George Sorrell

Georges Eugène Sorel (French: Georges Eugène Sorel; November 2, 1847 - August 29, 1922), French philosopher and syndicalist theorist. His political thought is known as Sorelism. He was born into a middle-class family in 1847 and studied civil engineering. In 1892, he left his civil engineering position and concentrated on thinking and researching problems. In 1893, his thoughts turned to Marxism and he began to write analytical and critical articles. In 1897, he defended Dreyfus in the Dreyfus Affair. In 1902, he publicly criticized the then mainstream socialist and radical parties' assumptions of leading to socialism through democracy and constitutionalism, and enthusiastically supported revolutionary syndicalism. In Sorel's view, democratic institutions, with their universal suffrage and political dominance, will ultimately only strengthen the economic enslavement of the working class. After 1909, he gradually became disillusioned with syndicalism. After the October Revolution broke out in Russia in 1917, he announced his support for the Bolsheviks. He believed that the Bolsheviks could regenerate mankind morally. Sorel's philosophy combines the ideas of Bergson and Nietzsche, arguing that reason is subject to sensibility. This became the theoretical basis for the revolutionary socialism he founded. He believed that violent revolution by mobilizing irrational forces was the only way to achieve socialism. Sorel gave the general strike a mystical quality, believing that it had the thrilling power to mobilize workers to engage in "heroic violence" and thereby destroy capitalist society. Unlike some populists, Sorel saw socialism as governed by a small elite. Sorel believed that the general public did not have the ability to control themselves and therefore could only be ruled by the elite. His ideas had a great influence on Mussolini's later fascism.