that fifty and odd years later similar events aided his nephew, Louis
Bonaparte, to take a similar step with a similar result, gives the name
to this work--"The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte."

As to the other terms and allusions that occur, the following sketch
will suffice:

Upon the overthrow of the first Napoleon came the restoration of the
Bourbon throne (Louis XVIII, succeeded by Charles X). In July, 1830, an
uprising of the upper tier of the bourgeoisie, or capitalist class--the
aristocracy of finance--overthrew the Bourbon throne, or landed
aristocracy, and set up the throne of Orleans, a younger branch of the
house of Bourbon, with Louis Philippe as king. From the month in which
this revolution occurred, Louis Philippe's monarchy is called the "July
Monarchy." In February, 1848, a revolt of a lower tier of the capitalist
class--the industrial bourgeoisie--against the aristocracy of finance,
in turn dethroned Louis Philippe. The affair, also named from the month
in which it took place, is the "February Revolution". "The Eighteenth
Brumaire" starts with that event.

Despite the inapplicableness to our affairs of the political names and
political leadership herein described, both these names and leaderships
are to such an extent the products of an economic-social development
that has here too taken place with even greater sharpens, and they have
their present or threatened counterparts here so completely, that, by
the light of this work of Marx', we are best enabled to understand our
own history, to know whence we came, and whither we are going and how to
conduct ourselves.

D.D.L. New York, Sept. 12, 1897