The essay discusses the French coup of 1851 in which Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte assumed dictatorial powers. It shows Marx in his form as a social and political historian, treating actual historical events from the viewpoint of his materialist conception of history. Along with Marx's contemporary writings on English politics, the Eighteenth Brumaire is a principal source for understanding Marx's theory of the capitalist state.[1] It also shows more criticism of the proletariat than might be associated with his other work, referring to the bureaucracy as a "giant parasitic body" and describing widespread perceptions of the proletariat as a "party of anarchy, socialism, and communism," a party paradoxically established on precepts of an oppositional "party of order."