Sorel Georges (1847–1922), French socialist activist and philosopher best known for his Reflections on Violence (1906), which develops the notion of revolutionary syndicalism as seen through proletarian violence and the interpretation of myth. An early proponent of the quasi- Marxist position of gradual democratic reformism, Sorel eventually developed a highly subjective interpretation of historical materialism that, while retaining a conception of proletarian revolution, now understood it through myth rather than reason. He was in large part reacting to the empiricism of the French Enlightenment and the statistical structuring of sociological studies.
In contrast to Marx and Engels, who held that revolution would occur when the proletariat attained its own class consciousness through an understanding of its true relationship to the means of production in capitalist society, Sorel introduced myth rather than reason as the correct way to interpret social totality. Myth allows for the necessary reaction to bourgeois rationalism and permits the social theorist to negate the status quo through the authenticity of revolutionary violence. By acknowledging the irrationality of the status quo, myth permits the possibility of social understanding and its necessary reaction, human emancipation through proletarian revolution. Marxism is myth because it juxtaposes the irreducibility of capitalist organization to its negation – violent proletarian revolution. The intermediary stage in this development is radical syndicalism, which organizes workers into groups opposed to bourgeois authority, instills the myth of proletarian revolution in the workers, and allows them in postrevolutionary times to work toward a social arrangement of worker and peasant governance and collaboration. The vehicle through which all this is accomplished is the general strike, whose aim, through the justified violence of its ends, is to facilitate the downfall and ultimate elimination of the bourgeoisie. In doing so the proletariat will lead society to a classless and harmonious stage in history. By stressing the notion of spontaneity Sorel thought he had solved the vexing problems of party and future bureaucracy found in much of the revolutionary literature of his day. In his later years he was interested in the writings of both Lenin and Mussolini. See also MARXISM, POLITICAL PHILOSOPH. J.Bi.