[In the following review of Reflections on Violence, economist and philosopher Orage credits Sorel with providing a necessary mythology to socialist philosophy, and declares Sorel a worthy disciple of Karl Marx.]

Sorel's Reflections on Violence is one of the few works upon Socialism that can be, and deserves to be, read by the non-professional student. Socialist authors for the most part are for Socialist readers exclusively. They are usually economic dissenting parsons addressing a conventicle of the already saved in language of a sectarian circumscription. Occasionally, however, one of them breaks loose from the sect and the language of the sect, and addresses the world in the language of the world. And Sorel is one of these. Regarding his thesis that a 'myth' is necessary to the creation of a revolutionary movement, and that in particular the 'myth' of the General Strike is indispensable to the modern proletarian movement, I am not convinced, nor is it necessary that any man should be. It is rather poetry than a political idea, and belongs to the same order of thought as the Republicanism of Plato. But there is no doubt in my mind that the idea is of value on that very account. What has been lacking in Socialism—with the exception of Marx's Capital, in which the tremendous historical tragedy of capitalism is recorded—is sublimity, the sense of the grand. Sorel's contribution of a 'myth' to the movement is therefore of the nature of art; it lifts the commonplace into the ideal world by deepening its significance. 'Socialists', he says, 'must be convinced that the work to which they are devoting themselves is a serious, formidable, and sublime work; it is only on this condition that they will be able to bear the innumerable sacrifices imposed on them by a propaganda that can procure them neither honours, profits, nor even immediate intellectual satisfaction.' Even if the only result of the idea of the General Strike is to make the Socialist conception more heroic, it should on that account alone be looked upon as having an incalculable value.

Over against this view of Socialism as something tremendous, sublime, heroic, and hence worthy of the unrewarded devotion of a lifetime, may be set the views of the merely political Socialists who look for results, both to their own advantage and to the advantage of the movement, here and now. Sorel is properly critical of the character of such men. Of the leaders, for example, he says that they have preserved the Marxist vocabulary while allowing themselves to become completely estranged from the thought of Marx. They talk of revolution when all the time they mean evolution. And seldom without some personal object either. 'The leaders who foster this sweet illusion (that of immediate reform by political action) see the situation from quite another point of view than that of their followers; the present social organization revolts them just in so far as it creates obstacles to their ambition; they are less shocked by the existence of the classes than by their own inability to attain to the positions already reached by older men; and when they have penetrated far enough into the sanctuaries of the State, into drawing-rooms and places of amusement, they cease, as a rule, to be revolutionary and speak learnedly of "evolution".' The violence of a proletarian movement, when it is spontaneous, is incalculable: there is no telling to what lengths it might go. But not only calculability is necessary, but control of the movement as well, if the leaders are to be able to dispose of it to their own advantage. For this reason, not only is violence denounced, but measures to nip it, even before it is in the bud, are taken by working class leaders who themselves aspire to belong to the middle classes. The organization of the proletariat in political Trade Unions under a centralized political control, and their diversion from economic to political methods, are plainly dictated by the nature of the problem; and these, as we know, are carried out so effectively that in England the Trade Union leaders, by the power they exercise, are the greatest obstacles to Socialism that exist. From this it may come about that the social revolution of which these leaders have a political vision may end in nothing better than the Servile State. It is hard, indeed, to foresee any other consequence from it. 'It is even possible', says Sorel, 'that, since the transmission of authority operates nowadays almost mechanically, thanks to the new resources at the disposal of the Parliamentary system, and since the proletariat would be thoroughly well organized under the official Trade Unions, we should see the social revolution culminate in a wonderful system of slavery.'

Sorel claims to be the true disciple of Marx, but much to the amusement, it appears, of present-day Marxists. The latter, however, are certainly wrong, for the relation between Marx and Sorel is that of the draughtsman of the plot of the Capitalist tragedy to the artist who concentrates upon the dénouement. Marx unfolded the series of Acts commencing with the birth of the wage-slave, and concluding with the death of the villain of the piece, namely, Capitalism, at the hands of its victim. Sorel, on the other hand, chose for his lesser drama the tragical moment of the climax in the General Strike. Both, however, had the same conception of the secular tragedy; but Marx supplied the whole framework, while Sorel worked out the conclusion only. Marx, it is certain, would no more have repudiated Sorel than Sorel has repudiated Marx. The difficulty with modern Marxists is, as Sorel has said, that they have lost their Master's grand conception of the real nature of the Capitalist tragedy. They employ his terms, but whittled down to the size of a paltry movement of a few years. It is as if Milton's epic of the Loss and Regaining of Paradise should become the textbook of earnest Plymouth brethren who might continue to employ Milton's phraseology, but with their mind upon their parish pump, or, as Ben Jonson said, hearing of Helen of Troy, but thinking all the time of Elinor Rumming. To such minds the very notion of the rise and fall of Capitalism, as representing a tragedy in the history of Mankind, is romantic and ridiculous. Nothing spiritual do they observe in it; nor do they climb to the vision of the Proletariat and the Capitalist as grandiose protagonists in a play lasting over many centuries. The impatient little creatures want something done at once: they want, in fact, a cinema for an evening rather than a tragedy for a thousand years.