Ann Talbot on Ted Grant:
In 1794 Robespierre was overthrown on 9 Thermidor and power shifted to more conservative Jacobins who relied for support on propertied sections of the third estate. In 1799 Bonaparte seized power in the coup d’état of 18 Brumaire on behalf of the wealthiest sections of the French bourgeoisie. But neither of those regimes threatened the essential shift which had taken place in property relations. They remained defenders of bourgeois property rights and in that sense retained a certain progressive character in relation to the feudal absolutist regimes that still dominated Europe.
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2006/09/gra2-s28.html
Socialism does not develop in the same way as capitalism. It has to be built consciously. Thus the Stalinist regime exposed the proletarian revolution to dangers that Bonaparte did not present to the bourgeois revolution in France.
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2006/09/gra2-s28.html
The process of degeneration in the Soviet Union could not extend infinitely. At some point the process of degeneration identified by Trotsky had to lead to the restoration of capitalism if a political revolution did not overthrow the Stalinist bureaucracy.
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2006/09/gra2-s28.html
In fact, Marxists such as Lenin and Trotsky argued that bourgeois-democratic tasks could only be accomplished by the revolution of the proletariat. Marx emphasized that the political progress brought about by the French revolution did not come from the bourgeoisie but despite its final victory. The restoration of the Bourbon monarchy and the rise of the Bonaparte family in fact represented the failure of the peasantry to conduct a revolution in its own interests and the necessity of a proletarian-led revolution to achieve democratic as well as socialist tasks.
Karl Marx from 18 Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte:
“Historical tradition gave rise to the French peasants‘ belief in the miracle that a man named Napoleon would bring all glory back to them. And there turned up an individual who claims to be that man because he bears the name Napoleon, in consequence of the Code Napoleon, which decrees: ‘Inquiry into paternity is forbidden.’ After a twenty-year vagabondage and a series of grotesque adventures the legend is consummated, and the man becomes Emperor of the French. The fixed idea of the nephew was realized because it coincided with the fixed idea of the most numerous class of the French people.” -Karl Marx from 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
“But what is now ruining the French peasant is his small holding itself, the division of the land and the soil, the property form which Napoleon consolidated in France. It is exactly these material conditions which made the feudal peasant a small-holding peasant and Napoleon an emperor.” -Karl Marx from 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
“Therefore the interests of the peasants are no longer, as under Napoleon, in accord with, but are now in opposition to bourgeois interests, to capital. Hence they find their natural ally and leader in the urban proletariat, whose task it is to overthrow the bourgeois order. But ‘strong and unlimited government’ – and this is the second ‘Napoleonic idea’ that the second Napoleon has to carry out – is called upon to defend this ‘material order’ by force. This ‘material order’ also serves, in all Bonaparte‘s proclamations, as the slogan against the rebellious peasants.”
-Karl Marx from 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
But when the imperial mantle finally falls on the shoulders of Louis Bonaparte, the bronze statue of Napoleon will come crashing down from the top of the Vendôme Column.
-Karl Marx from 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
Marx correctly predicted the fall of the Vendome Column monument as a result of the return of the Bonaparte family to power. The monument represented the success of the bourgeoisie in restoring monarchy and empire on the ashes of the revolution. The Paris Commune needed to bring down the monument to show their opposition both to the French Army and the corrupt republic of the ruling class.
“The Vendôme Column was erected in Paris between 1806 and 1810 in tribute to the military victories of Napoleon I. It was made of bronze from captured enemy guns arid crowned by a statue of Napoleon; the statue was removed during the Restoration but re-erected in 1833. In the spring of 1871, by order of the Paris Commune, the Vendôme Column was destroyed as a symbol of militarism.” -Footnote from 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
The concluding words of my work: “But when the imperial mantle finally falls on the shoulders of Louis Bonaparte, the bronze statue of Napoleon will come crashing down from the top of the Vendome Column,” have already been fulfilled. Colonel Charras opened the attack on the Napoleon cult in his work on the campaign of 1815. Subsequently, and especially in the past few years, French literature has made an end of the Napoleon legend with the weapons of historical research, criticism, satire, and wit. Outside France, this violent breach with the traditional popular belief, this tremendous mental revolution, has been little noticed and still less understood.
-Karl Marx from 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, Preface to the Second Edition, 1869
Tweets with Kenny, Ted Grant Supporter:
According to Kenny, a member of Alan Woods’ own group, Woods exemplifies nano-bureaucratic opportunism, sacrificing all principles for a television appearance.
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