This colloquium, following the publication of a new edition of "The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte" by Karl Marx, which includes two appendices previously unpublished in Spanish, features Clara Ramas San Miguel (translator of the book), Aymé Román (writer), Santiago Alba Rico (philosopher) and Valerio Rocco (director of the CBA).

In The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, Marx recounts the events that took place in France between 1848 and 1852. From the fall of Louis Philippe of Orléans and the Springtime of the Peoples, through the election of Louis Bonaparte as president, to the tensions between the executive and legislative branches that would culminate in the coup d'état of the future Napoleon III. A work imbued with critical irony and profound literary style, this is Marx's most relevant text and the best example of his work as a political commentator.

The great events of history repeat themselves, but as farce: the illustrious figures of the past return, but as buffoons. Applicable to the recurring crises of capitalism or the rise of the far right, the origin of this Marxist reflection would be the following: the tragedy of Napoleon Bonaparte's 1799 coup d'état, when the revolutionary flame had already died out, fueled the comedy of his nephew Louis Bonaparte's self-coup in 1851. Before the postmodernists, Marx already understood that the time of grand narratives had ended and that the only way to understand one's own present could be ironic.

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