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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte by Karl Marx: civil and the criminal law, the "liberte', egalite', fraternite',"
together with the 2d of May 1852--all vanished like a phantasmagoria
before the ban of one man, whom his enemies themselves do not pronounce
an adept at witchcraft. Universal suffrage seems to have survived only
for a moment, to the end that, before the eyes of the whole world, it
should make its own testament with its own hands, and, in the name of
the people, declare: "All that exists deserves to perish."
It is not enough to say, as the Frenchmen do, that their nation was
taken by surprise. A nation, no more than a woman, is excused for the
unguarded hour when the first adventurer who comes along can do violence
to her. The riddle is not solved by such shifts, it is only formulated
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