Georges Sorel’s Philosophy
by Zoltanous
The intellectual legacy of Georges Sorel constitutes one of the most intricate and provocative contributions to radical political theory, characterized by a fragmentary corpus dispersed across periodicals rather than consolidated volumes. His writings oscillate between ideological exhortation and rigorous philosophical inquiry, rendering them resistant to straightforward classification. This essay integrates an introductory synthesis of Sorelianism’s sociological, historical, and religious underpinnings with an explication of “diremption.” the conceptual dissolution of unity into antagonistic multiplicities, while encompassing his broader framework of myths, violence, pessimism, and syndicalism. Grounded in a critique of bourgeois decadence, Enlightenment optimism, and rationalist hegemony, Sorel positioned himself as a Proudhonian Marxist committed to the moral regeneration of the proletariat through collective action. By eschewing deterministic narratives of progress in favor of myth-driven antagonism, his thought provides an analytical framework for comprehending revolutionary dynamics as fractured, heroic confrontations rather than teleological advancements.
Georges Sorel (1847–1922) emerged from a petit bourgeois milieu of wine merchants during France’s transition to modern democracy under the Second Empire of Napoleon III, an epoch dominated by the financial bourgeoisie’s orchestration of infrastructural development. Educated in engineering at the École Polytechnique, he commenced his career in public works at age 20, enduring prolonged isolation in Corsica and Algiers amid the Franco-Prussian War and the Paris Commune. Upon retirement after 25 years, he relocated to Paris to pursue scholarly endeavors.
Sorel’s prominence derived from his encyclopedic erudition; he was a fixture at Charles Péguy’s bookstore, engaging in discourses spanning classical Greek philosophy to industrial safety protocols. Contemporaries regarded him as a “living intelligence,” marked by intellectual restlessness and an insatiable curiosity, though he favored oral exchange over written composition, commencing publication only in middle age. This predilection complicates hermeneutic efforts: his positions evolved inconsistently, interpersonal relations proved volatile, and he migrated between journals in apparent perpetual dissatisfaction — a manifestation of an unquiet intellect. Across fewer than three decades as a public thinker, Sorel embodied profound contradictions: an orthodox Marxist pursuing heterodox interpretations; alternately supportive and oppositional in the Dreyfus affair; extolling Mussolini and Lenin as paramount socialist statesmen; harboring anti-Semitic sentiments while venerating ancient Hebrew civilization; formulating radical syndicalism while aligning with Charles Maurras’s nationalist right.
Beginning in 1894, Sorel contributed to L’Ère nouvelle, the inaugural French Marxist periodical, and co-established Le Devenir Social alongside Paul Lafargue (Marx’s son-in-law), Paul Bonnet, and Georges Deville (the first French translator of Capital). Disillusioned by the CGT’s concessions to democratic equilibrium, he explored tactical affiliations with Action Française through the Cercle Proudhon to counteract Third Republic degeneration, primarily to advance his disciple Eduard Berth. An unauthorized 1910 review implied monarchist inclinations, yet Sorel diverged from Maurras on nationalism. In the early phases of World War I, Sorel discerned a deeper significance in the conflict as a clash between conservative principles and democracy, as expressed in correspondence with Berth, though by 1914 he vehemently opposed the war and the strike-suppressing union sacrée. In 1917, he endorsed Lenin and the Bolsheviks, appending defenses to Reflections on Violence. In 1918, he supplemented Materials For a Theory of The Proletariat with a postscript portraying the Russian Revolution as an inaugural epoch defying plutocratic dominance, though his disciples, including Hubert Lagardelle, Eduard Berth, and Georges Valois, later critiqued the Bolshevik trajectory as catastrophic following Lenin’s death.
“The book was not printed until 1918; the war has posed new problems which I dare not broach at this time. Only one point seems certain: that the victory of the Entente was a triumph for demagogic plutocracy. This plutocracy wants to suppress the Bolsheviks who frighten it; its military forces are sufficient to carry out this operation. But what will the plutocrats gain by the extermination of the Russian revolutionaries? Will not the blood of martyrs be effective once again? One must not forget that without the massacres of June 1848 and May 1871, socialism would have had great trouble in making this principle of the class struggle acceptable in France. The bloody object lesson which will take place in Russia will make all workers feel that there is a contradiction between democracy and the mission of the proletariat. The idea of constituting a government of producers will not perish; the cry: ‘Death to the intellectuals!’ for which the Bolsheviks are so often reproached will perhaps end by imposing itself on the workers of the entire world. One must be blind not to see that the Russian Revolution is the dawn of a new era.”
