International Open Access Journal Platform

In The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, Marx exposed the practical paradox of bourgeois political rule and its own security: “the party of order in the parliament, by clamoring for peace, itself becomes peaceful. In its struggle against other social classes, it destroys the very conditions of its own system—the parliamentary system—thereby declaring bourgeois political rule incompatible with bourgeois security and survival”(Marx & Engels, 2012: 746). In Marx’s critical perspective, this represents the inevitable manifestation of capitalist logic in the political sphere. To maintain the absolutization of its exploitative relations, the bourgeoisie must continually sacrifice the republican and legal forms upon which it depends during crises. This divergence gives rise to a “security illusion” that disguises the particular class interests as the universal social interests. The pursuit of this illusion ultimately exacerbates social contradictions and leads to greater crises. Marx profoundly analyzed the generative mechanisms and contradictory roots of the “security illusion” under capitalist logic, anchoring this political psychological phenomenon in capitalist relations of production and class structure. This provides a crucial mirror for understanding security discourse under the capitalist crisis.

1 The Practical Paradox of the Order Party: The Mechanism of the “Security Illusion”

In The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, Marx thoroughly dissected the causes and consequences of the 1848 French Revolution, explicitly identifying the first open confrontation between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. After seizing power, the bourgeois Order Party, through discourse reconstruction, enemy fabrication and self-performance, constructed an “illusion of security” aligned with the interests of the intermediate classes. This strategy completely isolated the proletariat, leading to the rapid decline of the revolutionary wave. However, the proletariat’s temporary withdrawal failed to enable the bourgeoisie to achieve their ideal social state; a greater crisis was quietly brewing.

1.1 Discourse Reconstruction: The Camouflage of Class Rule

The bourgeoisie, having seized power, needed to repackage its class interests as universal values through discursive restructuring to secure a stable governing foundation. Following the June 1848 uprising, France’s class balance shifted, with the Order Party representing the large bourgeoisie and financial aristocracy assuming control. The bourgeoisie’s discourse of order swiftly overwhelmed the former revolutionary rhetoric, branding the proletariat—possessing the most resolute revolutionary will—as disruptors of order. “Property, Family, Religion, Order”(Marx & Engels, 2012: 677) emerged as the new discourse—not a coincidental moral appeal, but a meticulously designed political strategy by the large bourgeoisie represented by the Party of Order. The French Revolution of 1848 stood in stark contrast to that of 1789. In the former, the various classes involved no longer vied to advance but scrambled to retreat. Marx observed: “Each party kicked backward at the party pressing it forward and threw itself forward onto the party, pushing it backward. No wonder they lost their balance in this ridiculous posture, put on a helpless grimace, made a few strange leaps, and fell. Thus, the revolution proceeded along a descending path.”(Marx & Engels, 2012: 692) During this period, the capitalist economy achieved initial development in France. The industrial bourgeoisie gained some economic and political standing but had not yet risen to become the ruling class. The revolutionary proletariat gathered around Paris had only just stepped onto the historical stage. The relative backwardness of industrial production inclined not only the bourgeoisie but also large segments of the petty bourgeoisie and peasantry toward preserving the existing order of production. They embraced the bourgeois narrative that “whenever the ruling class shrinks in scope, whenever narrower interests prevail over broader ones, society is saved”(Marx & Engels, 2012: 678). Under the guise of preserving order, the bourgeoisie seized comprehensive control of ruling power, causing the French Revolution to abruptly shift from a progressive trajectory toward a conservative one. Louis Bonaparte exploited this opportunity to usurp power.

