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    Anarist Developments in Cultural Studies

    Art & Anary2011.2

    Bad Anarism: Aestheticized

    Mythmaking and the Legacy of

    Georges Sorel

    Mark Antliff*

    Abstract

    is article considers the varied impact of the notion of revolutionaryconsciousness first developed by the French political theorist GeorgesSorel (18471922) on proponents of anarchism and Marxism, includ-ing Walter Benjamin, Bart de Light, Frantz Fanon, Antonio Gramsci

    and, most recently, Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe. I question thestrategy amongst these thinkers to draw selectively from Sorels writ-ings in an aempt to create a cordon sanitairearound those aspects ofhis thought that are problematic by virtue of their impact on proto-fas-cist and fascist ideologues throughout Europe. In addressing this issueI examine how Sorels anarchist theory of anti-Statism, constructedaround the power of myths, led him to endorse anti-capitalist anti-Semitism as an extension of class struggle; and I critique his Janus-faced concept of aestheticized violence as it relates to his quest formoral regeneration through revolution.

    Among those theorists whose ideas served as a catalyst for twen-tieth-century anarchism, Georges Sorel (18471922) (Fig. 1) remainsthe most controversial, primarily due to his own troubled political

    * Mark Antliff, Professor of Art History and Visual Studies at Duke University, is authorofInventing Bergson: Cultural Politics and the Parisian Avant-Garde(1993); co-editorwith Mahew Affron of Fascist Vision: ArtandIdeology in France andItaly(1997);and co-author with Patricia Leighten of two books, Cubism and Culture(2001) and ACubism Reader: Documents and Criticism, 19061914(2008). In 201011 he co-curatedthe exhibition e Vorticists: RebelArtists in London and New York, 19141918, whichopened at the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University and then traveled to thePeggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice and to Tate Britain. e present study derivesin part from his book on Georges Sorels myriad impact on French politics, art andculture, Avant-Garde Fascism: e Mobilization of Myth, Art and Culture in France,19091939 (2007).

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    156 Mark Antliff

    Figure 1 George Sorel

    trajectory and that of his self-proclaimed followers, many of whomwere drawn to fascism following Benito Mussolinis rise of powerin 1922, the year ofSorels death.1 Despite such associations Sorelsnotion of revolutionary consciousness and the role he ascribed to

    myth in constituting and fomenting political activism continued toaract theorists among the le in Europe, including the Marxist An-tonio Gramsci, whose conception ofan intellectual and moral blocwas indebted to Sorel, and the prominent champion of Ngritude,Frantz Fanon, whose seminal books Bla Skin, White Masks(1952)and Te Wreted of the Earth(1962) drew on Sorels theory to instillrevolutionary consciousness among blacks in Europe and Africa.2

    Walter Benjamin in his important essay On the Critique of Violence

    (1921) interpreted Sorels concept of the general strike in terms ofthe abolition not only of the state apparatus through non-violentresistance (the refusal to work) but also the destruction of the legal

    1 See Avant-Garde Fascism: e Mobilization of Myth, Art and Culture in France,19091939 (Durham: Duke University Press, 2007).

    2 On Gramsci, see Enrico Angelli and Craig N. Murphy, Consciousness, myth andcollective action: Gramsci, Sorel and the Ethical State, in Innovation andTransfor-mation in International Studies, eds. Stephen Gill and James Mileman (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1997), 2538, Jack Roth, e Cultof Violence: Sorelandthe Sorelians(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980), 175178, and chaptersix of Walter Adamson, Hegemonyand Revolution: A StudyofAntonioGramscis Po-litical and Cultural Revolution (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980); onFanon, see Georges Ciccariello-Maher, To Lose Oneself in the Absolute: Revolution-ary Subjectivity in Sorel and Fanon, Human Aritecture: Journal of the Sociology ofSelf-Knowledge (Summer 2007), 101112.

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    order maintained by the State to justify its oppressive rule.3 A compa-rable view was taken up by the anarchist Bart de Light who likewiseendorsed Sorels theory in the context of his monumental study of

    direct non-violent action, Te Conquestof Violence: An essayon Warand Revolution (1937).4 More recently the Marxists Ernesto Laclauand Chantal Mouffe have sought to resuscitate Sorels concept ofmyth in the context of their theory ofhegemony, and the constitutiverole of antagonistic struggle as a catalyst to a theory of revolutionno longer premised on the outmoded Marxist concept of historicalnecessity.5 By breaking with orthodox Marxism, which posited classconflict and revolution as the pre-determined outcome ofeconomicinequality, Laclau and Mouffe follow Sorels example in seeking toestablish class identity and class antagonism by other means. Inendorsing Sorels theory ofmyth as an anti-essentialist, anti-deter-minist tool for political activism Laclau and Mouffe argue that thelater appropriation ofSorels thought by advocates of fascism wasmerely one of the possible derivatives from Sorels analysis and byno means a necessary outcome ofhis ideas. us the endorsementof mythmaking by Sorels fascist followers, and their celebration ofwar as a mythic catalyst for ethical renewal and proletarian heroismwas not necessarily determined by the very structure of Sorelsthought which reportedly remained indeterminate.6

    What Laclau and Mouffe fail to address is the extent to whichSorels theory of radical subjectivity contained within it the seedsfor such ideological volatility, as evidenced by the writings of Sorelhimself. Such findings should stand as a warning to any endorse-

    ment among contemporary anarchists ofSorels prognosis on howto achieve revolution, however aractive his theory ofagitationalmythmaking might first appear. In many respects Sorels critiqueof the Enlightenment as the ideological means by which Europeandemocracies establish and maintain power and his related advocacy

    3 On Benjamins debt to Sorel, see Werner Hamacher, Afformative, Strike: BenjaminsCritique of Violence, in eds. Andrew Benjamin and Peter Osborne, WalterBenjaminsPhilosophy: Destruction and Experience(London: Routledge, 1994), 110138.

    4 Bart de Ligts book was first published in French in 1935 under the title Pour vaincresansviolence: rflexions sur la guerre et lervolution; the expanded and revised Englishtranslation appeared in London in 1937 and in the United States in 1938. See Bart deLigt, Te Conquestof Violence: An Essayon Warand Revolution (New York: E.P. Duon,1938)

    5 See Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, Hegemonyand SocialistStrategy: Towards aRadical Democratic Politics(London: Verso, 1987), 3642.

    6 Ibid., 41.

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    of the anti-rational power of myth as the catalyst for revolutionaryconsciousness, finds an echo in the recourse to mythmaking stilloperative in the work of contemporary anarchist theorists.7 is

    unfeered embrace of irrationalism as a means ofconstituting a pol-itics of revolutionary identity formation carries with it the perils offorming a movement lacking in any critical self-reflection, in whichmyth itself has the potential to become a pliant tool in the handsof a self-styled revolutionary or reactionary elite. To probethis issue, we need to consider how Sorels anarchist theory of anti-Statism, constructed around the power ofmyths, led him to endorseanti-capitalist anti-Semitism as an extension of his theory of class

    struggle; and his Janus-faced concept of violence, as it relates to hisquest for moral regeneration.

    Sorels Political Trajectory

    Georges Sorel was a prolific author whose tumultuous politicalevolution accounts for the fact that, following his death, activistsacross the full political spectrum laid claim to his philosophicallegacy.8 Born in Cherbourg as the son ofa bankrupt wine merchant,Sorel received technical training at the cole polytechnique in Parisbefore becoming an engineer in 1870. From 1879 to his retirementin 1892, Sorel was ensconced in Perpignan in the Eastern Pyrnes,and it was there, in 1889, that he published his first books, Le Procs

    7 See, for example, Gavin Grindon, e Breath of the Possible, Constituent Imagination:Militant Investigations Collective Teorization, Stevphen Shukaitis and David Graeberwith Erika Biddle, eds. (San Francisco: AK Press, 2007), 94107.

    8 Notable monographic studies of Sorel and his influence include, Michel Charzat,Georges Sorel et la rvolution au XXe sicle (Paris: Hachee, 1977); Yves Guchet,Georges Sorel, 18471922: Serviteur dsintress du proltariat(Paris: LHarmaan,2001); Irving Louis Horowitz, Radicalism and the RevoltAgainst Reason: e Socialeories ofGeorges Sorel(New York: Humanities Press, 1961); J.R. Jennings, GeorgesSorel: e Character andDevelopment of his ought(New York: St. Martins Press,1985); Georges Soreletson temps, eds. Jacques Julliard and Shlomo Sand (Paris: Editionsdu Seuil, 1985); James Maisel, Te Genesis ofGeorges Sorel: An AccountofHis FormativePeriod Followed by a Study of His Influence (Ann Arbor: George Wahr PublishingCompany, 1951); Jack J. Roth, e Cultof Violence: Sorelandthe Sorelians(Berkeley:University of California Press); Shlomo Sand, LIllusion du politique: Georges Sorel etle dbat intellectuel 1900(Paris: Editions La Dcouverte, 1985); and John L. Stanley,e Sociology of Virtue: e Political and Social ought ofGeorges Sorel (Berkeley:University of California Press, 1981). e journal Cahiers Georges Sorel(19831988),now titled Mil neuf cent: Revue dhistoire intellectuelle(1989-present) also containsvaluable studies of Sorel and his legacy.

