Syndicalism: Difference between revisions

Sorel’s other important contribution is his conception of producerist ethics, which he borrowed from Friedrich Nietzsche’s conception of master morality, and of social peace. In Sorel’s home country, France, he examined how the bourgeoisie had weakened itself and given economic and political concessions to the socialists of the country, but only in order to stabilize themselves. This had resulted in the rise of decadence within the bourgeoisie, and in the French left, as the bourgeoisie and proletariat intermingled in the democratic affair. His solution was that of producerist ethics (which he examined from the old bourgeoisie and their cold and ruthless nature in seeking profit) of unlimited proletarian violence, which would destroy social peace and accelerate the class war to its breaking point.

Sorel’s pessimism is an anti-reformist one, being based in his naming of socialist reformism as being political optimism. His main focus with this is in the dire state of the French socialist movement and how they have surrendered themselves to bourgeois forces. The bourgeoisie in order to pacify the proletariat has granted the socialist parties limited power in order to give them hope of achieving their goals peacefully, and with this locking the socialist movement in a cycle of political optimism that will lead only to the stabilization of capitalism. The only solution as stated before for Sorel is unrestrained revolutionary violence by the proletariat in order to destroy social peace and the institutions of it, and to accelerate the class war.