Yet the bourgeoisie’s emphasis on the discourse of order did not bring genuine security and prosperity; instead, it laid the groundwork for an even greater crisis. In evaluating bourgeois ideology, Marx noted: “Every new class that seeks to replace the old ruling class must, to achieve its aims, present its own interests as the common interests of all members of society.”(Marx & Engels, 2012: 180) Conceptually, this means giving its ideas a universal form, portraying them as the only rational and universally valid ideas. It is precisely through this discursive strategy that the bourgeoisie skillfully cloaks its class interests in the universal mantle of “social order” and “public safety”. They transform the demands for preserving capitalist private property and the wage labor system into shared imperatives for safeguarding social stability and promoting economic development. The suppression of proletarian resistance is reinterpreted as a necessary measure to uphold the dignity of law and protect citizens’ property. This process of discursive reconstruction is fundamentally a meticulous disguise for class rule. When “order” becomes the unquestionable supreme value, any social transformation that might challenge the bourgeoisie’s fundamental interests is labeled as “disrupting order”. Consequently, the proletariat’s struggle for liberation is naturally categorized as “chaos” that must be severely suppressed. By controlling ideological state apparatuses such as education and media, the bourgeoisie continuously instilled this distorted notion of order into society. This led intermediate strata, including segments of the petty bourgeoisie and peasantry, to gradually internalize this notion, mistakenly viewing the bourgeois class order as the sole guarantee for their own survival and development. Thus, they intellectually embraced and accepted the “illusion of security” shaped by this discourse.

1.2 Enemy Construction: The Production of Political Threats

Following the February Revolution, different class actors advanced distinct political agendas based on their class interests, with many groups adopting socialism as their political platform. However, socialist groups during this period largely remained confined to abstract socialist discourse (Marx & Engels, 2012: 698). They failed to distinguish between socialism’s moral ideals and its scientific pathways, often treating it merely as a tool for social transformation. The confusion over revolutionary subjects and objectives created an illusion of class unity. Yet when revolutionary momentum stalled and class interests diverged, these forces rapidly realigned and restructured. The June Uprising served as such a turning point, after which the class struggle between the bourgeoisie and proletariat became increasingly overt. “The failure of the June insurgents, while preparing and clearing the ground for the foundation and establishment of the bourgeois republic, also demonstrated that the question in Europe was not one of ‘republic or monarchy’, but something else entirely.”(Marx & Engels, 2012: 677) Here, Marx emphasizes that this “something else” refers precisely to the proletariat’s emergence onto the historical stage. It revealed that the bourgeois republic here represented the unrestricted dictatorship of one class over others (Marx & Engels, 2012: 677). When proletarian demands threatened the core interests of capital, the bourgeoisie unhesitatingly employed savage violence to defend its rule. During the February Revolution, the bourgeoisie required proletarian support, thus rallying under the banner of “liberty, equality, fraternity”(Marx & Engels, 2012: 673). However, the demands of the June Uprising directly challenged the foundations of bourgeois rule—private property rights and the capitalist order of free competition—compelling them to define the proletariat as an enemy to be eliminated.

To substantiate the threat posed by this “enemy”, the Order Party utilized controlled media and parliamentary platforms to portray the proletariat as “destroyers of order” and “public enemies of society”, claiming their existence would undermine civic tranquility and property security. They deliberately exaggerated certain radical tactics employed by the proletariat during the uprising, distorting them into attacks on the entire civilized world to instill widespread panic across society. This demonization of the proletariat served not only to cloak the violent suppression of the June Uprising in legitimacy but also to sever the proletariat’s ideological ties with other intermediate classes, preventing the formation of new political alliances. Through this “enemy fabrication”, the bourgeoisie successfully packaged its class interests as the common good of society, transforming the proletariat’s legitimate struggle for rights into a tangible threat to “security”. This paved the way for establishing tighter class rules. This process of manufacturing political threats is fundamentally an extension of capitalist logic into the political sphere—an ideological construction and political manipulation by the bourgeoisie to maintain its ruling order. In summary, after the June Uprising, the proletariat was shaped into an enemy by the bourgeoisie because their resistance actions exposed the bourgeois republic as nothing more than a “bourgeois dictatorship”. To preserve its class rule, the bourgeoisie had to stigmatize and demonize the proletariat through ideological means, defining them as public enemies threatening society as a whole. This provided a veneer of legitimacy for the violent suppression and comprehensive political regression. This event marked the complete shattering of the Second French Republic’s illusion of “fraternity”, as class struggle became openly manifested in its most naked and brutal form.