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    de Socrateand the Contribution ltude profane dela Bible. esetexts laid the ground work for the sociology of morals that be-came the central preoccupation of all his later writing. 9 Aer his

    retirement he moved to Paris, where he first embraced orthodoxMarxism before embarking on a revisionist interpretation of Marxthat would culminate in his conversion to revolutionary syndicalism.Between 1893 and 1897 Sorel contributed to the ephemeral journalLre Nouvelle(189394) and to the more successful DevenirSocial(18951898). Concurrently he continued to reflect on moral issues,publishing a Marxian interpretation ofearly Christianity titled LaRuine du monde antique(1901), and an important study of the Eigh-

    teenth-century philosopher Giambaista Vicos notion of historicalprocesses of corsi (decline) and ricorso (rebirth) (1896).10 Havingbecome disappointed with Le Devenir Socials adherence to the or-thodox Marxism of Karl Kautsky, Sorel resigned from the editorialboard in 1897, began reading Marx in the original, and sided withEduard Bernsteins aempt to restore moral integrity to Marxism.11

    Aer 1902 Sorel parted ways with parliamentary socialism alto-gether, claiming that the true legacy of Marx resided in the agita-tional, direct action politics of the French syndicats, and their boursesdutravail(a meeting hall, cultural center and labor exchange), whichguaranteed their class autonomy. From 1902 to 1909 Sorel was an ad-vocate of anarcho-syndicalism, publishing articles in the syndicalistjournal Mouvement socialiste (18991914) and its Italian counter-part, Divenire sociale(19051911). During this phase Sorel becameenamored of the anti-rationalist philosopher Henri Bergson, and reg-

    ularly aended his lectures at the Collge de France. Subsequentlyhe adapted Bergsons critique ofscientific determinism, and his al-ternative theory of creative intuition to his own radical revisionofMarxism. Bergsonian thought, in conjunction with that of Vico,inspired Sorels interpretation of the syndicalist general strike as amyth that would awaken the intuitive capacity of the proletariatand spark their ethical war against a decadent ird Republic and its

    9 See Stanley, Te Sociologyof Virtue, for a comprehensive examination of Sorels theoryof morality.

    10 Jeremy Jennings, Georges Sorel, 3655; and John L. Stanley, Sorels Study of Vico: eUses of Poetic Imagination, Te European Legacy(September, 1998), 1734.

    11 See the chapters titled e Decomposition of Marxism, 18971901 in Stanley, eSociology of Virtue; and Zeev Sternhell, with Mario Sznajder and Maia Asheri, eBirth of Fascist Ideology: From Cultural Rebellion to Political Revolution (Princeton:Princeton University Press, 1994), 3691.

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    plutocratic system ofgovernance, parliamentary democracy. Soreloutlined this new theory in three interrelated books, all publishedin 1908: La Dcomposition du Marxisme(which extricated Marxism

    from political reformism), LesIllusions du progrs(a critique of theEnlightenment and its legacy in the culture and politics of the bour-geoisie), and Rflexions sur laviolence(his Bergsonian apologia ofproletarian violence, which outlined his theory of myth and revolu-tion).12

    e period from 1909 to the outbreak of World War One in Au-gust 1914 constitutes the most hotly debated phase in Sorels devel-opment.13 Following the failure of strike activity in both Italy and

    France, and establishment of an alliance between parliamentary so-cialists and factions within the syndicalist movement, Sorel enteredinto a troubled alliance with a group ofwriters and activists affiliatedwith theanti-democratic royalist organization Action franaise. Sorel,along with his syndicalist ally Edouard Berth, joined the monarchistsGeorges Valois and Jean Variot in planning a national syndicalist

    journal, La Cit franaise(1910); when that effort failed, Valois andBerth carried the national syndicalist project forward by establish-ing the Cahierdu Cercle Proudhon (19121914). Berth defined thegroups ideological position in 1914 in Les Mfaits desIntellectuels(e Misdeeds of Intellectuals), a theoretical tract that praised thedisciplined militancy of self-styled Royalists and the revolutionaryenergy of anarcho-syndicalists whom Berth called on to join forcesin combating the plutocratic State. Although the Cercle Proudhongroup claimed Sorel as their mentor, he declined to participate, pre-

    ferring instead to join Variot in founding a journal appropriatelytitled LIndpendance(191113). In LIndpendance, and related arti-cles published in the newspaper LAction franaise, Sorel celebratedthe resurgence ofFrench patriotism and the regenerative effects ofclassical culture and the Christian tradition on French society. Sorelendorsed these new-found myths together with that of the general

    12 Jeremy Jennings cogently summarizes this phase of Sorels development in Jennings,Georges Sorel, 116142.

    13 See, for example, the following analyses of this phase of Sorels development: Guchet,Georges Sorel, 191226; Jennings, Georges Sorel, 143159; Maisel, Te Genesis ofGeorgesSorel, 203215; Paul Mazgaj, e Action Franaise and Revolutionary Syndicalism(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1979), 96127; Stanley, e So-ciology of Virtue, 270292; and chapters eight and nine in Zeev Sternhell, LaDroitervolutionnaire: Les Originesfranaises dufascisme, 18851914(Paris: Editions du Seuil,1978).

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    strike as able to generate opposition to the pernicious effects ofEn-lightenment rhetoric, which shored up support among all classes forparliamentary democracy. At the same time, while he lauded the

    Action francaises tenacious opposition to the ird Republic, he wascareful not to endorse their vision of monarchical government, orthe alliance of syndicalists and nationalists developed by his CercleProudhon disciples. Sorel and Berth also wrote anti-Semitic texts,which aacked the Jewish intellectual as the enemy of French cul-ture and the chiefapologist for the Enlightenment and its plutocraticoffspring, the ird Republic.

    With the outbreak of World War One, Sorel withdrew from the

    public arena while reaffirming his anarchist-inspired opposition toparliamentary politics. It is in this context that he published hislast two books: Matriaux dune thorie du proltariat (1919) andDelutilit du pragmatisme(1921). Following his death in October1922, Edouard Berth, who had returned to revolutionary syndical-ism, published a collection of Sorels early writings under the titleDAristote Marx (1935), while Jean Variot, now a convert to fas-cism, published his own reminiscence ofconversations with Sorelthe same year, Propos de Sorel(1935).

    Myths and Radical Subjectivity

    Central to Sorels theory following his break with orthodox Marx-ism was his notion ofmyth-making as the principle means by which

    oppressed groups establish a radical subjectivity among the rankand file in their ongoing bale against their oppressors. us inhis Reflections on Violence(1908),14 Sorel concluded that the revolu-tionary transformations instigated by religious sects and politicalmovements arise from the emotive impact of their core myths, de-fined as those visionary principles that inspire immediate action. 15

    For Sorel, myths were decidedly instrumental; rather than providingpeople withasocial blueprint for a future to b e created incrementally

    14 Sorels Reflections on Violencefirst appeared in an abbreviated form in Italian in theRoman journal IlDivinere sociale; it was then published as Lo Sciopero generale e laviolenzain 1906. is volume, combined with additional essays from the syndicalistjournal Le Mouvementsocialisteand a new introduction, appeared in French underthe title Rflexions sur la violencein 1908. For a survey ofSorels myriad impact inFrance and Italy, see Jack Roth, Te Cult of Violence: Sorel and the Sorelians.

    15 Georges Sorel, Reflections on Violence, (1908, authorized translation by T. E. Hulme;reprint, London: Collier-Macmillan, 1961), 28.

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    ofclass war, appears thus as a very beautiful and very heroic thing;it is at the service of the immemorial interests of civilization . . . itmay save the world from barbarism.17 Proletarian violence was mo-

    tivated by a desire for justice, it was a disciplined activity carried onwithout hatred or a spirit of revenge. By contrast the essential aimbehind the repressive violence meted out by monarchs, or bourgeois

    Jacobins during the Terror in 1793, was not justice, but the welfareof the State.18 Syndicalist violence, therefore, must not be confusedwith those acts ofsavagery, and Sorel felt justified in hoping thata Socialist revolution carried out by pure Syndicalists would notbe defiled by the abominations which sullied (souille) bourgeois

    revolutions.19

    Sorelian violence, to quote historian David Forgacs, was more im-age than reality, and supposedly minimal in its bloodshed by virtueof the sense of discipline and justice animating its practitioners.20

    In effect Sorel displaced the violent act from an infliction of bod-ily harm to an imaginary realm described as an act of heroism, aform of beauty, a civilizing force able to heal society. Forgacs sees acomparable operation at work in Italian Fascism, citing for instanceMussolinis declaration in 1928 that fascist violence must be gen-erous, chivalric, and surgical.21 Despite the fact that Sorel soughtto minimize violence while Italian Fascism exalted it, both forms ofviolence operated at the level of the imaginary wherein violencewas displaced into something other: a social medicine, a creationoforder, a revolution-recomposition.22 Such historical precedentsshould give us pause when we read statements such as the following

    from CrimethInccalling on us to embrace myth as a catalyst for rev-olutionary inspiration: When we tell tales around the fire at night

    17 Sorel, Reflections on Violence, 99; and Rflexions sur la violence(1908; reprint Paris:Marcel Rivire, 1946), 130. e English translation uses the word very fine forSorels trs belle. I have substituted the word beautiful which is closer to theoriginal French.

