Reflections on Violence (Dover Books on History, Political and Social Science) by Georges Sorel

Reflections on Violence (Dover Books on History, Political and Social Science) Reviews

• 
  Graham

  I read this in the middle of having a nervous breakdown. It quickly (and disturbingly) became one of my favorites. It is a book that pacifists and non-pacifists should read alike because it brings up issues (involving tactics) that must be faced.
  
  Also makes you wonder how much the whole 'revolutionary' process actually deceives the masses. After reading this, you will be better equipped to view with suspicion any and all calls for sweeping revolutionary change. Still, it promotes without any hesitation the belief in a complete commitment to the class war--something that todays radicals seem to want to push aside in favor of liberal change through institutions.
  
  The fundamental questions you will ask yourself after reading this book: What role does violence play in creating revolutionary change? Do we need it, or does pacifism work? FInally, while it was not Sorel's intent to propose this question, are we all being deceived by the power of 'myth'.
  
  Everyone should read this book. You know, especially if you are barricaded up in a certain liberal-white-utopian-northern state where non-violent left wing pacifism is oh so easy.
• 
  Nicole Gervasio

  I don't know why I have such an aberrant affection for this esoteric, polemical book of Western, French philosophy. Georges Sorel, to be blunt, died as a royalist anti-Semite who wasn't too kind to women intellectuals, either.
  
  But there are some truly tide-changing aspects to his Reflections. Before reading them, I had never considered epistemological "violence" as a generative, galvanizing strategy that might disrupt "ideas" unquestioningly inherited from scholars and calcified to such an extent that they've become stagnant forces of habit. I appreciate Sorel's conviction in being his own scholar, independent from and historically without access to a university education. Even though many of the primary examples he gleans for tracing his perception of violence through history-- in Antiquity, his racist stereotype of "the Wandering Jew," his seeming fervor for Calvinism and Christianity, etc.-- may seem outdated and often offensive, the general precepts he presents really did change my way of thinking about how I've learned what I supposedly know.
  
  The book is much more specifically about the phenomenon of the general strike as it pertains to proletarian class consciousness and politics. However, if you want a precis of Sorel's thesis for many of the essays included here (which formerly appeared as separate, non-sequential reflections in a radical socialist journal around the 1900s-1910s), read the curious personal memento that he includes as an introduction, "The Letter to Daniel Hálevy." It more than adequately justifies many of his pivotal views on myth, class culture, history, and knowledge production.
• 
  William West

