Reflections On Violence, Georges Sorel

• Irrational forces constitute the essence of human nature
• Sorel recognizes political potential of nonrational
• Like Nietzsche, Sorel was disillusioned with bourgeois society
• Considers it decadent, unheroic, and life-denying
• Places hope in Proletariat
• Courageous and Virile
• Sorel wants to destroy existing bourgeois-liberal-capitalist order
• accomplished through universal work stoppage, which would make governments give power to the workers
• General strike has appeal of great myth
• its image would stir all antibourgeois resentment of the workers
• insipire them to carry out thier revolutionary responsibility
• By believing in the myth of the general strike, workers would soar above the moral decadence of bourgeois society
• Myth serves a religious function
• unites the faithful into a collectivity with one will and induces heroic state of mind
• Sorel applaudes violence
• Accords with his conception that life is an unremitting battle and history is a perpetual conflict between decay and vitality
• Sorel's pseudoreligious exaltation of voilence and massaction
• Condemnation of liberal democracy and rationalism
• recognition of power and political utility of irrational and fabricated myths
• vision of heroic morality finds concrete expression in fascist movements after WWI