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Tuesday, October 19, 2021

Georges Sorel on myth and violence: Trump’s source for 6 January

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)

 

 



[1] Georges Sorel, Reflections on Violence, tr. T.E. Hulme and J. Roth (New York: Collier Books/Macmillan, 1974), pp. 49,50.  See the Introduction: “Letter to Daniel Halévy”.

[2] Ibid., pp. 126,127.  See Chapter Four: “The Proletarian Strike”.

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