  Georges Sorel’s “Reflections on Violence” holds a unique place in twentieth century political theory. Ostensibly a work of the anarchist left, it’s influence was greatest on what would become the fascist right.
  It should be remembered that, in 1907 when this work first appeared in book form, the distinction between “Marxist” and “Anarchist” was not nearly as definitive as it has since become. With the exception of the then tiny Bolshevik Party, the overwhelming majority of official socialist parties had become dominated by what is today remembered as “Bernsteinian revisionism”, the notion that expanded democracy would lead inevitably to the gradual implementation of socialism through parliamentary reform. (Bernstein is perhaps unfairly singled out as the embodiment of such “revisionism”. Engles himself paved the way for this line of thinking in the years following Marx’s death.) Only a few voices from within such parties, such as that of Rosa Luxemburg, then still in the German Workers Party, or Leon Trotsky, then still in the Russian Menshevik Party, challenged this notion. For an observer such as Sorel, (and despite a lot of tough talk on his part, Sorel was indeed mostly, if not entirely, an observer) those activists who called themselves “Anarcho-Syndicalists” were simply the line of Marxists that rejected parliamentarism in favor of direct action as envisioned by Marx himself. They were the front-line, violent revolutionaries of the proletarian struggle.
  Sorel was mildly critical even of Marx for sometimes adopting the ruling class’s concept of societal control. “Force” was Sorel’s term for that which the capitalist class used against the proletariat. In its focus on the proletariat seizing control of the state to exude its own force against its opponents, traditional Marxism risked turning the revolution into simply a bureaucratic switching of the guards. Only violence, opposed to force, could ever be truly liberatory, and violence could only be exerted from below, not from a state controlled by whatever class.
  Indeed, Sorel, a self-appointed “theorist of anarcho-syndicalism”, was never a conventional Marxist. He wrote very little on the conditions of the working class under capitalism or the potential of workers’ democracy under socialism. Instead, Sorel looked to the class struggle as a way to reignite the savage creativity of humanity. This savagery had been tamed, according to Sorel, in passages clearly indebted to Nietzsche although Sorel tries unpersuasively to distance himself from the German, by bourgeois morality as it had come to dominate under capitalism. Indeed, Sorel praises the founding robber-barons of capitalism for being savagely creative in their invention of new forms of domination. And, in a striking reminder to today’s reader that the early European commentators on socialism were not necessarily anti-racist, Sorel repeatedly praises the spirit of “Yankee ingenuity” in the colonists’ take over of the New World. In one particularly harrowing passage, Sorel cites American “lynch-law” as an example of authentic, proletarian violence!
  According to Sorel’s historiography, the Jacobin Terror was in fact the beginning of modern liberalism, in which the state thought of itself as the “servant of, rather than the master of the people.” But, thought Sorel in 1907, before the rise of the systems that would today, constructively or not, be labeled “totalitarian”, the Terror was also the last gasp of the all-powerful state. Liberal capitalism had weakened the state and empowered the individual, but this had only resulted in a coddled populace that had, by an large, lost it’s capacity for invention and fallen, ironically, more and more under the sway of a parasitic Catholicism. While claiming to be “civilized” in its abhorrence of violence, liberal capitalism gives a free pass to financial crimes by the minority of capitalists towards the majority of proletarians. But this same society describes as monstrous violent crimes of survival perpetuated by the desperate working class. However, Sorel also believed that capitalism’s weakening of the state and those who control it, and strengthening of the individual might lead to the downfall of capitalism.
  Sorel writes that the best thing that could happen to revive the potential of the contemporary European would be a great, continent wide war. But, in one of the most retrospectively ridiculous passages of the book, he surmises that nothing like that was imminent in 1907 since the ruling bourgeoisie displayed a horror of war. Calls for “social duty” in inter-class and international cooperation and trade were mere excuses by weaklings to avoid the violence of their nightmares.
  Who wasn’t, indeed couldn’t, be afraid of war and violence in Sorel’s view, was the European proletariat. The systematically exploited workers had no capital with which to influence policy. Their only means with which to better their lot was to instill fear through organized violence. The class struggle was, for Sorel, the road to redemptive war. Class war would delineate humans into an “us” versus “them”, and only such an inspirationally violent bifurcation could reinvigorate Europe.
  But what would push the majority of the proletariat away from the sophisms of parliamentary “socialism” and towards violent action? Sorel’s answer would be by far the most influential aspect of his thought.
  Transformative social action could only be inspired by what Sorel terms “myths”. Myths are the constructed belief of social actors that their cause is certain to ultimately triumph. Sorel turns to Henri Bergson’s notion of movement-as-becoming to illustrate the creative energy of social violence. Social action creates and projects an imaginary world (the “ultimate triumph”) ahead of the present but consisting of the actor’s movements in the present. When such an imaginary is embraced by the social majority (a mass that can constitute an “us”), an authentic myth has been established.
  Sorel offers examples throughout history of what he considers galvanizing myths that have altered the course of civilization. The primary example he turns to is the Christian apocalyptic myth, which borrowed from its inception from already ancient Jewish notions of redemption to instill in its followers a projected certainty about their renewal in the future. Despite failing to materialize on a tremendous number of occasions, the myth of the apocalypse continues even today to inspire Christians to organized action. However, like the contemporary class struggle was in danger of becoming, the message of Christianity, the creatively liberating potential of its myth, had been fatally compromised by bureaucratization. The ancient hermit-martyrs of Christianity lived lives of war against the elements out in the desert. This existence of struggle against the forces of nature was chosen by them in order to give reality to a well defined myth. But gradually, the monastery replaced the desert and “sacrifice” became only another privileged profession.
  Similarly, Rousseau’s writings spoke of a society of the future that would recapture the “virtue” of an imagined past. This myth inspired the French Revolution. Not many, admits Sorel, would today say that the Terror and the Napoleonic wars manifested what Rousseau had in mind. But, Sorel revealingly points out, they probably transformed reality more than Rousseau himself would have imagined or even desired. It is irrelevant for Sorel if the content of a myth ever becomes reality. It only matters that the myth compels action that leads to some kind of transformation. Sorel values myths for the quantity, not quality, of transformation they inspire.
  Sorel believed that the myth that would compel the European proletariat to embrace full class war was that of the general strike. The workers could be made to believe that they were all powerful if they imagined a continent wide shut down of society through work stoppage. The strike would confront society with a catastrophe without putting forth a vision of the disaster’s end by way of making any definite demands. This would give the strike a terrifying “character of infinity” in which “normality” could not be retrieved. Sorel again readily acknowledges that an actual continent-wide, industry-wide general strike would, in all likelihood not be possible. But it would be the myth of class invincibility that would spur the proletariat forward.
  As I mentioned in the opening paragraph, “Reflections On Violence” was ultimately more influential on the radical right than the left. If there is a historical figure who seems to have tried to implement Sorel’s theories most literally it would be Benito Mussolini, who indeed is said to have loved the book and had great admiration for Sorel as a thinker. As is well known, Mussolini started his political career as the type of anarcho-syndicalist leftist that Sorel wished to inspire. Mussolini went from a class-based notion of violent struggle to conceiving of Italy as the “proletarian (which is to say exploited and marginalized) nation” of twentieth century Europe. What was needed was not struggle between different classes in Italy, but an identification by all Italians as a nation-class that could, through its unity, recover its past greatness. Like a Sorelian myth, Mussolini offered a vision of the future that referenced longing for the Classical cultural past. He also offered a vision of social action, violence against all those who did not go along with his national vision, that made no political promises other than the supposedly liberating potential of participatory action.
  The Neo-Classical aesthetics of Mussolini’s regime greatly influenced those of Adolph Hitler, who also referenced the German historical past in his vision of a messianic national future. While it is unlikely that Hitler read “Reflections on Violence”, Mussolini’s politics were too much of an influence on Hitler’s that Sorel must also be considered an indirect influence on the Nazi regime.
  In general, fascist politics were those that most borrowed from Sorel’s thinking. A mythical vision of the past as the national future would spur the masses into an “us versus them” nationalist thinking that would galvanize them into a violent struggle that was its own goal. The promised reward was not some specific vision of the future, as with communism, but the rekindling of a “warrior spirit” that would remold humanity, in this sense in a modernist spirit, but remold it in an image of the past, in this sense in a romantic spirit.
  But it was not only fascists that Sorel inspired. At least one major thinker associated with the left was directly influenced by “Reflections on Violence”: Walter Benjamin. The angel of history described in Benjamin’s essay, “Theses on the Philosophy of History” was inspired by a sketch by Paul Klee, but it clearly serves as an allegory for some very Sorelian themes. Flying into the future but facing the past, Benjamin’s angel seems intended to warn his readers of the dangers of ignoring the past that eternally impregnates the present. Benjamin recognized that it was the fascist right that had learned Sorel’s lesson, and he feared that gave fascism an ideological edge over the Marxist left, with its one-sided obsession with mechanized modernity and futurism.
  It was Benjamin’s essay “Towards a Critique of Violence” that directly addressed “Reflections on Violence”. Benjamin’s notion of “sovereign violence”, that wielded by the self against the power of the law, is almost directly lifted from Sorel’s distinction between the violence of the oppressed versus the force of the oppressive state. In this context, Benjamin sounds almost troublingly Sorelian, as we have seen how easily this line of thinking can lead to fascistic conclusions.
  I would distinguish Benjamin’s “sovereign violence” from Sorel’s “proletarian violence” by pointing to Benjamin’s extremely unconventional religiosity. Benjamin always looked towards the messianic potential of every historical moment. Every constellation of circumstances had the potential to deliver redemption (in, yes, a Sorelian way of the redemption of the past into the present) and justice. But where as Benjamin looked for a (perhaps violent!) redemption through the unspoken potential of contingency, Sorel looked for it through beating the crap out of someone.
  Sorel perhaps negatively influenced Benjamin’s friends Max Horkheimer and Theodore Adorno. They conjectured that enlightened modernity (most specifically in the form of Weimar Germany) perhaps led inevitably to barbarism (most specifically in the form of the Nazis) in part due to the ease with which modern technology allowed seductive myths to be spun by the culture industry.
  The fact that a theorist of the radical left was ultimately a defining influence for the radical right will inevitably be used as ammunition by those championing the Arendtian notion of the “democratic versus the totalitarian” that equates communism and fascism, that is, by virtually all apologists for liberal-capitalism. In response I would only say that the fact that ideas have unpredictable lines of influence does not imply some inner connection between liberating versus oppressive traditions. The champions of “democratic” liberalism almost inevitably trace the birth of “democratic” tendencies to the American revolution (and, I suppose, lynch law) and the “totalitarian” to the Jacobins and the French Revolution. They seem to want to forget that the French revolutionaries, including the Jacobins, were directly influenced by the supposedly democratic ideals of the American revolution. Influence is, indeed, complicated and unpredictable.
• 
  Aung Sett Kyaw Min