    18 Sorel, Reflections on Violence, 11112; and Rflexions sur laviolence(1908; reprint Paris:Marcel Rivire, 1946), 147.

    19 Sorel, Reflections on Violence, 125; and Rflexions sur la violence(1908; reprint Paris:Marcel Rivire, 1946), 16566.

    20 See David Forgacs important essay, Fascism, violence and modernity, in Te ViolentMuse: Violence and the Artistic Imagination, 19101939 (Manchester: ManchesterUniversity Press, 1994), 521.

    21 Mussolinis statement is reported by his confidant Marguerita Sarfai in her biographyDux(1928), and quoted in Forgacs, 6.

    22 Forgacs,Fascism, violence and modernity, 11.

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    ofheroes and heroines, ofother struggles and adventures . . . we areoffering each other examples of just how much living is possible. 23

    Heroism in the realm of labor unrest had a constructive comple-

    ment in the creativity of the industrial worker, whose interactionwith modern machinery galvanized a workers potential for inven-tion. To Sorels mind the ethical violence of the worker mergedwith the creativity of the industrial producer; Mussolini (and hisFrench fascist counterpart, Georges Valois) appropriated this aspectof Sorels theory when they described the fascist movement as analliance ofcombatants and producers.24 At its most extreme a societybuilt around such myths would no longer support institutions struc-tured on Enlightenment precepts; parliamentary democracy wouldcede to the creation of a new form of politics, such as anarchism.As belief systems that served as catalysts for activism, myths notonly nurtured social cohesion among disparate constituencies, theyalso made social and industrial dynamism, and the potential for vio-lent upheaval, core aspects of any ideology employing such mythicimages to achieve its objectives.

    e Abstract Citizen

    e creation of the ird Republic produced a conflict betweenthose favorable to the doctrine of universal suffrage and those op-posed to it. As Pierre Birnbaum has detailed, political dissidentslike Charles Maurras and Maurice Barrs condemned the Republi-

    can principle of one man, one vote for falsely positing politicalequality among all citizens on the basis of Enlightenment ideals;they alternatively campaigned in favour ofolder forms ofcommunal

    23 CrimethInc, Days of Love, Nights ofWar, 113. In a cogent argument, Gavin Grindonhas positioned CrimethInc s mythmaking in the context of a broader movementamong leists to harness mythic moments for their revolutionary potential fromthe Surrealists to the Situationists to Reclaim the Streets. In the process Grindontouches on Sorels impact on Georges Bataille and his allies associated with the

    College ofSociology. See, Gavin Grindon, e Breath of the Possible in ConstituentImagination: Militant Investigations//Collectiveeorization, eds. Stevphen Shukaitisand David Graeber with Erika Biddle (Oakland: A.K. Press, 2007), 94107.

    24 For a discussion of Sorels notion of the producer and its impact on fascists in Franceand Italy, see James Gregor, Young MussoliniandtheIntellectualOrigins ofFascism(Berkeley: University ofCalifornia Press, 1979); Zeev Sternhell, with Mario Sznajderand Maia Asheri e Birth of Fascist Ideology: From Cultural Rebellion to PoliticalRevolution (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994). I discussed this theme atlength in Chapter 3 ofAvant-Garde Fascism, 121143.

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    solidarity native to France, such as Catholic faith, regional identity,or the system ofguilds that united workers according to their profes-sion.25 Study ofSorels writings reveals that his theory ofsyndicalist

    revolution was premised on antirationalist paradigms conducive tosuch rightist antidemocratic thought. Sorel drew a strong contrastbetween vital and degenerative social forces, premised on a Bergson-ian division between social structures emanating from intellectualmodes of thought and those tied to intuition, and thus expressiveof a creative force opposed to intellectualism. In Sorels view Re-publican ideology subsumed all classes into its atomized concept ofcitizenship; he countered this homogenization by asserting the het-

    erogeneity of class difference, and identifying vital qualities uniqueto each class.26 In Le Mouvement socialiste, Sorel critiqued the deter-ministic, mechanistic and materialist aspects of both capitalism andparliamentary democracy, which in turn inspired him to posit a spir-itualist road to revolution meant to galvanize both the bourgeoisieand the proletariat. His primary concern was with the decadence ofFrench society, for Sorel viewed class conflict as the means by whichbourgeois and proletarian alike could be rejuvenated and the cor-rupting effects of parliamentary democracy successfully resisted.27

    Fundamental to Sorels distinction between vital and degenerativesocial forces was a division derived from Bergson between those so-cial structures arising from intellectual modes of thought and thosetied to intuition, and thus expressive of the vital dureanimatinglife. Duration, Bergsons term for temporality, was synonymouswith creativity, and each material manifestation of duration report-

    edly contained within it an lan vital, or vital impulse. According toBergson intuition was the faculty of thought most adapted to thislife force and thus able both to discern duration and contribute toits creative evolution, its production of material form. UltimatelyBergson hoped that intuition would not only give us insight into life,but knowledge ofeach other, and that social forms based on intuitionwould create a society open to its own creative evolution. Since intu-ition was a form of empathic consciousness, a disinterested type of

    instinct, the social order arising from this state would be the product

    25 Pierre Birnbaum, Catholic Identity, Universal Suffrage, and Doctrines of Hatred,in eIntellectualRevoltAgainst LiberalDemocracy, 18701945, ed. Zeev Sternhell(Jerusalem: e Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1996), 23351.

    26 Sternhell, Te Birth of Fascist Ideology, 1994, 3691; and Antliff, Avant-Garde Fascism,7381..

    27 See Mazgaj, Te Action Franaise and Revolutionary Syndicalism, 1979.

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    ofa sympathetic communion of free wills, an order expressive of theconsciousness ofeach citizen rather than one imposed mechanicallyfrom without by some external authority. Intuition then was a state

    of mind able to reflect on its own nature and externalize or expressthat nature in the form of creative acts. e nature of those actsnecessarily mirrored the creative process from which they sprang;thus intuitive acts had all the aributes of creative duration itself:they were indivisible, heterogeneous, and qualitative processes.28 ForSorel, Bergsons insights had profound consequences, both for hisvision ofsociety and the means by which he sought to change it. Inhis interpretation ofBergson, intellectualized conceptions described

    by Bergson as antithetical to intuition had their political equivalentin Republican and enlightenment ideology.29 Sorel and his colleagueBerth sought to identify the qualitative differences within the bodypolitic ignored by democraticapologists, themost significant of thesedifferences being that ofclass. In Sorels theory each class had itsunique lan; the error ofdemocracy was that it subsumed all classesinto its abstract conception of citizenship, thereby denying the het-erogeneity ofclass difference and the vital qualities intrinsic to eachclass.

    In his Reflections on ViolenceSorel applied this theory ofqualitativedifferences to his conception ofcollectivity, claiming that individualschose to join a syndicat as an expression of their free will, and theirintuitive sympathy with each other. e spiritual transformation ofeach individual assured that all action undertaken by an individualwas in harmonious relation to that of his peers. In a chapter titled

    e Morality of the Producers, Sorel related such harmonious ac-tions to an internal discipline founded on the deepest feelings of the

    28 For Bergsons views on the relation of human creativity to duration in the universe,see Henri Bergson, Maerand Memory, 1896, trans. N. M. Paul and W. S. Palmer, 1911(rpt. New York: Humanities Press, 1978) 26798; Henri Bergson, Creative Evolution,1907, trans. Arthur Mitchell, 1911 (rpt. New York: Random House, 1944) 29095; andAntliff, Inventing Bergson: CulturalPolitics andthe Parisian Avant-Garde(Princeton:Princeton University Press, 1993) 100105; on the scientific implications of Bergsonstheories, see P.A.Y. Gunter, Henri Bergson, in ed. David Ray Griffin, Founders ofConstructive Postmodern Philosophy: Pierce, James, Bergson, Whitehead, and Hartshorne(New York: S.U.N.Y. Press 1993) 133163.

    29 On Sorels critique of enlightenment ideology, and his opinion that proponents ofthe illusions of rationalism find their adversary in the teachings of Bergson, seeGeorges Sorel, Illusions of Progress, 1908, trans. Charloe and John Stanley, 1969,129; Georges Sorel, Reflections on Violence, 1908, 2830, 157; for a good synopsis ofSorels Bergsonism, see Richard Vernon, Commitment and Change: George Sorel andthe Idea of Revolution (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1978), 5061.

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    soul rather than a discipline that was merely external constraint.He concluded that syndicalist action was the product of a qualita-tive and individualistic point of view, before adding that anarchists

    have entered the syndicats in great numbers, and have done muchto develop tendancies favourable to the general strike.30 To Sorelsmind anarchism and the intuitive consciousness animating syndical-ism were uerly compatible, as long as creative individuals acted inconsort, in response to a class consciousness premised on intuitivesympathy.

