The Brumaire 18 by Luis Bonaparte , the work of Karl Marx, presents an analysis as interesting as it is timeless. Bonaparte was elected president of France by universal suffrage in 1848. However, unable to re-election by the Constitution, in December 1851 he gave a self-coup and, shortly after, established the Second Empire reigning as Napoleon III.
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Marx alleges that in that period the workers conquered suffrage, but their wage and economic demands made the bourgeois go to Luis Bonaparte to separate them from the system. Therefore, for Marx the bourgeoisie is always torn between two strategies. On the one hand, seek a compromise with the workers if they follow a “social democratic” strategy and restrict their salaries in exchange for other concessions. On the other, it can appeal to the Crown and the Sword to break the workers politically, even if that may mean turning it into their hostage.
This dynamic is the foundation of many contemporary research on transitions to democracy and can be applied to the current context, when the authoritarian closure is incardinated by the extreme right. These parties are defined as authoritarian formations, with a nationalist and xenophobic discourse, and with populist strategies. A basic dimension that does not mention its economic program for good reasons. Although the extreme right emerged in the eighties and nineties with an ultra-liberal agenda, the famous "winning formula" of Kitschelt, in some countries has turned to anti-globalization and interventionist positions. This is the evolution of Le Pen father to Le Pen daughter, but far from it is a closed debate within the family (politics).
Following the Marxist thesis, the chauvinist and anti-globalization discourse would have a derivative: it would alienate the establishment. That is, it can be used to weave an alliance of working classes and middle classes around nationalism, a formula that bites right and left, but will push the elites behind traditional parties or even innovative formulas to curb it. Macronism may be a good example of this thesis.
On the contrary, if the radical right is maintained on a liberal economic agenda, certain elites can see it as a useful instrument to contain dynamics of discontent, homologizing it relatively quickly to the other conservative and liberal parties. Or, to put it another way, that since this type of extreme right does not question the market status quo or deepen it, there will be less resistance in its cultural and social proposals.
Thus, when Thuringia has opened a gap in the German dike, Brumario's thesis points to a paradox: perhaps the normalization of the extreme right depends more on its economic program, which does not define it, than on the aggressiveness of the authoritarian setback that it advocates .
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