— Georges Sorel, Materials For a Theory of The Proletariat
Sorel’s demise in 1922 precluded commentary on Italian Fascism, though correspondence indicates disfavor despite reported private commendation of Mussolini in 1919. A black flag upon his coffin symbolized antipathy toward the Third Republic. A steadfast Catholic influenced by social Christianity and proximate to Péguy until 1905, Sorel evinced sympathy for agrarian laborers bound to traditional Catholicism, rigorous labor ethics, and terrestrial attachment. Social Christianity contested positivism by asserting science’s incapacity to furnish moral justifications or historical prognostications, a stance resonant with Sorel’s views. His socialism prioritized the ethical revitalization of French workers, commencing from the proletarian sphere to restore societal integrity on organic and individual levels. Sorel conceptualized the working class as the conduit for bourgeois regeneration, necessitating its preliminary moral elevation. Intellectuals and scientific inquiry proved inadequate to fathom social transformation’s profundities, domains long illuminated by religious insight, thus entrusting renewal to proletarian austerity, labor discipline, and sacrificial ethos. Enigmas within social reality eluded empirical methodologies, animated solely by religious and mythic forces, transmuting ecclesiastical mysticism into socialism’s earthly redemption.
Sorel’s theoretical edifice originates in classical antiquity, particularly Hellenic civilization. In his 1889 reconstruction of Socrates’ trial, he affirmed the verdict, attributing to the philosopher the demolition of Greek society — not the Periclean zenith, but the rural-militaristic era of Homer and Hesiod. Therein, moral integrity derived from poetic instruction and existences of indigence and exertion. Indigence, arduous toil, and sacrificial dedication forged collective ethics essential for communal enterprises. Sorel esteemed pre-Socratic simplicity, familial devotion, adherence to statutes and local cults, frugality, and piety as foundations of societal vitality. This “heroic tradition” sanctified martial prowess via poetic pedagogy, with conflict constituting the social structure’s raison d’être. Warfare propelled advancement, intensifying communal solidarity, heroism, and altruism — virtues Socrates eradicated.
Socrates and the sophists precipitated optimism and rationalism’s calamities. Optimism forsaken the tragic-religious perspective from tragedies and epics, alongside frugal customs, corroding existential realism and fidelity to religious/social mores. Socrates misconstrued human nature’s instability absent acknowledgment of adversities and behavioral codes; optimism undermined collective morality by privileging gratification over cohesion, deriding impediments to pleasure. Such dispositions paralleled Greece’s subjugation by Macedonians and Romans. More grievous was rationalism’s pivot from mythic/legal obedience to intellectual explications — a retrogression. Tragic doctrines devolved into superficial logic; combatants ceded to rhetoricians; pedagogy shifted to linguistic artifices rather than practical preparation; civic-divine allegiance yielded to Platonic abstractions. An oratorical elite materialized, fracturing indigent equality. Pedagogical ramifications proved deleterious: optimistic rational faith enabled state dictation of curricula and cognition in authoritarian fashion.
Sorel’s anthropology posited humanity’s social fulfillment through creation or conflict, lest it descend into hedonistic egoism, necessitating communal labor within organic associations such as family or polis over skepticism. Fin de siècle France echoed sophistic Greece in decline from constricted economic-political pursuits. Post-Revolutionary rationalism and individualism signified this degradation; Sorel’s endeavor sought regeneration by reclaiming heroic, communal essences excised by bourgeois order. Morality emanated from collective heroic praxis and sacrifice, with communal safeguarding and production engendering individual dignity. Informed by decades of rural peregrinations among laborers, these conceptions analogized bourgeois France to post-Socratic Athens, catalyzing Sorel’s campaign against decay through syndicalism and Marxism.
19th century bourgeois optimism extolled industrial innovations and sustained peace post-1815, with positivism asserting scientific explication of all phenomena. This Enlightenment inheritance, reason, science, advancement, from Descartes to Locke canonized liberal democracy. Sorel’s despondency arose from France’s convulsions, coups d’état, 1848 and 1871 uprisings, Dreyfus scandal, contravening sanguine projections. Entering scholarly discourse amid critiques of Enlightenment materialism, he aligned with the counteroffensive.
