Re: Variations of the capitalist state

*Variations of the capitalist state: Part 3*

So, what is Bonapartism anyway?

I don’t think there is a commonly agree upon definition of Bonapartism to this day.

In this discussion, Anthony T. wrote,

“Second, the claim is that the United States never needed Bonapartism because a limited Bonapartism is built into the Constitution. This argument mistakes the category. Bonapartism in the Eighteenth Brumaire is not a quantum of executive power inscribed in a founding document. It is a determinate relation among classes: *a bourgeoisie that surrenders political rule to preserve social rule* , a mass of atomized producers who must be represented because they cannot represent themselves, and a swollen apparatus that acquires a material interest of its own. Executive autonomy is the symptom, not the definition. If a strong elected executive were sufficient, Jackson, Lincoln, Wilson, and Roosevelt would all qualify, and the term would sort nothing.

“What *distinguishes Lincoln's war powers or Roosevelt's emergency administration is that the autonomy was delegated by a bourgeoisie that retained the power to revoke it* and was exercised through an apparatus staffed by career officials whose tenure did not depend on personal loyalty.”

I don’t think this definition holds up very well.

To start with, the French bourgeoisie retained the power to revoke the power of Louis Napolean, and they did in 1870. True, they had a little help from Bismark, Wilhem I and the Paris Commune. Also true, the guy stayed in power for 22 years.

If Bonapartism is an irrevocable transfer of power to a dictator, how many cases have there ever been in history? Franco in Spain and Salazar in Portugal? Hitler? Well, he was revoked, but not by the German bourgeoisie. Mussolini? He was revoked by the Italian partisans. However, most of the cases usually classed as Bonapartism are not these sorts of lifelong dictatorships. Certainly not the ones Trotsky classified as Bonapartist at the end of the Weimar Republic.

In Anthony T.’s July 4, 2026 ( https://tempestmag.org/2026/07/patrimonial-bonapartism/ ) article ( https://tempestmag.org/category/article/ ) Patrimonial Bonapartism: Origins, comparisons, and the American conjuncture , he included a long description of the definition of Bonapartism by Nicos Poulantzas.

“For Poulantzas, the bourgeois state always exhibits a relative autonomy from the dominant class, because it must organize the class as a whole against the centrifugal tendencies of its competing fractions. *Bonapartism, then, refers to a period in which the relative autonomy of the state becomes intensified.* During this time, the executive concentrates power, parliamentary mediation breaks down, and the state apparatus becomes the primary site of conflict among class fractions. In his late work, Poulantzas proposed that this had become the normal form of the developed capitalist state under late capitalism, a regime he called “authoritarian statism,” characterized by the decline of parliamentary institutions, the concentration of power in the executive, the fusion of party and state, and the decline of formal legal procedure (Poulantzas 1978). In this account, authoritarian statism is described as Bonapartism that has become permanent and pervasive, serving as the underlying tone of advanced capitalist rule rather than merely as an expression of a crisis episode.”

In other words, for Poulantzas, permanent and pervasive Bonapartism was exercised through an apparatus staffed by career officials whose tenure did not depend on personal loyalty. Otherwise, it would make no sense to say that it was normal form of the developed capitalist state under late capitalism.

In Bonapartism and Fascism (July 1934), Leon Trotsky described Bonapartism as a state form transitional between electoral bourgeois rule and fascist rule. He wrote, “A government which raises itself above the nation is not, however, suspended in air. The true axis of the present government passes through the police, the bureaucracy, the military clique. It is a military-police dictatorship with which we are confronted, barely concealed with the decorations of parliamentarism. But a government of the saber as the judge arbiter of the nation – that’s just what Bonapartism is.”

In other words, in Trotsky’s view, Franco, Salazar, Hitler and Mussolini were all something different than Bonapartism.

Here is a proposal for a definition of Bonapartism that draws on Trotsky and Poulanatzas:

Bonapartism is a transitory, authoritarian, type of government in capitalist states in which the relative autonomy of the state becomes intensified.

This definition is relative to the preceding political period, is not absolute and outside of history, and is useful for categorizing various temporary authoritarian capitalist governments like those at the end of the Weimar Republic, like the recently defeated government of Victor Orban in Hungary, and like the current government of Donald J. Trump in the United States.


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