Word: Revolution

Revolution: a cycle, or recurrent period of time

Revolution: alteration, change, mutation

These are two definitions from the Oxford English Dictionary that provide us with a greater understanding of Karl Marx’s “The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte.” Marx writes about multiple revolutions, and his use of the word encourages the idea that we simply live in a cycle of revolutions; each is a separate event but they all boil down to an attempt to change something. The revolutions that Marx speaks of are something that we are caught in, something we cannot escape, and while it seems to be something that never ends or changes, it must, because history is inescapable, and everything we do alters the future, becoming another cycle to change.