Myth functions as the principal catalyst for collective mobilization: imagistic depictions of triumphant conflict, orienting adherents’ endeavors.
“In the course of these studies, I have established something so simple that I did not believe it had to be emphasized: men who participate in great social movements represent their immediate action in the form of images of battles assuring the triumph of their cause. I proposed calling these constructions myths, the knowledge of which is so important for the historian: the syndicalist general strike and Marx’s catastrophic revolution are myths. I have given as remarkable examples of myths those which were constructed by early Christianity, the Reformation, the French Revolution and by Mazzini’s followers. I wanted to show that it is not necessary to try to analyze such systems of images in the same way that one breaks down something into its elements; that they should be taken as a whole and as historical forces; that it is necessary above all to keep from comparing the accomplished facts with the images which men had adopted prior to action.”
— Georges Sorel, Reflections on Violence
Myths evident in Christianity, the Reformation, the French Revolution, Mazzinian circles, Marxian cataclysm, and syndicalist strikes contrast with utopias that induce passivity and belief in inexorable advancement. Myths incite praxis, positing development as attainable via deliberate exertion.
“As long as there are no myths accepted by the masses, one may go on talking of revolts indefinitely without ever provoking any revolutionary movement; this is what gives such importance to the general strike and renders it so odious to socialists who are afraid of revolution; they do all they can to shake the confidence felt by the workers in the preparations they are making for the revolution; and in order to succeed in this they cast ridicule on the idea of the general strike, which alone has a value as a motive force. One of the chief means employed by them is to represent it as a utopia; this is easy enough, as there are very few myths which are perfectly free from any utopian element.
The revolutionary myths which exist at the present time are almost pure; they allow us to understand the activity, the sentiments, and the ideas of the masses as they prepare themselves to enter on a decisive struggle; they are not descriptions of things but expressions of a will to act. A utopia is, on the contrary, an intellectual product; it is the work of theorists who, after observing and discussing the facts, seek to establish a model to which they can compare existing societies in order to estimate the amount of good and evil they contain; it is a combination of imaginary institutions having sufficient analogies to real institutions for the jurist to be able to reason about them; it is a construction which can be broken into parts and of which certain pieces have been shaped in such a way that they can (with a few alterations) be fitted into future legislation. — Whilst contemporary myths lead men to prepare themselves for a combat which will destroy the existing state of things, the effect of utopias has always been to direct men’s minds towards reforms which can be brought about by patching up the system; it is not surprising then that so many believers in utopias were able to develop into able statesmen when they had acquired greater experience of political life. — A myth cannot be refuted since it is, at bottom, identical to the convictions of a group, being the expression of these convictions in the language of movement; and it is, in consequence, unanalysable into parts which could be placed on the plane of historical descriptions. A utopia, on the other hand, can be discussed like any other social constitution; the spontaneous movements it presupposes can be compared with those actually observed in the course of history, and we can in this way evaluate their verisimilitude; it is possible to refute it by showing that the economic system on which it has been made to rest is incompatible with the necessary conditions of modern production.”
— Georges Sorel, Reflections on Violence
Myth encapsulates communal convictions, impelling mobilization; utopias assess societal virtues and vices, fostering incremental reforms and presumptions of inevitable amelioration. Revolutionaries must instill mythic narratives in the masses to secure triumph. Myth, neither divine nor supernatural but a sociological construct forged in human history, harmonizes with Sorel’s authentic Catholicism without conflict. Its efficacy in mass consciousness derives from Bergson, who formulated a “positive metaphysics” to counter prevailing positivism and determinism, safeguarding free will and human spirituality. Bergson’s intuition apprehends reality spontaneously, sans logical mediation, culminating in creative praxis through mental images coalescing into “matter,” with the body serving as an action nexus — moldable via cognitive processing.
Sorelianism converges with elitist theorists such as Le Bon, who observed that crowds conceptualize in images triggering illogical sequences, and Pareto, who likened myth to derivations, aggregates of images evoking sentiments and propelling conduct, integral to political sociology. Fin de siècle intellectuals, immersed in rationalism, positivism, and optimism, prove incapable of galvanizing masses; only apt mythic imagery disrupts torpor.
“The language common could not produce these results in any certain way; one must resort to collections of images that, taken together and only by intuition, before any pondered analysis is made, are capable of evoking the mass of feelings that correspond to the different manifestations of the war undertaken by socialism against modern society.”
