Society of December 10th

The Society of December 10th

The Society of December 10th constitutes an archetypal example of a counter gang deployed by a Bonapartist figure. Louis Bonapart utilised this organisation to transform the French Revolution, preventing it from being genuinely revolutionary and instead making it a vehicle for his personal power. According to Marx, the Society of December 10th was the original counter gang, though previous forces, such as Caesar’s legion, could also be argued to have constituted a counter gang.

Formation and Composition

Marx provided a detailed description of the Society of December 10th. It was founded on the pretext of being a benevolent society. Through this veneer, the lumpen proletariat of Paris was organised into secret sections. Each of these sections was guided by Bonapartist agents, and a Bonapartist general commanded the whole force.

The ranks of the Society of December 10th were composed of elements described with contempt as a pile of scumbags, the underclass scum. The core of the organisation was formed from this kindred element. This mass included a variety of marginalised and criminal figures, such as vagabonds, discharged soldiers, discharged jailbirds, escaped galleys slaves, swindlers, mountbacks, lazzaroni, pickpockets, tricksters, gamblers, brothel keepers, porters, literati, organ grinders, rag pickers, knife grinders, tinkers, and beggars. These elements represented the whole indefinite, disintegrated mass known in French as lem. The ranks also included decayed ruse and dubious means of subsistence, along with ruined and adventurous offshoots of the bourgeoisie.

Function and Bonapartist Service

The Society of December 10th served as Bonapart’s peculiar party fighting force. It was a benevolent society only in so far as all its members, much like Bonapart, felt the necessity of benefiting themselves at the expense of the labouring nation. Markx viewed this mob with contempt, considering it a group of leeches on French society rather than wealth creators.

Bonapart constituted himself as the chief of the lumpen proletariat. The defining characteristic of the real Bonapart, the Bonapart son phrase, is that he alone rediscovers in mass form the interests which he personally perceives, recognising in this scum—this awful refuge of all classes—the only class upon which he can base himself unconditionally.

The function of the organisation was to pave the way for Bonapart’s regime to seize power. Louis Bonapart created this gang of marginal elements to operate as a hit squad and to create chaos. This was in contrast to the desired outcome of Markx, which was a broad mass movement of ordinary workers becoming politically aware and working in their economic interest. Unlike genuine labour unions and socialist groups with deep community roots, the Society of December 10th was merely a collection of thugs, criminals, and elements from the margins of society.

The contempt with which Marx described the Society of December 10th is hardly concealed. The society remained Bonapart’s private army until he successfully transformed the public army itself into a Society of December 10th.

Ultimately, the French Revolution, in the Marxist perspective, was not truly revolutionary because it resulted in the replacement of the aristocracy by the bourgeoisie, establishing a capitalist order rather than something more communistic. The Society of December 10th enabled Bonapart to transform the revolution into a more efficient mechanism for centralisation than the previous Bourbon regime.