  A mixed bag, really.
  Unabashedly affirming his anarchist influences, Sorel claims to have distilled of the entire socialist movement (that is to say, English political economy, German philosophy and French Socialism) to the notion of a syndicalist general strike. This proletarian-lead general strike is to be distinguished at all costs from the political general strike favored by the "parliamentary socialists" in which the place of power is only evacuated, not abolished. Rather, Sorel wants to do away with the aspirations for leadership or power, to the point of scolding Kautsky for daring to sketch a plan for the post-revolutionary society. Indeed, rabidly anti-centralist, Sorel wants to act now and leave all the subsquent dealings to the spontaneous ingenuity of the free producers of tomorrow. The vehicle for immediate action is, of course, the general strike, invested with all the mythic significances of the revolutions past.
  Violence will rejuvenate the moribund bourgeosie and rekindle their class interests. For Sorel, the bourgeosie have strayed too far from their historical destiny by being duped into thinking they could broker a progressively long lasting peace with the proletarian. Sorel wants nothing less than to FORCE the objective conditions of the revolution by subjective means. Through the general strike, the affects become a material motive force that seizes hold of the masses.
  Unfortunately for Sorel, injecting the proletarian masses with the much needed spiritual and moral enthusiasm of the Bergsonian sort secures immediate intelligibly of praxis at the price of deeply idealizing and therefore impoverishing the science of class struggle.
  Curiously enough, despite his professed hostility to political general strikes, Sorel wholeheartedly endorsed Lenin and Bolsheviksm, even recognizing the "backward" conditions of Russia.
• 
  Jesse

  Despite writing on the sidelines as an advocate for "revolutionary syndicalism", as far as I can tell Sorel is essentially a figure of the radical right. Imagine you had an uncle who sat at home, reading books about the decline of the west, and writing Tweets about how the Starbucks workers going on strike ought to 1. be more violent and 2. reject all aid from corrupt politicians like AOC. This is how I imagine Sorel, although unfortunately he has been much more influential than this straw-uncle would be.
  
  He grounds his argument on the idea that society has entered an era of decadent values, harmful to the vigor of the bourgeoisie and proletariat alike, and most importantly harmful to "production" and economic progress. He thinks that a violent worker's movement is needed, hostile to all socialist politicians and attempts at reform. Without this violent mentality on the part of the workers, the bourgeoisie might forget their own historic role and attempt to create "social peace" with welfare reforms that harm the vitality of production. And this hostile mentality in the Worker's Movement can only be founded on an irrational, integral Myth, a la Bergson, which he calls the myth of the General Strike, the strike to end all strikes.
  
  What does his mythical "general strike", his irrational rupture, look like? He hardly tells us! And he tells us not to plan for its aftermath, because it doesn't matter if it actually occurs, it's mostly just way to create new moral values! But he also tells us that the workers need to be sure to be able to take over the production process immediately and make it more productive than before, in order not to frighten off the lower middle classes who might otherwise cleave to them. In other words, the myth of the "general strike" is also a myth of economic miracle, where the workers take the machines and utilize them more productively than ever before. (A prophecy of Stakhanovism?!)
  