1.3 Self-Performance: The Return of Power Politics

The Order Party originally comprised two major royalist factions—Legitimists and Orleanists—which united under the guise of a bourgeois Order Party for shared material survival imperatives. Yet the bourgeoisie’s fundamental interest lies in the security and accumulation of capital. When they realized that parliamentary democracy—with its universal suffrage, freedom of the press and debates—might threaten their economic dominance, they gradually abandoned their chosen form of political rule. “Instinct told them that the republic, while completing its political domination, was simultaneously undermining the social foundations of that domination.”(Marx & Engels, 2012: 673) For now, they had to confront the various enslaved classes and engage them directly in struggle, without mediation, without the crown as a shield, and without the diversion of secondary conflicts among themselves or with the monarchy. The bourgeoisie preferred an “order” without political liberty to a “chaos” with political liberty that might threaten their property. This short-sighted economic rationality ultimately destroyed their long-term political survival environment. Thus, the Order Party embarked on a self-deceptive charade. While superficially maintaining the framework of parliamentary politics—even more frequently invoking terms like “rule of law,” “order,” and “tranquility” to adorn their facade—they gradually descended into the quagmire of strongman politics in practice. They no longer sought to build consensus and consolidate rule through parliamentary debate and policy negotiation. Instead, they increasingly relied on the coercive force of administrative power, attempting to suppress social discontent and potential resistance through high-pressure tactics. The essence of this performance was the regression of bourgeois rule from a relatively concealed “rule of law” form to a blatant “might makes right” form. They naively believed that by wielding the violent deterrence of the state apparatus, they could utterly stifle the discontent and resistance of the ruled classes in their infancy, thereby permanently safeguarding their economic privileges and social status. Yet this “self-performance”, achieved at the expense of political freedom and social justice, precisely exposes the inherent weakness and historical limitations of bourgeois rule, paving the way for the return of Bonapartist strongman politics.

The bourgeoisie once regarded freedom of the press and parliamentary debate as liberal treasures against feudal despotism. Yet when the proletariat attempted to utilize these very institutions to fight for its rights, the bourgeoisie immediately denounced them as the “socialist” scourge inciting chaos. “In short, since the bourgeoisie denounces as ‘socialist’ what it once extolled as ‘liberalism,’ it thereby admits: its own interests demand that it evade the dangers of its own rule; To restore domestic tranquility, it must first silence its bourgeois parliament; to preserve its social power intact, it must destroy its political power.”(Marx & Engels, 2012: 712) This signifies the bourgeoisie’s recognition that continuing to wield political power directly and openly carries too great a risk. They require a more powerful, less constrained authority to bear the political risks of rule on their behalf. “Only when the bourgeoisie as a class is politically doomed to be as worthless as any other class can individual capitalists continue exploiting other classes and comfortably enjoy property, family, religion, and order.” To save its purse, it must remove the crown from its head and suspend the sword that protects it, like the sword of Damocles, over its own head. Thus, the restoration of the monarchy was not an accidental historical regression. Still, the inevitable reactionary solution chosen by the bourgeoisie was when it could no longer manage its social crisis through democratic forms. Marx profoundly revealed the inevitability that, in crisis, the political form of capitalist society could diverge dramatically from its class content.

2 Structural Tensions in Capitalist Rule: The Contradictory Roots of the “Illusion of Security”

The bourgeoisie’s pursuit of the “illusion of security” is doomed to collapse, rooted in the structural tensions inherent in capitalist rule. The underlying logic of capital accumulation perpetually subjects the bourgeoisie’s quest for security to contradictions between ends and means, instruments and subjects, and invocation and uncontrollability. The pursuit of the “illusion of security” not only fails to deliver genuine security but may intensify social contradictions and erode institutional foundations—a manifestation of capitalism’s irreconcilable contradictions inevitably playing out in the realm of security.

