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The Concepts of Bonapartism and Caesarism from Marx to Gramsci

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The Concepts of Bonapartism and Caesarism from Marx to Gramsci chapter 1 The Concepts of Bonapartism and Caesarism from Marx to Gramsci 1 The Genesis of the Category between Historiography and Political Polemics Both Bonapartism and Caesarism are neologisms that are closely connected to the French political situation of the mid-nineteenth century. As Cristina Cas- sina writes, the neologism Bonapartism appears immediately after the fall of Napo- leon I. The Treasure of the French Language [Trésor de la langue française] (1975) dates the first use of the term to 1816, quoting from a pamphlet by Paul-Louis Courier entitled Petition to both Houses [Pétition aux deux Chambres] … The word Bonapartism, in this first use, therefore served to indicate the group of those who had joined, and benefited from, the regime of Napoleon Bonaparte.1 This first usage also contributed to laying the foundations of the so-called ‘Napoleonic legend’. In the case of the term ‘Caesarism’, the first occurrence is in a text by Auguste Romieu (1800–55) entitled The Age of Caesars [L’ère des césars], written in 1850.2 With this term Romieu indicated the ‘domain of the sabre’ which he hoped would be realised shortly thereafter in France; he described a form of power based on the support of military force which ‘takes over the hereditary monarchy in particular situations of crisis’,but which, unlike this, is not hereditary.3 Originally, Romieu’s classicising neologism was distinguished from the Bonapartist phenomenon, whose main features (the coup d’État and political legitimation through a plebiscite) have little to do with Romieu’s reference to the monarchical principle, and to the conquest of political power through the 1 Cassina 2001, p. 19. 2 Romieu is also the author of another famous anti-socialist pamphlet, The Red Spectre of 1852 [Le spectre rouge de 1852], which is cited by Marx in The Eighteenth Brumaire. 3 Cervelli 1996, pp. 102 and 109. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2021 | doi:10.1163/9789004441828_002 2 chapter 1 exercise of force embedded in the concept of Caesarism.4 Very soon, however, these concepts were brought into proximity with each other. Their original meaning was quickly set aside to make room for a different and, so to speak, more general conception, which is the result of a ‘mixture’ of elements of both categories. From the early 1840s onwards, the category of Bonapartism was increas- ingly conceived of as a ‘third way’, i.e. as a form of strong but democratically legitimised government, as it emerges clearly in the works by Louis Napoleon Bonaparte (1808–73), in particular in On the Opinions and Policy of Napoleon [Des ideés napoleoniennes] (1839) and The Extinction of Pauperism [Extinction du pauperisme] (1844).5 In fact, if Napoleon I was the one from whom Bona- partism took its name, his nephew was its true theoretician. Napoleon III’s works greatly contributed to defining the Bonapartist political project, by draw- ing skilfully on both the conservative and the revolutionary tradition. He also based his politics on this Bonapartist theory. His political action began pre- cisely in those years and became fundamental in the post-1848 phase.6 The concept of Caesarism also underwent a rapid evolution. Shortly after its appearance in Romieu’s text, the expression was picked up by other thinkers and used in a different sense, which was more or less politically oriented. On the one hand, for example, Jacob Burckhardt (1818–97) makes it an almost tech- nical term, while, on the other, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1809–65) broadens its meaning several times.7 If the Swiss historian uses it in his discussion of the imperial military designations of the Constantinian age, the French socialist turns Caesarism into one of the two poles of his teleological and ‘dilemmatic’ conception of history. Proudhon interprets Caesarism as the only alternative to non-government and anarchy, as well as the only possibility of producing a revolutionary situation. It is noteworthy that Proudhon also significantly trans- forms the content of the concept: in fact, he attributes to Caesarism a ‘demo- cratic’ character, thus bringing it closer still to Bonapartism, also defined in democratic terms, although in a very peculiar way. On the other hand, through his works The General Idea of the Revolution in the Nineteenth Century [Idée gén- érale de la révolution au XIXe siècle] and The Social Revolution Demonstrated by 4 See Cervelli 1996, pp. 102–11. 5 In this context, a role was played also by the strengthening of the Napoleonic legend, follow- ing the return of Napoleon I’s ashes to his homeland. 6 On Napoleon III and on the Second Empire, see, among others, Price 1997 and Milza 2006. 7 On Burckhardt’s The Age of Constantine the Great [Die Zeit Constantins des Grossen] (pub- lished in late 1852), see Cervelli 1996, pp. 111ff. On Proudhon and his enlargement of the concept, harshly criticised by Marx, see Cervelli 1996, pp. 145ff..
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