  The one redeeming feature of this text is his critique of the French parliamentary socialist Jaures, who seems to have been trying to create a patriotic socialism that glorified the Jacobins.
• 
  Dan

  We moderns abhor violence and only allow the state a limited monopoly on violence. But what if violence is morally, historically, socially, tactically, and so on necessary – as Sorel makes the case here in a limited Marxist and class struggle context? Sorel's reflections on violence inspired revolutionaries and dictators like Lenin, Stalin, Mussolini, and Hitler.
  These reflections stand in the aftermath of Dreyfus affair and are mainly engaged with the French events and politicians around 1900. As such, the “reflections on violence” are quite secondary to the author's wide interests in political affairs and Marxist reflections that are of little interest to us today.
• 
  Duarte

  This book is extremely flawed. Like, very much so. Sorel, while heavily influenced by Marx, abandons Marxism at a fundamental level every other position. It is thus wrong on countless topics. Some of the most egregious:
  
  -Considering that because all the Second International parties were now led by middle-class statesmen, so all Party organizations would be made up of middle class statesmen; thus unions must be the revolutionary political organ;
  -That proletarian revolution wouldn't lead to revolutionary terror, the reason why that happened in the French revolution was due to its middle-class, bourgeois character;
  -That the proletariat wouldn't assume State power;
  -That general strikes are not done for the sake of the economic well-being of the whole class, but are rather "Napoleonic battles" that are perfect for "weeding out the pacifists who would spoil the elite troops" of the proletarian fighting force;
  -That no historical path can be predicted, that there is no scientific way to analyze history, even stating that "The errors [in predicting the future] committed by Marx are numerous and sometimes enormous" - when Marx predicted so much so accurately! When the biggest mistake of Marx, to think that Russia would pass over capitalism, was argued against correctly by the Russian Marxists, meaning it was always a matter of methodology!;
  -The notion that the "general strike" will bring down capitalist society - rather than the insurrectionary proletarian coup taking down the State and putting in place its own;
  
  Amid many others.
  
  A gigantic part of the book is dedicated to Sorel's critique of the middle class (which is often times on point), but this ideology, syndicalism, was itself the ideology of a reactionary middle class of technicians, which were just as guilty of what Sorel hated in the Second International.
  
  So why am I giving it three stars?
  
  Because, quite simply, its topics are still relevant. The insipid character of reformism, how it's the politics of the middle classes, how reactionary these middle classes are, the rejuvenating effect that proletarian violence has on a degenerating culture, the importance of building a myth around which the whole class can rally, etc. All of this is just as relevant now as it was in the fin de siécle, when Sorel was writing it.
  
  Our culture has degenerated due to capitalism an untold amount, due to the cult of the commodity. It is a culture that breeds loneliness, alienation, sadness, rage, anger, etc. In France, a study published today by the Fondation de France claims that there are already 7 million people living in isolation, 3 million higher than in 2010. That is, the percentage of the French population without ANY emotional relationships and family and community support increased from 9% to 14% of the population - an enormous percentage. It continues to grow. Teleworking, which was supposed to improve reconciliation and encourage collaborative work in teams, has finally been implemented in such a way that 54% of those who adopted it during the pandemic in France claim to suffer from a feeling of isolation and loneliness.
  
  The braindead middle-class in service of the abhorrent bourgeois states keeps blaming this on "individual choices" - but these are not the consequences of individual acts, they are socially developed.
  
  The solution to this is the proletarian movement, the COMMUNIST movement - which means the old people's houses, the working class spaces, the culture of fraternal help and struggle. And above all, the working class violence, the final insurrection that takes down the disgusting democratic States and put in its place the regime of workers', peasants' and soldiers' councils.
  
  So, Sorel's points about proletarian violence are quite correct. It is correct there. And that is why I give it three stars.
  
  This book ends with an appendix where Sorel defends Lenin. Lenin, who goes against many of the things in this book - Lenin the extremist partisan, Lenin the master of terror, Lenin the statesman, Lenin the fundamentalist Marxism which, contrary to the popular myth that he created "his own" variant of Marxism, he was in fact, a fundamentalist to the bone. Sorel ends the book in an appendix written far after the first edition, he defends Lenin and does so quite rightly.
  
  But that only condemns the wrong parts of the book more - he has to defend Lenin, who really fought for proletarian violence - strikes, insurrections, coups, civil war and terror - despite the fact that Lenin went against much of what the book just said.
  
  At the same time, it is now all the more time to remember the "myths" from the past which are in reality nothing but historical truths that bourgeois history has purposefully erased - always remember the German revolution, the Hungarian Soviet Republic, the Gilan Republic, the Shanghai Commune, that the Red Wave was what gave most of us Europeans our 8-hour working day, remember, remember, remember! The workers' insurrections of the past may have failed, but the future ones will walk all over the modern States, just like the Napoleonic armies once did.
  
  As for the democratic condemnation of proletarian violence, there is nothing more disgusting.
  
  What is 200k dead from the Red Terror, mostly in self-defense, compared to the 7 to 8 million dead by starvation caused by the blockades of the disgusting democratic nations, and of their outrageous amount of aid given to White armies in order to raise Russian infrastructure to the ground?
  
  How can there be talk of a small dictatorial clique imposing its will on the Russian population, when, several times, Bolshevik control was reduced to Moscow and St. Petersburg, when 30 different armies entered Russian territory, with only a single one of them ever being friendly to the Bolsheviks (and this was a rarity), when the White armies received more foreign support, all from the "democratic" nations, than any other force in human history? Is one really meant to believe that a "small clique" managed to force the population to fight for such hardships rather than giving in, all against the population's wishes?
  
