Who is georges sorel

It is a military and not a police type of violence that he has in mind, devoid of cruelty and certainly not motivated by envy of the wealthier classes, which would be immoral and degrading to the proletariat. Far from seeking to replace the present form of government by one equally authoritarian, the object of proletarian violence is to do away with government altogether. Morally commendable violence is evinced, he argues, in spontaneous acts of popular justice by Norwegian mountain-dwellers, in lynch-law or the Corsican vendetta.

It is the advocates of political revolution, such as the socialists who wish to supplant the privileged minority of today, who are liable, as the Revolution showed, to adopt inquisitorial methods of cruelty and terror as a cure for political or economic difficulties. For these reasons syndicalism is against democracy, which encourages the proletariat to take part in bourgeois institutions, especially parliament, and is a source of demoralization, corruption, and the undermining of class solidarity.

The general strike, which is the proper aim of the proletarian struggle, is thus to be distinguished from political revolution. The general strike is not an economic one in the sense of an attempt to improve the situation of the working class in capitalist conditions, but it is also the contrary of a political revolution.

The purpose of the latter is to attain power, and it is subject to all the laws of a fight for power, including tactical alliances, but it does not premise the division of society into only two camps.

Besides the syndicates it presupposes other organizations, committees, or parties with programmes and ready-made forms for the future: it must be planned, and can therefore be criticized in detail. Moreover, a political revolution is not based on the Marxian doctrine of class division but on an anti-Marxist opposition between rich and poor: it appeals to base instincts ofenvy and vindictiveness, instead of the sublime heroism of popular champions.

A general strike means the destruction of the existing order without any idea of setting up a new authority: its purpose is to restore control of production of free men who have no need of masters. It is a single, indivisible action, not to be broken down in to stages or conceived as a strategic plan.

Revolutionary syndicalism is thus equally opposed to utopianism and to the Blanquist doctrine that a group of conspirators claiming a mandate from the proletariat may take advantage of circumstances to seize power and then transform society by means of force and repression. Blanquism or Jacobinism stands for a revolution of the poor against the rich, not a Marxian revolution carried out by producers alone. The latter is by no means aimed at a party dictatorship: Bernstein is right when he says that the assumption of power by the social democrats would not make the people sovereign, but merely dependent on professional politicians and newspaper owners, Until such time as the workers have a strong economic organization and attain a high standard of moral independence, the dictatorship of the proletariat can only mean the dictatorship of party orators and men of letters.

Again, the syndicalist revolution cannot be simply the result of the economic decadence of capitalism. Revolutions that take place when the old regime is in a state of impotence and collapse do not lead to improvement, but petrify the state of decay. The syndicalist revolution requires capitalism to be expansive—to suffocate by its own energy, not to die of inanition. This is the way to foster the sense of absolute class division, the solidarity of the oppressed, inflexible heroism, the grandeur and dignity of a historical mission—everything that socialist politicians sacrifice when they cheat the exploiters into making petty concessions and in so doing demoralize the working class.

As Bergson showed, history proceeds by unforeseeable acts of creation. The illusions of determinism are due to the exaggerated hopes aroused by the progress of natural science in the nineteenth century: the utopians naively imagined that the future course of society could be plotted like the movements of heavenly bodies. The revolutionary movement is directed towards the future, but it foresees it only in terms of its own spontaneous action, guided by a single, indivisible, unanalysable idea—the sublime myth of a total transformation of the world in a final, apocalyptic battle.

Such was the inspiration of early Christianity, which refused to compromise with the world or to regard itself as part of society, withdrawing instead into the myth of the Parousia. The syndicalist movement is likewise a spontaneous process of renewal which may regenerate the working class, corrupted by politicians and legislation, and in due time bring salvation to all mankind.

The purpose of the new revolution is not to bring prosperity and abundance, or to make life easy. The principal values of socialism are those of morality and not of well-being, and it may be noticed that the poorest members or the proletariat are the least, not the most, revolutionary-minded.

Proudhon saw the future society as a loose federation of agricultural and industrial associations, with public life based on communal and provincial units, freedom of the Press and of assembly, and no standing armies. The morality of the proletariat was a morality of producers as opposed to merchants; modern democracy was still modelled on the stock exchange, whereas the democracy of the future would be analogous to co-operative manufacture.

These comparisons are not devoid of foundation. The history of democratic ideas and institutions is certainly related to the history of trade, and the whole Mediterranean culture arose and developed in terms of ports and commercial towns.

