Abstract
Its rhetorical flourishes notwithstanding, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte merits serious political & philosophical consideration. Setting two modes of revolutionary temporality alongside one another, the text illuminates the problem of revolutionary temporality in all of Marx's later work. The first mode is the temporality of hoarding, which characterizes bourgeois revolutions. The second mode is the temporality of distillation, which characterizes proletarian revolutions. I contrast these temporalities, showing the difference Marx sees between the two types of revolution, a difference that is crucial to his prescriptive project for lasting political change. Then, drawing on Georges Bataille's consideration of Stalin's regime from Vol. III of The Accursed Share, I use the slim margins of difference between the two temporalities to call Marx's contrast into question. Philosophically, the collapse of the two temporalities foreshadows Marx's return to the Hegelian logic of history in his later texts. 20 References. Adapted from the source document