  And never forget that all these States are against all proletarians of every state! You don't have to go to Russia to see the White Terror in the days of 1917-1923! It appeared in every democratic nation where the workers' rose up.
  
  The Shanghai massacre in China, pistolerismo in Spain, the Freikorps murder and rape sprees in Germany, the fascist terror in Italy (which was defended by the democratic government), the white terror in Hungary after the soviet republic ended (which was far more brutal, involving pogroms, killing around 5 times more people, largely innocent workers in Budapest - and yet about this nobody ever hears a word compared to the red terror, which was always in self-defense!), the murderous treatment of the workers in Finland after the civil war, etc etc.
  
  One does not even need to look abroad to see the obvious massacres committed by the smugly triumphant democracies with its very undemocratic proxies, which it pretends to oppose - the moment there is a serious threat to the democratic regime, the White terror comes.
  
  All the democracies today laugh triumphantly, as even if they didn't manage to destroy soviet power, they managed to destroy Russia so thoroughly that the soviet regime fell within a few years anyway. But the power of the workers', peasants' and soldiers' councils will survive forever as the lessons that will guide the future working class forwards. They will never be forgotten.
• 
  Ману

  It is a sad fact that this work usually goes unread by every generation. It seems to be the most creative work in the radical tradition since Marx (up to that point). While his metaphysical description of the general strike may not be convincing, his epistemological critique of elites within socialism and hierarchical structures via the inconsistency and façade of their knowledge systems is profoundly rich. His critique of positivism and the way he manages to connect bourgeois scientism with liberalism's position in society is underappreciated. What the book lacks, however, is a tempered look at anarcho syndicalism that doesn't deify the abstract event in the general stike. His conversation of the sublimity of morality could have developed further, for example, had he not reduced it with a Deus ex machina in the general strike. Lastly, his ideological purity is perhaps his other shortcoming, seeing in liberalism (middle class ideology) something to be extirpated, without ever immanently critiquing its development. The Dreyfus Affair looms large over this work, and in this sense he seems to be too tied to the peculiarities of French politics to appreciate the potential within his work. The tragedy of this collection of essays then lies in the fact that they are inchoate, and yet Sorel's point is to leave more questions than furnished systems, so perhaps that is their brilliance.
• 
  Luke Echo

  He does waffle on a bit
• 
  M

  64 years before
  Anti-Oedipus saw Deleuze and Guattari suggest we "accelerate the process", Georges Sorel demanded we do so in the name of progress, civilisation, and all things True, Good and Beautiful. Taking up the accelerationist current in Marx's thought and using it as a sledgehammer against the parliamentary socialism of his day, Sorel manages a more convincing fusion of Marx and Nietzsche than we've seen since, while managing to be a more honest and worthy successor to Marx than any of the humanist moralisers who call themselves Marxists today.
  
  (I read the Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought edition, by the way, just in case anyone wants to chase up my page references.)
  
  Reflections on Violence really has a simple message: The capitalist class has become weak-willed and stupid thanks to the activities of the parliamentary socialists. The latter, Sorel says, are playing both sides to their own advantage: they win small concessions from the bourgeoise by leveraging their fear of the proletariat, while disparaging insurrectionary thinkers like Sorel and lulling the masses into believing the best way to achieve their goals is through the advocacy of the party elite. This ultimately serves no-one but the parliamentary socialists, who dream of nothing more than growing rich and successful off the back of the worker's movement. But not only is this behaviour disgraceful to Sorel, it's also antithetical to Marxist doctrine: capitalism is a fundamentally progressive economic system only when the class struggle is vigorous and open. Open antagonism between the classes is the engine of progress, as the capitalists seek to marginalise the power of the proletariat by developing the productive forces, while the proletariat grow ever more organised and determined in asserting themselves. What Sorel fears is that the coming-together and cross-class solidarity envisioned by the parliamentary left will lead to economic decline and stagnation, where Nietzsche's Last Man, who dreams only of a comfortable life, reigns forever over a herd of workers with no ambition and a property-owning class who are no better than slaves.
  
  Sorel is a perceptive reader of Marx, and understands that socialism is not a return to a pre-capitalist unitary body, nor the creation of a peaceful utopia, on the contrary socialism "picks up where capitalism left off..." (129) The proletariat "has no need to make plans for utilizing its victories: it counts on expelling the capitalists from the productive domain and on taking their place in the workshop created by capitalism." (161) It is common enough today, every time capitalism shits the bed, to hear leftists say 'Marx predicted all this... this is why socialism must replace capitalism...' but as Sorel notes, "the crises Marx had in mind must not be confused with economic decline; crises appeared to him as the result of a too-risky venture on the part of production, which creates productive forces out of proportion to the means of regulation which the capitalist system automatically brings into play." (127) The reason that socialism must succeed capitalism is not so that the economic system can be kinder, less brutal (though it may well be); it is not a question of decelerating the process to prevent catastrophe, but rather putting the means of production in the hands of the workers, who know what they're doing far better than the capitalist who merely funds the ventures. Competency and stability comes second to the daring, discipline, and technical ability of the fully-developed proletariat.
  
