What is Bonapartism? A reply to Révolution Permanente

Over the last ten years in France, repression against young people and workers has continued to intensify: police violence, ‘preventive’ arrests of activists, the criminalisation of trade union activity, bans on demonstrations, gatherings and meetings, etc. The repression of the Yellow Vests and the solidarity movement with Palestine are two glaring examples, but this is a serious and ongoing trend.

[Originally published in French at marxiste.org]

On the left, the observation of this trend is leading a growing number of activists to conclude that France is no longer a bourgeois-democratic regime, but a form of dictatorship or, at the very least, a transitional form between bourgeois democracy and dictatorship. This is the case, for example, of Révolution Permanente, which since 2015 – at the latest – has been repeating that we are under the imminent threat of a “Bonapartist turn”. In Marxist terminology, ‘Bonapartism’ refers specifically to a military-police dictatorship.

Unfortunately, far from clarifying the question of the nature and trajectory of the current bourgeois regime in France, the articles on the website of Révolution Permanente only serve to sow confusion. Reading them, it is difficult to understand whether these comrades believe that the ‘Bonapartist turn’ has already taken place – or whether it is still ahead of us. For example, they assert that we are living within the ‘ultra-Bonapartist framework of the Fifth Republic’, but that we must nevertheless fear a “Bonapartist leap” in the short term. On the one hand, they describe the Fifth Republic in general (from 1958 to the present day) as a ‘Bonapartist regime’; but on the other hand, they only speak of “Bonapartist tendencies” and “Bonapartist measures”. Insofar as they raise the spectre of a “new Bonapartist turn”, one must assume that a first “turn” has already taken place, but this is not very clear. In fact, it is mainly the reader who is left turning in circles after reading Révolution Permanente’s material.

Bonapartism is a complex phenomenon. To shed light on it, we must return to the fundamental ideas of Marxism, and that is what we will do here. This will allow us to understand the nature of the current regime, its trajectory and the tasks that follow for revolutionary communists.

Repression and special powers

Contrary to what the comrades of Révolution Permanente often suggest, Bonapartism cannot be reduced to the articles of a constitution, whether it be Article 49.3 or Article 16 of the current French constitution, which allows the President to grant himself ‘full powers’ in the event of a major crisis. In reality, all bourgeois regimes, even the most ‘democratic’ ones, are equipped with legislative or constitutional tools – ‘state of emergency’, ‘martial law’, etc. – allowing the ruling class to resort ‘legally’ to extraordinary measures to defend its domination.

Every state is a class state, which, in the final analysis, consists of “special bodies of armed men,” according to Engels / Image: Kristoffer Trolle, Wikimedia Commons

Similarly, repression is not a characteristic unique to Bonapartist regimes. In 1891, soldiers shot and killed nine strikers in Fourmies, in northern France. Fifteen years later, Interior Minister Georges Clemenceau deployed the army and had 146 trade unionists arrested ‘preventively’ in order to break the strike of 1 May 1906. There are many other examples of brutal repression during this period. Despite this, Marxists – including Lenin and Trotsky – considered the Third French Republic to be a bourgeois democracy.

Every state is a class state, which, in the final analysis, consists of “special bodies of armed men,” according to Engels. Their role is to defend the rule of the ruling class. Under capitalism, the state always defends the rule of the bourgeoisie. And when the need arises, even the most ‘democratic’ bourgeois regime resorts to ‘exceptional’ measures, whether martial law or violent repression. In a sense, these measures represent elements of Bonapartism, but only elements: on their own, they are not sufficient to determine the political character of a regime. In fact, there are elements of Bonapartism – more or less developed – in every bourgeois democracy.

An ‘arbiter’ between the classes

On this question, Révolution Permanente too often neglects the following idea, which is fundamental to Marxist analysis: Bonapartism is the product of a certain type of relationship between social classes, but also between the state apparatus (the ‘armed bodies of men’) and the ruling class itself. The two are closely linked, as we shall see.

