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Reflections on Violence

Georges Sorel

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Famous Georges Sorel Quotes

“Mussolini is a man no less extraordinary than Lenin. He, too, is a political genius, of a greater reach than all the statesmen of the day, with the only exception of Lenin…”

Georges Sorel

As quoted in The Myth of the Nation and the Vision of Revolution: The Origins of Ideological Polarization in the 20th Century, Jacob L. Talmon, University of California Press (1981) p. 451. Sorel’s March 1921 conversations with Jean Variot, published in Variot’s Propos de Georges Sorel, (1935) Paris, pp. 53-57, 66-86 passim

“I have no reason to suppose that Lenin gained his ideas from my books; but if that were true, I should be not a little proud of having contribute to the intellectual development of a man who seems to me to be at once the greatest theoretician of socialism since Marx and a statesman whose genius recalls that of Peter the Great.”

Georges Sorel

“For Lenin,” Soviet Russia, Official Organ of The Russian Soviet Government Bureau, Vol. II, New York: NY, January-June 1920 (April 10, 1920), p. 356

“As the State formerly played a most important part in the revolutions that abolished the old economic systems, so it must again be the State that should abolish capitalism.”

Georges Sorel book Reflections on Violence

Source: Reflections on Violence (1908), p. 170

“We must not always attach too much importance to violent attacks on the bourgeoisie; they may be motivated by the desire to reform and to perfect capitalism.”

Georges Sorel book Reflections on Violence

Source: Reflections on Violence (1908), p. 125

“Proletarian violence, carried on as a pure and simple manifestation of the sentiment of class struggle, appears thus as a very fine and heroic thing; it is at the service of the immemorial interests of civilization; it is not perhaps the most appropriate method of obtaining immediate material advantages, but it may save the world from barbarism.”

Georges Sorel book Reflections on Violence

Source: Reflections on Violence (1908), p. 85

“Thus proletarian violence has become an essential factor in Marxism. Let us add once more that, if properly conducted, it will have the result of suppressing parliamentary socialism, which will no longer be able to pose as the leader of the working classes and as the guardian of order.”

Georges Sorel book Reflections on Violence

Source: Reflections on Violence (1908), p. 79

Georges Sorel Quotes about ideas and thoughts

“It is very difficult to understand proletarian violence as long as we try to think in terms of the ideas disseminated by bourgeois philosophy; according to this philosophy, violence is a relic of barbarism which is bound to disappear under the progress of enlightenment.”

Georges Sorel book Reflections on Violence

Source: Reflections on Violence (1908), p. 65

“Lenin may be proud of what his comrades are doing; the Russian workers are acquiring immortal glory in attempting the realization of what hitherto had been only an abstract idea…..”

Georges Sorel

“For Lenin,” Soviet Russia, Official Organ of The Russian Soviet Government Bureau, Vol. II, New York: NY, January-June 1920 (April 10, 1920), p. 356

“Everyone explains that discussions about Socialism are exceedingly obscure; this obscurity is due, to a large extent, to the fact that contemporary socialists use a terminology which no longer corresponds to their ideas.”

Georges Sorel book Reflections on Violence

Source: Reflections on Violence (1908), p. 47

Georges Sorel Quotes

“Mussolini is not an ordinary socialist. You will perhaps see him one day as a leader of a consecrated battalion, saluting the flags of Italy with his sword. He is an Italian of the fifteenth century, a condottiere. He is the only man with the strength to correct the weakness of the government.”

Georges Sorel

As quoted in The Genesis of Georges Sorel, James H. Meisel, Ann Arbor, Wahr (1951), p. 220, n.21

“Revolutionary syndicalism keeps alive the desire to strike in the masses and only prospers when important strikes, accompanied by violence, take place.”

Georges Sorel book Reflections on Violence

Source: Reflections on Violence (1908), p. 39

“We have the right to conclude from this that syndicalist violence, perpetrated in the course of strikes by proletarians who desire the overthrow of the State, must not be confused with the acts of savagery which the superstition of the State suggested to the revolutionaries of [17]93 when they had power in their hands and were able to oppress the conquered – following the principles which they had received from the Church and from the monarchy.”

Georges Sorel book Reflections on Violence

Source: Reflections on Violence (1908), p. 108

“And so I am not concerned to justify the perpetrators of violence but to enquire into the function of the violence of the working classes in contemporary socialism.”

Georges Sorel book Reflections on Violence

Source: Reflections on Violence (1908), p. 42

“Existing social conditions favour the production of an infinite number of acts of violence and there has been no hesitation in urging the workers not to refrain from brutality when this might do them service.”

Georges Sorel book Reflections on Violence

Source: Reflections on Violence (1908), p. 183

“[Myths] are not descriptions of things, but expressions of a determination to act… 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.”

Georges Sorel book Reflections on Violence

Source: Reflections on Violence (1908), p. 28-29 (Letter to Daniel Halevy)

“It seems that it was the Jews who had entered the has not been a happy one.”

Georges Sorel book Reflections on Violence

Source: Reflections on Violence (1908), p. 290

“Engels feared that the Socialists, in order to gain adherents in the electoral struggles rapidly, would make promises which were contrary to Marxist doctrine. The antisemites told the peasants and the small shopkeepers that they would protect them from the development of capitalism. Engels thought that an imitation of this procedure would be dangerous, since, in his opinion, the social revolution could only be realised when capitalism had almost completely destroyed the small proprietors and small industries; if the Socialists, then, endeavoured to hinder this evolution, they would ultimately compromise their own cause.”

Georges Sorel book Reflections on Violence

Reflections on Violence, London: UK, George Allen & Unwin, (reprinted in Saxony 1925) p. 180

“All the future of socialism resides in the autonomous development of workers’ syndicates.”

Georges Sorel

As quoted in Essays in Political Philosophy, Vidya Dhar Mahajan, Doaba House, Lahore, 1943 p. 41

“It seems that it was the Jews who had entered the revolutionary movement who are primarily responsible for the terroristic measures blamed upon the bolsheviks.”

Georges Sorel book Reflections on Violence

Source: Reflections on Violence (1908), p. 290
Context: This hypothesis appears to me to be all the more reasonable given that the intervention of the Jews in the Hungarian Soviet Republic has not been a happy one.