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Sorel and the Left

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2014

David Beetham
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Extract

GEORGES SOREL FORMS AN APPROPRIATE SUBJECT FOR THIS JOURNAL, in that his writing can be seen as providing a justification for permanent opposition to the work of government. His name has been associated with the recent revival of anarcho-syndicalism, and at first sight he has much in common with the contemporary Left. Sorel was an outspoken critic of consensus politics, in which socialist leaders appeared to betray their principles and adjust themselves comfortably to the existing order. He believed real opposition could only find expression outside the political system, untainted by its shabby compromises. He was an opponent of ‘bourgeois culture’, and regarded it as his main achievement to have exposed its superficiality, particularly the utilitarian social science taught in the universities. He attacked materialist values, and looked for a revival of idealism and integrity in public life. He regarded proletarian violence as morally superior to the force which the democratic state attempted to conceal by fraud. Finally, he disliked bureaucracy, and hoped to see a society of producers’ workshops under the workers’ control.

Type
Articles
Information
Government and Opposition , Volume 4 , Issue 3 , 01 July 1969 , pp. 308 - 323
Copyright
Copyright © Government and Opposition Ltd 1969

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References

1 Sorel prided himself on being largely self-taught. See e. g. ‘Lettre à Daniel Halévy’, printed as the Introduction to Réflexions sur la violence, 6th ed., Paris, 1925, p. 7.

2 Les Illusions du Progrès, 5th ed., Paris, 1947, p. 335.

3 Réflexions sur la violence, pp. 358 ff.

4 Op. cit., p. 109.

5 Op. cit., pp. 323–4.

6 Op. cit., pp. 256–7.

7 Op. cit., p. 130.

8 See ‘Lettre à Daniel Halévy’, op. cit., pp. 32 ff and p. 182.

9 Op. cit., p. 189.

10 Sorel doubted whether Marx’s assessment had ever been completely accurate. He had been misled by ‘Hegelian notions of the Weltgeist’. See ‘La Marche au Socialisme’, printed as an Appendix to Les Illusions du Progrès, p. 375.

11 Réflexions, p. 202.

12 Op. cit., pp. 233 ff.

13 Les Illusions du Progrès, p. 306.

14 Op. cit., pp. 354–5.

15 Réflexions, p. 367.

16 Op. cit., p. 381.

17 See ‘La Marche au Socialisme’, Les Illusions du Progrès, p. 383.

18 Réflexions, p. 336.

19 Op. cit., p. 346.

20 Op. cit., p. 46.

21 Op. cit., p. 12.

22 Robin, E. g. Blackburn attacks this ‘bourgeois fatalism’ in his ‘Brief Guide to Bourgeois Ideology’ in Cockburn and Blackburn, eds., Student Power, Penguin Books, 1969, p. 177.Google Scholar

23 Beacon Press, 1964, passim.

24 Beacon Press, 1955.

25 E. g. Les Illusions du Progrès p. 318.

26 Cf. La Critica (25 January 1911) 26, 343, quoted in Curtis Three against the Third Republic, Princeton, 1959.

27 Published in de George, R. T. (ed.), Ethics and Society, London, Macmillan, 1968.Google Scholar

28 Op. cit., p. 140.

29 Op. cit., p. 144.

30 Réflexions, p. 16–17.

31 Op. cit., p. 41–2.

32 Ibid.

33 See Politics as a Vocation in Gerth and Mills (eds.), From Max Weber, Routledge, 1948 and The Methodology of the Social Sciences ed. Shils and Finch, Free Press, 1949, pp. 16 ff.

34 Réflexions, p. 130.

35 Op. cit., p. 147.

36 Borkenau, ‘Three Fascist Philosophers’, Horizon, June, 1942, p. 427.

37 E. g. Les Illusions du Progrès p. 335.

38 Réflexions, p. 50.

39 Runciman, W. G., Social Science and Political Theory, Cambridge, 1963, p. 149.Google Scholar

40 Sorel was well aware of the value of sectarianism for promoting moral fervour, see e. g. Réflexions, p. 320.