So far as has been evidenced here, Marx spoke about Bonapartism in connection with only one historical instance, Louis Bonaparte. There is one other notable use of the term: Trotsky applied it to the Soviet Union. A generally sympathetic academic examined this instance. From his article:
As early as 1928, Trotsky started describing the regime within this theoretical framework, as “Kerenskyism in reverse.” This model clearly framed much of his thinking on Stalinism as Trotsky would reference Soviet Bonapartism in over a hundred articles and interviews over the next dozen years. Throughout the early 1930s Trotsky repeatedly used the Bonapartist state paradigm in general terms, though, as Twiss describes, sometimes inconsistently, favouring the term “bureaucratic centrism” or referring to Bonapartism in the future tense as a potential force for the restoration of capitalism. By early 1935 he moved to a more precise definition specifically comparing the regime to the First Empire, arguing the the political conquest of Thermidor had occurred a decade earlier with the defeat of the 1924 Opposition. Yet, just as Napoleon did not “reestablish the economy of feudalism” argued Trotsky, “the social content of the dictatorship of the bureaucracy is determined by those productive relations that were created by the proletarian revolution.” – https://www.historicalmaterialism.org/trotsky-and-the-problem-of-soviet-bureaucracy/ So far, it appears that the term Bonapartism has been used mainly by Trotsky and then his followers, secondarily by liberal political scientists, and rarely by Marxist theorists. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#42069): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/42069 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/119773879/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. #4 Do not exceed five posts a day. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/13617172/21656/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