    Berth, in a May 1905 article published in Le Mouvementsocialiste later reedited for Les Mfaits desIntellectuels defined the roleof revolutionary syndicalism in promoting that intuitive state andthe manner in which anarchists hostile to collectivity, along withorthodox Marxists and parliamentary socialists, set out to impedeit.31 According to Berth the epistomological roots of the laer threeideologies resided in an intellectualised and atomised conception ofthe individual, whereas revolutionary syndicalism was allied to anew philosophy of life charted by Berths heroes, Friedrich Niet-szche and Bergson. Anarcho-individualism purportedly advocatedextreme social automatism derived from intellectualism in the sci-ences and akin to the concept of abstract citizenship posited underdemocratism. Likewise orthodox Marxism, by virtue of its rational-ism, did not escape what Berth called the law of intellectualism,for the collectivity promoted by Marxists amounted to a totallymechanical form of cooperation among workers, a cooperation,stated Berth, where the will of the cooperators counts for nothing,

    a cooperation whose directing idea is exterior to the cooperatorsthemselves.32 Whether social order took the form of the collectionof atomized individuals as conceived by anarcho-individualists ora mechanical order external to its component parts, as developedby orthodox Marxists, it still amounted to an abstract conception ofcitizenship, no different from that posited under democracy.33 In hisIllusions ofProgressSorel endorsed Berths thesis, adding that thedemocratic concept of the abstract citizen stemmed from theories

    ofnatural law, and atomistic theories ofphysics; consequently the

    30 Sorel, Reflections on Violence, 28485.31 Edouard Berth, Anarchisme individualiste, Marxisme orthodox, syndicalisme rvo-

    lutionnaire, Le Mouvement socialiste(May 1905), 635; rpt. in Berth, Les Mfaits desIntellectuels, 87130.

    32 Berth, Les Mfaits des Intellectuels, 95119.33 Berth, Les Mfaits des Intellectuels, 107.

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    Cartesianism to justify its frivolity, since that ideology was veryamenable to Parisian intellectual circles.38 By preaching moral lax-ity to the idle rich, advocates of Cartesian ideology permied the

    enjoyment of the good things of today in good conscience withoutworrying about tomorrows difficulties.39

    To Sorels mind Cartesianism was tailor-made for the politicaloligarchy that arose in the wake of the French Revolution of 1789.40

    Cartesianism not only suited the old, idle aristocracy but also alater generation of politicians elevated to power by democracy, who,menaced by possible downfall, wish to make their friends profit fromall the advantages to be reaped by the state.41 Nothing is more aris-tocratic than the aspirations ofdemocracy, Sorel asserted, for thelaer tries to continue the exploitation of the producing masses byan oligarchy of intellectual and political professionals. 42 Divorcedfrom the forces ofproduction, the idea ofprogress developed by ourdemocrats [consisted] neither in the accumulation of technical meth-ods nor even ofscientific knowledge, and instead took the form ofapure logic, insuring the happiness ofall who possess the means ofliving well.43 Like the aristocracy of the previous generation, theseplutocratic advocates of abstract logic and moral laxity had theiradversaries in the defenders ofChristian belief, moral rectitude, andintuition.44 In the Seventeenth century the followers of Descarteswere challenged by Pascal, while in the Twentieth century, demo-cratic ideology was threatened by the rising tide of Bergsonism. 45

    38 Sorel, e Illusions of Progress, 21. Le progrs sera toujours un lement essentiel

    du grand courant qui ira jusqu la dmocratie moderne, parce que la doctrine duprogrs permet de jouir en toute tranquillit des biens daujourdhui, sans se soucierdes difficults de demain. Sorel, Les Illusions du Progrs (Qatrime dition), 49.

    39 Sorel, e Illusions of Progress, 21. Le progrs sera toujours un lement essentieldu grand courant qui ira jusqu la dmocratie moderne, parce que la doctrine duprogrs permet de jouir en toute tranquillit des biens daujourdhui, sans se soucierdes difficults de demain. Sorel, Les Illusions du Progrs (Qatrime dition), 49.

    40 Sorel, Te Illusions of Progress, 150.41 Ibid., 21.42 Ibid., 150.43 Ibid., 22.44 Sorel, Te Illusions of Progress, 22.45 e Jansenist Pascal had critiqued Cartesianists for applying the laws of physics to

    the realm of human affairs, thereby recognizing that pseudomathematical reasoningis not applicable to moral questions. We must understand that in Pascals eyes, themathematical sciences form a very limited area in the whole field ofknowledge, andthat one exposes oneself to an infinity of errors in trying to imitate mathematicalreasoning in moral studies. Sorel drew on Henri Poincars theory of conventionalismand Bergsons critique of the instrumental limitations of intellectual analysis to

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    One should compare Pascal and Bergson, added Sorel, since bothwere opposed to the illusions of rationalism.46 Democratic thought,like Cartesianism, had no role to play in human affairs other than to

    justify the existence of unproductive elements in society, whetherthey be the landed aristocratsand their intellectual courtiers, or largescale financiers and their democratic apologists.

    e rise of the productive bourgeoisie aer 1789, therefore,spawned the creation of an unproductive, haute bourgeoisiewithinits midst.47 It was this haute bourgeoisie which undermined classconsciousness by aping the aristocracy. e bourgeois assumptionofpower was accompanied by efforts to emulate the aristocratic de-light in theoretical reasoning. Ironically this laer-day enthusiasmfor the trappings ofaristocratic culture had been preceded, in theEighteenth century, by the aristocracys equally disastrous assimila-tion of bourgeois ideology into the cultivated world of the literarySalon. When the philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau developed anabstract theory of general will, the aristocracy, states Sorel, bor-rowed subjects for discourse from the ird Estate and amused itselfwith projects for social reform, which it considered on a par withaccounts of marvelous voyages in the land of milk and honey.48 Forthese aristocrats Rousseaus abstract ideas were first and foremost aform of Salon entertainment, not a call to revolution.

    e Anti-Enlightenment: Ancients Against Moderns

    In eIllusions ofProgressSorel defined an alternative aestheticto this leisure culture, based on adherence to aesthetic traditionsgrounded in productive labor and class consciousness. In his view,the proponents ofprogress were not only hostile to religious belief

    reach similar conclusions. See Sorel, TeIllusions ofProgress, 1516; Jennings, GeorgesSorel, 1985, 9699; 139142.

    46 Sorel, Te Illusions of Progress, 22.47 On Sorels distinction between the productive and unproductive elements of the

    bourgeoisie see Sorel, Reflections on Violence, 8687, 25295; and John Stanley, eSociology of Virtue, 1981, 26266.

    48 Sorel, e Illusions ofProgress, 45.Cest que la noblesse na plus, cee poque,didologie qui lui soit propre; elle emprunte au iers-Etat les sujets de dissertationet samuse des projets de rnovations sociale, quelle assimile des rcits de voyagesmerveilleux faits des pays de Cocagne. Sorel, Les Illusions du Progrs (Qatrimedition), 90.

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    they thought their own culture superior to the art of past eras, in-cluding that ofclassical antiquity. e most important manifestationof this was the quarrel between Ancients and Moderns in the sev-

    enteenth and eighteenth centuries, a time when new philosophicalprecepts came into conflict with the long-unchallenged belief in thesuperiority of the culture of the ancient world.49

    Cartesianism, stated Sorel, had influenced literary debates be-tween the defenders of the Ancients, most notably Nicholas Boileau,and promoters of the Moderns, such as Charles Perrault. In Sorelswords, Perrault systematically ranked his contemporaries above thegreat men ofantiquity or the Renaissance [and] preferred Lebrun to

    Raphael.50 Not surprisingly Sorel claimed that Boileau had allies inthose men of the Renaissance who had studied Greek customs,and religious reformers like the Jansenists, who had defended theclassical tradition, and exalted St. Augustine as the Christian exem-plar ofclassical values. By contrast the moderns valued noveltyand viewed art as a mere diversion.51 Almost all the women sidedwith Perraults party, asserted Sorel, so that the cause of the mod-erns, like Cartesianism, was taken up in the literary salons; moreoverPerraults flaery of his contemporaries won him advocates in thegreat literary gazees and among the great mass of men who hadpretensions to literary taste. As a result of Perraults defence ofprogress in the arts the philosophico-scientific poetry of writerslike Lamoe won widespread approval. Concurrently, Descartesteachers, the Jesuits, defended literary mediocrity against Boileauand moral mediocrity against the Jansenists, in order to gain influ-

    ence over the greatest number of people.52

    Boileaus defeat wasthus complete, lamented Sorel, for all around him he could seea rebirth of literary affectation, while in the coteries, transformedinto literary salons, the Fontenelles and Lamoes were in ascen-dance.53 Although the nineteenth century Romantics were to renew

    49 On the bale between the Ancients and Moderns see, Georgia Cowart, Te Origins ofModernMusicalCriticism: FrenandItalian Music, 16001750(Ann Arbor: U.M.I. Press,1981), 3539; and Joan Dejean, Ancients againstModerns: Culture Wars andthe Makingof a Fin-de-Sicle(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997).

    50 Sorel, TeIllusions ofProgress, 13. Riens ne nous parait plus trange que le mauvaisgut de Perrault meant systmatiquement ses contemporains au-dessus des grandshommes de lantiquit ou de la Renaissance, et, par example, prferant Lebrun Raphael. Sorel, Les Illusions du Progrs (Qatrime dition), 16.

    51 Sorel, Te Illusions of Progress, 36.52 Illusions of Progress. 6; French edition 24.53 Ibid. English trans., 7; French edition 24.

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    the aack on Boileau, he had a defender in the anarchist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, whose mixture of leist politics and cultural con-servatism appealed to Sorel (and to the Cercle Proudhon group).

    us Sorel cited Proudhons claim that Boileaus glory reappears inproportion as the new generation rids itselfof the romanticist man-tle.54 e quarrel between Ancients and Moderns had a Nineteenthcentury correlate in the bale between Romantics and Classicists,and more importantly, defenders of the decadent Republic and thefollowers of Proudhon.

