Georges Sorel

The way he describes conditions under what he called late capitalism, that's a very real thing.

You know, one of the reasons I like Werner Sombart and Sorel is because they took from Marx what's valuable, you know, in sociological and psychological terms, and discarded the rest.

You know, one of the reasons I say that to be truly educated in political theory, you need to read Marx.

It, it's not just for the obvious reason that, you know, like I, I said, to understand the 20th century, you've got to understand Marxist theory.

Because there was a very- active, you know, discourse on the subject matter of socialism that really characterized European social thought, I'd argue probably from around the time of Edmund Burke until, you know, really u-until Marx and Engels became active in disseminating their theories through mass dissemination of published material and not just within, you know, university cloisters and things like that.

But so people wanted to, you know, talk about that kind of stuff.

And Werner Sombart, I, I think Werner Sombart and Georges Sorel, if you're talking about, if you're talking about the, the new right as it existed in Europe, you know, the, the conservative revolutionaries and then the fascists and the National Socialists and myriad iterations, iterations of radical rightist thought from the turn of, uh, the 20th century onward, you know, Sore- Georges Sorel and Werner Sombart, their impact can't be overstated.

And Sombart generally, like I, I just said, I mean, I think Sorel is important and has an enduring significance, but that's somewhat esoteric and that's somewhat ideologically coded in favor of certain conceptual sympathies.

How many people at the time, influential people, people who became leaders were inspired by it.

Reflections on violence by Sorrel.

And then I found out that the Imperium Press version had a forward by you.

So I decided to have you on and let's discuss it.

Yeah, I appreciate the opportunity, man.

Definitely.

When did Sorrel come on your radar? Like, when did you read him first?

You know, it's interesting because a lot of people associate Sorrell, like, and some of these other thinkers with kind of the rise of, like, you know, a kind of right-wing subculture on the Internet.

Um, you know, that, uh, it was a, it was a form of both resistance to and reaction against modernity, but it also embraced like certain aspects of hyper modernity, you know, which seemed, um, which seemed incoherent to people who don't really understand what was underway.

But, um, there was a, uh, I think that one of the reasons I emphasize George Sorel so much is because thinkers like him are kind of the tie that binds what seems like opposing tendencies.

But, um, and most significant Nolde suggested national socialism was a synthesis of these two tendencies, you know, which themselves were a reaction against, you know, the tendency towards Bolshevism as the new kind of, um, as the new, uh, iteration of, of, um, you know, what had, what was first emerging with the Jacobin revolution.

You know, thus national socialism, it's both, it's both radical and reactionary.

And, so, those are the syndicalists.

And, as far as Georges Sorel, Sorel, who was an engineer, his really contribution was to come up with the idea of the general strike, the general strike.

And the general strike, he calls it a myth, a myth not in the sense that it doesn't exist, but a myth in the sense that it is an overwhelming given of the possible that can motivate people to take militant working class action.

And that one day everybody would simply put down their take off their work outfit and shut capitalism down by simply saying we're not going to work anymore, and the whole thing collapse.

And you have people like George, I'm not defending Marxism, by the way, but they were turning Marxism into something that was even further weaponized as a fascist imperialist tool.

And you have George Sorel, who was one of the first to like, he was basically a huge influence on fascist Italy.

And he was the one who revised Marxism such that socialism could be fit into a fascist construct.

That was like a very open intention of his.

And I think this appealed to a young Mussolini very much.

Mussolini, who at the time was a socialist when he was reading Sorrel, really was impressed by this and really was impressed that there was sort of a syndicalist thinker such as Sorrel that was embracing sort of Nietzschean concepts Of overcoming.

And not not, you know, emphasizing kind of, you know, the oppressed or that our sorrow should be a main staple of, you know, kind of leftist thinking or that, you know, the oppressed.

Well, Thomas has done two episodes.

We've done two episodes together on Sorrel, on Reflections on Violence.

I keep a copy of it on my desk with me.

Thomas said Sorrel is what Nietzsche should have been.

I actually agree because Sorrel was kind of proactive, unlike Nietzsche was sort of not pro.

You know, Hegel, uh...

Sorel borrowed a Hegelian point when he talked about the, the trial of Socrates and why Socrates deserved to be executed.

Hegel's notion was that what brought down Greece- Was, uh, the individual will and its need, its overweening need for recognition in the absence of, you know, a, uh, a state that could absorb that and sublimate it into a communitarian enterprise without neutralizing its dynamic characteristics.

You know, so you- we- the situation developed where the natural aristocracy was, you know, ceased to view their own, the, you know, the product of their own will and, and their desire for recognition with anything associated with, you know, the city state.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, Sombart, uh, I mean, George Sorel too.

I mean, I-