Marx stated that the purpose of this essay was to "demonstrate how the class struggle in France created circumstances and relationships that made it possible for a grotesque mediocrity to play a hero's part." In doing so he applies the method of Historical Materialism and besides it's many other points of interest and importance it can serve readers as a practical instance of this particular method of historical analysis

In this essay one finds Marx's famous formulation of the role of the individual in history, "Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past."

Marx's interpretation of Louis Bonaparte's rise and rule is also of interest to later scholars studying the nature and meaning of fascism, among whom the coup is regarded as a forerunner of the phenomenon of 20th-century fascism.