Georges Sorel

Georges Eugène Sorel (November 2, 1847 in Cherbourg; August 29, 1922 in Boulogne-sur-Seine) was a French social philosopher known for his theories and political ideas, collectively known as Sorelianism. He is best known for his criticism on elitism and opposition to liberal democracy as well as his support for political violence. Sorel is primarily considered the a pioneer of but is also — along with  — considered to be a trailblazer of fascism as well.BORKENAU, Franz, "Sorel, Pareto, Spengler: Three Fascist Philosophers." In "Horizon" Vol. V. No. 30 (June, 1942).Fascism: A Reader's Guide : Analyses, Interpretations, Bibliography. (1978). University of California Press. Pages 321, 352, 364, 367 Sorel’s syndicalist and fascist ideas would eventually be fused into Ohana, P. D. (2016). Nihilist Order: The Intellectual Roots of Totalitarianism. Liverpool University Press. 
==Biography==
Sorel was born in Cherbourg, France, to a bourgeois family. He would move to Paris in 1864 to attend the Collège Rollin and then École Polytechnique in 1865. After graduating, he went on to work as a engineer for the French government in 1869. After having worked for well over a decade, he started studying again. Then, in the 1890s, he would discover Karl Marx, which led him down the socialism rabbit hole. Around mid-to-late 1890s, he began giving lectures about the unity and struggle of the labor unions, with a bent towards anti-parliamentarianism and direct action, which was welcomed by intellectuals and workers of the time. He would side with during the notorious Dreyfus affair, but would be ultimately disappointed by the incident's outcome.
Circa 1905, Sorel contributed to the theoretical elaboration of revolutionary syndicalism through his contributions to the Italian "Il Divenire sociale" and French journals. In 1906, his most famous text, "Réflections sur la Violence" (Reflections on Violence), appeared in the latter journal. It was subsequently published in book form in 1908, and was followed in the same year by "Les Illusions du Progrès" (The Illusions of Progress).Gregor, A. J. (2008). Marxism, Fascism, and Totalitarianism: Chapters in the Intellectual History of Radicalism. Stanford University Press. Page 91-92. Sorel would find a significantly larger audience in Italy than in France.Borgese, G. A. (1934). The Intellectual Origins of Fascism. New School for Social Research. Page 481.
During the First World War, Sorel mostly worked as a pundit, voicing his opposition towards and the Italian nationalists.Sorel, G. (2018). From Georges Sorel: Essays in Socialism and Philosophy. Taylor & Francis. Later in the 1910s, he praised the Russian Revolution, declaring Lenin as the "greatest socialist theoretician since Marx".Portis, L. (1980). Georges Sorel. Pluto Press. Page 106. Sorel would then die in Boulogne-sur-Seine in 1922 and is buried in the vault of his adopted son Jean-Baptiste David in Tenay.
==Politics==
Sorel changed his political allegiance many times during his lifetime, though he was generally at home at both ends of the horseshoe. Sorel had been a monarchist and traditionalist before turning to orthodox Marxism in the 1890s. Although Sorel was considered a Marxist intellectual from 1890s to his death, his fidelity to the actual Marxist tradition has been scrutinized in retrospect.Greil, A. L. (1981). Georges Sorel and the Sociology of Virtue. University Press of America. Page 17. 
After 1909 he broke with trade unionism and briefly embraced the proto-fascist monarchism of the  — a group founded by  — with Sorel praising Maurras' for his attacks on bourgeois democracy. Subsequently, Sorel moved on to support the cause of the Russian Revolution. In the appendix to the fifth edition of his major work, Reflexions sur la Violence (1908), he wrote an essay entitled "Pour Lenine" in which he defended Lenin's boycott of the Constituent Assembly and proclaimed socialism, and praised the 1917 Russian Revolution. Despite some claims, his influence on Lenin is unlikely, as Lenin only cited him once, and then only with negative connotations.
==Philosophy==
Following the Dreyfus affair, Sorel tried to examine and rectify what he considered to be the weaknesses of Marxist theory. He eventually came up with a form of which rejected historical materialism, dialectical materialism, and proletarian internationalism. He criticized what he saw as Marx's rationalism and utopian tendencies, believing that the core of Marx's thought was closer to early Christianity than to the French Revolution. He did not view Marxism as 'true' in a scientific sense, as did orthodox Marxists. Rather, it was 'true' in that it promised a redemptive role to the proletariat within a decaying society.
Additional motive was Sorel's opposition to reforms (that would birth social democracy), which he saw as "right-wing". Furthermore, Sorel did not believe in the "inevitability of history" of orthodox Marxism, but believed that a carefully crafted "myth" would lead the masses to unified action.
Sorel theoretically founded revolutionary syndicalism as a trade union current distinct from socialism, anarchism and communism. He sought theoretical support to his ideas from works of (an anarchist skeptical of bourgeois democracy) and learned from (because of course) and the importance of "myth" and the opposition to "scientific materialism". He also revived the believing that the French society needed to bring about "change through coercion". Sorel also supported Nietzschean vitalism and the will to power, and believed that violence is sometimes a brave proof of individual freedom.
Sorel's syndicalism proposed a form of leadership that aimed to put the production of goods into the hands of the workers who would create a "Republic of Producers". Its guiding principle was to disrupt capitalism through general strikes, boycotts, and sabotage, and to bring about workers' control of the means of production. However, this "ethical ideal", would lead Sorel to a path of anti-democracy, believing that only "the syndicate" could be the agent of change. As underlined in Sorel's "Reflections on Violence", he called on workers to express their will through "the myth" of the general strike. With the use of violence, the masses would coerce those attempting to compromise with the bourgeois into submission.