2.1 The Contradiction Between Ends and Means: The Destruction of Political Forms by Short-Sighted Logic

On the surface, Bonaparte’s rise to power resulted from the convergence of his political tactics and the nostalgia of peasants and middle classes for the Napoleonic era. Yet in reality, Bonaparte’s dismantling of bourgeois political forms precisely mirrored the political stage of France’s capitalist development—an external manifestation of the irreconcilable contradiction between ends and means under capitalist rule. On the one hand, France lagged in its industrial revolution, with industrial production heavily influenced by international markets. “1849 and 1850 were years of great material prosperity and overproduction, a condition that did not manifest until 1851.”(Marx & Engels, 2012: 748) France’s industrial backwardness drastically reduced its competitiveness during economic crises: “In France, exports were hit hardest, while in Britain it was imports.”(Marx & Engels, 2012: 748) On the other hand, proletarian class consciousness was taking shape, making France the epicenter of a new wave of European revolution (Cui, 2024). France’s industrial revolution unfolded more slowly and unevenly than Britain’s, yet by the 1840s, the former had profoundly reshaped the economic landscape in textiles, railways and finance. This gave rise to an emerging, concentrated industrial bourgeoisie while simultaneously spawning a growing urban industrial proletariat. Industrialization also eroded the livelihoods of traditional artisans, small shopkeepers, and peasants, creating a vast underclass of petty bourgeoisie teetering on bankruptcy. Meanwhile, traditional elites controlling land and financial capital remained powerful, resulting in a complex social structure where old and new classes coexisted amid intense conflicts of interest. The bourgeoisie required the proletariat as labor to drive the industrial system and generate profits, yet they deeply feared this class’s potential for political organization and revolution. This contradiction led them to favor authoritarian regimes that could guarantee both a stable labor force and a predictable business environment, even at the expense of political liberty.

Thus, Marx observed: “We can now understand why the bourgeoisie, amid the indescribable clamor of fusion, amendment, postponement, constitution, conspiracy, coalition, exile, usurpation, and revolution, frantically cried out to its parliamentary republic: ‘Endless terror is worse than terror ending!’”(Marx & Engels, 2012: 750) The Industrial Revolution created the proletariat, transforming it into an independent political force. The 1848 Revolution, particularly the June Uprising, revealed to the bourgeoisie the formidable power of this force to overturn society. Caught between the powerful proletariat born of the Industrial Revolution and the specter of communism unleashed by the 1848 Revolution, the French bourgeoisie confronted the fundamental contradiction of its rule: to preserve the essential order of capitalist exploitation, it must dismantle the very republican democratic forms that guaranteed that order. Fear of proletarian revolution overrode all principles, causing it to view universal suffrage and parliamentary politics as threats rather than safeguards. This shortsightedness and panic, born of capitalist logic, drove the bourgeoisie to voluntarily weaken its own political power. Instead, it sought a violent authority transcending all classes—a “public security” that served as a mask for class suppression (Marx & Engels, 2012: 682). Ultimately, Louis Bonaparte’s restoration of imperial rule was not an accidental historical regression, but the inevitable outcome of the bourgeoisie’s cold-blooded choice to willingly don the “crown” to save its “wallet”. When capital could no longer preserve itself through democratic means, it instinctively chose its most reactionary political form. Yet, after the Second French Empire’s restoration, the security and order the bourgeoisie pursued did not endure stably. Although the Second Empire created a relatively stable environment for capital accumulation, the devastating defeat in the Franco-Prussian War fundamentally threatened France’s national security and directly precipitated the Paris Commune uprising. The “disorder” most feared by the bourgeoisie erupted in an even more intense form.

