Reflections on Violence by Georges Sorel

Author:Georges Sorel
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780486121154
Publisher: Dover Publications
Published: 2012-10-13T04:00:00+00:00

The political general strike concentrates the whole of this conception into one easily understood picture: it shows us how the State would lose nothing of its strength, how the transmission of power from one privileged class to another would take place, and how the mass of the producers would merely change masters. These new masters would very probably be less able than those of to-day; they would make more flowery speeches than the capitalists, but there is every evidence that they would be much harder and much more insolent than their predecessors.

The new school approaches the question from quite another point of view: it cannot accept the idea that the historical mission of the proletariat is to imitate the middle class; it cannot conceive that a revolution as vast as that which would abolish capitalism could be attempted for a trifling and doubtful result, for a change of masters, for the satisfaction of theorists, politicians, and speculators—all worshippers and exploiters of the State. It does not wish to restrict itself to the formulas of Marx; although he gave no other theory than that of middle-class force, that, in its eyes, is no reason why it should confine itself to a scrupulous imitation of middle-class force.

In the course of his revolutionary career, Marx was not always happily inspired, and too often he followed inspirations which belong to the past; he even allowed from time to time a quantity of old rubbish which he found in the Utopists to creep into his writings. The new school does not in the least feel itself bound to admire the illusions, the faults, and the errors of the man who did so much to work out revolutionary ideas; it endeavours to separate what disfigures the work of Marx from what will immortalise his name; its attitude is thus the reverse of that of official Socialists, who admire especially in Marx that which is not Marxian. We shall therefore attach no importance whatever to the numerous extracts which may be quoted against us to prove that Marx often understood history as the politicians do.

We know now the reason for his attitude: he did not know the distinction, which appears to us nowadays so obvious, between middle-class force and proletarian violence, because he did not move in circles which had acquired a satisfactory notion of the general strike.250 We now possess sufficient material to enable us to understand the Syndicalist strike as thoroughly as we do the political strike; we know what differentiates the proletarian movement from the older middle-class movement; we find in the attitude of the revolutionaries towards the State a means of elucidating ideas which were still very confused in Marx’s mind.

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