Georges Sorel
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Georges Eugène Sorel (2 November, 1847-29 August, 1922) was a French philosopher and theorist of anarchosyndicalism.
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Biography
He was born in Cherbourg, son of a bankrupted wine merchant. He studied in the École Polytechnique in Perpignan. He became chief engineer with the Department of Public Works.
Politics
Sorel had been politically monarchist and traditionalist before embracing orthodox Marxism in the 1890s. He tried to fill in what he believed were gaps in Marxist theory but ultimately created a variation of the ideology. He rejected Marxist theories of historical materialism, dialectical materialism, and internationalism. Sorel came to favour the anarcho-communism of Proudhon and Bakunin. He was heavily influenced by Henri Bergson who developed the importance of myth and demolished scientific materialism.
Sorel rejected those Marxists who believed in inevitable and evolutionary change, preferring more "direct action" approaches. These approaches included general strikes, boycotts, sabotage, and constant disruption of capitalism with the goal being to achieve worker control over the means of production. Sorel's belief in the need for a deliberately-conceived "myth" to sway crowds into concerted action was put into practice by mass fascist movements in the 1920s.
He echoed the Jacobin tradition in French society that held that the only way for change to occur was through the application of force. Sorel praised Charles Maurras, Action Française and Lenin for attacking bourgeois democracy. At the time of his death, in Boulogne sur Seine, he had an ambivalent attitude about both Fascism and Bolshevism.
Friendships
Sorel had ties of friendship to Antonio Labriola and wrote a preface to the French translation of Labriola's Essays on the Materialist Conception of History.
Works
- Contribution à l'étude profane de la Bible (Paris, 1889)
- Le Procès de Socrate, Examen critique des thèses socratiques (Paris: Alcan, 1889)
- Fondements scientifiques de l'entendement (Paris, 1893)
- La Ruine du monde antique: Conception matérialiste de l'histoire (Paris, 1898)
- Questions de morale (Paris, 1900)
- Introduction à l'économie moderne (Paris, 1903)
- La crise de la pensée catholique (Paris, 1903)
- Le Système historique de Renan (Paris, 1905-1906)
- Les préoccupations métaphysiques des physiciens modernes (Paris, 1907)
- La Décomposition du Marxisme (Paris, 1908); translation as The Decomposition of Marxism by Irving Louis Horowitz in his Radicalism and the Revolt against Reason; The Social Theories of Georges Sorel (Humanities Press, 1961; Southern Illinois University Press, 1968).
- Les illusions du progrès (1908); Translated as The Illusions of Progress by John and Charlotte Stanley with a foreword by Robert A. Nisbet and an introduction by John Stanley (University of California Press, 1969, ISBN 0520022564)
- Réflexions sur la violence (1908); translated as Reflections on Violence first authorised translation by T. E. Hulme (B. W. Huebsch, 1914; P. Smith, 1941; AMS Press, 1975, ISBN 0404561659); in an unabridged republication with an introduction by Edward A. Shils, translated by T.E. Hume and J. Roth (The Free Press, 1950; Dover Publications, 2004, ISBN 0486437078, pbk.); edited by Jeremy Jennings (Cambridge University Press, 1999, ISBN 052155117X, hb)
- La révolution Dreyfusienne (Paris, 1909)
- Matériaux d'une théorie du prolétariat (Paris, 1919)
- De l'utilité du pragmatisme (Paris, 1921)
- Lettres à Paul Delesalle 1914-1921 (Paris, 1947)
- D'Aristotle à Marx (L'Ancienne et la Nouvelle Metaphysique) (Paris: Marcel Rivière, 1935)
- From Georges Sorel: Essays in Socialism and Philosophy edited with an introduction by John L. Stanley, translated by John and Charlotte Stanley (Oxford University Press, 1976, ISBN 0195017153; Transaction Books, 1987, ISBN 0887386547, pbk.).
- From Georges Sorel: Volume 2, Hermeneutics and the Sciences edited by John L. Stanley, translated by John and Charlotte Stanley (Transaction Publishers, 1990, ISBN 0887383041).
- Commitment and Change: Georges Sorel and the idea of revolution essay and translations by Richard Vernon (University of Toronto Press, 1978, ISBN 0802054005)
- Social foundations of contemporary economics by translated with an introduction by John L. Stanley from Insegnamenti sociali della economia contemporanea (Transaction Books, 1984, ISBN 0878554823, cloth)
References
- Georges Sorel and the sociology of virtue by Arthur L. Greil (University Press of America, 1981, ISBN 0819119881, ISBN 081911989X pbk.)
- Georges Sorel, Prophet without Honor; A study in anti-intellectualism by Richard D. Humphrey (Harvard University Press, 1951)
- Georges Sorel: The Character and Development of his Thought by J.R. Jennings; foreword by Theodore Zeldin (St. Martin's Press, 1985, ISBN 0312324588)
- The Genesis of Georges Sorel : an account of his formative period, followed by a study of his influence by James H. Meisel (G. Wahr Pub. Co., 1951; Greenwood Press, 1982, ISBN 0313236585)
- Georges Sorel by Larry Portis (Pluto Press, 1980, ISBN 0861043030, pbk.)
- The Cult of Violence : Sorel and the Sorelians by Jack J. Roth (University of California Press, 1980, ISBN 0520037723
- Radicalism and the Revolt against Reason: The Social Theories of Georges Sorel by Irving Louis Horowitz. With a translation of his essay on The decomposition of Marxism (Humanities Press, 1961). A later edition contains a preface relating Sorel's theories to American thought in the 1960's (Southern Illinois University Press, 1968).
- Three against the Third Republic : Sorel, Barrès, and Maurras by Michael Curtis (Princeton University Press, 1959; Greenwood Press, 1976, ISBN 0837190487)
- Biographical Dictionary of the Extreme Right Since 1890 edited by Philip Rees, (Simon & Schuster, 1991, ISBN 0130893013)
External links
- Georges Eugène Sorel, 1847-1922 (http://cepa.newschool.edu/het/profiles/sorel.htm)
- Georges Sorel and Syndicalism (http://www.oswaldmosley.com/people/sorel.html) at OswaldMosley.comfr:Georges Sorel