“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