This book should be read for its literary qualities along. The wit, style and humor is unmatched. It also serves as a primer on several key Marxian conceptions including social psychology and political ideology in its treatment of how ideology and political illusions function as self-deceptions hiding underlying motivations decades before Freud developed the concepts of the unconscious and repressed meaning; how and why under certain circumstances the ruling classes of modern capitalism opt for authoritarianism over democracy; the complex interplay of individual temperament and broad historical realities that lead most people to think that their opinions, prejudices and politics are unique expressions of themselves outside and independent from the social context in which they were formed; and the problems of a relatively late-developing and uneven form of capitalism that help explain why the 19th century French bourgeoisie had such difficulty consolidating its position as ruling class compared with its British and later, American, counter-parts.

The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte was an essay written by Karl Marx between December 1851 and March 1852, and originally published in 1852 in Die Revolution, a German monthly magazine published in New York and established by Joseph Weydemeyer. 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.

Karl Marx (5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, economist, sociologist, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. Marx's work in economics laid the basis for much of the current understanding of labour and its relation to capital, and subsequent economic thought. He published numerous books during his lifetime, the most notable being The Communist Manifesto (1848) and Das Kapital (1867–1894).