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1) Sorel, Georges. The Columbia Encyclopedia,
1847-1922, French social philosopher. An engineer before he devoted himself to writing, Sorel found in the political and social...2) syndicalism. The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. 2001
...The writings of Pierre Joseph Proudhon, with his attacks on property, and of Georges Sorel, who espoused violence, have influenced syndicalist doctrine. Syndicalism,...
Sorel had been a Marxist in the 1890s. He tried to fill in what he saw as gaps in Marxist theory but ended up doing a thoroughgoing revision (some would say rejection) of the ideology. He rejected Marxist theories of historical materialism and dialectical materialism and also rejected Marxism's internationalism. Sorel came to favour the anarcho-communism of Proudhon and Bakunin. He was heavily influenced by Henri Bergson who developed the importance of myth and demolished scientific materialism.
Sorel rejected those Marxists who believed in inevitable and evolutionary change preferring a more "direct action" approach including general strikes, boycotts, and sabotage and constant disruption of capitalism in order to achieve worker control of the means of production. Sorel's belief in the need for a deliberately-conceived "myth" to sway crowds into concerted action was put into practice by mass fascist movements in the 1920s.
He echoed the Jacobin tradition in French society that held that the only way for change to occur was through the application of force. Sorel praised Charles Maurras, Action Française and Lenin for attacking bourgeois democracy.
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