I. The confusion of parliamentary socialism and the clarity of the general strike. – Myths in history. – Experimental proof of the value of the general strike.

II. Research carried out to perfect Marxism. – Means of throwing light upon it, starting from the general strike: class struggle; – preparation for the revolution and absence of utopias; – irrevocable character of the revolution.

III. Scientific prejudices against the general strike; doubts about science. – The clear and obscure parts in thought. – Economic incompetence of parliaments.

Every time that we attempt to obtain an exact conception of the ideas behind proletarian violence we are forced to go back to the notion of the general strike; but this same notion may provide many other services and throw an unexpected light on all the other obscure parts of socialism. In the last pages of the first chapter I compared the general strike to the Napoleonic battle which definitively crushes an adversary; this comparison will help us to understand the ideological role of the general strike.

When today's military writers discuss the new methods of war necessitated by the employment of troops infinitely more numerous than those of Napoleon and equipped with weapons much more deadly than those of the time, they nevertheless imagine that wars will be decided in Napoleonic battles. The new tactics proposed must fit into the drama Napoleon had conceived; no doubt the detailed development of the combat will be quite different from what it used to be; but the end must always be the catastrophic defeat of the enemy.

I have often been asked lately if since 1906 I have observed any facts that invalidate some of the arguments set forth in this book. On the contrary, I am more than ever convinced of the value of this philosophy of violence. I have even thought it useful to add to this reprint an ‘apology for violence’ that I published in Le Matin on 18 May 1908, at the time when the first edition appeared.

This is one of the books that public opinion does not allow an author to improve; I have only allowed myself to change a few words here and there in order to make certain phrases clearer.

Sorel's early writings

Born in 1847, Georges Sorel came late to writing about politics. A provincial and bourgeois upbringing was completed by an education in Paris and then by over twenty years working as a civil engineer for the French State. Most of that time was spent in the southern town of Perpignan, far from the intellectual and political excitement of Paris. Yet it was here that Sorel began to write.

Sorel's first articles appeared in the mid–1880s. For the most part these were concerned with obscure scientific subjects, but many were devoted to studying the impact of the French Revolution upon the Pyrénées–Orientales region where he worked. Then, in 1889, came the publication of two books: Contribution à l'étude profane de la Bible and Le Procès de Socrate. Both dealt only indirectly with politics, but where they did so they conveyed a message of moral conservatism. The France of the Third Republic was thought to be in a state of moral decline. To reverse this process, Sorel recommended the values of hard work, the family and those of a rural society.

Sorel's retirement from government service in 1892 and move to the suburbs of Paris coincided with his first interest in Marxism. Upon the basis of a limited acquaintance with the texts of Marx, Sorel initially saw Marxism as a science. This, however, was quickly to change as he perceived the inadequacies of the economic determinism associated with Marxist orthodoxy.

My dear Halévy,

I would no doubt have left these studies buried in the bound volumes of a review if friends, whose judgement I greatly value, had not thought that it would be a good idea to bring to the attention of a wider public reflections which serve to make better known one of the most singular social phenomena that history records. But it seemed to be that this public deserves some explanations, since I cannot often expect to find judges as indulgent as you have been.

When in Le Mouvement socialiste I published the articles that are now to be brought together in a volume, I did not have the intention of writing a book. I wrote these reflections as they came to my mind, knowing that the subscribers to that review would have no difficulty following me as they were already familiar with the theories that had there been developed by my friends over several years. But I am convinced that the readers of this book will be bewildered if I do not submit a kind of defence that will better enable them to see things from my own point of view. In the course of our conversations you have made critical comments which fitted so well into the system of my own ideas that they have led me to investigate certain interesting questions more thoroughly.

I. Morality and religion. – Contempt of democracies for morality. – Ethical preoccupations of the new school.

II. Renan's uneasiness about the future of the world. – His conjectures. – The need of the sublime.

III. Nietzsche's ethics. – The role of the family in the genesis of morality; Proudhon's theory of morality. – The ethics of Aristotle.

IV. Kautsky's hypotheses. – Analogies between the spirit of the general strike and that of the wars of Liberty. – Fear inspired in the parliamentarians by this spirit.

V. The worker employed in the factory of advanced production, the artist and the soldier in the wars of Liberty: desire to surpass previous models; care for exactitude; abandonment of the idea of exact recompense.

