Reflexiones en torno a la cuestión de la representación en El Dieciocho Brumario de Luis Bonaparte de Karl Marx

Abstract

This article studies how Marx analyzes the question of the political representation in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. In this text, Marx makes diverse uses of the term ‘representation’ and, in fact, sometimes seems that it refers to concepts, even, antagonistic between them. We have identified three different senses in its use: as a delegation in a third party (in the meaning of let themselves to be represented), as a defense of interest, and as construction of these interests, by the representative. We also have studied how these three operations slide between themselves in an ambiguous manner. These movements allow give efficacy to the sense of representation and they explain its complexity in the political dynamic inside a representative democracy. At last, we have found that in the construction of the representation emerge gaps and tensions produced by the mediation of language, by the persistence of traditions, and by the dynamic of the ideological fight between the classes.