UK’s Eighteenth Brumaire. Book review "Alt-Finance: How the City of London Bought Democracy", by Marlène Benquet and Théo Bourgeron (2022) - Sciences Po Accéder directement au contenu
Article Dans Une Revue (Compte-Rendu De Lecture) Journal of Cultural Economy Année : 2023

UK’s Eighteenth Brumaire. Book review "Alt-Finance: How the City of London Bought Democracy", by Marlène Benquet and Théo Bourgeron (2022)

Résumé

Why could we see the Brexit series as Britain’s 18th Brumaire? Not only because of Marx’s famous quip that ‘all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice (…) the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce’ ([Citation1852] Citation1907).Footnote1 Indeed, the Brexit adventure had much more of the appeal of farce than Louis-Napoleon’s bloody coup, which left more than a thousand republicans dead in Paris and southeastern France. In the end, it aired many farcically comic episodes: a failed Tory plebiscite nailed down by the Tory party itself, a competition for the most burlesque slogans (‘Let’s give our NHS the £350 million the EU takes every week’), Brexit leaders deliberately embracing the role of political clowns (even through their haircuts), a waltz of Tory prime ministers and parliamentary intrigues, and helpless gesticulations by the Speaker of the House of Commons. However, there is a more profound reason. In their provocative book Alt-Finance, Marlène Benquet and Théo Bourgeron reload one of Marx’s most insightful intuitions: major political events in the bourgeois regime can be read as the result of conflicts between different factions of capital. During the first half of the 19th century, according to Marx, the French upper classes were divided into factions supporting different political regimes: pro-Bourbon landowners versus pro-Orleans industrial and financial bourgeoisie. Under the Second Republic, their disorderly reunification in a Party of Order paved the way for Louis-Napoleon’s personal and populist adventure: he branded his name and sold illusions to various social groups, offering nothing but the old Napoleonic prosperity to small-holding peasants or myriad military jobs to the lumpen proletariat. (First paragraph)
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hal-04224724 , version 1 (02-10-2023)

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Olivier Godechot. UK’s Eighteenth Brumaire. Book review "Alt-Finance: How the City of London Bought Democracy", by Marlène Benquet and Théo Bourgeron (2022). Journal of Cultural Economy, 2023, pp.1-4. ⟨10.1080/17530350.2023.2186922⟩. ⟨hal-04224724⟩
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