Karl Marx begins with a quote attributed to the early 19th-century philosopher Friedrich Hegel, claiming that all important events and people in history appear twice. Marx adds the idea that they happen “the first time as tragedy, the second as farce” (10). This is because the past has a tremendous influence over the present. When dramatic change happens, the people carrying out that change invoke authorities and traditions from the past. As Marx puts it, “The tradition of all the dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living” (10). He gives the examples of Martin Luther resembling Apostle Paul, Oliver Cromwell’s government in England drawing on the Old Testament, the First Republic of France imitating the ancient Roman Republic, and the 19th-century socialist politician Louis Blanc imitating the French Revolution leader Robespierre (10-11).

Particularly, Marx focuses on the First Republic of France as a “bourgeois society” that originally drew on images of the Roman Republic while it was being established with the French Revolution. However, these ancient images were abandoned once the First Republic was firmly established. Marx admits that the goal of the French revolutionaries was not to mock the Roman Empire.