  Sorel, again in full agreement with Marx, stresses that what capitalism has built up, socialism will inherit. The capitalists are the enemy, but they are not to be robbed of the master morality which drives them to prepare the world for socialism. As Marx said in the Poverty of Philosophy, "in existing society, in the industry based upon individual exchanges, the anarchy of production, which is the source of so much poverty, is at the same time the source of all progress..." Sorel, warning of what happens if capitalism is straightjacketed by slave morality, adds: "If, on the contrary, the bourgeoisie, led astray by the nonsense of the preachers of ethics and sociology, returns to the ideal of conservative mediocrity, seeks to correct the abuses of the economy and wishes to break with the barbarism of their predecessors, then one part of the forces which were to further the development of capitalism is employed in hindering it, chance is introduced and the future of the world becomes completely indeterminate." (76) But, and this is important to stress, it is not a question of simply waiting around until the capitalists have developed industry enough and then letting them disappear. The class struggle must be continually fought by the worker's movement. Everybody must play their role. Then, and only then, does socialism come about with the necessity that Marx predicts.
  
  Sorel views socialism as a heroic leap into the unknown (74; 129; 251), where selfless workers strive towards excellence, assuring "the continued progress of the world" (248). Details are scarce, but it's basically Capitalism 2: Capitalism Harder. The master morality of a strong and self-confident proletariat will bring about changes we can't even imagine. Like Marx, Sorel sees little point in speculating about a future that will be guided by material necessity, instinct, ambition, and unheard of technological advances. Social theorists and utopian technicians will have little say in the way things go.
  
  As far as I'm concerned, this is really the direction that Marxism logically goes in. Sorel, like Marx, worships at the altar of technological progress and assigns central importance to the proletariat on the basis of its importance to the functioning of the economy. But the dream of indefinite progress is no longer tenable today. You can't help but feel a sense of amusement when you read Sorel: socialism will not rescue industrial society from barbarism. Industrial society is barbarism. Finite planet, finite resources, finite time. The story of the rise of the proletariat is not an epic. It is, in truth, quite tragic. But mostly it's a farce.
  
  Socialists as much as capitalists belong to an ideological tradition that ecology quietly made a fool out of decades ago. If leftists must persist in their attacks on capital, they ought to be Sorelists (that is, actual Marxists): ruthless, uncompromising, continually demanding concessions and never on the defence, sustained by heroic myths and motivated by a cold, conquering mindset. But this is to remain irrational and religious. This is perfectly fine with Sorel. But how much longer can utopians avert their gaze from the abyss?
• 
  Sami Eerola

  You would image that a book that argues for the morality of revolutionary violence would be at least exciting to read, but it is not. This book is so boring. Boring because of the highside of actual communist revolutions.
  
  It is difficult to take seriously philosophical arguments that the real world have showed to be terrible wrong. This book is also boring, because it argues against events and people that the history gave almost entirely forgotten. With out the context of the time, this book is a very hard understand.
  
  The only thing that makes this book remotely interesting to read is that Sorrel invented many of the philosophical ideas that would become the foundations of fascist thought.
  
  The writer is kind of a weird authoritarian anarchist and it is so ironic that his arguments for a violent general strike are the same that even current Neo-Nazis use to justify their horrible world view. Only thing that this book lacs is a racist argument. There is some antisemtic stereotypes here and there, but the writer is not trying to argue for the purity of the white race. The fascism of this book are the esoteric arguments for total war that will "purify" a nation, by destroying the old elites and the idea of ancient heroes and myths as vehicles to mobiles the workers.
  
  The mythic elements are the thing that i was interested, because Sorrel was the first thinker to propose that people do not embrace a ideology because it makes logical sense, but because it has a good story to explain the world. For this book the story is the idea of a great general strike that would shatter the capitalist world and kickstart a communist revolution.
  
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  Emre

  Sorel, 1908-Fransa gündemindeki sosyalist parti politikalarını, genel grev fikrini ve proleter şiddeti Marx'ın tezlerini yeniden yorumlayarak, Devrim mitine duyulan ihtiyacı dile getirerek makalelerinin merkezine taşıyor. Özellikle iki yüzlülük ve burjuva kaypaklığı sergileyen sosyal demokrat/sosyalist parti eleştirisi bugün için de önemli.
  Bugünlerde Türkiye'de yayılmaya başlayan ve öznesi doğrudan işçilerden oluşan grev hareketleri belki Sorelvari bir genel greve işaret etmese de işçi sınıfının politika belirlemede düzen partilerine ihtiyaç duymadığını göstermesi bakımından kritik bir önemde.
  Son olarak Telemak'a bu edisyon için teşekkür etmekle birlikte, metinde oldukça çok baskı hatası olması okuru yorucu ve üzücü bir konu. Bu hataların birinci baskıya has kalması ve olası yeni baskılarda düzeltilmesi dileğiyle.
• 
  Leonardo

  Gramsci discute con Sorel. Comentado en clase de Filosofía política e historia de las ideas políticas. Clase 9.
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  Andrew

  OK, so this was written before Marxist revolution was truly put to the test, and, while this perhaps makes me a weak-spined reformist, the Soviet experience if anything emboldened the case for what Sorel would have condemned as "parlimentary" socialism. This isn't to say that revolution is an impossibility, but I can't think a successful revolution would follow Sorel's blueprint.
  
