This Philosopher Terrifies the Establishment | Georges Sorel

[00:00:00]Hello everyone. Today we're going to be talking about an underrated thinker uh partly because he does not fit cleanly into any of the main intellectual traditions or political sides that people think of. The that thinker is George Surell uh who wrote uh fantastic uh book on the myth of violence and its various uses and uh let us get on with his core ideas here. His first big idea is that myth is a central driving force inspiring people to act with conviction and sacrifice.

[00:00:41]If you want to make sense of history, argues Surell, uh, you need to understand the power of myth. You need to understand that people aren't motivated by abstract ideals or by reason or by coherent arguments. Uh they tend to be driven by these uh myths. They furnish movements with emotional power, unity of purpose and the will to struggle. It is the irreplaceable engine of political action.

[00:01:19]One of the examples that Surell gives of a powerful myth in reflections on violence, which is the aforementioned book I talked about, uh is the total revolutionary general strike as a literal operational plan and as a galvanizing image. So he had in mind of course uh the general strike um that led to you know the idea of a workers revolution and it's it's worth understanding that sell is a revolutionary thinker. Many of the people I've looked at have implicitly or otherwise uh supported the status quo or supported the maintenance of order. Uh Sell was an explicitly revolutionary thinker who wanted to break up the existing order and replace it with a new one. And uh he saw great potential in the general strike as a galvanizing image, a myth that sustains class solidarity that when he use fighting spirit that orientates the proletariat towards rupture rather than compromise.

[00:02:31]Now what's important to understand here is that the actual correctness of the cause of the strike is neither here nor there. The actual arguments used to justify this strike or that strike or you know whether it's over you know uh wage rates or you know whether wages are tacked to the price of coal you know all of this stuff doesn't really matter.

[00:02:58]What matters is the the image, the overall aesthetic and emotional effect of the worker seeing himself as part of a heroic struggle against power for the justice of his own cause. This is the myth of the general strike.

[00:03:25]And he's using it, I should mention, as an example of a modern myth that has some power to move people or did have at some point. Uh there was a big general strike I think in the 1920s in this country um and and in the 1930s as well.

[00:03:45]Anyway, the critique of rationalism and parliamentary socialism. So, Surell argued that uh gradualist parliamentary socialism of the minivic stripe, you know, the whites as opposed to the reds, uh was fundamentally flawed. It was out of touch. Uh you know, this is the politics of not only the Mencheviks but of the Fabians. the Fabian Society um and various other gradualists. Uh and of course this thinking would apply uh to the right as well as to uh the left.

[00:04:25]It is the difference between people who uh believe that you can get change in the direction you want through the mechanism of parliament uh versus those who fundamentally believe uh that that is a that is a pipe dream. He says that the real dynamics of power corrupted uh by compromise and incapable of genuine transformation. So uh yeah if basically if you take the step on the on the path of reform and by that I do I both don't and do mean reform UK. Okay. So reform uh namely being we're going to change the system by essentially becoming part of the system. Uh for Sorell this is going to lead to all of the things that the elite theorists then talk about the iron law of oligarchy and so on and so forth. Um he says that the intellectual the rationalist intellectual mistake abstract schemes for political reality.

[00:05:29]So intellectuals time and memorial have sat down and tried to plan tried to come up with you know schemas for what they stand for a set of bullet points or you know uh articles of uh dogma whatever uh their faith in incremental progress weakens the working class and fails to liberate it. So Sel had very little time for intellectuals. We'll come back to this in a moment.

[00:06:01]Parliament basically is a containment engine. It is expert in co-option in co-opting. Right? As I've said so many times, your anger, their agenda, your anger, their agenda on feasting upon popular discontent in order to neutralize the actual power of dissent.

[00:06:29]This is the nature of containment.

[00:06:32]It will start using the talking points of let's say revolutionary workers, leaders. Okay. But then it will transform their class struggle into a managed competition between elites.

[00:06:50]Now your union leader becomes yet just another politician.

[00:06:56]Now your workers party become just another group among the competing groups of parliamentary democracy.

[00:07:04]And so what you wanted is muted.

