Georges Sorel - Reflections on Violence

THIS NEW edition of the Rflexions sur la violence is a reprint of the one which appeared in 1908; I have thought it necessary to add this chapter to it in order to show how mistaken people are who believe they raise an irrefutable argument against the doctrines based on the class struggle by saying that, according to the evidence of common sense, the conception of society is permeated throughout with the idea of unity.

That in many circumstances the unity of society must be taken into very serious consideration, especially those circumstances which are most related to acting on the every day constructions of the mind which we attribute to common sense, is something no reasonable person will dream of challenging. One may say, in effect, that social unity presses upon us from all sides, so to speak, in the ordinary course of life; because we feel, almost always, the operation of the effects of hierarchical authority which imposes uniform rules on citizens of the same country. It must not be forgotten, on the other hand, that if common sense is perfectly adapted to the requirements of ordinary relations, it almost always omits the most serious events in life, those in which the value of profound intentions makes itself evident; it must not, therefore, be regarded as certain that the idea of unity thrusts itself into every social philosophy.

Certain widely current language habits of today have contributed more than all the arguments to popularizing the prejudices in favor of unity. It has been found convenient very often to employ formulas in which human organizations are likened to the higher order of organisms; the sociologists took considerable advantage of these ways of speaking, which permitted them to give the impression that they possessed a very substantial science based on biology; since the naturalists made many resounding discoveries during the nineteenth century, sociology profited from the prestige which natural history acquired. Such socio-biological analogies present the idea of unity with singular insistence; one cannot, indeed, study the higher animals without being struck by the extreme state of dependence of the parts in relation to the whole living body. This connection is so much closer than many scholars believed for a long time, that it would be impossible to apply to physiology the methods which were so successful in physics; the natural unity, they thought, would be impaired by the mechanism of experimentation, so that one would only see a sick person like those destroyed by neoplasms.

It is not necessary to be a very profound philosopher to perceive that language deceives us constantly as to the true nature of the relationships which exist between things. Quite often before venturing upon a dogmatic criticism of a system, there would be a very real advantage in finding out the origin of the images which are frequently encountered in it. In the present case, it is evident that the socio-biological analogies indicate the reverse of reality. Just read, for example, the famous book of Edmond Perrier on the Colonies animales: This scholar manages to render rather intelligible the mysterious phenomena that he wishes to describe, by employing concepts borrowed from the so varied relationships that men form among themselves; he, therefore, follows a very good method, for he employs the relatively clearer areas of knowledge to make the organization of the extremely obscure areas intelligible;

After having utilized in order to obtain sound biological description, the abundant evidence that human groups provide us, does one have the right to transfer into social philosophy, as do the sociologists, formulas which had been constructed by means of observations made on men, but which, in the course of their adaptation to the requirements of natural history, evidently have not escaped undergoing some modifications? In order to be suitably applied to organisms, they have singularly distorted the notion of human activity by disregarding what everyone regards as being the most noble prerogatives of our nature.

When one compares the animal colonies, one may arrange them on a ladder of evolution culminating in that perfect unity of all the partial activities which is revealed in the normal psychology of man; one may say of those which are least controlled by a directing center, that they already possess potential unity; the different levels are distinguishable, one from the other, only by the greater or less concentration which they present; for there is, nowhere, any element irreducible to unification. On the other hand, it has often been said that our Western societies, thanks to their Christian culture, offer the spectacle of consciences which achieve a full moral life only on condition that they understand the infinity of their value; such societies are, therefore, irreconcilable with the unity which the animal colonies reveal to us. By resetting in sociology the social concepts that biology has devised for its own needs, one exposes oneself, therefore, to committing grave contradictions.