— Georges Sorel, Reflections on Violence
Sorel’s revolutionary imperative centered on dismantling bourgeois decay and reinstating heroic ethics through proletarian violence. The proletarian parallels the Spartan warrior, myth-equipped for boundless sacrifice, an efficacious prototype of authoritarian commitment. Bourgeois society proffers only the alienated neurotic, substituting material accrual for transcendent ideals. Proletarian potency resides in heroic, intuitive myth-enacted conduct. Sorel and Bergson extended consciousness beyond rational confines — a rebellion against positivist dominance, probing subjective realms for remedies to societal decline. Positivist and Enlightenment presumption interrogated: can science satiate existential yearning for significance? Sorel’s resolute negation posited meaning as derivative of heroic myth-praxis. Science and reason yield mere empirical assertions; human essence demands narratives conferring historical and social import.
Diremption encapsulates the inevitable fragmentation of social cognition into analytical domains, prioritizing multiplicity over coherence. Upon apprehension, social reality engenders compartmentalized ideologies that diverge with expanded comprehension, replete with inherent contradictions.
“Man cannot create unity in his thought unless he allows himself to give up part of reality. In order to construct a new metaphysics that corresponds to our needs, it must be admitted that in coming into contact with the world, our mind divides itself into distinct ideologies, which deal with areas that become more separate as we gain a broader knowledge [connaissance] of the real. Humanity has always acted as though it understood this metaphysics and the evidence of history legitimizes the enterprise of those who seek to create this philosophy of diremption to replace that of unification.”
— Georges Sorel, Socialist Studies
Unity necessitates excision of reality; historical materialism requires adaptation through a metaphysics of plurality. Ideologies subserve material exigencies, manifesting as discrete spheres that bifurcate with deepened insight. Marxism dies at geopolitics’ threshold; Leninism incorporates Hobsonian imperialism, yielding conjoined multiplicities devoid of total integration. Humanity has implicitly operated under this paradigm; Hegelian sublation must be discarded in favor of dissolution into constituent elements. Nonetheless, unity warrants consideration as engendered by tangible forces.
“That in many circumstances, and especially in those which are most related to acting on the everyday constructions of the mind which we attribute to common sense, the unity of society must be taken into very serious consideration is something that no reasonable person will dream of disputing.”
— Georges Sorel, Unity and Multiplicity, Reflections on Violence
Unity arises from economic-juridical consolidation via hierarchical structures and uniform legal application, informing quotidian cognition, yet not encompassing the entirety of thought, which advances through diremption. Parliamentary socialists integrate into societal fabric, construing transformation as liberalism’s prolongation. Select cadres direct class conflict, forging proletarian coherence for revolutionary efficacy — a severance, thus diremption.
“Similar observations could be made with regard to workers’ organizations; they seem under an obligation to vary themselves to infinity, to the extent that the proletariat feels itself more capable of taking its place in the world; the socialist parties believe themselves charged with providing ideas to these organizations, advising them and grouping them into a class unit, at the same time as their parliamentary activity would establish a connection between the workers’ movement and the bourgeoisie; and we know that the socialist parties have taken from democracy their great love of unity. In order properly to understand the revolutionary movement, we must place ourselves in a position diametrically opposed to that of the politicians. A large number of organizations are merged, to a greater or lesser extent, into the economic-juridical life of the whole of society, to the extent that whatever unity is required in society is produced automatically; others, less numerous but well selected, lead the class struggle; it is these that discipline proletarian thought by creating the ideological unity which the proletariat needs in order to accomplish its revolutionary work; — and the guides ask for no recompense and in this, as in so many other things, are very different from the Intellectuals, who insist upon being maintained in a joyous way of life by the poor devils before whom they consent to hold forth.”
— Georges Sorel, Unity and Multiplicity, Reflections on Violence
Linguistic constructs mislead regarding interrelations; sociobiological metaphors invert actuality, society comprises clashing mechanisms, not an organism subserving wholeness. The aggregate derives from antagonistic interplay; absent such, devolution into universal conflict ensues.
“It is not necessary to be a very profound philosopher to recognize that language deceives us constantly as to the true nature of the relationships that exist between things. Before commencing a systematic critique of a system, there would often be a very real advantage in finding out the origin of the images which are frequently encountered in it. In the present case, it is evident that the sociobiological analogies indicate the reverse of reality.”