[00:07:09]the energy that you had built up is contained and actually feeds back into strengthening the system. Sell saw all of this and because he was revolutionary as opposed to reformist, he opposed it and uh actually uh encouraged uh re revolutionary parties and leaders to go in the opposite direction.

[00:07:31]He argued did sell that violence is both creative and regenerative.

[00:07:37]uh specifically proletarian violence that is violence from uh the organized workers. Surel he was not it would not be accurate to say that he was a Marxist. He had his own form of uh kind of syndicicalist socialism. It's called Celianism or Sorelism. You can look it up. Um and in order to justify uh why he thought the workers uh taking matters into their own hands and actually becoming violent was justified, he um basically makes a distinction between what he called bourgeois force which is always and everywhere repressive state violence that works in the service of maintaining privilege and proletarian violence which is direct offensive action by workers. The latter is a purifying and heroic force according to Surell because it breaks the moral decay of bourgeois society. It resists the corruption of reformism and it restores sacrifice and moral seriousness to the proletariat.

[00:08:52]So he actually thought that there was a an inner heroic like there's there's a myth if you want to violence just as there's the myth of the general strike there's a myth of violence and he isn't meaning myth in a negative sense he's talking about its heroic potential its inner potential to create genuine strikes against power now this idea has all sorts of later purchase in various different uh revolutionary thinkers. Off the on the top of my mind, the early work of the Marxist Antonio Negri in the 1970s somewhat went in this direction. It was given a popular depiction I would argue in the uh film Fight Club when uh in Fight Club they they take to acts of actual vandalism and violence against the uh faceless corporations and chain stores and uh so on and so forth. So uh and the idea is is that this cuts through all of the politeness. It cuts through any basically it cuts through all of the uh bourgeois defense layers.

[00:10:12]Okay. Now in today's parliament in the parliament of social media a lot of people would say well George uh George Surell you're basically fed posting on Maine they'd call it there fed post right sell was fed posting on Maine. And there is some truth to that. there is some truth to the fact that uh he he was basically advocating violence. Okay, obviously this channel does not advocates violence, but George Sell did.

[00:10:43]And so what sort of arguments would he make against those people who would caution against that, myself included?

[00:10:49]Well, you'd say, well, the trouble is is that ultimately uh all of you people warding against this are acting in the interest of the bourgeoa. You're basically reinforcing the bourgeoa norm.

[00:11:02]uh which works in the service of maintaining privilege.

[00:11:06]Uh basically you're acting as a bourgeoa yourself uh by uh arguing that the maintenance of law and order above all else is the most important thing. Uh actually we you know if you're truly a revolutionary you want to bust all that down and you know viewed neutrally in a value free way you could have a look at all of the political movements in history that did actually take Sorell's advice. Did they get more of what they want or did they get less of what they want? uh now I would argue that uh any honest assessment of that looking at the history of Britain for example would say that broadly speaking whenever the proletariat uh took to the streets uh they did actually succeed in making the system shift okay whether it was through the mechanism of the general strike or or through various other riots that we've seen through history that there is a certain efficacy now this should not be mistaken for a revolutionary victory and it should not be mistaken for uh saying that the peasant revolt wins over the organized minority of power. Okay, that is not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is when the workers do get violent in the manner that Surell is suggesting, it forces the system to shift. Now, individual people will end up on the wrong side of the law. individual people will end up going to jail and things like that. Okay, the repressive uh bourgeois apparatus will kick into gear. Okay, all of that stuff will happen. But also the the the fact of violence then if you remember your parto uh makes the fox style elite a little bit jittery and so it forces them to to kind of start making concessions and things like that. You can see other examples of this uh on the left uh in America the civil rights movement uh was not all peace and love. It was not simply pretty speeches by Martin Luther King. It was a vi it was violent. Lots of the gains of the civil rights movement in the 60s were gained by violence through violence. Uh in some cases literally putting streets on fire.