    Having sided with the Ancients, Sorel incorporated concepts ofclassicism and tradition into his theory of class consciousness. In

    Sorels schema, traditionalists respected past techniques of artisticproduction, and consciously adopted these methods in emulationof past artistic achievements. ere are two groups of writers,wrote Sorel; one prides itselfon having become good literary cras-men; its members have trained themselves by a long apprenticeship,while the other group has continued to churn out works accordingto the tastes of the day. Like the Ancients, these crasmen report-edly felt the value of form in poetry; they recognized that suchproduction required patient labour, and, as a result, addressed alimited public. By contrast their adversaries shared the Modernsobsession with literary novelty, and compromised artistic standardsfor commercial success by writing for caf-concerts and newspa-pers.55 Decline in crasmanship had accelerated in the eighteenthcentury, for proponents ofEnlightenment philosophy like Condorcetnot only condemned religious art, but the Medieval guild structure

    associated with it. Sorel thus speculated whether the influence ofthe friends of the Enlightenment was not fatal to art during the end

    54 Ibid. English trans., 7; French edition, 25.55 Sorel, e Illusions of Progress, 78. Une rvolution moderne a tabli une scission

    fondamentale entre deux groupes dcrivains; les unes se vantent dtre devenus de

    bons ouvriers des leres; ils se sont forms par un long apprentissage et ils travaillentextraordinairement leur langue; les autres ont continu crire rapidement selondu gut du jour . . . Nos artistes contemporains de style sont les vrais successeursde ce Boileau, si longtemps mpris . . . Si quelquun a senti le prix de la forme enposie, cest Boileau . . . Les hommes qui travaillent avec un patient labeur leurscrits sadressent volontairement un public restreint; les autres crivent pour lescafs-concerts et pour les journaux; il y a maintenant deux clientles bien spares etdeux genres liratures qui se mlent gure. Sorel LesIllusions du Progrs(Qatrimedition), 2527.

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    of the eighteenth century, for they helped to ruin professional tra-ditions and to set art on an artificial path with a view to expressingphilosophical fantasies.56

    If French society were to be saved, artisanal traditions and pro-ductivist ethics should guide all creative endeavours. Sorel, in theIllusions of Progress, found evidence ofsuch resurgence in the time-honoured, aesthetic sensibility of independent, rural winegrowersas well as in the inventiveness of the industrial worker. 57 In his Re-

    flections on ViolenceSorel related the espritde corpsgenerated bythe syndicats to the morality of the producers and the creativityworkers brought to production processes.58 Drawingon the anarchistaesthetics of Proudhon, Sorel declared art to be an anticipation ofthe kind of work that ought to be carried on in a highly productivestate of society.59 He then defined the conditions under which themodern worker could develop an aesthetic sensibility.60 As an ex-perimental field which continually incites the worker to scientificresearch, the modern workshop required workers to be forever opento the difficulties the current method ofproduction present. We arethus led to invention, and through that to the realisation that artshould be regarded as being an anticipation of the highest form ofproduction as it tends to be manifested more and more in society. 61

    Sorels correlation between creativity and a productivist ethic alsoinspired Berth, in an article of 1905 published in Le MouvementSo-cialiste, toanalyse the creative rather than routinenature of theworkundertaken by syndicalists. According to Berth, production methodsin the progressive unions required an incessant adaptation to tech-

    niques always more delicate, whose rhythm is perpetually new, and

    56 Sorel, e Illusions ofProgress, 103. Condorcet est inintelligible. On pourrait sedemander plutt si linfluence des amis des lumieres na pas t funeste lart durantla fin du XVIII sicle; cee influence contribua ruiner des traditions de mtier pourlancer lart sur une voie factice en vue de lexpression de fantaisies philosophiques.Sorel, Les Illusions du Progrs (Qatrime dition), 192.

    57 Sorel, Te Illusions of Progress, 15457.58 . Sorel, Reflections on Violence, 36. On Sorels fusion of the productive and artistic

    esprit, and separation of proletarian culture from a bourgeois aesthetic education,see Jennings, Georges Sorel, 112115.

    59 Sorel, Reflections on Violence, 39. On Proudhons declaration that art must have amoral purpose, and that the edifying effects of art should also animate the workplace,see George Woodcock, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon: A Biography(Montral: Black Rose1987), 2569; on Proudhons influence on Sorels theory of art, see Jeremy Jennings,Georges Sorel, 1985, 112115.

    60 See Georges Sorel, Reflections on Violence, 286288.61 Sorel, Reflections on Violence, 28687.

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    to state it clearly, more revolutionary. Creativity in the workplaceassured that the worker understands and loves his work, that it be-comes the center ofhis existence, a source of pride, dignity, and

    a feeling of justice.62 Given the agitational role of industrial syndi-cats in Paris it is not surprising that Sorel and Berth would praise theurban worker in the modern workshop; what has gone unnoticedis that his eulogy to the rural vigneron was equally politicised, forwinegrowers in the Midi had embraced revolutionary syndicalismand initiated a massive strike wave that engulfed the entire southbetween 1903 and 1911.63 As one auned to the condition of hisfields, every winegrower had a feeling ofaachment towards theproductive forces entrusted to him; in like fashion, the proletarianwas acutely aware of changes in industrial technology. It has longbeen pointed out, Sorel continued, how much the winegrower isan observer, a thinker, and is curious about new phenomena; heresembles the worker of progressive workshops much more thanthe labourer, since it is impossible for him to be content with rou-tine, for each year brings a burden of new difficulties. Devoid ofroutine, such skill had been celebrated by poets, because theyperceive its aesthetic character.64 Like the Ancients, the winegroweror industrial worker took pride in the cra of production: it wasthis relation of art to labor that distinguished classical and artisanalculture from those art forms designed to entertain a leisured class,whether aristocratic or bourgeois.

    62 Berth, Les Mfaits des Intellectuels, 12612863 Laura L. Frader, Grapes of Wrath: Vineyard Workers, Labor Unions, and Strike

    Activity in the Aude, 18601913, in Class Conflict and Collective Action, eds. LouiseA Tilly and Charles Tilly (London: Sage, 1981), 185206.

    64 Sorel, Te Illusions of Progress, 15556. Tout dabord, on doit signaler les sentimentsdaffection quinspirent tout travailleur vraiment qualifi les forces productives quilui sont confies. Ces sentiments ont t surtout observ dans la vie champtre . . .Il y a une lagriculture grossire dans laquelle on chercherait vainement les vertue

    aribues la proprit; mais il y a une autre qui, pendant de longs sicles, a t fortsuprieure au grand nombre des mtiers urbains, comme travail qualifi; cest celle-l que les potes ont clbre, parce quils en apercevaient le caractre esthtique . . .on a souvent signal combien est observateur, raissonneur et curieux de nouveaut levigneron, qui ressemble bien plutt louvrier des ateliers progressifs quau laboureur;il lui serait impossible de se contenter de la routine, car chaque anne apporte untribut de difficults nouvelles; dans les pays de grand crs, le vigneron suit avec uneaention minutieuse tous les pisodes de la vie de chaque plant. Sorel LesIllusionsdu Progrs (Qatrime dition), 28183.

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    In his Relections on ViolenceSorel went further by comparing theethos animating the male warrior ofClassical Greece to that ofstrik-ing workers, whether agrarian or industrial.65 Sorel claimed that the

    myth of the general strike, in producing an epic consciousness, notonly galvanized the workers creative capacities, such myth-mak-ing potentially regenerated the bourgeoisie by leading that class toabandon the politics ofappeasement espoused by Parliamentary So-cialists. Worker agitation would thus cause industrialists to fomentthe cataclysmic class war predicted by Marx.66 e fundamental aimof the proletariat, argued Sorel, was to re-invigorate the bourgeoisiethrough class conflict, thereby making the middle class recover the

    serious moral habits, productive energy and feeling of its owndignity that had dissipated under the impact ofdemocratic ideals.67

    For this reason Sorel regarded labor militancy as a salutary form ofviolence, qualitatively distinct from the oppressive force of the State.e Enlightenment precepts undergirding the ird Republic andits institutions had encouraged reconciliation between the classes.In response Sorel lauded the anti-parliamentary policies of the syn-dicats, and the decision of the Confdration Gnrale du Travail,or C.G.T. to employ strike action as a means of maintaining labormilitancy and with it, class schism. e myth of the general striketherefore produced an intuitive class consciousness, typified by hero-ism, moral rectitude and sublimity, comparable to that of the citizensoldiers of classical Greece. Proletarian violence, we are told, is avery heroic thing since it is at the service of the immemorial inter-ests of civilization: thus we should salute the revolutionaries as

    the Greeks saluted the Spartan heroes who defended ermopylae.Such epic consciousness also instilled a spirit of invention amongthe working class, akin to the creativity that had motivated Gothicartisans during the Middle Ages.68

    65 Sorel, Reflections on Violence, 8699.66 Sorel, Reflections on Violence, 12639.67 Sorel, Reflections on Violence, 6973, 8491.68 Sorel, Reflections on Violence, 99, 286295. La violence proltarienne, exerce comme

    une manifestation pure et simple du sentiment de lue de classe, apparait ainsi commeune chose trs belle et trs hroique; elle est au service des intrts primordiaux dela civilisation . . . Saluons les rvolutionnaires comme les Grecs salurent les hroesspartiates qui dfendirent les ermopyles et contriburent maintenir la lumiredans le monde antique. Georges Sorel, Rflexions sur la violence, edition dfinitive(Paris: Librairie Marcel Rivire, 1946), 13031.