Fifty years ago Proudhon pointed out the necessity of giving the people a morality that would fit new needs. The first chapter of the preliminary discourses placed at the beginning of De la Justice dans la Révolution et dans l'Eglise is entitled: ‘The state of morals in the nineteenth century. Invasion of moral scepticism; society in danger. What is the remedy?’ There one reads these striking sentences: ‘France has lost its morals. Not that, as a matter of fact, the men of our generation are worse than their fathers … When I say that France has lost its morals I mean something very different, that it has ceased to believe in her own principles. She no longer has either moral intelligence or conscience, she has almost lost the idea of morals itself. As a result of continual criticism we have come to this sad conclusion: that right and wrong, between which we formerly thought we were able to distinguish, are now vague and indeterminate conventional terms; that all these words, Right, Duty, Morality, Virtue, etc., of which the pulpit and the school talk so much, serve to cover nothing but pure hypotheses, vain utopias and unprovable prejudices; thus that social life, governed by some sort of human respect or by convention, is in reality arbitrary.’

Men who address revolutionary words to the people are bound to submit themselves to high standards of sincerity, because the workers understand these words in their exact and literal sense and never indulge in any symbolic interpretation. When in 1905 I ventured to write in some detail on proletarian violence I was fully aware of the grave responsibility I assumed in trying to show the historic bearing of acts that our parliamentary socialists try to cover up with so much skill. Today I do not hesitate to declare that socialism could not continue to exist without an apology for violence.

It is through strikes that the proletariat asserts its existence. I cannot be persuaded to see in strikes something analogous to the temporary rupture of commercial relations which is brought about when a grocer and his supplier of prunes cannot agree about the price. The strike is a phenomenon of war; it is therefore a serious misrepresentation to say that violence is an accidental feature destined to disappear from strikes.

The social revolution is an extension of this war in which each great strike is an episode; this is why the syndicalists speak of this revolution in the language of strikes; for them socialism is reduced to the conception, the expectation of and the preparation for the general strike, which, like the Napoleonic battle, is to annihilate completely a condemned regime.

I. Parliamentarians who have to inspire fear. – Parnell's methods. – Casuistry; fundamental identity of the parliamentary socialist groups.

II. Degeneration of the bourgeoisie brought about by peace. – Marx's conceptions of necessity. – Part played by violence in the restoration of former social relationships.

III. Relation between revolution and economic prosperity. – The French Revolution. – The Christian conquest. – Invasion of the barbarians. – Dangers that threaten the world.

It is very difficult to understand proletarian violence as long as we try to think in terms of the ideas disseminated by bourgeois philosophy; according to this philosophy, violence is a relic of barbarism which is bound to disappear under the progress of enlightenment. It is therefore quite natural that Jaurès, who has been brought up on bourgeois ideology, should have a profound contempt for the people who praise proletarian violence; he is astonished to see educated socialists in agreement with the syndicalists; he wonders by what extraordinary act of bad faith men who have proved themselves thinkers can accumulate sophisms in order to give the appearance of reason to the dreams of stupid people who are incapable of thought. This question greatly worries the friends of Jaurès, who are only too willing to treat the representatives of the new school as demagogues and to accuse them of seeking the applause of the impulsive masses.

Parliamentary socialists cannot understand the ends pursued by the new school; they imagine that ultimately all socialism can be reduced to the means of getting into power.

I. The struggle of poorer groups against rich ones. – The opposition of democracy to the division into classes. – Methods of buying social peace. – The corporative mind.

II. Illusions relating to the disappearance of violence. – The mechanisms of conciliation and the encouragement which it gives to strikers. – Influence of fear on social legislation and its consequences.

Everyone explains that discussions about socialism are exceedingly obscure; this obscurity is due, to a large extent, to the fact that contemporary socialists use a terminology which no longer corresponds to their ideas. The best known of the people who call themselves reformists do not wish to appear to be abandoning certain phrases which have for a long time served to characterize socialist literature. When Bernstein, perceiving the enormous contradiction that existed between the language of social democracy and the true nature of its activity, urged his German comrades to have the courage to appear to be the way that they were in reality and to revise a doctrine that had become false, there was a universal outcry at his audacity; and the reformists were not in the least eager to defend the old formulas; I remember hearing well-known French socialists say that they found it easier to accept the tactics of Millerand than the theses of Bernstein.

This idolatry of words plays a significant role in the history of all ideologies; the preservation of a Marxist vocabulary by people who have become estranged from the thought of Marx constitutes a great misfortune for socialism.

I. Biological images which foster the idea of unity; their origin.

II. Ancient unity and its exceptions. – Christian mysticism. – The rights of man; their consequences and their criticism. – Utility of the conception of ahistoric man.

