from Georges Sorel, Reflections on Violence, 1908

Sorel was a French thinker, a man of the socialist left, but one who was inclined more to anarchism than to organized socialism or to the dictatorship of the proletariat (Communism, or Marxism-Leninism). Above all, he appealed to the radical left which yearned to overthrow the "system" violently.

...CHAPTER II

VIOLENCE AND THE DECADENCE OF THE MIDDLE CLASSES

I

It is very difficult to understand proletarian violence as long as we think in terms of the ideas disseminated by middle-class philosophers; according to their philosophy, violence is a relic of barbarism which is bound to disappear under the influence of the progress of enlightenment.

It is therefore quite natural that Jaurès [the leading French socialist politician up to World War I, a mainstream, "reformist" or parliamentarian socialist], who has been brought up on middle-class ideology, should have a profound contempt for people who favour proletarian violence; he is astonished to see educated Socialists

hand in hand with the Syndicalists*; he wonders by what miracle men who have proved themselves thinkers

of thought. This question worries the friends of Jaurès considerably, and they are only too ready to treat the

representatives of the new school as demagogues, and accuse them of seeking the applause of the impulsive

masses.

Parliamentary Socialists cannot understand the ends pursued by the new school; they imagine that ultimately

all Socialism can be reduced to the pursuit of the means of getting into power. Is it possible that they think the

followers of the new school wish to make a higher bid for the confidence of simple electors and cheat the Sociahsts of the seats provided for them? Again, the apologia of violence might have the very unfortunate result of dis-

*  Syndicalists were socialists who wanted to overthrow bourgeois society by means of a "general strike," in which all workers would put down their tools and violently force the system to its knees.

gusting the workers with electoral politics, and this would tend to destroy the chances of the Socialist candidates

by multiplying the abstentions from voting! "Do you wish to revive civil war?" they ask. To our great states-

men that seems mad.

Civil war has become very difficult since the discovery of the new firearms, and since the cutting of rectilinear

streets in the capital towns. The recent troubles in Russia* seem even to have shown that Governments can

count much more than was supposed on the energy of their officers. Nearly all French politicians had prophesied

the imminent fall of Czarism at the time of the Manchurian defeats**, but the Russian army in the presence of rioting did not manifest the weakness shown by the French army during our revolutions ; nearly everywhere repression

was rapid, efficacious, and even pitiless. The discussions which took place at the congress of social democrats at

Jena show that the Parliamentary Socialists no longer rely upon an armed struggle to obtain possession of the

State. ...

*  The Russian Revolution of 1905, eventually put down with great violence by the state.

**  The defeats fighting the Japanese in Manchuria, during the Russo-Japanese War, 1904-1905.