A class that cannot rule directly rules through a single despot.

Evidence

Finally, Louis-Napoleon’s regime—which appears in the form of a single despotism—in fact is seated on the back of a particular class interest: that of the “most numerous” class in France at that moment, though one destined to decline: the small-holding peasantry. This class fraction cannot rule in its own name. It rules through Napoleon and through his ideas. It is this class which temporarily gives content to the expanding state—for the state is not “suspended in mid-air”: but Louis-Napoleon, revivifying spirits, names, battle cries, and costumes from the past (the past of another and greater Napoleon), is the conductor of the power of this class to the political level. Capital settles for a “postponement.” “Bonapartism” is its name and form. — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 513

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: Bonapartism as a class ruling through a figurehead who borrows past costumes and names — the concept of indirect class rule through despotism, with the state as a neutral-looking apparatus, is dense enough to rework into very different contexts (populist strongmen, tech-bro autocrats).
• XREF: Direct echo of Marx’s own ‘Eighteenth Brumaire’ and of Gramsci’s concept of passive revolution — a throughline Hall returns to in his later work on Thatcherism.