Trading encourages habits of compromise: negotiation and bargaining as well as deceit and hypocrisy, rhetoric and demagogy, prudence and competition, love of wealth and comfort, rationalism and disregard for tradition, shrewd calculation and prediction, and the ideal of success. The subordination of production to exchange-value, which according to Marx is the essence of capitalism, is a natural culmination of these trends.

He was attracted by the picture of untamed warrior clans fighting for survival rather than wealth or comfort, valiant but not cruel, proud in spite of their poverty, devoted to their tribal customs and their freedom, ready to fight to the death against foreign rule. The new morality takes shape in the working class under capitalist conditions, and is in fact a prior condition of revolution and of economic change: here Sorel agrees with Vandervelde, who says that a victory of the workers without a radical moral transformation would plunge the world into a state of suffering, cruelty, and injustice as bad as the present, if not worse.

The chief points at which the new morality comes into play are the family, war, and production, and in all these spheres it means an increase of dignity, solidarity, heroism, generosity, and personal responsibility. Sorel attaches especial importance to sexual restraint and family virtues, the weakening of which he regards as a natural reinforcement of bourgeois society.

The ideal to which he looks up is that of the Homeric heroes as seen by Nietzsche. In this respect he stands unique. His attacks on reformism are sometimes very like those of the orthodox social-democratic Left, but his criticism of Marxist orthodoxy has much in common with that of the anarchists. He attacks anarchism from a Marxist standpoint, yet on some points he criticizes Marx from the angle of Bakunin or Proudhon.

The usual classifications of socialist thought at this period do not apply to him. Like Marx, Sorel regarded socialism not merely as a better form of social organization but as a complete transformation of every aspect of life, morality, thought, and philosophy: not a mere set of reforms, but a reinterpretation of human existence. The socialists of his time did not, in his opinion, take a serious interest in human nature and the final aim of life.

Marxism, to Sorel, was above all the poetry of the Great Apocalypse which he identified with social revolution. He combated reformism not because it was ineffectual—on the contrary, he knew it to be effective—but because it was prosaic and unheroic. He believed in the class basis of socialism and the unique role of the producers as agents of the revolution.

The proletariat, as a militant sect, must guard above all things its independence of existing society. Sorel dreamt of a free society, i. Marx put his faith in technology, which he thought would liberate mankind from the cares of material existence; Sorel, on the contrary, regarded productive activity as the source of all human dignity, and the desire to be free from such cares was, to him, no better than bourgeois hedonism.

Marx was a rationalist inasmuch as he believed in scientific socialism, i. A movement led by lawyers, journalists, and students clearly had nothing to do with revolutionary syndicalism as Sorel understood it, and he was also repelled by the anarchist groups of Bakuninist persuasion who combined conspiratorial methods with authoritarian principles.

The nationalization of means of production was valueless in itself as far as liberating the workers was concerned, for it merely increased the power of politicians over producers. It may appear strange that a writer who so fiercely attacked the idea of patriotism, state institutions, and party organization should have been recognized as an ideologist of the budding Fascist movement and should have supplied arguments to the functionaries and apologists of a brutal nationalist tyranny— the more so as, unlike Nietzsche, Sorel accepted the basic doctrines of Marxism.

Yet his link with Fascism is a real one, though clearly it was impossible to judge the first intimations of Italian Fascism in with the eyes of those who witnessed the Second World War. Fascism drew its strength from the sense of desperation and desire for absolute change, the disillusionment with democracy and disbelief in the possibility of reform, the obscure need for some radical break with the existing scheme of things. He did not set up to be the planner of a new order, but the herald of catastrophe.

He called for a break in the continuity of civilization in the name of a better culture, a return to the popular sources of legislation and morality; in so doing he unconsciously showed that an attack on the whole of an existing culture is in effect an invitation to barbarism unless it is based on already existing values and a clear knowledge of what the new order is supposed to comprise.

Sorel aims many shrewd blows at the naivety of the rationalists; but if an attack on rationalism is not clearly distinguished from an attack on reason, if it appeals to a philosophi e des bras which is not so very different from a philosophy of the mailed fist, then it becomes a rebellion against the mind and a plea for violence pure and simple.

A morality that regards violence in itself as a source of heroism and greatness is very near to being an instrument of despotism. The criticism of pervading corruption, abuses, petty squabbling, and the competition for jobs masquerading as a conflict of ideas—all these have been denounced by anarchists, communists, and Fascists in very similar terms. As a professed Marxist who supplied inspiration to Fascism, Sorel Is important in that the destiny of his idea reveals the convergence of extreme forms of leftist and rightist radicalism.