— Georges Sorel, Unity and Multiplicity, Reflections on Violence
Social philosophy deploys diremption: isolating components, propelling toward autonomy to discern intrinsic dynamics. Consummate comprehension precludes unity’s reconstruction.
“The fundamental difference that exists between the methods of social philosophy and those of physiology now appears to us more clearly. The latter can never consider the functioning of an organ without relating it to the whole of the living being; one could say that this whole determines the type of activity into which this element enters. Social philosophy, in order to study the most significant phenomena of history, is obliged to proceed to a diremption, to examine certain parts without taking into account all of the ties which connect them to the whole, to determine in some manner the character of their activity by pushing them towards independence. When it has thus arrived at the most perfect understanding it can no longer attempt to reconstitute the broken unity.”
— Georges Sorel, Unity and Multiplicity, Reflections on Violence
Diremption, or the separation of opposing elements, reveals the Church’s internal ecclesiastical laws, which assert an absolute autonomy incompatible with state control. During intense struggles, Catholics demand this independence, while diplomatic agreements often mask the Church’s unyielding principles. True harmony between Church and state is merely a theoretical illusion that fails to explain historical realities; instead, periods of Church revival disrupt history by manifesting this claimed sovereignty, justifying the method of diremption as outlined by Georges Sorel in “Unity and Multiplicity” from Reflections on Violence.
As a de-territorialized entity, the Church inherently clashes with national authorities, whether monarchical or republican, seeking its own sovereignty. The Lateran Pact under Fascist Italy illustrates this: granting Vatican independence allowed secularization of governance while aligning with the Church’s autonomous demands. Extending diremption to democracy highlights its resemblance to the stock exchange, both are unified multiplicities harboring antagonistic forces, enabling dominion over production despite a lack of direct knowledge or involvement in it.
“Electoral democracy greatly resembles the world of the Stock Exchange; in both cases, it is necessary to work upon the simplicity of the masses, to buy the cooperation of the most important papers, and to assist chance by an infinity of trickery; there is not a great deal of difference between a financier who puts grand-sounding concerns on the market, which come to grief in a few years, and the politician who promises his fellow citizens an infinite number of reforms, which he does not know how to bring about and which resolve themselves simply into an accumulation of parliamentary papers. Neither one nor the other knows anything about production and yet they manage to obtain control over it, to misdirect it and to exploit it shamelessly: they are dazzled by the marvels of modern industry and they each imagine that the world is so rich that they can rob it on a large scale without causing any great outcry amongst the producers; to bleed the taxpayer without bringing him to the point of revolt, that is the whole art of the statesman and the great financier. Democrats and businessmen have a very special science for the purpose of making deliberative assemblies approve of their swindling; parliamentary regimes are as fixed as shareholders’ meetings. It is probably because of the profound psychological affinities resulting from these methods of operation that they both understand each other so perfectly: democracy is the paradise of which unscrupulous financiers dream.”
— Georges Sorel, The Ethics of The Producers, Reflections on Violence
Psychological congruences account for their mutual comprehension; democracy emerges as the idyllic domain for unscrupulous financiers. Socialism illustrates diremption’s utility: the Cultural Revolution fragmented party cohesion through enhanced collective autonomy in rural sectors; subsequent reforms dissected collectives to bolster party sovereignty. Contemporary China accommodates multiplicity via a mixed economy, fortified party oversight through corporate mechanisms and social credit systems; entities like Huawei, governed by union committees, exemplify this plurality. Centralized planning interfaces with market vitality, with inherent tensions propelling national advancement. Teleological endpoints remain illusory, theoreticians’ unification fantasies yield to the primacy of social conflict. Socialism aligns optimally with diremption; rigorous social science engages not harmonious rhythms but the dissonant clamor of mechanistic friction.
Violence disrupts capitalist operations, strikes embody this by halting production, transcending mere physical altercations.
“The danger which threatens the future of the world may be avoided if the proletariat hold on with obstinacy to revolutionary ideas, so as to realize as much as possible Marx’s conception. Everything may be saved if the proletariat, by their use of violence, manage to re-establish the division into classes and so restore to the bourgeoisie something of its energy: that is the great aim towards which the whole thought of men who are not hypnotized by the events of the day but who think of the conditions of tomorrow must be directed. Proletarian violence, carried on as a pure and simple manifestation of the sentiment of class struggle, appears thus as a very fine and heroic thing; it is at the service of the immemorial interests of civilization; it is not perhaps the most appropriate method of obtaining immediate material advantages, but it may save the world from barbarism.