In a bourgeois democracy, the state pretends to be ‘independent’ and ‘neutral’, but this is to better hide the fact that it is firmly controlled by the class whose interests it serves. The big bourgeoisie holds all the strings of the ‘democratic’ regime, from politicians to the highest civil servants, including those in the police and the army. We even see constant movement between the private sector and the highest echelons of the state: Emmanuel Macron, the banker turned president, is a good example of this.

Under certain conditions, however, the state apparatus can acquire much greater independence from the bourgeoisie. This is the case when, in one way or another, a certain balance of power is established between the social classes – for example, when, after a phase of intense mobilisation, the working class is exhausted but has not succeeded in taking power, while the ruling class is unable to continue ruling ‘as before’. As Engels wrote:

“Exceptional periods, however, occur when the warring classes are so nearly equal in forces that the state power, as apparent mediator, acquires for the moment a certain independence in relation to both.”

Taking advantage of this equilibrium between the classes in struggle, the state apparatus can free itself to a certain extent from the control of the ruling class. This type of regime is called ‘Bonapartist’, in reference to that of Napoleon Bonaparte from 1799 onwards.

A Bonapartist regime presents itself as an ‘arbiter’ between the classes and essentially rules ‘by the sword’, i.e. by means of the police and the army. It represses the labour movement, but also forces the bourgeoisie to make certain concessions. However, this regime continues to defend the fundamental interests of the capitalist class. The latter no longer directly controls the state, but nevertheless remains the economically ruling class in society. In this sense, it can be said that a Bonapartist regime emancipates itself from the control of the bourgeoisie with the aim of consolidating the rule of the bourgeoisie itself, which, for this reason, consents to it with varying degrees of enthusiasm.

Putin, de Gaulle and Pinochet

Vladimir Putin's regime is a good example of this. At the end of the 1990s, after the restoration of capitalism in the USSR, the Russian working class was paralysed by the leadership of the Communist Party, while the young Russian bourgeoisie, riddled with gangsterism, was incapable of maintaining a stable bourgeois-democratic regime. The army and security services then took matters into their own hands, under the leadership of the head of the intelligence services: Vladimir Putin. Once president, Putin brought the Russian bourgeoisie to heel and repressed certain oligarchs, with the aim of defending the fundamental interests of the ruling class and stabilising Russian capitalism.

In the 20th century, Bonapartist regimes existed in many capitalist countries. They were not all identical / Image: Révolution

In 2009, one particular incident starkly illustrated what a Bonapartist regime is all about. Following the 2008 financial crisis, a company owned by oligarch Oleg Deripaska announced the closure of one of its factories. Its workers went on strike; their mobilisation could have signalled a general movement of the Russian working class. Vladimir Putin then summoned the owners, including Deripaska, to a meeting held at the factory in question, which was broadcast on television. Deripaska was called “incompetent” by the Russian president, who behaved like a headmaster facing a disruptive schoolboy. Humiliated in front of millions of Russians, the oligarch was forced to sign an agreement on the spot, guaranteeing the jobs that had been threatened. Through this staged performance, Putin was attacking one boss in order to defend the fundamental interests of the entire bourgeoisie. By playing the role of arbiter between the classes, he sent the following message to the Russian working class: what is the point of striking if the Kremlin's ‘strong man’ defends your jobs?

In the 20th century, Bonapartist regimes existed in many capitalist countries. They were not all identical. Between 1958 and 1968, General Charles de Gaulle led a particularly weak Bonapartist regime in France. In May 1958, with the Algerian War at a stalemate, a group of generals supported by ultra-nationalists who wanted to keep Algeria French staged a coup in Algiers and threatened to “drop paratroopers on Paris” and overthrow the Republic. In mainland France, the Stalinist leaders of the French Communist Party were under pressure from their grassroots supporters, who were prepared to take up arms against the leaders of the coup. Caught between these two threats – from the far right and the far left – the bourgeoisie accepted De Gaulle's offer to take power in order to contain both. He was thus appointed Prime Minister with extraordinary powers by the National Assembly on 1 June. Having defused the coup by the generals in Algiers (with whom he had played a kind of double game) and thus given the PCF leaders a pretext for demobilising the working class, De Gaulle established a new Republic at the head of which he played the role of ‘referee’.