If leftist radical phraseology confines itself to attacking bourgeois democracy without offering a better democracy in its place, if it merely opposes rationalism without setting up new cultural values, if it advocates violence unhampered by moral restrictions, then its programme is merely that of a new despotism and is essentially the same as that of the radical Right.

Thus, his passionate defence of Lenin and the Bolsheviks was highly ambiguous. He admired the Russian Revolution as a dramatic apocalypse, a death-blow to intellectuals, a triumph of willpower over alleged economic necessity, and an assertion of native Muscovite traditions over Western ones.

In the appendix to Reflections on Violence we read:. Sorel knew little of Leninist doctrine: he admired Lenin as a prophet of the Apocalypse, and Mussolini for the same reason. He was ready to support anything that seemed heroic and promised to destroy the hated system of democracy, party strife, compromise, negotiation, and calculation. He was not interested in the petty question of human welfare, but in discovering the circumstances most propitious to an outburst of energy.

The penetrating critic of rationalism ended as a worshipper of the great Moloch into whose jaws the blind, fanatic, jubilant mob advanced, in a warlike frenzy, to its own destruction. You are commenting using your WordPress. You are commenting using your Google account.

You are commenting using your Twitter account. You are commenting using your Facebook account. It is unknown what Valois was doing during the Weltkrieg. He was, however, an important member of the Revolution in Despite being distressed by the defeat of France, Valois considered this defeat as necessary since it allowed the end of bourgeois domination over France and the installation of a revolutionary state in France.

After the end of the Weltkrieg and the Ceasefire of Copenhagen , Valois planned the bases of his faction inspired by the name of his mentor died in , the Sorelians. Valois also does not hide his revengeful spirit against Germany and the Reichspakt. This vision of a Sorelian state frightens many communards, especially among the Travailleurs and Anarchistes. Despite this, his ideas have a success among the younger generation, allowing the arrival of a man such as Jacque Doriot, Marcel Bucard or Hubert Lagardelle.

Oswald Mosley sees in Valois's ideas an inspiration for the creation of a new authoritarian ideology allowing the advent of a pure socialist regime, homogeneous with the resort of militarism, uniting with nationalism and getting rid of its undesirable elements such as the reactionaries, the bourgeois or the democrats: The Totalist State.

The Kaiserreich Wiki Explore. Main Page All Pages Community. History and Lore. He was fixing the faulty interpretation of the constitution put forth by his fellow congress men. He believed that Jackson had no true facts on his assessment, in fact he saw the veto as alarming. Rhetorical Analysis of Communism: A History By Richard Pipes Communism was originally a social theory of a completely unified and harmonious society 3. Private property and class inequality was said to be the root of all evil, so by removing those from society, a government could encourage peace on a national, and later a global scale.

Richard Pipes examines the roots of Communism in his book, Communism: A History, and then proceeds to methodically express the failure and decay that comes with it.

In many cases, Richard Pipes can be found taking advantage of the Ethos appeal to convince his audience of his intellect and assure them that he has reliable information. George Sorel 's radical political philosophy can be characterized as deeply controversial not only because of its exact content, but also because of its historical role. On the one hand, his most famous book, Reflections on Violence, is a canonical text for the anarcho-syndicalist tradition.

On the other hand, it was embraced by the fascist politics, for instance, by Mussolini. One of the most nuanced receptions of Reflections on Violence can be seen in 'Critique of Violence ', a remarkable essay by Walter Benjamin which he wrote in In this essay, Benjamin critically assesses the whole historical structure of the law by applying the explicitly Sorelian ideas of violence and the general proletarian strike. However, as I will try to demonstrate …show more content… Sorel 's Radical Project Sorel was one of the most prominent figures of the French early 20th century Marxism, but he was radically opposed to the tradition of parliamentary socialism.

Indeed, this disdain for parliamentarism is what he and Benjamin definitely share. He views parliamentary socialism as a clear betrayal of the genuine Marxist principles, that is, of the commitment to the task of overthrowing capitalist state and economical system, instead of reforming it. Sorel 's Reflections on Violence is not a mere intellectual endeavor; rather, it is a revolutionary guideline. As Chiaria Bottici notes in A Philosophy of Political Myth, this Sorel 's text 'clearly has an activist intent: to develop a severe critique of the parliamentary socialists and their neglect of the primary role played by proletarian violence in history ' Bottici , In Reflections on Violence Sorel tries to develop a specific revolutionary ethics which will be true to the genuine Marxism.

He explicitly states that the task of his study is 'to deepen our understanding of moral conduct ' Sorel , It is crucial that moral conduct is associated here with political practices and, ultimately, with proletarian.