[00:13:35]Uh and we saw a repeat and echo of that in the so-called summer of love in 2020 when uh the Black Lives Matter movement BLM was incredibly violent and despite that violence still ended up uh remarkably getting their own way in all sorts of uh in all sorts you know businesses and the establishment basically bending over backwards as opposed to other groups that you might think of. uh that played by the rules and uh did not have the system bending over backwards for them. Now, there's all sorts of arguments that can be made about this. Um I tend to be skeptical uh you know about going this route and I've been on record saying that many many times. Um, partly because the powers that be are wise to this in a way that they may not have been in Surell's time. Uh, the difference between now and when Surell was writing is uh a robust secret security state and the intelligence services. That is the rise of the CIA and the FBI in America. the rise of MI5 and MI6 in this country uh which basically thrive on infiltrating dissident groups and then making them quote unquote fed post and making them say things that seem like they're advocating for violence and then that's how they they quash the movement or they use that as a pretext to strike down. So you could argue that uh the political technology around these things has advanced and I'd be interested to see uh you know if Sell could come back what he would have to come back on that. Uh I I would say that in the late 19th century there was a certain power and truth to what he was saying even in the early 20th century.

[00:15:45]But uh given those events, power, capital P power learned from them. It learned from them and uh made it massively massively more difficult to use these tools. Then you could say, well, okay, well, what about the example of BLM that you just mentioned? And my explanation for BLM was not actually um independent dissident groups organizing for themselves. I think BLM was a counterrevolutionary force tacitly statebacked um and uh you know what you could call a counter gang. Okay, you could call a counter gang. So yeah, I I actually, you know, in these videos I've been presenting the ideas, but this is one where I think circumstances, technology, and events have somewhat overtaken what Surell uh was saying. So even when the heat rises, okay, even when things look like they start getting kinetic, the modern state has tools at its disposal that the early 20th century and late 19th century states did not. Uh which makes things massively more difficult.

[00:17:06]uh because concessions that would have been gained through these sorts of means in the past no longer need to be granted because the technology puts the intelligence security state at such a such an advantage. Okay, speaking of rising heat, do you know what? It's summer and that means promo code scorcher. Uh when we come back, we'll get more in detail on sell. Pick up a course, ladies and gentlemen. Pick up a course.

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[00:18:16]So, while I was playing, I was thinking about what Sell might say to some of my objections.

[00:18:22]And one of the things that he might say if he could come back now, if the theoretical time traveling Sorell came to 2026, he'd say, "Well, the thing is guys, uh, you didn't listen to me, did you? You didn't. The revolution did not take place and now maybe it's too late. The bourgeoa won.

[00:18:42]Maybe maybe Surell would say that that the bourgeoa won out and now they've made it very difficult uh for the proletariats who now truly do have the boot on their necks.

[00:18:56]um your lack of taking heroic action when it mattered, your inability to see through the tricks of the bourgeoa, their containment games, their parliamentary co-opings, uh you know, playing by their rules.

[00:19:14]That's why you failed, Sel would say.

[00:19:17]Now it may well be too late. Now, I don't know if he would say that, but I I suspect that he would be thinking along these sorts of lines.

[00:19:27]So as I said there are two kinds of violence according to Surell. The bad kind of violence which is bourgeoa violence and the good kind of violence which is the proletariat violence.

[00:19:39]Sorell insists on this distinction being moral. It's not merely tactical. It's not like um you know sometimes it's a good idea and sometimes it's not. It is literally if you're doing violence in the name of the bourgeoa, you're on you're on team evil basically. And if you're on if you're doing proletarian violence in the name of revolutionary struggle, armed struggle, you're doing good.

[00:20:05]Animated by the myth of the general strike.

[00:20:09]Okay. uh proletarian violence functions as a form of moral education, a creative act capable of clearing the ground for a new civilization. And make no mistake, Surell truly did want to clear them out, replace them with a new order. He was uh and this is I mean why why he's difficult to place on left or right is because he takes elements of both leftist thought clearly his workers struggle his workers revolution uh but he also takes some ideas from the right as well uh in what might broadly be called syndicicalism syndicicalism.

[00:20:56]So yeah uh and uh also for this reason George Terrell has attracted fans from the left who like Negri and various other people who I've mentioned who take inspiration uh from his uncompromising and somewhat hardcore nature uh but also he's attracted fans from the right for the same reason again obviously on the more radical or revolutionary end argued that parliamentary democracy fundamentally is a fraud. Why? Because it masks real power. Democratic institutions conceal the underlying class antagonisms and present managed compromise as legitimate representation.