III. The ecclesiastical monarchy. – Harmony of powers. – Abandonment of the theory of harmony; idea of absoluteness better understood today.

IV. Current preference of Catholics for accommodation. – Indifference of the State. – Current conflicts.

V. Contemporary experiments provided by the Church: parliamentarianism; the selection of fighting groups; multiplicity of forms.

This new edition of Reflections on Violence is a republication of the one that appeared in 1908; I have thought it necessary to add this chapter in order to show how mistaken are those people who believe that they raise an irrefutable argument against the doctrines based upon the class struggle by saying that, according to the evidence of common sense, the notion of society is completely permeated with the idea of unity.

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. One may say, in effect, that social unity presses upon us from all sides, as it were, in the ordinary course of life; because we feel, almost all the time, the force of the effects of a hierarchical authority which imposes uniform rules upon the citizens of the same country.

I. Old ideas relative to the Revolution. – Change resulting from the war of 1870 and from the parliamentary regime.

II. Drumont's observations on the ferocity of the bourgeoisie. – The judicial Third Estate and the history of the law courts. – Capitalism against the cult of the State.

III. Attitude of the Dreyfusards. – Jaurès' judgements on the Revolution: his adoration of success and his hatred for the vanquished.

IV. Antimilitarism as proof of an abandonment of bourgeois traditions.

The ideas current among the general public on the subject of proletarian violence are not based on the observation of contemporary facts nor on a rational interpretation of the present syndicalist movement; they derive from an infinitely simpler mental process, a comparison of the present with the past; they are shaped by the memories that the word revolution evokes almost automatically. It is presumed that the syndicalists, merely because they call themselves revolutionaries, wish to reproduce the history of the revolutionaries of [17]93. The Blanquists, who look upon themselves as the legitimate owners of the terrorist tradition, consider that for this very reason they are called upon to direct the proletarian movement; they display much more condescension to the syndicalists than do the other parliamentary socialists; they are inclined to assert that the workers' organizations will come to understand in the end that they cannot do better than to put themselves under their tuition.

I. Observations of P[aul] Bureau and of P[aul] de Rousiers. – The era of martyrs. – Possibility of maintaining the cleavage with very little violence, thanks to a catastrophic myth.

II. Old habits of brutality in schools and workshops. – The dangerous classes. – Indulgence for crimes of cunning. – Informers.

III. Law of 1884 passed to intimidate conservatives. – Part played by Millerand in the Waldeck-Rousseau ministry. – Motives behind present ideas on arbitration.

IV. Search for the sublime in morality. – Proudhon. – No moral development in trade unionism. – The sublime in Germany and the catastrophic conception.

There are so many legal precautions against violence and our education is directed towards so weakening our tendencies towards violence that we are instinctively inclined to think that any act of violence is a manifestation of a return to barbarism. If industrial societies have so often been contrasted favourably with military ones, it is because peace has always been considered the greatest of blessings and the essential condition of all material progress: this last point of view explains why, since the eighteenth century and almost without interruption, economists have been in favour of strong central authorities and have troubled little about political liberties. Condorcet levels this reproach at the followers of Quesnay, whilst Napoleon III had probably no greater admirer than Michel Chevalier.

It may be asked whether there is not a little stupidity in the admiration of our contemporaries for gentle methods; I see, in fact, that several authors, remarkable for their perspicacity and their interest in the ethical side of every question, do not seem to have the same fear of violence as our official professors.

The reflections that I submit to the readers of Le Mouvement socialiste on the subject of violence have been inspired by very simple observations about evident facts which play an increasingly marked role in the history of contemporary classes.

For a long time I have been struck by the fact that the normal development of strikes has included a significant number of acts of violence; but certain learned sociologists seek to disguise a phenomenon that everyone who cares to use his eyes must have noticed. Revolutionary syndicalism keeps alive the desire to strike in the masses and only prospers when important strikes, accompanied by violence, take place. Socialism tends to appear more and more as a theory of revolutionary syndicalism – or rather as a philosophy of modern history, in so far as it is under the influence of syndicalism. It follows from these incontestable data that, if we wish to discuss socialism seriously, we must first of all investigate the functions of violence in present social conditions.

I do not believe that this question has yet been approached with the attention it deserves; I hope that these reflections will lead a few thinkers to examine the problems associated with proletarian violence more closely; I cannot too strongly recommend these studies to the new school which, inspired by the principles of Marx rather than the formulas taught by the official proprietors of Marxism, is in the process of giving socialist doctrines a sense of reality and a seriousness which they have certainly lacked for several years.