To those who accuse the syndicalists of being obtuse and ignorant people, we have the right to ask them to consider the economic decadence for which they are working. Let us salute the revolutionaries as the Greeks saluted the Spartan heroes who defended Thermopylae and helped preserve civilization in the ancient world.”
— Georges Sorel, Reflections on Violence
Violence revitalizes bourgeois vigor, compelling recourse to coercion and facilitating proletarian ascendancy. Bourgeois socialists perpetuate stasis, ameliorating through concessions that engender economic stagnation. Systemic interruption advances civilizational imperatives. Contemporary libertarians exemplify transformative violence, emancipating social spheres from state encroachment and accelerating class polarization.
Pessimism, shaped by Jansenist influences, stands in stark contrast to the erratic swings of disillusioned optimism, from fervent revolutionary energy to passive societal compliance, as seen in leftist shifts from Trump-era unrest to Biden-era adaptation. It forms a metaphysics of ethics, outlining a tightly bound path to liberation, guided by empirical insights into barriers like social determinism and a deep recognition of inherent human fragility.
Pessimism differs markedly from its common caricatures; it is less a worldview than a moral metaphysics, envisioning a narrowly conditioned route to deliverance. This is shaped by experiential knowledge of obstacles thwarting our desires, often framed as social determinism and a profound sense of our innate weakness. These three facets, experimental awareness, conviction of frailty, and the constrained march to freedom, must remain interconnected, though they are frequently overlooked in isolation.
The notion of pessimism stems from literary historians’ observations of ancient poets’ laments over the pervasive threats of sorrow and pain to humanity. While good fortune occasionally visits, malevolent forces lurk, ready to ambush and inflict genuine suffering that evokes universal sympathy, even from the fortunate. This has fueled an enduring literature of grief. Yet, grasping pessimism requires more than abstract study or individual cases; it demands examining its expression in historical groups, incorporating the elements of social determinism and human weakness. Pessimists view social conditions as an unbreakable, monolithic system governed by iron laws, escapable only through total catastrophe. This renders it foolish to blame societal ills on a few villains, sparing pessimists the vengeful delusions of optimists frustrated by unexpected hurdles. They do not fantasize about securing future happiness via the massacre of current egoists.
At its core, pessimism revolves around conceptualizing the path to deliverance. One could not deeply probe personal misery or the fates that humble human pride without the sustaining hope of overcoming these tyrannies alongside comrades. Christians, for instance, dwelled on original sin to rationalize humanity’s redemption through Jesus’ sacrifice, positing it as necessitated by a profound collective crime. The Western emphasis on original sin, beyond mere Roman legal influence as Taine suggested, arose from Latin peoples’ exalted view of imperial majesty, which amplified the miracle of God’s Son’s sacrifice and thus intensified explorations of human wretchedness and destiny.
Pessimists discern inherent vulnerability and determinative constraints; transformation necessitates structural disruption and reconfiguration. This orientation does not entail absolute repudiation of advancement but serves as a corrective to unfounded optimism. The amalgamation of conscious and unconscious elements (science and myth) engenders authentic progress, discrediting Enlightenment rational historiography and its utopian extrapolations by underscoring the unconscious’s pivotal function.
Sorel appropriated elements from Giambattista Vico’s 18th century expositions on historical evolution through psychological laws under providential guidance, delineating consciousness’s preparation via religious and juridical phases. Adapting Vico’s ricorso, ruptures in juridical continuity, Sorel conceptualized revolution as the wholesale reconstitution of social relations. He contested Vico’s “law of royalty,” wherein democracies and plutocracies incline toward dictatorship or monarchy for national welfare, acknowledging the pattern without deeming it inexorable; concrete mechanisms elude theoretical anticipation.
History bifurcates into factual-empirical and mythological modalities — the latter encompassing psychological and subjective dimensions overlooked by positivism. Vico posited social history as indicative of metaphysical origins; absent teleology, cyclical via inevitable decay.
“Seek the origin of our metaphysical constructions in the more or less empirical constructions of social existence.”
— Georges Sorel, “Étude sur Vico,” Le Devenir Social
Determinism fosters inertia; heroic violence carves novel trajectories. Sorel’s voluntarism affirms humanity’s mastery over destiny, modulated by productive forces and psychological dynamics.