[00:21:45]Think about the process, right? You're that mine miner, for example, who's gone on the general strike. Okay, I've had enough of this. down with the bastards.

[00:21:57]Okay, we're doing all the work here.

[00:22:01]We're we're the ones being screwed. Down with all this. We want to take over.

[00:22:06]And then some politician stands up there and says uh maybe I'll do my best uh Tony Blair impression.

[00:22:17]Hello, we've heard you. I understand your concerns. We hear you. And uh well, this is what I have to say to the British worker.

[00:22:29]I have to say this.

[00:22:32]We understand that things have been difficult, but we will be a government that truly represents you. Here are the changes we're going to make to make Britain a a freer and a fairer country for everybody.

[00:22:47]You we truly will represent the British worker. Okay. Now, maybe Tony Blair was the wrong person to choose. Maybe I should have chosen Andy Burnham or somebody like that. But this is basically the mechanism that Surell is talking about because if you're a true blue revolutionary, okay, if you're a true revolutionary rather than somebody who is representing the interests of the bourgeoa, if you're a true blue revolutionary, you say what? You can't represent me. You're one of them. You're working for the system.

[00:23:25]You're working with your You're one of them. You'll just screw me over again. I don't want some compromise. I want to take your place.

[00:23:36]But let's pretend that you're not that true blue revolutionary, that you're just an easily tricked worker.

[00:23:44]So, oh, I kind of like the idea that this Tony, you know, this Tony, he's speaking a lot of speaks a lot of sense that Andy Burnham speaks a lot of sense.

[00:23:53]Tell you what, I'll get behind him. I'll vote for him and maybe I'll all my wishes will come true.

[00:24:00]Fell for it again. Huh?

[00:24:03]So this is basically what we're what Sel is getting at because the idea that that politician can legitimately represent you and your interests is a pipe dream. The bourgeoa are never going to represent the workers fairly according to Sell. They will always represent their own interest.

[00:24:26]They will always maintain their own power. They are not going to share it.

[00:24:31]It must be taken from them, says Sell.

[00:24:36]Next reason that parliamentary democracy is a fraud.

[00:24:42]It breeds corruption.

[00:24:44]Electoral competition incentivizes opportunism.

[00:24:49]Workingclass leaders are co-opted. Their energies redirected from struggle into parliamentary careerism.

[00:25:01]I was the first kinuk in a thousand generations to go to university to get an education that was denied.

[00:25:13]What happened to Neil Kinnock? Did he as a true blue representative of the British workers dedicate his life to overthrowing the bourgeoa?

[00:25:27]Or did Neil Kinnach become a riyal careerist whose son then became part of the ruling architecture? Steven Kinnuk.

[00:25:39]Steven Kinnuk then becomes almost like a kind of minor noble and minor bourgeoa aristocrat in this system who lives to service his own bourgeoa career.

[00:25:57]Okay, I know I don't know why I'm picking on the Kinnox. They were just the first ones to come to my mind. But this is what he's talking about in action.

[00:26:09]How can the son of a genuine proletariat worker like Neil Kinnock end up becoming the feckless middleclass bourgeois careerist establishment man shill for the status quo that he became.

[00:26:28]Sell would say it is because parliamentary democracy itself is a fraud. It is there to trick you out of your own interests in the service of their interests. And in his in his lens, it's the bourgeoa.

[00:26:44]It's their system.

[00:26:47]They're not going to they will parcel out bits of it to allow you to become one of them, but they are not going to hand over the keys or share it properly with the workers, says Sell. Okay.

[00:27:05]Now, if this sounds a bit much for a lot of people, it's because that's the difference between a a fire brand revolutionary and someone who, you know, uh would rather not see that kind of level of disruption.

[00:27:23]But if you're one of those people who would rather not see that level of disruption, Sell would argue you are in fact de facto a bourgeoa and serving bourgeoa interests. Now you might object. You say, "Well, hold on a second. Aa that's not quite fair. I'm a I'm a card carrying socialist and I've always voted Labor blah blah blah." You say, "No rubbish. Labor a bourgeoa party. You are a bourgeoa. You just won't admit it. You're not honest with yourself. you don't actually embody the ideals that you say you want to fight for. You have been co-opted, you have been tricked.