  Sorel makes some very valid points-- the symbolic value of the general strike, for instance, is very compelling-- but the total argument falls apart. The idea that violence is good because the bourgeoisie is pacifist strikes me (PUN TIME) as logically invalid and seriously wrong-headed. The notion of eternal violence as invigorating and masculine seems grotesquely proto-fascist, and there's a reason some of Mussolini's state intellectuals were quite taken by Sorel. Look out for this one, kids.
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  Yogy TheBear

  First I think it is important to give a review by Ludwig von Mises on Sorel: “Although Marxians considered themselves solely interpreters of Marx, one Marxian, one writer, added something and had a strong influence, not only on the small group of his followers, but also on other authors. Georges Sorel [1847–1922] […] developed a philosophy in many respects different from the Marxian philosophy. And it influenced political action and philosophic thinking. Sorel was a timid bourgeois intellectual, an engineer. He retired to discuss these things with his friends at a bookshop owned by Charles Péguy [1873–1914], a revolutionary socialist […].
  Sorel belonged psychologically to the group of people who dream of action but never act; he didn’t fight. As a writer, however, Sorel was very aggressive. He praised cruelty and deplored the fact that cruelty is more and more disappearing from our life. In one of his books, Reflections on Violence, he considered it a manifestation of decay that Marxian parties, calling themselves revolutionary, had degenerated into parliamentary parties. Where is the revolution if you are in Parliament? He also didn’t like labor unions. He thought the labor unions should abandon the hopeless venture of seeking higher wage rates and should adopt, instead of this conservative pattern, the revolutionary process.
  Sorel saw clearly the contradiction in the system of Marx who spoke of revolution on the one hand and then said, “The coming of socialism is inevitable, and you cannot accelerate its coming because socialism cannot come before the material productive forces have achieved all that is possible within the frame of the old society.” Sorel saw that this idea of inevitability was contradictory to the idea of revolution. This is the contradiction all socialists ask themselves about—Kautsky, for one. Sorel completely adopted the idea of revolution.
  […]
  Syndicalism can mean ownership of the industry by the workers. Socialists mean by this term ownership by the state and operation for the account of the people. Sorel wanted to attain this by revolution. He didn’t question the idea that history leads toward socialism. There is a kind of instinct that pushes men toward socialism, but Sorel accepted this as superstition, an inner urge that cannot be analyzed. For this reason his philosophy has been compared with that of Henri Bergson’s élan vital (myths, fairy stories, fables, legends). However, in the doctrine of Sorel, “myth” means something else—a statement which cannot be criticized by reason.
  1. Socialism is an end.
  2.The general strike is the great means.
  Most of Sorel’s writings date from 1890 to 1910. They had an enormous influence on the world, not only on the revolutionary socialists, but also on the royalists, supporters of the restoration of the House of Orange, the “Action française,” and in other countries the “Action nationale.” But all these parties gradually became a little bit more “civilized” than Sorel thought they should be.
  ” From Marxism Unmasked My thoughts: Sorel is a very confusing author with a very confusing work. In the end I think the main thing that he has a frustration with the current development of the world in his time. He wants a revolution that for him appears to have an erotically and nihilistic mythos to it. Thus he criticizes a few major trends of socialism and the liberals and bourgeoisies; bouth sides with the same passion, for not being antagonistic enough to bring the revolution he wants… The socialists and proletarians seek social reforms through strikes, the bourgeoisie are week and do not follow their class interests in exploiting the proletarians to the max… Thus for him history will enter into an un deterministic path, not on the dialectical path set by Marx. Basically the path to socialism/communism (which he perceives as anarcho-syndicalism) can be maintained and fueled by violence that will stop the amelioration of economical and political gap between the proletarians and bourgeoisies achieved through liberalism, capitalism (not in the socialist conception) and social reform… One thing I said and I want to clarify, I find him very nihilistic. Because he rejects the benefits of the amelioration of economical and political gap between the classes and the achieving of social harmony… It is like he rejects the morality of peace and understanding and choses the morality he wants, that of class antagonism. This guy deserves his fame, his ideas are dangerous. He clearly demonstrated in a number of passage his understanding of the many errors of socialism and/or Marxism. But he rejects all of this, basically proposes a myth to direct the workers towards his beloved revolution. A few notes from Sorel: “Against this noisy, garrulous and lying socialism, which is exploited
  by ambitious people of every description, which amuses a few buffoons
  and is admired by decadents, stands revolutionary syndicalism,
  which endeavours, on the contrary, to leave nothing in a state
  of indecision; its ideas are honestly expressed, without trickery and
  without insinuation; no attempt is made to dilute doctrines by a
  stream of confused commentaries. Syndicalism strives to employ
  methods of expression which throw a full light on things, which
  put them exactly in the place assigned to them by their nature, and
  which bring out the whole value of the forces in play. Opposition,
  instead of being glossed over, must be thrown into sharp relief if
  we are to follow syndicalist thinking; the groups that are struggling
  against each other must be shown to be as separate as possible;
  finally, the movements of the revolting masses are presented so as
  to make a deep and lasting impression on the souls of the rebels”
• 
  Radu

  An interesting collection of articles on post-Revolutionary/post-Napoleonic France from a socialist/syndicalist perspective, though for someone who isn't familiar with French history it wasn't as interesting as I first hoped it would be.
  
  One major take that I did find an interesting, however, was the way that Sorel differentiated the forms that violence takes according to the person(s) enacting it;
  
  Violence enacted by the State is referred to as "force" because the violence committed by the State's enforcers has the weight of a collective government and all it's leviathan bureaucracy behind it. The State's enforcers are paid to dispassionately maintain a status quo without any obligatory sense of moral indignation... or hypocrisy when witnessing the State's laws not being enforced in equal measure.
  
