Sorel, Georges

SOREL, GEORGES. - French sociologist, b. at Cherbourg on 2 Nov. 1847, d. at Boulogne-sur-Seine on 30 Aug. 1922. He practiced the profession of engineer for several years.

Of his writings (L'avenir socialiste des syndicats [1900]; Les illusions du progrès [1908]; La décomposition du marxisme [1908]; Matériaux d'une théorie du prolétariat [1919], etc.) the most significant remains Réflexions sur la violence (1908; Italian trans. from the 6th ed. of 1923, Bari 1926). He is one of the masters of modern syndicalism (v.) and one of the most acute critics of Marxism (v.). His political-social thought is strongly influenced by Bergson (v.) and by Bergsonism, by the philosophies of action (v.) and of life, among which his own must also be counted. This explains his contempt for democracy, the expression of bourgeois mediocrity, and his severe criticism of the "charlatanical dogmas of the 18th century." In this condemnation of mediocre egoism, of which democracy is the expression, and in the contrast set against it of heroic struggle, of the exceptional and the vital, S. meets with other representatives of Lebensphilosophie, such as Nietzsche (v.), Ortega, etc.

The essential point of contact between S. and Marx (v.) is the class struggle as the radical elimination of capitalist society; for the rest, S.'s "philosophy" moves along lines different from those of Marx and precisely unfolds on the basis of an absolute voluntarism (v.): history is becoming, action, freedom, which is conquered through violent struggle. Hence the central theme of S.'s doctrine, the opposition between "fantastic world" and "historical world"; the former, negation of the latter, depends on our activity, is created by our will and therefore makes freedom possible. To act and to be free is to create for oneself a myth, which, felt and willed by the masses, becomes social. The myth is opposed to "utopia," a product of the "intellect" and not of the will, a model or exemplar (in the Platonic sense) of a perfect society, with which existing (historical) societies are compared in order to reform or correct them. On the contrary, the myth does not modify the historical world, it destroys it; it does not adapt, it revolutionizes; it is not demonstrated and not refuted, it is realized through the class struggle and violence. In this way S.'s voluntarism shifts socialism from the intellectualistic and reformist plane of utopia (even Marxism is, according to him, weighed down by utopian elements) to that of myth or of passionate will and free action, which, exalted by the myth, breaks in and destroys the historical situation through total and violent class struggle. This is "syndicalism," in which S. sees the highest expression of socialism, the affirmation of the heroic virtues of the proletariat, of the vital impetus, which only open and violent war can save from the inevitable mortifications in which reformism and partial concessions would like to bridle it. To violence socialism owes "the high moral values with which it offers the modern world its salvation" (Réflexions, p. 333). Besides being an expression of vital energy and of power of action, violence is in fact also an assertor of moral values, insofar as it destroys "force," which belongs to bourgeois society and the State: force is of the weak and is oppressive of freedom, violence is of the heroes who, having negated force, make possible a society of free men; force, one might say with Bergson, is of "static" morality, violence of "dynamic" morality, which is impetus and heroism. The myth capable, according to S., of feeding the class struggle and of keeping it in a continuous state of incandescence is the general strike (v.); the only one that can keep the combativeness of the proletariat awake and mark the passage from capitalist to socialist society; which is much more than and different from a passage: it is a "catastrophe," something "grave, fearsome, and sublime" (ibid., p. 168), the result of a powerful spiritual energy. Nor does it matter whether the myth is realized or not, since its value lies in being aroused to action. Thus S. gives the class struggle and socialism a scope no longer economic but spiritual; however, his "myth," which prescinds from every factual situation and claims to be the expression of anti-intellectualism, is also itself an intellectualistic construction and therefore a utopia in the not best sense of the term.

S. had great influence on the French social movement and also on Russian communism as well as, in Italy, on fascism (v.), which saw in him, besides a voluntarist sociologist with Nietzschean and also "D'Annunzian" spirits, the critic of Wilson (v.) and of Versailles and the supporter of Italian claims.

Michele Federico Sciacca