”
§ Two
variables:
– Whether
society is saved: “Property, family, religion, order.”
– Whether the
circle of rulers contracts and exclusive interests displace wider ones
The
three periods
§ In the first period of the provisional government “the dynastic opposition,
the republican bourgeoisie, the democratic-republican petty bourgeoisie, and
the social-democratic workers, provisionally found their place in the
democratic government.” (21)
§ In the second period occurs “the domination and the disintegration of the
republican faction of the bourgeoisie” (27)
§ In the third period occurs “the class struggle” between the party
representing “the two great factions” of the bourgeoisie” and the party
representing the petty bourgeoisie allied with the proletarians (46)
Marx’s
Ideal of Natural Order
§ Very hard to see in Marx
§ But 20-21: “Universal suffrage seems to have survived only for a moment,
in order that with its own hand it may make its last will and testament before
the eyes of the world and declare in the name of the people itself: All that
exists deserves to perish.”
§ Or again 43-44: “the most motley mixture of crying contradictions…the
collective will of the nation, as often as it speaks through universal
suffrage, seeking its appropriate expression through the inveterate enemies of
the interests of the masses.”
§ People who have the right to vote should not vote to surrender it
§ Behavior should not be self-canceling
Marx’s
Dependent Variable
§ The ability of an elected president to retain popular support while
abolishing elections
§ In an ideal world, this could never occur
§ It happens in France
§ All the classes are in the original provisional government but in the end
only the rural petty bourgeoisie and the lumpenproletariat remain
§ The number of rulers is reduced to “the hero Crapulinski” (26) and
broader interests have been replaced by more exclusive ones
Marx’s
Independent Variable
§ How does preservation of property motivate otherwise apparently
self-contradictory behavior?
§ The answer is the concept that later to become known as “false
consciousness”
– I cannot find this phrase in 18th Brumaire
–
But both the petty bourgeoisie and
the bourgeoisie fall into traps of their own making
–
The proletariat could avoid the traps
but fails to when it ties itself to the petty bourgeoisie
Property
and Consciousness
§ Understanding
of the political situation varies according to ownership of property
§ 47: “Upon
the different forms of property, upon the social conditions of existence, rises
an entire superstructure of distinct and peculiarly formed sentiments,
illusions, modes of thought and views of life.”
False
Consciousness
§ Because
class consciousness seeks to preserve property but property cannot endure in
long run, awareness based on property must be false
§ The petty
bourgeoisie goes out of business in the short run and consequently its
consciousness is particular self-deceptive
Petty
bourgeois consciousness
§ 49: In “the so-called social-democratic party.... democratic-republican
institutions are demanded as a means, not of doing away with the two extremes,
labor and capital, but of weakening their antagonism and transforming it into
harmony.”
§ 50: “one must not form the narrow-minded notion that the petty
bourgeoisie, on principle, wishes to enforce an egoistic class interest. Rather
it believes that the special conditions of its emancipation are the general
conditions within the frame of which alone modern society can be saved and the
class struggle avoided [emphasis deleted].”
§ 54: “the democrat, because he represents the petty bourgeoisie, that is,
a transition class, in which the interests of two classes are simultaneously
mutually blunted, imagines himself elevated above class antagonism
generally."
Bourgeois
consciousness
§ Bourgeois property outlasts petty bourgeois forms and therefore bourgeois
consciousness is more realistic but still flawed:
§ 65-66: “The bourgeoisie had a true insight into the fact that... all the
so-called bourgeois liberties and organs of progress attacked and menaced its
class rule at its social foundation and its political summit simultaneously....
What the bourgeoisie did not grasp...was the logical conclusion that its own
parliamentary regime, that its political rule in general, was now also bound to
meet with the general verdict of condemnation... its own interests dictate that
it should be delivered from the danger of its own rule... in order to preserve
its social power intact, its political power must be broken..”
Peasant and Lumpen Consciousness
§ 124:
“[Peasants’] representative must at the same time appear as their master... as
an unlimited governmental power who protects them against the other classes.”
§ 132: “But,
above all, Bonaparte looks upon himself... as the representative of the lumpenproletariat....
whose prime consideration is to benefit itself.”
Proletarian
consciousness
§
This topic receives little discussion
in 18th Brumaire
§ 23: By May 15, 1848, “Blanqui and his comrades, the real leaders of the
proletarian party,” had been removed “from the public stage for the entire
duration of the cycle we are considering.”
§ 22: Blanqui tried to declare “a social republic…, “the general content of
the modern revolution,” but this declaration “was in singular contradiction to
everything that, with the material available, with the degree of education
attained by the masses, under the given circumstances and relations, could be
immediately realized in practice.”
§ 50: The suppression of Blanqui handed the proletariat over to leadership
by “some supernumeraries from the working class and some socialist
secretarians” by whose entry into the Montagne “from the social demands
of the proletariat the revolutionary point was broken off.”
§ The proletariat is capable of a true understanding of “the general
content of modern revolution” but its degree of education was inadequate in
1848.
Illusions
§ Consciousness varies by class but all classes (except potentially the
proletariat) act on illusions
§ Meaning does not matter
§ 47: “as in private life one differentiates between what a man thinks and
says of himself and what he really is and does, so in historical struggles one
must distinguish still more the phrases and fancies of parties from their real
organism and their real interests, their conception of themselves, from their
reality.”