  Violence enacted by private individuals, or by disenfranchised groups, is simply referred to as "violence" because the lack of any of the aforementioned bureaucratic weight is replaced by the deep sense of moral indignation and/or heated passions found lacking in representatives of the State.
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  Jose Angelo

  For an unseemingly innocuous obscure journalist, highly critical thought skills with techinical apparatus. He advocates the syndacalist general strike as the prime mover necessary required social violence to overthrow capitalism. Written in the early twentieth century, still an inspiration for the industrial technological slaves of today. Harcore committed purist Marxist; with anarchical bent. Historian, polemicist, critic, provacateur, journalist, and thinker, Sorel poses good arguments as to why social violence is necessary to confronting a violent system of capitalist exploitation demeaning and devouring us all!
  
  I love these Cambridge texts on Political Thought.
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  Bahattin Cizreli

  Yazarın dünyasını kavramak kitapta bahsi geçen tarihi olaylara ve döneme hakim olmakla mümkün. Bu yönüyle kitap özel bir araştırmada detayla incelenmeyi hak ediyor. Çünkü Sorel'in sivri-alaycı dili, kışkırtıcı argümanları ve sarsıcı iddiaları insanı hayran bırakacak cinsten. Kitabı okuduktan sonra neden hem Lenin hem de Mussolini'nin kendisine hayranlık duyduğuna dair iddiaların gerçek olabileceğini anladım. Kitaptaki tartışmayı siyasal stratejilerden soyutlayarak okuyabilirsek şiddet-ahlak ilişkisine dair çok ciddi sorgulamalara yol açabilir. Sonuç olarak iyi bir kitaptı.
• 
  Wetdryvac

  On the list of toxic stuff that's toxic: Holy pants, this stuff's insidious. Good in terms of tracking down some mindset source materials, but... yeah. Treated with the standard researcher's skim, because it pretty much hurt my brain to read straight, even selecting a portion and shooting for the segment.
  
  Probably come back to it some once I've gotten some resistance, but the first dive was, "Set it on fire."
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  Andrei Hognogi

  The central thesis of the book seems to be that there's a difference between the force that keeps a regime and the violence that overthrows it. It also gives to the reader good insights on the post bonapartist french socialism. I found the author to be levelheaded and the arguments to be grounded in ancient greece and christian history. I will have to return to this book someday to do it justice.
  The second part of the book is much better than the first.
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  Oakley Merideth

  "Everybody agrees that the disappearance of these old brutalities is an excellent thing. From this opinion it was so easy to pass to the idea that all violence is an evil, that this step was bound to have been taken; and, in fact, the great mass of the people, who are not accustomed to thinking, have come to this conclusion, which is accepted nowadays as a dogma by the bleating herd of moralists. They have not asked themselves what there is in brutality which is reprehensible."
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  Juan Crusoe

  Ya sólo el fantástico prefacio de Isaiah Berlin serviría para justificar esta lectura.
• 
  noblethumos

  “Reflections on Violence" by Georges Sorel, published in 1908, is a thought-provoking and controversial treatise that explores the role of violence in revolutionary movements and social change. Sorel, a French philosopher and sociologist, challenges conventional political theories and advocates for the transformative power of myth and the mobilization of violent action. In this academic review, we critically examine the key themes, strengths, limitations, and scholarly significance of Sorel's work, considering its historical context and its ongoing relevance in political and social theory.
  
  
  "Reflections on Violence" presents a radical and provocative perspective on the use of violence as a catalyst for social transformation. Sorel argues that violence, when harnessed through a revolutionary myth and directed toward a noble cause, can serve as a force for positive change. He rejects traditional parliamentary politics and emphasizes the importance of a powerful myth that inspires and mobilizes the masses to pursue radical action.
  
  One of the strengths of Sorel's work lies in his challenge to the prevailing political and social theories of his time. He offers a compelling critique of liberal democracy and capitalism, highlighting their limitations in addressing social inequalities and class struggle. Sorel's emphasis on the transformative power of collective action and the need for a revolutionary myth resonated with various political movements, particularly syndicalism and Marxism, shaping subsequent debates on the role of violence and ideology in revolutionary politics.
  
  Moreover, Sorel's work prompts critical reflection on the complex relationship between violence, politics, and social change. His analysis of the efficacy and limitations of violence as a tool for political transformation raises ethical, strategic, and practical questions that continue to be relevant in contemporary discourse. While Sorel's ideas have been subject to criticism for their potential to justify authoritarianism and extremism, they have also sparked fruitful discussions on the nature of power, ideology, and social movements.
  
  However, it is essential to acknowledge the limitations and controversial aspects of Sorel's work. His glorification of violence and his rejection of rationalism and gradualism have been criticized for their potential to undermine democratic principles and the rule of law. Additionally, Sorel's reliance on myth as a mobilizing force raises questions about the manipulative aspects of collective identity and the dangers of demagoguery.
  
  
  "Reflections on Violence" by Georges Sorel is a significant work that challenges conventional political theories and highlights the potential of violence as a force for social transformation. While recognizing its historical and intellectual contributions, this academic review acknowledges the limitations and controversial aspects of Sorel's arguments. The work's enduring significance lies in its ability to stimulate critical engagement with questions of political agency, the dynamics of social change, and the role of ideology and violence in revolutionary politics.
  
  
  "Reflections on Violence" by Georges Sorel stands as a provocative and influential work that challenges established political theories and advocates for the transformative power of violence and revolutionary myth. While recognizing its contributions to political and social theory, this academic review emphasizes the limitations and controversial nature of Sorel's arguments. Scholars and readers engaging with Sorel's work must approach it critically, considering the ethical, strategic, and practical implications of his ideas in the context of democratic norms and the pursuit of social justice.
  
  GPT