For these reasons Sorel is often associated with both fascism and anarchism. Because of his Reflections on Violence, he is also occasionally associated with terrorism. And despite his disdain for social democracy, Sorel did respect Eduard Bernstein and agreed with many of his criticisms of orthodox Marxism, and has thus has been associated with the revisionists as well as the New Left. Sorel was friends with the father of Italian Marxism, and wrote a preface to Labriola's essay on the "materialist concept of history" when it was translated into French. However, Labriola would eventually diverge from Sorel's beliefs.Jacoby, R. (2002). Dialectic of Defeat: Contours of Western Marxism. Cambridge University Press. Page 56. 
==As a pioneer of fascism==
 
Sorel's works have had tremendous influence on anti-democratic politics, with his work being positively acknowledged by the likes of (who is considered a pioneer of fascism along with Sorel), and (notable Conservative Revolution and Nazi ideologue). According to the entire structure of fascism, including its governance, cannot be thought in any other way but by Sorelian political theory. Although the fascist regimes of the 1930s bears little resemblance to Sorelian revolutionary syndicalism of the early 1900s, Sternhell nevertheless maintained that these regimes are structurally more closer to the revolutionary syndicalist ideological synthesis than Stalinism is to Marxism or right-wing populism is to democratic governments.
In reductive terms, the transformation of Sorel's syndicalism to fascism primarily comes down to reality running afoul with Sorel's followers. After his most ardent followers — namely and (founder of the first French fascist party, ) — tried to make the "myth of the general strike" in reality with no success, they found the very idea an impossibility and began abandoning the concept of class and class struggle all together. Seeing that the countrymen would not support them, that strikes and other socialist action would damage their homeland, these syndicalist dissents started exploring nationhood as the new "myth", to supplant the failed general strike myth. Not believing in the creative power of proletariat, the syndicalist dissent instead chose a nationalistic "revolutionary war" as their new myth. In retrospect, Berth's and Valois' ideas have become associated with fascist corporatism.Bresciani, M. (2024). Learning from the Enemy: An Intellectual History of Antifascism in Interwar Europe. Verso Books. . Page 52.
Amongst these syndicalist dissenters was Benito Mussolini, whose early politics placed within the revolutionary syndicalist thought, that he then applied into the fascist revolt against the parliamentary bourgeoisie.De Felice, R. (1995). Mussolini il rivoluzionario: 1883-1920. Einaudi. (in Italian) Subsequently, Mussolini proclaimed that Sorel was "the spiritual father of Fascism", "[his] teacher," and that "[he owes] the most to Sorel."Delzell, C. F. (1971). Mediterranean Fascism 1919–1945. Palgrave Macmillan UK. ISBN: 9781349002405. Page 3 It's been observed by the likes of Jack Joseph Roth that Mussolinian Fascism was “an organized and vulgarized transformation of the pre-War Sorelian movement.” another notable Italian fascist heavyweight, was also a revolutionary syndicalist before transitioning to fascist syndicalism in early 1920s, with Mussolini's rise having prompted him to fuse socialism with nationalism.Roberts, D. D. (1979). The Syndicalist Tradition and Italian Fascism. Manchester University Press. Page 14. 
This transformation is not that far fetched, as Sorel himself saw a proverbial "moral quality of combative conflict". Per Hans Barth: "For Sorel, the struggle as the result of the antagonistic structure of man is ultimately a struggle for law and justice."Hans Barth: Masse und Mythos. Die ideologische Krise an der Wende zum 20. Jahrhundert und die Theorie der Gewalt. Georges Sorel. Rowohlt Verlag, Hamburg 1959. (in German) As such, Barth deemed that Sorel's writing can be easily interpreted to have the latter's theory of violence to "serve the overall moral renewal of the European peoples" and that the "effect of [Sorel's] teaching was the unlimited use of power."Hans Barth: Fluten und Dämme. Fretz & Wasmuth, Zürich 1943 (in German)
==Notable Works==
* Contribution à l'étude profane de la Bible (Paris, Auguste Ghio, 1889)
* Le Procès de Socrate, examen critique des thèses socratiques (Paris, Félix Alcan, 1889)
* Les Girondins du Roussillon (Perpignan, Charles Latrobe, 1889)
* D’Aristote à Marx (L’Ancienne et la Nouvelle Métaphysique) (1st ed. in articles, 1894; new edition: Paris, Marcel Rivière, 1935)
* La Ruine du monde antique Conception matérialiste de l’histoire) (1st ed. Paris, Librairie G. Jacques et Cie, 1902; 2nd ed. Paris, Marcel Rivière, 1925)
* Saggi di critica del marxismo (Palermo, Remo Sandron, 1903)
* Le Système historique de Renan (Paris, G. Jacques, 1906)
* Insegnamenti sociali dell'economia moderna. Degenerazione capitalista e degenerazione socialista (Palerme, Remo Sandron, 1907)
* Les Illusions du progrès (Paris, Marcel Rivière, 1908)
* (1st ed. 1908; 4th definitive ed. Paris, Rivière, 1919)
* La Révolution dreyfusienne (1st ed. Paris, Marcel Rivière, 1909)
* Matériaux d’une théorie du prolétariat (1st ed. Paris, Marcel Rivière, 1919)
* De l’utilité du pragmatisme (Paris, Marcel Rivière, 1921)
==References==
Category:Authors
Category:Fascists
Category:France
Category:Propaganda
Category:Left-wing activists
Category:Philosophers
Category:Political pundits
Category:Socialists