In the Defence of Violence.
Mao Zedong Famously said that "political power grows out from the barrel of a gun", the implication of this statement is quite easy to decipher - Violence is the most powerful force in the world, and it is the sole decisive factor in politics and power struggle. His political philosophy was crude at best and his analyses of violence, a medieval one. Although violence is a much fascinating concept if studied closely and scientifically.
**A couple of things before we move forward, all the general arguments here are drawn from George Sorel's impeccable work "Reflection on Violence". I will try to explain these reflections in a cohesive manner but I can't promise anything, the Sorelian imagination of violence differs greatly to what we generally assumes. Also I only understood 10% of the text and I am proud of it.**
BACKDROP
The year was c.1892 AD, when the intellectual circle of France was thriving and the economic determinism of Marxian orthodoxy was dominating the Bourgeoisie Salons. Particularly two movements can be used to explain the backdrop of Sorel's reflection on violence, the French Syndicalism and the Dreyfusad movement. Syndicalism scorned the politics, the republic and patriotism, the trade syndicates ought to destroy the "Government of Assassins" and establish not state socialism but a society of producers, marking the end of capitalism.
The important thing is according to Marxian theory of modes of production, history has a purpose and surprisingly an end marked by the eradication of capitalism and establishment of Communism.
When we look at the syndicalist movement, we observe a very interesting thing , whenever these syndicalists organised a strike against the employer/industry, even for the most normal strike to proceed, it needed significant acts of violence, and here violence stands for everything that Gandhi opposed - Politically as well as Morally( This is the most simple definition of violence I can deduce at the moment, hence kindly correlate accordingly), The Sorelian imagination of violence did not inspire french syndicalism, as a matter of fact Sorel did not even agree to most of its ideals except their struggle against the state. But it led him to an important conclusion that " to discuss socialism seriously we must first investigate the nuances of violence in the present social conditions".
Dreyfusad affair rather provides a more interesting context, so I will take this with more details.
In the late 19th century when France was still recovering from the Franco-Prussian War (1870-71), it was full of nationalistic and militarist sentiments ( because that is the only thing Bismark had left them with ), all these sentiments eventually culminated into the rise of Anti-Semitic attitudes in Europe.
In c.1894 AD, French army officer captain Alfred Dreyfus, who was Jewish was unsurprisingly accused of treason- specifically, of passing military secrets to the German Embassy in Paris. The key evidence against Dreyfus was a handwritten memorandum ("The Bordereau") found in the wastepaper basket of the German military attache, despite this weak evidence captain Alfred was court martialed, convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment on the Devil's island.
Over the time it was found that the real traitor was someone else, but the cover up was even more spectacular, when the French military leadership found out about this, they suppressed the evidence to protect the reputation of French army. This political development divided the French masses into two distinct groups - The Dreyfusads and Anti- Dreyfusads, due to increasing political pressure, a retrial was conducted in c.1899 AD, Alfred Dreyfus was again found guilty but was pardoned by President as a compromise.
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| Trail of Alfred Dreyfus |
ON VIOLENCE
Sorel was a Dreyfusad and he was particularly disturbed by what the affair represented, a total control on public imagination by the state and even more disturbing was the fact that people was unaware of this manipulation.
For Sorel, violence wasn’t simply the blind physical force condemned by bourgeois morality; it was the creative act that purifies and reinvigorates the working class, breaking the rust of routine compromises and parliamentary stagnation. By engaging in spectacular acts of violence—in the form of strikes, sabotage, or direct action—the proletariat summons its own vitality, forging solidarity through shared risk and sacrifice. Unlike Marx’s historical-material account (in which violence is a by‑product of class antagonism), Sorel elevates violence itself to the motor of revolutionary renewal.
The “Myth” of the General Strike
Central to this vision is the “myth” of the general strike: not an actual timetable for action, but a symbolic ideal that galvanizes workers. Sorel insists that myths are not lies or illusions but living representations that give moral purpose and emotional intensity to a movement. The general strike myth fuses the scattered energy of individual unions into a collective will; even if the strike never happens exactly as envisioned, its mythic power shapes strategy, discipline, and hope.
Against Parliamentary Socialism
Sorel’s disdain for the parliamentary left—whom he saw as negotiating away the revolutionary spirit for ministerial glory—echoes his critique of the Dreyfusard republicans who conflated legalism with justice. Where the Dreyfusads trusted slow legal remedies, Sorel demands that workers trust their own capacity for autonomous action. Parliamentary tactics, to him, diffuse energy into endless debate; the myth of the strike concentrates it into a decisive moment of truth.
Yet Sorel’s embrace of heroic violence carries an implicit elitism. He portrays the advanced worker as almost aristocratic—above conventional morality, drawn to the beauty of self‑sacrifice. This aestheticization of violence risks sidelining mass democratic deliberation and opens the door to the very demagoguery he wished to oppose. Indeed, in the decades after Sorel, various right‑wing movements co‑opted his valorization of myth and violence, stripping out the socialist content.
Limits of the Myth
A myth can inspire—but it cannot replace concrete organization. General strikes can founder for lack of coordination; isolated acts of sabotage may provoke brutal repression without delivering political gains. Sorel himself lamented that, in practice, French syndicalists often failed to move beyond occasional outbursts, leaving the bourgeois state intact. Thus the myth must be tethered to effective structures—worker councils, federations, even temporary agreements with other social forces—if it is to shape real power.
Sorel challenges us to abandon moral condemnation in favor of a sociological lens—one that asks: What social conditions give violence its symbolic charge? How do narratives of past heroism influence present willingness to risk life and limb? He urges us to see violence not as aberration, but as a fundamental expression of collective agency.
SUM UP
Sorel’s reflections on violence pull us out of sterile moral debates and ask us to grapple with violence as a living social force—mythic in its mobilizing power, creative in its capacity to regenerate solidarity, yet perilous if untethered to democratic organization. By combining his aesthetic insights with rigorous empirical study—tracking when, how, and why groups turn to force—we can develop a more nuanced, scientific understanding of violence’s role in the modern struggle for power.
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