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    e Myth of Anti-Capitalist, Anti-Semitism

    Sorels blueprint for social revolution underwent radical revision

    aer 1909, when the C.G.T.s strike activity faltered and the syn-dicalists entered into a dialogue with Jean Jaurs parliamentarysocialists. Sorel and Berth responded by turning to anti-Republi-can advocates of militant Catholicism for potential allies in theirfight against the parliamentary system and its Enlightenment un-derpinnings. In LIndpendanceSorel further melded his ideologicaldoctrine with a theory ofculture, and deployed notions ofclassicismand religious aesthetics as a bulwark against the Republic and its

    allies in the cultural domain. In Reflections on ViolenceSorel hadalready related religious faith to revolutionary consciousness, claim-ing that Bergson has taught us that it is not only religion whichoccupies the profounder region of our mental life; revolutionarymyths have their place there equally with religion. Christians, likerevolutionaries, could possess sublimity provided that believerswere motivated by well defined myths in their epic struggle againstthe forces of immorality.69 Aer 1909, Sorel (in conjunction with hisLIndpendanceallies) incorporated religious belief into his programby proclaiming the bale between Dreyfusard Republicans and theirCatholic adversaries a momentous confrontation between decadentand regenerative forces in French society. e myth of a CatholicFrance, purged of destructive rationalism, would now sustain theforces of resistance. ough the present time is not favorable tograndeur, Sorel wrote in a 1910 appendix to TeIllusions ofProgress,

    history teaches us that greatness cannot be absent indefinitely inthat part of mankind that possesses the imcomparable treasures ofclassical culture and the Christian tradition.70

    69 Sorel, Reflections on Violence, 35, 24344. Mais lenseignement de Bergson nous aappris que la religion nest pas seule occuper la rgion de la conscience profonde;les mythes rvolutionnaire y ont leur place au mme titre quelle . . . Ces faits nousmeent sur la voie qui nous conduit lintelligence des hautes convictions morales;celles-ci ne dpendent point des raisonnements ou dune ducation de la volontindividuelle; elles dpendent dun tat de guerre auquel les hommes acceptent departiciper et qui se traduit en mythes prcis. Dans le pays catholiques, les moinessoutiennent le combat contre le prince du mal qui triomphe dans le monde et voudraitles soumere ses volonts; dans les pays protestants, de petites sectes exaltes

    jouent le rle de monastres. Ce sont ces champs de bataille qui permeent moralechrtienne de se maintenir, avec ce caractre de sublime qui fascine tant dmesencore daujourdhui. Sorel, Rflexions sur la violence, 49; 319320.

    70 Sorel, eIllusions ofProgress, 186. Lheure prsente nest pas favorable lide degrandeur: mais dautres temps viendront; lhistoire nous apprend que la grandeur

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    While the mythic power of Catholicism served to reinvigorateFrance, proponents of rationalism in both art and politics activelyundermined such resurgence. In Sorels own day Enlightenment

    philosophers were replaced by politicians as symbols of decadence,with the difference that parliamentary socialists like Jean Jaurs sub-stituted democratic ideology for the Social Contract, and cateredto an idle bourgeoisie rather than the landed aristocracy. Parlia-mentary socialism, argued Sorel in Te Illusions of Progress, wouldnot recruit so many adherents among the wealthy class if Jaurssrevolutionary harangues were taken seriously in those rich bour-geois circles that seek to imitate the inanities of the old aristocracy.71

    Worst still these socialists also campaigned among the working class.According to Sorel the parliamentary socialists who had mounted adefense of Captain Dreyfus founded the Universits populairesaer1899 to spread democratic ideology and bourgeois culture amongthe working class. Democracy has as its object the disappearanceof class feeling, wrote Sorel, and if the movement that, for severalyears, propelled the most intelligent workers toward the popular uni-versities had developed as the bourgeoisie had wished, [revolution-ary] socialism would have fallen into the democratic rut. Insteadof teaching workers what they need to know to equip themselvesfor their life as workers, the popular universities strived to developin them a lively curiosity for things found only in books wrien toamuse the bourgeoisie. As a result the public universities were avast advertisement for reading the books of the Dreyfusards.72 InTeIllusions ofProgress, Sorel also aacked the writer Anatole France,

    describing him as a Dreyfusard who frequented the literary salonsof wealthy Parisians. Following the Dreyfus Affair, wrote Sorel,

    ne saurait faire indfinement dfaut cee partie de lhumanit qui posde les in-comparables trsors de la culture classique et de la traditions chrtiennes. Sorel, LesIllusions du Progrs (Qatrime dition), 335.

    71 Sorel, eIllusions ofProgress, 186. Lheure prsente nest pas favorable lide degrandeur: mais dautres temps viendront; lhistoire nous apprend que la grandeurne saurait faire indfinement dfaut cee partie de lhumanit qui posde les in-comparables trsors de la culture classique et de la traditions chrtiennes. Sorel, LesIllusions du Progrs (Qatrime dition), 335.

    72 Ibid., 6264. Indeed Georges Deherme and others associated with the Universits pop-ulairesthought the Dreyfus Affair played a crucial role in uniting bourgeois intellectsand the working class elite in the creation of these Popular Universities aer 1899.For an evaluation of the movement, See Lucien Mercier, Les Universits populaires:18991914 (Paris: Ouvrires, 1986).

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    France became a refined boudoir entertainer of the Monceau Qar-ter whose lile drolleries to the fine ladies and gentlemen of highfinance eventually transformed him into an oracle of socialism. 73

    Woven into this laer description were the threads ofanti-capitalistanti-Semitism, for the correlation of Dreyfuss defenders with fig-ures of high finance was a theme that would reappear in Sorelswritings on culture for LIndpendance. By contrasting financierswith the truly productive members ofFrench society, Sorel wishedto underscore the classless, unproductive and rationalist nature offinancial speculators, whom he stereotyped as Jews. For Sorel, these

    Jewish capitalists were instrumental in promoting the Republics

    abstract concept of citizenship, thereby suppressing the class iden-tity and the productivist ethics Sorel wished to develop. e socialcorollary to this anti-Semitic anti-capitalism was decadence in therealm ofart. It is oen asked why rich Jews are so sympathetic toutopian ideas and sometime give themselves socialist airs, wroteSorel in eIllusions ofProgress, and in response he aributed thephenomenon to economic reasons. ese men live on the marginsof production, Sorel proclaimed; literature, music, and financialspeculation are their interests, and their outspoken boldness [thusresembles] that of eighteenth-century gentlemen.74

    In an article ofOctober 1912 published in LIndpendance, Soreltook this thesis to its logical conclusion in a diatribe against the sym-

    73 Sorel, eIllusions ofProgress, 6263. e passage reads as follows: A la suites delaffaire Dreyfus, nous avons vu un dlicat amuseur des boudoirs de la plaine Monceautransform, par badauds, en oracle du socialisme; il parait quAnatole France stonnedabord beaucoup de cee mtamorphose, mais quil a fini par se demander, toutde bon, si, vraiment, en contant ses petites drleries aux belles dames et aux gentilsmessieurs de la finance, il navait pas dcouvert lnigme de la question sociale. Sorel,Les Illusions du Progrs (Qatrime dition), 122.

    74 Sorel, TeIllusions ofProgress, 115. On sest demand souvent comment il se fait quedes Juifs riches aient de sympathies pour des utopies et parfois mme se donnent desallures socialistes. Je laisse ici de ct naturellement ceux qui voient dans la socialismeun moyen nouveau dexploitation; mais il y en a qui sont sincres. Ce phnomnenest pas expliquer par des raisons ethniques (1): ces hommes vivent en marge dela production; ils soccupent de lirature, de musique et de spculations financires;ils ne sont pas frapps de ce quil y a ncessaire dans le monde et leur tmrit a lamme origine que celle de tant de gentilshommes du XVIIIe sicle. Sorel, LesIllusionsdu Progrs (Qatrime dition), 213.

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    bolist and pro-Dreyfusard journal La Revue Blane(18901903).75

    As Venita Daa has demonstrated, La Revue Blanewas a major tar-get for the anti-Dreyfusard camp due to the high number of Jewish

    intellectuals on its editorial staff, its alliance with Dreyfusards in theuniversities, and the journals defence of the concept of abstractcitizenship that regionalists, Catholics and royalists found so abhor-rent.76 Sorel added his own voice to this chorus by vilifying La RevueBlaneasanunholy alliance between a fully secularisedJewish intel-ligentsia and their anarchist counterparts among the Nabis and Neo-Impressionist painters. Having condemned Dreyfus supporters forrejecting the French tradition and propagating a concept ofnation-

    hood premised on a faith in the dialectic of absolute reason, Soreldescribed the fanatical idealism of the Revue Blanecircle as thelogical outcome of such thinking. Qoting liberally from Henry deBruchards anti-Semitic Petites mmoires du temps de la ligue (1912),Sorel referred to the journals founders, the Natanson brothers astwo Jews come from Poland in order to regenerate our poor country,so unhappily still contaminated by the Christian civilization of theseventeenth century.77 ese foreigners reportedly set out to cor-rupt French literature, and in so doing enlisted the anarchist FlixFnon in their cause, by making him the journals editor-in-chief.78

    Sorel, like his close ally Edouard Berth, equated the anarchist de-fence of individual freedom with the atomised rationalism stemmingfrom parliamentary politics, and both doctrines served the Jewishintelligentsias desire to merge classes under an abstract concept of

    75 Sorel, Aux temps dreyfusiens, LIndpendance (October, 1912), 5156. For anoverview of the pro-Dreyfus stance of the journal, see Halperin, Flix Fnon: Aes-thete and Anarist in Fin de Sicle France(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988),319323, and Richard Sonn, Anarism & Cultural Politics in Fin de Sicle France(Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1989), 1719, 4043, 17576, 18586.