As we have seen above, Révolution Permanente emphasises the “ultra-Bonapartist framework” of the Fifth Republic, concocted by De Gaulle. But this misses the point: the ‘weakness’ of the working class at that time was very relative and temporary, so that the Gaullist regime could not completely eliminate all the democratic rights of the workers, let alone ban the powerful French Communist Party or the CGT. The repression of the workers' movement by the Gaullist regime therefore remained roughly comparable in intensity to that which had prevailed under the Fourth Republic before 1958. In fact, the Gaullist regime depended to a large extent on the complicity of the Stalinist leaders of the PCF – in a context where the Soviet bureaucracy in Moscow viewed the Gaullist regime's official anti-Americanism very favourably. The regime also benefited from a particularly favourable economic situation, with French capitalism still booming at the height of the postwar boom, known as the ‘Trente Glorieuses’ (‘the thirty glorious years’).

The Bonapartist character of De Gaulle's regime stemmed from the conditions of its birth through a coup d'état, which had enabled the state apparatus to free itself from the control of the usual representatives of the bourgeoisie, its professional politicians and bankers. They were replaced in power by military figures such as De Gaulle himself, ambitious bureaucrats such as Maurice Couve de Murville, and genuine political ‘adventurers’ with links to the criminal underworld such as Charles Pasqua. Similarly, the ‘official’ services were challenged by a host of more or less unofficial networks: the police were backed up by the Service d'Action Civique (Civic Action Service) – the regime's real political police – while the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was challenged by ‘diplomatic cells’ that De Gaulle personally directed through ‘shadow men’ such as Jacques Foccart. In short, the ruling class had lost control of various mechanisms through which it normally ensured control of the state apparatus.

By contrast, General Pinochet's Bonapartist regime in Chile was an extremely brutal dictatorship. The coup d'état of 11 September 1973 was the result of the paralysis of the Chilean working class after three years of revolutionary mobilisations. Chilean workers could have taken power if the social-democratic and Stalinist leaders had not opposed them with all their might. In the wake of the coup, the Chilean generals subjected the workers to a regime of terror comparable to that of a fascist state: all workers' organisations were banned, tens of thousands of people were arrested and thousands were summarily executed.

A ‘strong’ regime?

A Bonapartist regime can appear very solid; indeed, it does everything it can to appear so. But in reality, it depends on maintaining a more or less precarious balance between the classes. As Trotsky pointed out in his masterful History of the Russian Revolution:

“If you stick two forks into a cork symmetrically, it will, under very great oscillations from side to side, keep its balance even on a pin point: that is the mechanical model of the Bonapartist superarbiter. The degree of solidity of such a power, setting aside international conditions, is determined by the stability of equilibrium of the two antagonistic classes within the country.”

A Bonapartist regime can appear very solid; indeed, it does everything it can to appear so. But in reality, it depends on maintaining a more or less precarious balance between the classes / Image: Municipal Archives of Toulouse, Wikimedia CommonsWhen this balance is upset by a resurgence of class struggle, the Bonapartist regime can quickly collapse. Thus, the Gaullist regime was swept away by the general strike of May-June 1968. Only the betrayal of the leaders of the PCF and the CGT at the time prevented the working class from taking power, allowing the bourgeoisie to regain control of the situation. It retained the “ultra-Bonapartist framework of the Fifth Republic” (according to the superficial formula of Révolution Permanente), but the upheaval in the class balance of forces forced the French bosses to pursue their reactionary policies within the framework of a fairly classical bourgeois democracy, led by the investment banker Georges Pompidou. Since then, the French ruling class has always relied on bourgeois democracy as its instrument of rule.