2.2 The Contradiction Between Instrument and Subject: The Alienation and Independence of the State Apparatus

Marx not only profoundly analyzed the class conditions and economic foundations of the French Revolution but also examined the unique role played by the state apparatus in the revolution, particularly how the military became an increasingly independent force. “This executive power possesses a vast bureaucratic and military apparatus, a complex and ingenious state machinery, a corps of 500,000 officials and an army of 500,000 men.”(Marx & Engels, 2012: 760) Moreover, he emphasized that during the First French Revolution, this apparatus had developed to such an extent through the strengthening of centralization that “Napoleon completed this state machine”(Marx & Engels, 2012: 760). The Order Party naively believed this powerful state apparatus remained a tool at its disposal, and it used the apparatus against the proletariat and exploited its internal factions to oppose Bonaparte. But they failed to recognize that while serving narrow class interests, this apparatus had also developed its own distinct interests and operational logic. It no longer contented itself with being a passive tool. Marx pointed out: “In parliament, the people elevate their general will into law—that is, they elevate the law of the ruling class into the general will of the people. Before the executive power, the people completely abandon their own will and submit to the command of another will, to authority. Unlike legislative power, executive power embodies the rule of others over the people, not the self-governance of the people.”(Marx & Engels, 2012: 760) This characteristic of “rule by others” meant that once executive power grew sufficiently strong, it inevitably sought to break free from all constraints—including those imposed by its creators, the parliament and the bourgeoisie itself. The tool had gained agency, preparing a ready-made power base for Bonaparte’s emergence.

The state apparatus was originally a collective tool for the bourgeoisie to exercise class rule. Yet during the crisis of the 1848 French Revolution, this instrument became alienated due to the actions of its creators, ultimately turning against its masters. Driven by an endless fear of revolution and a short-term pursuit of “order”, the bourgeoisie, represented by the Party of Order, became mired in constant internal strife. They sought security by continually strengthening administrative and military power. This strategy elevated the status of state apparatuses of violence—such as the police and army—to unprecedented heights, simultaneously bolstering the position and resources of their administrative head, Bonaparte. Yet while fortifying this apparatus, the Order Party lost its political command over it due to internal divisions. As Marx observed, the National Assembly “recognized the army as the decisive force of the state”(Marx & Engels, 2012: 752) while simultaneously “having long since abandoned any claim to command that force”(Marx & Engels, 2012: 751). Thus, the state apparatus gradually escaped from parliamentary control, becoming an autonomous force with its own inertia. Bonaparte, leveraging his status as Napoleon’s nephew, used bribery and manipulation to redirect the loyalty of this apparatus from the abstract Republic to himself. Ultimately, he employed it to destroy the parliamentary system that had given it life. Thus, the weapon forged by the bourgeoisie to maintain its rule, driven by its absolute pursuit of security and order, turned against its own form of governance, becoming the force that established personal dictatorship. “Parliament is dying and collapsing, abandoned by its own class, its army, and all other classes. The parliamentary system and bourgeois rule are overthrown. Bonaparte has triumphed.”(Marx & Engels, 2012: 755) As an instrument of class rule, the state apparatus readily amasses immense power during crises, becoming a coveted target for competing classes. Yet the state inherently possesses autonomy; as its strength grows, it inevitably elevates its own subjectivity and manifests political inclinations. This constitutes the classic contradiction between tool and subject, culminating in France with the direct consequences of imperial restoration and the shattering of the “illusion of security”.