[00:28:02]And you know, I'm often reminded of the the punk, you know, the punk rocker, uh, the modern day I'm a I'm a punk.

[00:28:13]We're going to spend all my time evangelizing for DEI.

[00:28:19]um you know anti-racism and uh you know fighting Nazis let's say okay the exact ideology of the state the exact ideology of the bourgeoa state itself the exact politics of Tesco's and sainsburries and Goldman Sachs and every other major corporation that you can think Right. And the irony of this has not been lost on people. Rage for the machine. Rage for the machine. But those people tell themselves that they're being rebellious in some way. That they're being punk.

[00:29:03]So would say you're not you're nothing like you're you're a phony is what he'd say.

[00:29:11]And of course parliamentary democracy kills class struggle. The logic of parliament demands coalition and concession. It systematically dissolves the combative solidarity that Sell saw as the proletariat's defining virtue.

[00:29:31]Okay. The the working man finds strength in solidarity, organized action like the general strike and yes, violence. According to Surell, if you accept the demands of getting involved in parliamentary politics, all of those tools are taken away from you and therefore, you know, you're neuted.

[00:30:01]Interesting.

[00:30:06]Surell held that human beings are moved far more by myth, by instinct, and by emotion than by rational calculation.

[00:30:17]And this is going to be the theme of much of this week. All of the thinkers I'm looking at this week are are really interested in this idea that people aren't motivated by reason, they're motivated by emotion and instinct.

[00:30:30]Effective political action must speak to these deeper forces.

[00:30:36]It must speak to the heroic, to the sacrificial, and to the collective rather than appealing to self-interest or abstract principles.

[00:30:54]And this is really what uh Surell had in mind. I'll move myself out of the way here.

[00:31:00]uh which is so his his particular brand of socialism is syndicalism which puts power directly in the hands of the workers. Okay. Uh sell championed syndicicalism that is organization and direct action by workers own syndicates.

[00:31:21]He said this was superior both to reformist socialism that is you know something like the Labour party okay or the Fabian society and it was superior to state socialism of the kind that we saw in Soviet Russia.

[00:31:38]It keeps power with the workers. It avoids the corrupting influence of parties and it preserves the combative energy essential to genuine emancipation.

[00:31:52]It is decentralized. It is workerled and a organization.

[00:31:57]It strikes as a primary instrument of struggle. Okay. So that is using general strikes as a a struggle because uh you know if the workers are organized they can always strike. Uh and and of course the refusal of integration into state structures.

[00:32:18]Um and there you can see where these intersections are. Syndicalism is direct. It is workerled. It is competitive. It is morally vital. State socialism has the weakness of being centralized and bureaucratically party controlled. Well, if the party controlling it, the average worker could get screwed out of that situation as did happen many times. Uh, and of course in the reformist uh socialism, it's all the stuff about the parliamentary fraud that we talk about. It's fundamentally compromised. It's fundamentally top down. So, Sell's answer was syndicicalism.

[00:32:54]Now, can synindis syndicicalism actually work? Okay. Is there I would argue that there are some uh problems basic organizational problems with getting this idea up and running. Uh one of them is to do with hierarchy and decision making.

[00:33:17]uh the elite theorists would say well you know if we go back to Robert Michelle's who was writing after sell let's not forget but if we go back to Michelle's you would say well look this syndicicalism problem you're still going to need a leader you're still going to need an inner circle you're still going to need an organized minority within the syndicicalist collective uh and so then therefore power will acrew to those people you're not going to actually solve the problem uh simply by having these like syndic groups. So, it doesn't really solve the iron law of oligarchy in that way. Um, Sell might fire back and say, well, yeah, so what? Those leaders are going to be closer to actually representing the uh the workers, uh, you know, a part, let's say, you know, they're they're a factory. They're a collective who who own a factory together and there's an appointed board of that factory. those board members who are all workers themselves are going to be a lot closer to them than the uh either the commissar from the centrally leit bureau, right? Or from the uh you know the parliamentary party in Westminster or in Washington or wherever else um who who was basically be you know sold out to to the regime. So, you know, that's how SRA would it work? I I I don't know.