“Idealism and determinism produce a fictitious and deceptive continuity. Marx teaches us to seek historical continuity in what is truly real—that is, in men furnished with the means to act upon nature. Men are ‘the authors and the actors of their own drama,’ and ‘social relationships also are produced by men just as are cloth, linen, etc.’ The continuity of history manifests itself in two ways: by means of the development of productive forces which come into being side by side, or by means of the development of men whose minds become transformed according to psychological laws. This psychological part has been quite neglected by the Marxists, who have, in general, remained aloof from the contemporary philosophical movement. In Marx’s time psychology was little studied by the Germans and few had comprehended the treasures contained in the work of Vico.”
— Georges Sorel, Critical Essays in Marxism
Coercive regimes prepare the proletariat for voluntary association. Socialism entails free association and mutual contracts. Sorel critiqued statist democrats for their faith in state economic capacities, chauvinistic delusions, and unity fanaticism paralleling ultramontane Catholicism. Proudhon envisioned state intervention for institutional creation (insurance, banks, railways) followed by citizen management; he cautioned against French expansionism, deeming neutrality pacts insufficient against democratic avarice. Federalism, unattainable via democratic evolution, required external imposition akin to parliamentary monarchy.
Bergson’s élan vital, creative impetus propelling organic development, was transposed to social domains. Post-general strike, the proletariat reorganizes industry into autonomous entities, accelerating commodity relations’ dissolution and fostering emergent post-capitalist forms through proletarian dynamism.
Sorel refrained from utopian delineations but repudiated statism, advocating “associations of producers.” autonomous federations governed by free contracts. He censured bourgeois socialists like Jaurès for hierarchical models evocative of feudalism, subordinating production to moral imperatives and thereby stifling vital forces. Sociologists highlight that historical revolutions have benefited minorities; Marx attributed this to state’s historical entwinement with industrial formation. Bourgeois socialists inherit this statist prejudice. Durkheim subordinated corporations to state oversight; Jaurès stratified society from individual to nation via syndicates and communes, augmenting central authority. Such communal unification replicated medieval patterns, rendering the state industrial overlord — a conservative reconfiguration.
In engaging with Georges Platon’s analysis in Le Socialisme En Grece, Sorel invoked passages expressing profound skepticism toward the “dictatorship of the proletariat,” noting its historical tendency to restore inequities rather than abolish them, as evidenced by transitions from Marius to Sulla or Caesar’s imperial hierarchy. Platon’s reflections underscore the risk of political organization altering the proletariat’s essence, potentially reinstating injustice if morally deficient elements ascend. Sorel deployed this to interrogate the concept, a doubt echoed by Berth, who contrasted Proudhon’s concrete inquiries with Marx’s formulaic assertions, resolving communism into mutualism.
“The tactics of the new unions are justified perfectly by the exigencies of the situation. But people have tried to give it a theoretical basis—wrongly so, in my humble opinion. Experience having shown how difficult it is to keep workers in syndicates, it seems strange to abandon the mutualist idea. Besides, even in the dockers’ union, which was at first conceived in a spirit entirely opposed to that of the old trade-unionism, it was very quickly recognized that it would be useful to give family aid of 100 francs in case of death.
In this question, as in all practical questions, we must keep our sense of proportion. The rules of the old unions were not flexible enough; dues for all benefits should not be made obligatory, so as not to alienate the less fortunate; only unemployment or health insurance need be mandatory, but types of assistance vary according to circumstances. If quality is an essential element of success in social struggles as well as in battles, numbers must not be neglected entirely. The question of principles does not appear to be in doubt: to reduce the syndicates to societies of resistance only is to pose a formidable barrier to the development of the proletariat; to open the workers to surrendering to the authoritative influence of bourgeois demagogues by reducing the importance of economic forces which can contribute to maintaining the autonomy of the working class; to prevent it from elaborating new juridical principles in accordance with its own manner of living; in a word, to refuse it the possibility of becoming a class for itself. The mutual societies founded by the syndicates do not function on the same principles as bourgeois banks; instead of being inspired by capitalist models, they maintain an appearance of proletarian solidarity. The more there are distinct connections in the unorganized and confused milieu of workers, the more one is sure new elements of social reorganization are being carefully prepared. There is much talk of organizing the proletariat: but to organize does not consist in placing automatons on boxes! Organization is the passage from order which is mechanical, blind and determined from the outside, to organic, intelligent and fully accepted differentiation; in a word, it is a moral development. It is reached only by long practice and experience acquired in life. All institutions are formed in the same way; they do not result from decisions by great statesmen, any more than by scholars’ calculations. They are made by embracing and condensing all the elements of life. On what grounds would the proletariat then escape the necessity of ‘developing itself’ by this method?