2.3 The Contradiction of Summoning and Runaway: Bonaparte’s Emergence and Downfall

As the preceding discussion reveals, Bonaparte’s emergence was both the result of the bourgeoisie’s active summons and the political projection of objective economic conditions. Marx noted from the outset: “All great world-historical events and personages appear twice... the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.”(Marx & Engels, 2012: 668) Bonaparte’s emergence was inevitably not a historical accident but a logical outcome arising from the entire political conduct of the French bourgeoisie, represented by the Order Party, in the crisis following the 1848 Revolution. Driven by extreme fear of proletarian revolution and a myopic pursuit of “order”, the bourgeoisie objectively fostered a powerful social expectation and political demand for a “savior” transcending party lines who could deliver absolute tranquility. They did so by exaggerating social crises, undermining parliamentary efficacy and relentlessly intensifying administrative violence. Bonaparte precisely played and exploited this summoned role, yet he was far from a passive instrument. By systematically co-opting the state apparatus—which the bourgeoisie had strengthened but allowed to become alienated—he fused society’s universal expectations with material tools of violence. Thus, he transformed from a summoned symbolic figure into an active historical agent. Ultimately, wielding the legitimacy bestowed upon him by the bourgeoisie and the weapons they forged, he executed a political reversal against his callers. Rather than dismantling the capitalist order, he forcibly replaced their parliamentary republican form of government—which they could no longer sustain due to internal divisions—with a personal dictatorship that stood above all factions of the bourgeoisie. Thus, the triumph of Bonapartism signaled the self-negation of the bourgeoisie’s security strategy for preserving its rule. Its absolute pursuit of “order” ultimately extinguished its own direct political domination.

This historical irony reveals a fundamental law of bourgeois rule: when the fundamental interests of capital accumulation clash irreconcilably with the political forms sustaining those interests, bourgeois strategy falls into the paradox of self-exception. The bourgeoisie proclaims the rule of law and parliamentary democracy as the sole legitimate framework, yet to preserve itself in crisis, it often dismantles this very framework. Under the banner of “security” and “order”, it enters a state of emergency to restore normal production. Thus, at its core, the bourgeoisie’s discourse on security is not a commitment to universal safety but rather an exceptional politics of class power realignment and centralized authority during crises. Louis Bonaparte personified and normalized this “exception”. Marx’s analysis of France’s “security illusion” in 1848 provides a comprehensive analytical framework transcending historical context. This framework reveals that when the ruling class binds its particular interests to the collective security of survival, its security discourse can degenerate from a protective mechanism into an exclusionary political tool. With the relentless expansion of the world market and the universalization of capitalist modes of production, this logic has transcended national borders, becoming a universal law that cuts across temporal and spatial domains and geopolitical barriers (He, 2003). Yet this blind pursuit of the “illusion of security” not only fails to deliver peace and stability but may intensify social contradictions, erode institutional foundations, and trap the capitalist system in a historical cycle of self-destruction.

3 Marx’s Critique of the “Illusion of Security” and Its Implications

Marx’s critique stems from a fundamental premise: “security” under capitalism is neither neutral nor universal, but rather the projection and instrument of capital’s logic within the political sphere. Through political and economic analysis, he exposed the triple paradox of the “security illusion”. First, in its genesis, it represents the subversion of content over form. To preserve its exploitative order, the bourgeoisie would destroy parliamentary democracy and the rule of law upon which it depends during crises. The French bourgeois Order Party’s abolition of universal suffrage in pursuit of “peace” exemplifies this paradox, exposing the ideological essence and false universality of its security discourse. Second, in operation, it is the tool turning against its master. The state apparatus, originally a tool of class rule, swells unchecked by the bourgeoisie’s obsession with security, transforming into an alienated, independent material force. This “suspended spoil” is ultimately co-opted by Bonaparte, morphing from a guardian of order into the republic’s gravedigger. In this complete reversal, the state machine evolves from an instrument to an autonomous power. Third, in its conclusion, it represents the summoned devouring the summoner. The bourgeoisie’s panic-stricken and blind pursuit of absolute order proactively summoned a transclass “savior” amid political turmoil. Yet Bonaparte’s emergence did not restore order but forced a regressive shift in the form of rule: the bourgeois parliamentary republic was supplanted by the Bonapartist personal dictatorship it had invoked.