Bonapartist dictatorships far more brutal than that of General de Gaulle were also swept away by mass mobilisations. In South Korea, the generals ruled for nearly three decades – from 1961 to 1988 – subjecting the working class to a regime of terror. In 1980, an uprising was crushed in blood in the city of Gwangju; between 600 and 2,000 people were massacred by the army. But this event was a harbinger of the awakening of the South Korean working class. After years of intense class struggle, the generals were forced to transfer power to ‘normal’ bourgeois politicians, who nevertheless retained many of the legislative measures put in place under the dictatorship.

The role of the reformists

As Marxist Ted Grant explained in 1946, bourgeois-democratic regimes “all have certain specific features in common”. He continues:

“These are the traits which are decisive in determining the Marxist classification. All have independent workers' organisations: trade unions, parties, clubs, etc, with the rights which go with them. The right to strike, organise, the right to vote, free speech, press, etc, and the other rights which have been the by-product of the class struggle of the proletariat in the past. (Here we might add that the loss of this or that right would not, in itself, be decisive in our analysis of a regime. It is the totality of the relations which is the determining factor.)”

He then adds a decisive remark: “Where [workers’] organisations exist and play a powerful role (in France and Italy they are stronger than they have ever been) the bourgeoisie rules through the leaders and top layers of these organisations.”

As Marxist Ted Grant explained in 1946, bourgeois-democratic regimes “all have certain specific features in common” / Image: RCI

To determine the nature of the current regime in France, we need only ask the question: what factor has played the main role in keeping Macron in power since 2017? Is it the use of force or the exhaustion of the working class? Neither. The decisive factor was the policy of systematic sabotage of large-scale working-class mobilisations by the reformist leaders – and first and foremost by those of the trade union confederations.

For example, it is true that the Macron government brutally repressed the Yellow Vests movement. But the momentum generated by this magnificent movement could have led to the overthrow of the Macron government if the leaders of the trade union movement had thrown all their forces into the battle and put a broad movement of rolling strikes on the agenda. As we wrote in December 2018, the Yellow Vests movement placed the country “on the brink of a revolutionary crisis”. This is precisely what terrified the reformist trade union leaders. Instead of mobilising the working class, they tacitly approved the repression of the Yellow Vests and did everything they could to keep as many workers as possible out of the movement.

The same can be said of the powerful movement against Macron’s pension ‘reform’ in 2023 – and other similar movements over the past 20 years. The deliberate and calculated conservatism of reformist leaders is a central feature of bourgeois democracy, in France as elsewhere.

Contrary to the claims of Révolution Permanente, the French big bourgeoisie is not prepared – for the moment – to embark on a ‘Bonapartist leap’ that would lead to a military-police dictatorship. And for good reason: far from being exhausted, the working class still has considerable reserves of strength and militancy. The majority of wage earners have not participated in the mobilisations of recent years, precisely because of the conservative policies of the trade union leaderships, which fear that a movement that is too massive will escape their control. If it attempted to establish a Bonapartist dictatorship, the French bourgeoisie would provoke a potentially uncontrollable mobilisation of workers.

This is exactly what happened in South Korea last December. President Yoon's declaration of martial law provoked an explosive movement. The masses spontaneously took to the streets to block military convoys, while the leaders of the main trade union confederation were forced to call a general strike under the pressure of events. The overwhelming majority of the South Korean bourgeoisie had to condemn the coup attempt. The US imperialists did the same. All understood that it is dangerous to provoke the powerful South Korean working class in this way. From their point of view, it would be better to rely on the reformist and petty-bourgeois leaders of the Democratic Party and the reformist trade unions. As we write these lines, the South Korean bourgeoisie is struggling to calm the masses, whose defiance and militancy have been stimulated by Yoon's Bonapartist adventure. These events have been closely watched by the ruling classes around the world, including the French bourgeoisie.

A ‘broader’ democratic regime?

We are not saying that a Bonapartist regime is impossible in France. If the working class fails to take power in the next few years, the conditions for such a regime will eventually be created. But these conditions do not exist at this stage. By constantly raising the spectre of a ‘Bonapartist turn’ in the short term, the leaders of Révolution Permanente are seriously misjudging the dynamics of the class struggle and the immediate prospects arising from it.