One thing has always astonished me: the aversion of many Marxists to cooperatives. They maintain that the workers, once occupied with minute details of grocery and bakery, would be lost to socialism and would cease to understand the class struggle. From this desertion would come, at least in Italy, the increasing influence of the petit bourgeois mentality in the Socialist Party. What is the evidence for this lamented desertion? Only one thing: the bad composition of the Italian Socialist Party, and this bad composition has led to numerous articles in Critica Sociale. The test of practice is the true test of ideas: if the workers perceive that their leaders are not capable of directing them, they abandon them as soon as they leave the realm of vague manifestoes and come into contact with economic life. The leaders of the Socialist Movement are supposed to serve men, just as theory exists for practice. What would happen, then, if, after the social revolution, industry should be directed by groups who are today incapable of managing a cooperative?”
— Georges Sorel, Socialist Future of The Syndicates
Cooperatives, albeit not intrinsically socialist, facilitate dual power and equip the proletariat for productive management. Syndicates furnish services such as health and unemployment provisions, cultivating discipline attuned to industrial exigencies and fostering class coherence.
“The development of the proletariat includes a powerful moral discipline exerted on its members: it can be exercised through its syndicates, which are supposed to remove all the forms of organization inherited from the bourgeoisie. In order to sum up my thinking in capsule form, I say that the whole future of socialism rests on the autonomous development of the workers’ syndicates.”
— Georges Sorel, Socialist Future of The Syndicates
Syndicalism envisions self-governing federations liberating civil society from state domination, engendering post-capitalist relations through élan vital. Revolutionary processes exclude unproductive labor.
“The intellectuals have professional interests and not general class interests. These professional interests would be injured by the proletarian revolution. Lawyers would undoubtedly find no place in the future society and it is not likely that the number of diseases will increase. Progress in science and the better organization of assistance have already had the effect of diminishing the number of doctors utilized. In big industry many high-level employees could be eliminated if large stockholders did not need to place clients. A better division of labor would allow, as in England, the concentration of the work (now done badly by too many engineers) in a small group of very learned and very experienced technicians. As the character and intelligence of the workers improve, the majority of the overseers can be eliminated. The English experience abundantly proves it. Finally for office jobs, women compete actively with men; and these jobs will be reserved for them when socialism emancipates them. Thus, then, the socialization of the means of production would mean a huge ‘lock-out.’ It is difficult to believe that the intellectuals are unaware of a truth as certain as this one!”
— Georges Sorel, Socialist Future of The Syndicates
Contemporary syndicalism seeks to minimize supervisory hierarchies through machine learning and automation, augmenting leisure in streamlined economies devoid of superfluous bureaucracy. Capitalist decline is surmountable through heroic ethics derived from robust proletarian praxis, inheriting productive capacities without obliterating technological foundations. Scientific and industrial progress must be subordinated to proletarian direction, eschewing nostalgic returns to pastoral idylls. Violence assumes a cathartic function, extirpating decadent attributes such as positivism, rationalism, and atheism while safeguarding advancements. Christian asceticism is resuscitated as a counteragent to capitalist labor corruption and emblem of the emergent socialist archetype. Traditions, including Christian austerity, Greek heroism, and Jewish resilience, serve pragmatic ends in fabricating revolutionary myths to subvert prevailing order, with aspirations vested in tradition’s role in sustaining virtue amid ethical erosion.
Sorelianism synthesizes the New Testament with the Communist manifesto; diverging from Péguy’s ecclesiastical retreat, it posits modern exigencies demand contemporary valorizations, Christian radicality embodied in socialism. Socialism must forge indigenous symbols, myths, and rites to earnestly confront bourgeois hegemony. Confronted with an impasse, incapable of relying upon Church or bourgeois state, Sorel identified unions as possessing the state’s organizational prowess and the Church’s mythic capacity for instilling collective ethical praxis. Sorel’s critique of communist literature underscored its spontaneous proliferation devoid of ingenuity, sidelining technique, economics, and law in favor of philanthropic caprice.