As long as there are no myths accepted by the masses, one can go on talking of revolts indefinitely, without ever provoking any revolutionary movement; this is what gives such importance to the general strike and renders it odious to socialists who are afraid of a revolution; they do all they can to shake the confidence felt by the workers in the preparations they are making for the revolution; and in order to succeed in this they cast ridicule on the idea of the general strike – the only idea that could have any value as a motive force. One of the chief means employed by them is to represent it as a Utopia; this is easy enough, because there are very few myths which are perfectly free from any Utopian element.
The revolutionary myths which exist at the
present time are almost free from any such mixture; by means of them it is
possible to understand the activity, the feelings and the idea of the masses
preparing to enter on a decisive struggle; the myths are not descriptions of
things, but expressions of a determination to act. A Utopia is, on the contrary, an intellectual
product; it is the work of theorists who, observing and discussing the known
facts, seek to establish a model to which they can compare the known facts,
seek to establish a model to which they can compare existing society in order
to estimate the amount of good and evil it contains. It is a combination of imaginary institutions
having sufficient analogies to real institutions for the jurist to be able to
reason about them; it is a construction which can be taken to piece, and
certain parts of it have been shaped in such a way that they can (with a few
alterations by way of adjustment) be fitted into approaching legislation. Whilst contemporary myths lead men to prepare
themselves for a combat which will destroy the existing state of things, the
effect of Utopias has always been to direct men’s minds towards reforms which
can be brought about by patching the existing system; it is not surprising,
then, that so many makers of Utopias were able to develop into able statesmen
when they had acquired a greater experience of political life. A myth cannot be refuted, since it is, at
bottom, identical with the convictions of a group, being the expression of
these convictions in the language of movement; and it is, in consequence unanalyzable
into parts which could be placed on the plane of historical descriptions. …[1]
The myth must be judged as a means to acting on
the present; any attempt to discuss how far it can be taken literally as future
history is devoid of sense. It is the myth in its entirety which
is alone important; its parts are only of
interest in so far as they bring out the main idea. No useful purpose is
served, therefore, in arguing about the incidents which may occur in the course
of a social war, and about the decisive conflicts which may give victory to the
proletariat; even supposing the revolutionaries to have been wholly and
entirely deluded in setting up this imaginary picture of the general strike,
this picture may yet have been, in the course of the preparation for the
Revolution, a great element of strength, if it has embraced all the aspirations
of Socialism, and if it has given to the whole body of Revolutionary thought a
precision and a rigidity which no other method of thought could have given. …
… we know that the general strike is indeed
what I have said: the myth in which Socialism is wholly
comprised, i.e. a body of images capable of evoking instinctively all the
sentiments which correspond to the different manifestations of the war
undertaken by Socialism against modern society.
Strikes have engendered in the proletariat the noblest, deepest and most
moving sentiments that they possess; the general strike groups them all in a
co-ordinated picture, and, by bringing them together, gives to each one of them
its maximum intensity; appealing to their painful memories of particular
conflicts, it colours with an intense life all the details of the composition
presented to consciousness.[2]
Georges
Sorel, Reflections on Violence (1908)
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