    76 Venita Daa has examined the stereotype of the Jew as Intellectual in avant-guerreFrance and the espousal, by secular Jewish intellectuals, of rationalism and univer-sality as ideals allied to a Republican notion of citizenship (thus facilitating theirintegration into the French body politic). Although Daa has studied the role of LaRevue Blanein this discourse, she does not consider the thought of Sorel and hiscircle. See Daa, Te Birth ofa National Icon:TeLiteraryAvant-Garde andtheOriginsof the Intellectual in France(Albany: SUNY Press, 1999), 85116.

    77 A la Revue Blanese prparaient de merveilleuses anticipations de la pense future;cee officine appartenait aux Natanson, deux Juifs venue de Pologne pour rgnrernotre pauvre pays, si malheureusement encore contamin par la civilisation chrti-enne du XVIIe sicle. Sorel, Aux temps Dreyfusiens, 52.

    78 Fnon was the journals editorial secretary from January 1895 to 1903. See Halperin,Flix Fnon, 299323.

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    citizenship.79 e paradoxical collaboration of classes which arosewith the Dreyfus Affair, stated Sorel, was only an imitation of thatwhich took place in the Natanson academy. us La Revue Blane,

    which numbered the anarchists Fnon, Flix Valloon, MaximilienLuce, and Paul Signac among its contributors, was condemned bySorel as a salon of cosmopolitan anarchy, where esthetes rubbedshoulders with usurers and impressionist painters, or more to thepoint, those who had provoked bomb throwing.80 Sorel, like Berth,regarded the anarchists of the 1890s as an undisciplined rabble, de-void of the intuitive cohesion, heroism or sense ofcollective purposethat served to define anarcho-syndicalists. By labeling these Neo-Im-

    pressionists and Symbolists promoters of the propaganda of the deedand damning such acts as instances ofunruly anarchy rather thananarchism, Sorel condemned an older generation ofself-proclaimedmilitants for betraying the spirit of anarchism itself.

    Berth lent theoretical weight to this thesis in hisbook Te Misdeedsof Intellectuals, a text outlining his synthesis of Sorelian syndical-ism and royalism. In that book, for which Sorel wrote a laudatorypreface, Berth claims that democracy, as an ideology, wants to denyqualitative differences and subsume all life in the flat transparencyofan antimetaphysical, antipoetic, and antivital rationalism.81 evirtue of both the Action franaise and the syndicalist movements,states Berth, is that they recognize such differences in the form ofbourgeois and aristocratic values in the case of the royalists andproletarian consciousness among the syndicalists. In a chapter ofthe book titled Tradition and Revolution Berth singles out the in-

    tellectual as the chiefspokesperson for democracy, antithetical, headds, to the ancient values, heroic, religious, warlike, national, thatwould constitute a regenerated France.82 It is these intellectual advo-cates ofpacifismandenlightenment rationalismwhohold republicanideals; as stockholders on the market of ideas they are like theiraccomplices the stockholders of the Bourse, completely devoid of all

    79 Sorel, Aux temps Dreyfusiens, 5156; Berth, Anarchisme individualiste, 635; andBerth , Mfaits des Intellectuels, 3743.

    80 La paradoxale collaboration des classes que fit natre laffaire Dreyfus, tait seulementune imitation de ce qui se passait dans lacadmie des Natanson. Je vais avoir, encoreune fois, recours Henry de Bruchard qui nous donne, en quelques lignes, uneesquisse trs accentue de ce Parnasse: Salon danarchie cosmopolite, dit-il, o lesesthtes coudoyaient les usuriers et les peintres impressionistes. Sorel, Aux tempsDreyfusiens, 5156.

    81 Berth, Les Mfaits des Intellectuels, 11.82 Berth, Mfaits des Intellectuels, 1819.

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    sentiment ofhonour and eternally dedicated to trickery, that weaponof the weak. Berth claims that these intellectual and economic stock-holders, divorced from the ethics ofproduction, reject the ideal of

    virile dignity that would exist under a Sorelian warrior state.83It is their essential feminine nature and impotence which makesthem incapable of having or acquiring the force, loyalty, the duty,the feeling of honour of the soldier. 84 Berth anti-Semitic diatribereached a crescendo in a section that singled out Julien Benda as the

    Jew ofmetaphysics, the Gheo intellectual, the quintessence andthe extreme end of modern intellectualism.85 Here we are told thatBenda, the Cartesian adversary of Bergson, is as dead as his antivi-

    tal ideas: he purportedly practised a philosophy of transcendentalimmobility that le him enclosed in a darkened study, stiffenedin contemplation of his unchanging concepts. Most damning of all,Benda wants to make us believe that in defending intellectualismhe defends aristocratic conceptions when in fact the warrior andheroic spirit of the true aristocrat is anti-intellectual. In truth,declares Berth, Julien Benda is a Jew whose class allegiances are asham, and his intellectualism is the philosophy of the uprooted androotless, fully compatible with the universalist pretensions ofdemoc-ratic rationalism. Bendas rationalism, we are told is antitraditional,antiphysical . . . it only wants to know pure spirits, detached fromall historical time and place. For this reason Jewish intellectualsare divorced from the peasantry or proletariat, the bourgeoisie orthe aristocracy, for the peuple, like the aristocracy, are a histori-cal reality, a carnal reality; it is not the Pure Idea that constitutes

    them, but blood, traditions, race, all physical and nonintellectualthings.86 With Sorel and Berth, Bergsonian intuition and qualitativedifferences have at last become essentialised as a racial and corpo-real essence, and intellectualism reified into the disembodied, racialOther, the Wandering Jew, foreign to the espritde corpsof the Frenchfolk.87

    83 Berth, Mfaits des Intellectuels, 2829.84 Ibid. In effect Berth maps out, in Sorelian terms, all the anti-Semitic tropes of racial

    theory, for as Sander Gilman has demonstrated, fin-de-sicle scientific pathophysiol-ogy declared the Jew intrinsically unfit for military service, susceptible to feminineillnesses like hysteria, and thus not worthy ofassimilation into the European bodypolitic. Gilman, Te Jews Body(New York: Routledge, 1991), 3859.

    85 Berth, Les Mfaits des Intellectuels, 3743.86 Berth, Mfaits des Intellectuels, 3743.87 is association of the Jew with the disembodied power of a pure intellect, devoid of

    creativity, is, to my knowledge, an understudied dimension of anti-Semitic discourse.

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    182 Mark Antliff

    Sorels Reactionary Anarism

    As I indicated at the outset, Sorels theory continues to be arac-

    tive to the radical le by virtue ofhis intransigent call for an abruptrupture with the political status quo, and his recourse to mobiliz-ing myths as a means of galvanizing activist cadres as the potentialspark of revolution. In the absence of the large scale proletarianbase which filled the ranks ofsuch twentieth-century, anarchist in-stitutions as the Confdration Gnrale du Travail (C.G.T.) or theIndustrial Workers of the World, todays marginalized radicals arein a position not unlike those beleaguered groups described in Re-

    flections on Violence, whose mobilizing myths served to sustain themthrough prolonged periods ofpersecution. Were Sorel to be writingtoday the mythic status of the Bale of Seale among insurrec-tional groups such as the Black Bloc (the concept ofa bloc is itselfSorelian) would fit seamlessly into this strategy for self-preservationin the midst of the capitalist juggernaut. However, as valuable asthese mobilizing myths may be in instilling a spirit of resistance and one has only to think of the continuing role ofMay Day infocusing our hearts and minds on the Hay Market martyrs theycannot become an end in themselves. is is particularly true inthe case of Sorel whose singular focus on moral regeneration as thedesired outcome of activism driven by myths led to what MalcolmVout and Lawrence Wilde identify as a necessary vagueness aboutthe effects of any action which holds out hope for moral renewal.88

    Such calls for moral resurgence could arise just as easily from the

    extreme right as the extreme le, and Sorels willingness to drawon a motivating myth shared by both camps in the guise of anti-capitalist anti-Semitism underscores the volatility of his ideologicalagenda.

    In like fashion the fetishistic correlation of parliamentary democ-racy with Enlightenment rationality in Sorels theory is matched bythe organization of revolutionary resistance around an irrational be-lief system whose motivating myths carry within them the seeds of

    reaction. Again, such is the case with Sorels myth of anti-capitalistanti-Semitism, wherein a call for anarchist resistance was premisedon the vilification of an ethnic group. A comparable pitfall befell

    For a study of the fin-de-sicle claim that Jews lacked creative ability by virtue oftheir pathological condition, see Gilman, Te Jews Body, 128149.