Thus, Marx’s critique points to a profound historical warning: the “security illusion” that disguises specific class interests as absolute imperatives for societal survival inherently contains a tendency toward self-destruction. The pursuit of this “security illusion” not only fails to consolidate rule but, by eroding the foundation of its own legitimacy and intensifying social contradictions, ultimately leads to the total eruption of a ruling crisis. This analytical framework transcends the nineteenth-century French context, providing an indispensable critical lens for examining contemporary discourses that absolutize partial interests and engage in political manipulation under the banner of “national security”. True security cannot be achieved within the capitalist system, for the logic of capital accumulation and valorization dictates that all security must serve the stability of the capitalist production order. Otherwise, it inevitably plunges into a social crisis. As Engels noted in the preface to The Condition of the Working Class in England, “Capitalist production cannot remain stable; it must grow and expand, or it must die. Even now, a mere reduction in Britain’s largest share of the world market supply would mean stagnation, poverty, surplus capital on one hand, and surplus unemployed workers on the other”(Marx & Engels, 2012: 76). The prosperity of capitalist production did nothing to improve the living conditions of the working class. “Society has deprived thousands of people of the necessities of life, placing them in conditions where survival is impossible.”(Marx & Engels, 2009: 409) According to Engels’ data, the average life expectancy for workers, day laborers, and general wage earners in Liverpool at the time was only 15 years. At the same time, infant mortality rates in Liverpool’s slums remained alarmingly high (Marx & Engels, 2009: 420). “Thus, British society steadily and incrementally buried these workers, sending them prematurely to the grave.”(Marx & Engels, 2009: 409) These brutal statistics starkly reveal the coldness of capitalism during the Industrial Revolution and the acute sharpness of class contradictions. It became evident that the capitalist system could only guarantee the security of property and class interests for a minority, at the cost of the proletariat’s continuous deterioration of living conditions.

From the above, it is evident that Marx opposed abstract, eternalized understandings of safety, viewing them as nothing more than ideological illusions. His critique of safety consistently fought against notions of absolute safety divorced from specific historical conditions and class relations. In Marx’s view, the demand for security is not a transcendental social goal but a product of specific relations of production and the dynamics of class struggle. Therefore, by grounding the question of security in the critique of political economy, Marx successfully revealed historical phenomena that previous conceptions of security could not explain—namely, why the extreme pursuit of “security” paradoxically triggers greater crises and the overthrow of forms of rule. However, Marx did not oppose security in general. Instead, he advocated analyzing security within the framework of historical materialism, rejecting the mindset that treats security as a neutral technology or supreme value. He insisted on examining security practices in the light of the reality of class struggle. Marx argued that material production and class struggle constitute the practical domain of human history. Therefore, understanding security requires moving beyond a passive, normative stance to recognize it as a practical issue concerning the exercise of power and the defense of interests. Praxis forms the core of security discourse; security concepts acquire their concrete form and achieve their political objectives through specific practices such as repression, compromise, legislation and ideological propaganda. Thus, Marx criticized the bourgeoisie’s erroneous notion of “security above all, regardless of means”, arguing that illusory “order” should not obscure the real conflicts of class interests. As a radically new approach to security issues, Marx transcended the bourgeoisie’s rational security paradigm of the state. He replaced metaphysical narratives of fear with political and economic analysis, revealing security’s essence within the interpretive framework of capital movement. This paradigm shift not only resolves the historical paradoxes of security practices but also subverts the traditional conception of security as a universal conservative value. It endows security with revolutionary critical potential, transforming it into an intellectual weapon for dissecting the crisis of bourgeois rule and charting the path toward human liberation.

References

[1] Cui, Z. H. (2024). Marx’s practical justification of the concept of historical subject: An examination based on The Class Struggles in France from 1848 to 1850 and The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. Studies in Socialism, 2, 32.

[2] He, Y. (2003). Marx’s theory of world history. Marxism Studies, 2, 41.

[3] Marx, K., & Engels, F. (2009). Selected Works of Marx and Engels (Vol. 1). People’s Publishing House.

[4] Marx, K., & Engels, F. (2012). Selected Works of Marx and Engels (Vol. 1). People’s Publishing House.