Unit
of Analysis and Motivation
§ Marx proposes to analyze classes, not meaning or individuals
§ 50-51: “What makes [some persons] representatives... [of a class is not
membership in the class but] the fact that in their minds they do not get
beyond the limits which the latter do not get beyond in life, that they are
consequently driven, theoretically, to the same problems and solutions to which
material interest and social position drive the latter practically. This is, in
general, the relationship between the political and literary representatives of
a class and the class they represent.”
§ Human behavior is “driven” and driven by “material interest and social
position”
§ Individuals may deviate from their own class membership
–
Marx himself was a lumpenproletarian
who thought himself a “political and literary representative” of the
proletariat
–
He was supported financially by
Friedrich Engels, a bourgeois who also considered himself a political and
literary representative of the proletariat
§ Individuals only appear to matter when they act as a class does
Collective
Action
§ Because Marx
claims that class position determines significance of individual action, cost
calculation by individuals does not matter
§ Problem of
collective action among individuals does not arise
§ Individuality
is a product of property relations
Class
Shapes Individuality
§ 47: “Upon the different forms of property, upon the social conditions of
existence, rises an entire superstructure of distinct and peculiarly formed
sentiments, illusions, modes of thought and views of life. The entire class
creates and forms them out of its material foundations and out of the
corresponding social relations. The single individual, who derives them through
tradition and upbringing, may imagine that they form the real motives and the
starting point of his activity.”
The
Irrelevance of Individuals
§ 15: “Men
make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do
not make it under circumstances of their own choosing, but under circumstances
directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past.”
Collective
Action among Classes
§ Collective action takes the form of class coalitions whose composition
determines political institutions
§ Louis Bonaparte’s dictatorship, or “empire,” is a coalition between the
rural petty bourgeoisie and the lumpenproletariat
§ A republic with a restricted franchise Is an instrument of the
bourgeoisie ruling as a coalition of one
§ A universal male franchise is a coalition between the bourgeoisie and the
urban petty bourgeoisie, in which the proletariat may also participate
§ A provisional government in France was a coalition of all classes
including the proletariat, but because of conflict over property, such a
coalition could not endure
§ As the class coalition changes, political institutions change
Integration
§ Marx offers
two theories of democracy
§ (1)
democracy happens where classes are not fixed as individuals frequently move in
and out of various classes (the early United States)
§ (2)
democracy is a temporary alliance of the proletariat with parts of the
bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie
Coalition
Theories
§ Marx’s
second theory has been used by Guillermo to explain the alternation between
dictatorship and democracy in Argentina, where he sees democracy forming when
urban capital allies with the proletariat against rural capital
§ This theory
has also been generalized to “groups” by Adam Przeworski
A
Coalition of All Groups
§ Marx argues that democracy begins to fail in France when the proletariat
is expelled from politics
§ Prezeworski generalizes this argument
to a claim that democracy persists in general as long as no group is
expelled
§ Przeworski sees two possibilities for democracy to fail
–
A successful seizure of power by some
group
–
An unsuccessful seizure of power by
some group
Composition
of Democracies
§ “Democratic
societies are populated not by freely acting individuals but by collective
organizations.”
– Adam
Przeworski, Democracy and the Market (New York: Cambridge, 1991), 12.
§ This is an
astonishing claim, but notice direct line of descent from Marx’s reduction of
French population to five groups and Marx’s denial of individuality
Collective
Action
§ As in Marx,
Przeworski makes this claim to avoid the problem of collective action
§ Why
cost-benefit calculators would not vote: there are too many voters for each
voter to know how the others will vote
§ By
definition, there are fewer groups of voters than there are voters
§ If the
number of groups is few enough, the groups may know how the others will vote
Democratic
Failure
§ Przeworski sees two possibilities for democracy to fail
–
A successful seizure of power by some
group
–
An unsuccessful seizure of power by
some group
§ A group that succeeds eliminates the other groups and introduces its own
dictatorship
§ A group that fails is eliminated and one or more of the other groups
forms a dictatorship
§ Democracies persist when no group thinks it can succeed in seizing power
Marx
as a Point of Departure
§ Marx himself
is a theorist of political institutions as a superstructure built on a
foundation of economics
§ But Marx
provides clues to an alternative theory
§ Look at his
description of parliament
Parliament
as Talk
§ The bourgeoisie deserts parliament, Marx says, because it fears that
parliament will appeal for popular support against Bonaparte
§ 66: “The parliamentary regime
lives by discussion; how shall it forbid discussion? Every interest, every social institution, is
here transformed into general ideas, debated as ideas; how shall any interest,
any institution, sustain itself above thought and impose itself as an article
of faith? The struggle of the orators on the platform evokes the struggle of
the scribblers of the press; the debating club in parliament is necessarily
supplemented by the debating clubs in the salons and the pothouses; the
representatives, who constantly appeal to public opinion, give public opinion
the right to speak its real mind in petitions.
The parliamentary regimes leaves everything to the decision of
majorities; how shall the great majorities outside parliament not want to
decide?”
Talk
and Democracy
§ True to himself, Marx limits the scope of this possibility: “As long as
the rule of the bourgeois class had not been organized completely…”
§ But his passage asserts that the example of parliamentary talk inspires
popular demands for the right to decide by voting
§ Marx claims that economic interest outweighs these popular demands
§ Does that claim need to be true?