[00:34:46]I mean, there are there is such a thing as workers cooperatives. Uh some of which have been fairly successful. Uh the most famous one in this country is actually uh the co-op, which is a supermarket, which I believe is still workerowned and operated and led. Uh is it any different from any normal supermarket from the outside? No. Does it has it successfully withstood all of the uh managerial mantras of the time? No, not at all. I I would argue so. You know, if we take the co-op as an example, the co-op uh you know, the co-op is probably as woke as your favorite punk band, right? The co-op is probably espousing the same stuff as the labor politician.

[00:35:37]So it hasn't worked as a kind of bullwalk against the rest of society in the way that seli envvis vvisage whether that's a fair one maybe a curelian right may be able to put a more robust example than than the one I than the co-op sell argued against optimistic progress like many of the thinkers I've covered in this He rejected enlightenment narratives of inevitable improvement.

[00:36:11]He says bourgeois society was decadent and is decadent. It can only be renewed through struggle and heroism.

[00:36:22]European civilization can only be revitalized through a worker struggle.

[00:36:27]According to Surell, a worker struggle that captures heroic myths and heroic action.

[00:36:37]You can't embody that if you keep on compromising yourself by engaging in parliamentary politics. Sell would say he also attacks the intellectual as we've touched on. He said abstract theorists weaken the fighting spirit of the workers.

[00:36:54]Sell preferred the practical wisdom of those engaged in direct action over the armchair schemes of reformist socialists.

[00:37:06]And if all of this successfully took place, we would find a new moral order.

[00:37:13]His ultimate vision was a proletariat movement animated by powerful myths willing to use direct action. Okay.

[00:37:21]capable of forging a new ethic of heroism, of solidarity, and of productive labor, replacing bourgeois decadence with a more vital creative civilization.

[00:37:34]Myth galvanizes collective will, sustains combative identity. Violence purifies, educates, and clears the ground for renewal. and direct action enacts the struggle and builds the new moral community.

[00:37:53]Now, of all the uh thinkers that I've touched on in this series, I probably have the most issues uh directly with Surell. I got some disagreements with him. I've touched on some of those already. uh partly he couldn't have foreseen the rise of the security state of things like MI5 and MI6 or the CIA and the FBI and how um kind of uh advanced the techniques of surveillance uh of inf infiltration of different dissident groups and things like that uh would become uh in the late 20th century in the early 21st century. Um, so he couldn't have foreseen all of that. But I suspect that Sell, you know, if he if he if he didn't chastise the workers for not having embraced their destiny and overthrown the bourgeoa by now, he'd say, "Yeah, but the trouble with UAA is that you are one of those intellectuals that I'm talking about, aren't you?" Ultimately, UAA are an apologist for the bourgeoa order who preaches non-action, who preaches against violence, who preaches you basically want to sit on your hands.

[00:39:08]He he he would argue.

[00:39:11]Um my argument is well it's all well and good to say that direct action you know leads to the promised land uh as as he does but what about all those people who will not like what happens if your struggle just gets crushed which is the fate of most people taking this sort of action in history just gets crushed. And not only does it get crushed, the crushing of the descent then strengthens Leviathan. Where's my Robert Higs book, Leviathan and His Enemies, which I quote so often?

[00:39:57]Leviathan uses the crisis to strengthen itself.

[00:40:02]Okay? thereby putting the heroic action that Sorell is talking about out of reach for another generation or so because while they're in power they will use the myth they will actually use the a kind of counter myth a counter myth to to quell whatever that thing is crush that thing utterly and reinforce their own power. So yeah, this is where uh I guess there is some uh difference between myself and sell. It may make for an interesting stream. Uh if people have really like if people have interesting questions or counters to anything I've said here or in general, maybe I'll pick them up on a future stream because Surell is a figure of interest, but he's somebody who I have some issues with.

[00:40:56]All right. Uh pick up a course at the academic agency. It's promo code Scorcher and I'll see you all next time.