As is often the case, this error is linked to a lack of confidence in the ability of the workers to take power and transform society. Take, for example, one of many articles published by Révolution Permanente in April 2023, entitled: ‘Faced with authoritarian radicalisation, for a radical democratic response from below’. After emphasising that communism is the “only progressive and viable response to the crisis” of capitalism, the author of this article, Juan Chingo, wrote the following:

"But the reality is that we are not yet in a position to replace Macron with ‘a government of workers, the popular classes and all the exploited and oppressed, breaking with capitalism’. The majority of workers, despite their growing hatred of the existing institutions, still stand on the ground of bourgeois democracy. The urgency of the moment requires a determined fight against the bourgeois project of an ever more authoritarian state directed against all the exploited and oppressed. But to regain all that has been lost in the authoritarian radicalisation, we cannot return to the parliamentary combinations of the Third or Fourth Republic, as proposed by the supporters of France Insoumise. Rather than hoping for a return to renewed imperialist democracies, we must draw inspiration from what made the French Revolution so radical, starting with 1793. (...) A broader democratic regime, capable of ending the growing separation between the rulers and the ruled, where the former monopolise decision-making power during their term of office, thus excluding voters from public affairs, would accelerate the political education of workers and the popular classes and facilitate the struggle for a workers‘ government.”

This is followed by a detailed description of this “broader democratic regime”: abolition of the Senate and the presidential office; election of deputies for two years and by full proportional representation; the possibility of recalling deputies, whose allowances would not exceed those of a skilled worker, etc.

By constantly raising the spectre of a ‘Bonapartist turn’ in the short term, the leaders of Révolution Permanente are seriously misjudging the dynamics of the class struggle and the immediate prospects arising from it / Image: public domain

All this is very nice, but there is a big problem: this “broader democratic regime”, which Révolution Permanente makes the central axis of its programme, would still be a bourgeois regime, a regime based on private ownership of the means of production, so that the state would still be at the service of the capitalists. It would still be based on the gulf between rulers and ruled, capitalists and workers, billionaires and minimum wage earners.

As Lenin pointed out in The State and Revolution:

“We are in favor of a democratic republic as the best form of state for the proletariat under capitalism. But we have no right to forget that wage slavery is the lot of the people even in the most democratic bourgeois republic. Furthermore, every state is a “special force” for the suppression of the oppressed class. Consequently, every state is not ‘free’ and not a ‘people’s state’.”

This also applies, of course, to the “broader democratic regime” that the leaders of Révolution Permanente are calling for.

Once again, this opportunist error stems from a lack of confidence in the working class. Since the majority of workers “still stand on the ground of bourgeois democracy,” they should be called on to fight not for the expropriation of the big capitalists, but only – as a first step – for a ‘broader’ bourgeois democracy. This amounts to renouncing the basic duty of Marxists, which is to always link partial demands, democratic or otherwise, to the necessity of overthrowing capitalism and reorganising society on socialist foundations.

It is true that the majority of workers are not yet ready to fight for the programme of socialist revolution. Only in a revolutionary situation, by definition, can the working masses embark on this path and take power, on one condition: that they have a sufficiently strong revolutionary party, with deep roots in the working class. This party must be built well before the majority of workers turn towards the seizure of power, and it must be built amongst the most conscious layers of our class – on the basis of the Marxist programme, methods and ideas. Révolution Permanente does the exact opposite. This small organisation claims to address the “majority of workers”, and to this end it discards the flag of October 1917, replaces it with the (glorious but bourgeois) flag of 1793, and campaigns for a “broader” bourgeois “democratic regime” – in short, it sinks into the quagmire of opportunism.

Faced with the strengthening of repression and elements of Bonapartism within bourgeois democracy, revolutionary communists must energetically defend all the democratic rights of the working class and emphasise the enormous responsibility of the reformist leaders of the workers' movement for undermining these rights. However, we must never harbour illusions or allow the slightest ambiguity: only socialist revolution will bring about genuine democracy, in which workers will not only be able to elect their political representatives, but also control and plan the economy, finally guaranteeing that the needs of the entire population are met.