Syndicalist Marxism for Reactionary Times: Sorel’s Revolutionary Politics of Production

Abstract

This article explores Georges Sorel’s political and social thought during the period in which his passage to revolutionary syndicalism took place. In contrast to the established view on Sorel as a reactionary thinker, it presents him as a Marxist critic of reactionary tendencies in the politics of his time. Drawing on three of his works written during 1905–1909, it provides a synthesis of his political critique and presents his analysis of progressivism as a major illusion of modernity. In respect to Sorel’s social theory, the article reconstructs his conceptualization of production and proletarian subjectivity. It argues that the new forms of sociality emergent within the forces of production represent revolutionary attitudes of producing classes, which also find their expression in syndicalist politics.