    88 Malcolm Vout and Lawrence Wilde, Socialism and Myth: e Case of Sorel andBergson, Radical Philosophy(Summer 1987), 27.

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    Bad Anarism 183

    Frantz Fanon in his transformation of Sorels myth of an absolutedivide between classes into a mythic schism between races throughwhich the revolutionary Black subject discovers his or her racializa-

    tion. Having theorized this ontological self-assertion in Bla Skin,White Masksas devoid ofcritical self-reflection or analysis, Fanon inTe Wreted of theEarth, translatedSorels myth of the general strikeand class conflict into the colonial context as a violent confrontationbetween natives activated by the myth of Ngritude and their colo-nial oppressors. Fanon described the natives desire to wreck thecolonial world as a mental picture of action which is very clear,very easy to understand; moreover such images are not formulatedthrough a rational confrontation of points of views but insteadconstitute an untidy affirmation of an original idea propounded asan absolute.89 As George Ciccariello-Maher points out in his cogentanalysis ofFanons debt to Sorel, such myth-making had unfortunateconsequences, for by the time Fanon wrote Te Wreted of the EarthNgritude had largely become a reactionary tool in the hands ofneo-colonial puppets in Africa.90 us the myth of Ngritude, likethat ofclass, could be marshaled to serve progressive or reactionaryends, and an anti-colonial movement founded on the myth of racialabsolutes could unwiingly generate the very racial prejudice thatits progressive adherents sought to overcome.

    Finally we need to take another look at Sorels concept of heroicviolence, which he defined in opposition to the punitive violenceof the State. ose who have endorsed Sorels concept of the gen-eral strike as the principle expression of proletarian violence have

    mostly interpreted Sorels theory as a form non-violent resistanceto the governments barbaric use of force. Even Bart de Ligt, whoacknowledges that Sorels doctrine is anything but a plea for non-violence nevertheless does not take up a discussion of that issue,preferring instead to celebrate Sorels distinction between Bour-geois violence and Proletarian violence, which de Ligt recasts asa contrast between bourgeois violence and proletarian strength,the beer to ally Sorels theory with direct non-violent action.91

    What figures like Benjamin, de Ligt and Laclau and Mouffe hold incommon is an unwillingness to probe the most troubling aspect of

    89 Frantz Fanon, Te Wreted of the Earth(1962), trans. C. Farrington (New York: GrovePress, 1963), 4041.

    90 Georges Ciccariello-Maher, To Lose Oneself in the Absolute: Revolutionary Subjec-tivity in Sorel and Fanon, 111.

    91 Bart de Ligt, Te Conquest of Violence, 11314.

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    184 Mark Antliff

    Sorels theory ofproletarian violence, namely his comparison of thesense ofmorality and justice motivating striking workers in their re-sistance to the State with that instilled in soldiers engaged in military

    bale.

    Janus-Faced Violence

    Sorels overarching vision before 1914 was premised on militaryvirtue, productivist ethics, and the maintenance of those valuesthrough active resistance to the plutocratic State. Sorels concept

    of military virtue was modelled aer the citizen-soldier of ancientAthens while his productivism combined an antique concept of thedignity of labour with a nineteenth-century definition of industri-ousness encompassing managerial, productive and inventive skills,especially in modern industry. Historian Richard Vernon has exam-ined the historical genealogy of Sorels theory, drawing aention toSorels contrast between military virtue and industriousness, and thedegenerative impact ofmercantilism and rationalism on the bodypolitic.92 Sorel followed such luminaries as Montesquieu, Hume, andde Tocqueville in noting the contradiction between the classicalideal of the self-repression and self-forgetfulness of the citizen anda social order in which the predominant motive is profit seeking. 93

    Whereas military values extolled heroism and self-sacrifice in thename of the community, commercialism promoted individual self-interest at the expense of the collective good. Sorels 1889 study of

    Athenian society, e Trial of Socratesexamined the class-based di-mension of this paradigm: the ancient Athenians, wrote Sorel, weremuch superior to our envious, ignorant and greedy bourgeoisie . . .e citizens were not merchants, demanding guarantees for theirtransactions and protection for their industry, or seeking favoursfrom government. ey were soldiers whose very life was linkedto the greatness of the city. 94 As Vernon demonstrates, Sorel iden-tified contemporary syndicalists as the inheritors of this military

    ethic, declaring that socialism returns to ancient thinking and that

    92 See the chapter titled Citizenship in Industry: Georges Sorel in Richard Vernon,Citizenship and Order: Studies in Fren Political ought (Toronto: University ofToronto Press, 1986), 14668.

    93 Vernon, Citizenship and Order, 148.94 Georges Sorel, Le Procs de Socrates(Paris: Alcan, 1889), 172; cited in Vernon, Citizen-

    ship and Order, 149.

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    Bad Anarism 185

    the warrior of the city had a modern counterpart in the workerof advanced industry.95 us the ethical violence of class war hadan historical precedent in the heroism of citizen-soldiers in ancient

    Greece: this accounts for Sorels comparison, in Te Reflections on Vi-olence, of striking proletarians to the Spartan heroes who defendedermopylae. 96 Sorels faith in this warrior esprit led him to praisethe citizen-soldiers of the Revolutionary era in France as modern-day Athenians: thus Sorel concluded that, with the early Republicsrecreation of citizen armies, a quite new notion of the Cit [Frenchcommunity] was born, with strong analogies to that ofantiquity, andpatriotism became a force of hitherto unsuspected importance. 97

    Yet another regenerative mechanism for the French proletariatwas proposed by Sorel: war between nations. In his Reflections onViolenceSorel speculated that two accidents were capable of com-bating the unproductive decadence and pacifist lethargy resultingfrom the democratic betrayal of Frances classical legacy:

    a great foreignwar, which might renew lost energies, and whichin any case would doubtless bring into power men with a willto govern; or a great extension of proletarian violence, whichwould make the revolutionary reality evident to the middleclass, and would disgust them with the humanitarian platitudeswith which [the socialist politician Jean] Jaurs lulls them tosleep. It is in view of these two dangers that the laer displaysall his resources as a popular orator. European peace must bemaintained at all costs; some limit must be put to proletarian

    violence.98

    For Sorel then, a war in the name of the appropriate values couldreinvigorate the nation; examples included the wars of Revolution

    95 Georges Sorel, La Ruine du monde antique1901 (Paris: Rivire, 1933), 311; cited inVernon , Citizenship and Order, 149.

    96 Sorel, Reflection on Violence, 9899.97 Georges Sorel, La Ruine du monde antique1901 (Paris: Rivire, 1933), 31718; cited in

    Vernon, Citizenship and Order, 150.98 Sorel, Reflection on Violence, 8283. Ironically when Sorel wrote this he appended a

    footnote to the effect that the hypothesis of a great European war seems far fetchedat the moment. When war did arrive in 1914 Sorel condemned it for causing thele to capitulate to Republican ideology. His association of the World War I withdemogogic plutocracy thus differed fundamentally from that ofGeorges Valois andSorelian fascists throughout Europe. See Stanley, Sociology of Virtue, 1981, 293297.

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    186 Mark Antliff

    and the Empire which, by virtue of their success, were also a stimu-lus to industrial production.99 One had only to turn to the Classicalera to findanhistorical precedent for this paradigm. In his Reflections

    on Violence, Sorel described ancient Greece as a society dominatedby the idea ofwar conceived heroically, asserting that classical insti-tutions had as their basis the organisation ofarmies ofcitizens, thatGreek art reached its apex in the citadels, and that philosophersbefore Socrates conceived of no other possible form of educationthan that which fostered in youth the heroic tradition. 100 us pro-letarian producers could find their regenerative raison dtre notonly in the general strike, but in the heroism ofmilitant nationalism.is thinking accounts for Sorels support of Italys 1911 militarycampaign in Libya in the pages ofIndpendance, which he praised forinstilling military virtues among the Italian populous. Accordingto Sorel, the Italian proletariat avidly followed the adventures of itssoldiers with passion, despite the harangues of the parliamentarysocialists who opposed the war as an Imperialist enterprise.101

    Such thinking also accounts for the appeal of Sorels theory toEuropean fascists in the wake of World War One, for figures likeMussolini and his French counterpart Georges Valois, interpretedthat conflict as yet another instance of a Sorelian regenerative war,and described their movement as an alliance of combatants and pro-ducers that would harness the virtue instilled in war veterans as aresult of the espritde corpsforged in bale. In post-war Europe thesereturning combatants would then rejoin the ranks ofa restive prole-tariat eager to overthrow the plutocratic State through strike activity

    and forms of violence Mussolini deemed generous and chivalric.us the non-violent resistance exemplified by the general strikewas one dimension of an ideological matrix that included armedaggression, for in Sorels mind both postures could potentially beanimated by the same spirit of heroism, dignity and justice. issynthesis, like that of anti-capitalist anti-Semitism, indicates thatSorels theory encompassed revolutionary and reactionary elements.us in announcing their allegiance to Sorel, Europes fascists could

    rightly claim that their notion of violence was a direct outcome of to paraphrase Laclau and Mouffe the very structure ofSorelsthought. Given such realities, anarchist activists and theorists would

    99 Sorel, Reflections on Violence, 94.100 Sorel, Reflections on Violence, 188.101 Georges Sorel, La rivolta ideale, LIndpendance(1 April, 1912), 161177; and Antliff,

    Avant-Garde Fascism, 7071.

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    Bad Anarism 187

    do well to ponder the example ofSorel not only as a potential modelfor progressive activism, but as an object lesson in how a doctrineof aestheticizing myth and ethical violence not subject to rational

    analysis (or critical reflection on the part of those who embrace suchnotions) can quickly devolve into a reactionary tool in the hands ofpolitical elites.

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