SOURCE: An introduction to "The Illusions of Progress", by Georges Sorel, translated by John and Charlotte Stanley, University of California Press, 1969, pp. ix-xxxix.

[In the following excerpted foreward and introduction to Sorel's The Illusions of Progress, Nisbet and Stanley, respectively, examine Sorel's view of virtue as action, and attempt to put his work in perspective.]

TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION

I

Georges Sorel is known to English and American readers mainly through his Reflections on Violence which, aside from one small work,¹ is until now the only one of his dozen books to have been translated. It is not difficult to understand why this is so; the Reflections appeared at a time when there was intense interest in the treatment of socialism, and the work's militant stand against rationalism conformed to the temper of the times. Today, the idea of the creative role of violence in social movements is of great interest to students of contemporary events. Even the title of Sorel's work is a bit sensational.

As a consequence of this rather one-sided exposure, English-language readers regard Sorel primarily as an exponent of anarchosyndicalism and the now famous (or infamous) myth of the general strike. It is true that some of the narrow impressions have been corrected in the course of several recent American works² but, however competent, these treatments correct the misunderstandings or superficial impressions of Sorel only with the greatest difficulty. Even in France, many of Sorel's own lesser-known works are relatively unread, and a considerable amount of oversimplified thinking about him remains. Jean-Paul Sartre, for example, recently dismissed Sorel's writings as "fascist utterances,"³ a statement that, despite any particle of truth it may contain, is equivalent to condemning the Communist Manifesto as Bolshevik propaganda. Sorel's writings, however offensive they may be to us, must be studied on their own merits.

Interpreting Sorel is not an easy thing to do. He is a poor writer. His organization is bad; one idea is thrown on top of another helter-skelter, and Sorel thought it desirable to keep his writings difficult; the reader has to work in order to understand him. But the translators believe that the presentation in English of another of his important works is an excellent way to facilitate study of this important thinker. This particular work, published originally in 1908 as Les Illusions du progrès, was selected for a number of reasons. The idea of progress is of great interest to contemporary scholars and it is partly for this reason that the Illusions of Progress along with the Reflections is considered Sorel's most interesting and influential work.⁴ This is why it is the one work that should be read by students and scholars of the history of the idea of progress, as well as of Sorel's ideas.

The work, however, is more than academic. Because of almost two hundred years of expansion, continuous westward migration, and an almost exclusively liberal rationalist tradition of political thought, the idea of progress has a particular magic for Americans. Rare indeed is the politician who does not invoke the great "progress" we have made and even rarer the State of the Union address or convention keynote speech that does not invoke progress as one of the great purposes in American life. America in fact might be said to be one of the few industrialized nations in the Occident whose citizens are still ardent believers in the idea that the use of human reason produces human betterment or that every new discovery improves the lot of mankind: though the splitting of the atom may end the human race, it will still provide abundant sources of cheap electric power.⁵

Far from American shores, Sorel wrote The Illusions of Progress at a time in European history when there was not only a general disenchantment with the ideas that led Gustave Eiffel to build the tallest monument in Europe, but with the very concept of rationality itself. The new studies in psychology, plus a sense that fantastic opulence was devoid of any taste or refinement, produced an awareness of decadence and immorality. Reason and science had not emancipated man; they had enslaved and debased him. In Sorel's own case this awareness was confirmed by his observations of the very forces that he at first regarded as being the saviors of European civilization. The liberals and socialists had disillusioned him by their disgraceful behavior during the Dreyfus affair, and it was this disaffection that led to Sorel's opposition to the mainstream of French radicalism. To Sorel, the Dreyfusards were not really interested in socialist reconstruction. He observed⁶ that many of them had motives of personal ambition in supporting the beleaguered French officer. Sorel thought that the radicals, far from being interested in reforming the order of things, merely wanted a portion of that same order for themselves. They wanted power, not a more virtuous society; or at least they confused personal success with the success of the social revolution, when in fact their achievements consisted primarily in strengthening the existing order.

Consequently, Sorel spent a good portion of his intellectual career waging a two-front war against the agents of European capitalism and those of parliamentary socialism. Part of the difficulty, as Sorel saw it, was that both capitalism and reform socialism shared the same liberal rationalist assumptions that many of the European intellectuals began to question at the turn of the century. At the base of these assumptions, according to Sorel, lay the idea of progress.

It is particularly interesting that someone with Sorel's background should call the idea of progress into question. Born into a middle-class French family in 1847, Sorel was educated at France's prestigious Ecole Polytechnique and later he went to work as a government engineer. Engineering was not his first love, however, and he retired early in 1892. It was only after his retirement that he did most of his writing. To whatever degree his personal experience led him to a disenchantment with existing institutions, Sorel certainly did not allow a genuine respect for scientific progress to obscure his skepticism of an idea that went far beyond technical sophistication. Sorel knew that the idea of progress arose and flourished in a technological age, but he was aware that the idea spread far beyond the more efficient construction of highways or the multiplication of more efficient means of production. For he rightly thought that the idea of progress was a kind of guiding ideology or myth (in the pejorative sense) of the age—an ideology that had far-reaching political consequences.

II

In order to explain Sorel's view of the idea of progress, we should compare the idea of simple improvement or technological sophistication with the idea of progress in modern times. In order to do this it might be fruitful to leave Sorel and to discuss briefly three works that maintain that Sorel's understanding of the idea of progress—the modern understanding—actually was held in antiquity. Following this discussion, an analysis of what is meant by "ideology" will be attempted so that we can discuss how Sorel views the "ideology of progress."

The late Professor Ludwig Edelstein contended that the Greeks and Romans had an idea of progress which Edelstein defined with Arthur O. Lovejoy as "a tendency inherent in nature or in man to pass through a regular sequence of stages of development in past, present, and future, the later stages being—with perhaps occasional retardation—superior to the earlier."⁷

If this general definition of progress is what one might call "developmental improvement," it is easy to establish that some of the ancients did believe in progress. It is certainly not true, as one scholar has asserted, that the "ancients looked upon change with dread because it was identified with calamity."⁸ To take one note-worthy example, Aristotle regarded the development of the polis as change, and this change was regarded as natural and good; that is, that the polis was both better and in one sense more "natural" than earlier and more primitive forms of political organization. If this kind of thinking is what Mr. Edelstein regards as progress, then the Greeks most certainly believed in it.

But it is fair to say that the modern idea of progress is more than the natural tendency toward developmental improvement (which is the essence of the Lovejoy-Edelstein definition). For in Sorel's time, and even today, the idea of progress was both a law of historical development, a philosophy of history, and as a consequence also a political philosophy. It combined a descriptive analysis of history with a philosophical position that this development was right and good, and this position was used, as we shall see, for political purposes.

Now, the Lovejoy definition is vague enough to entail the possibility of the modern formulation being included in it. It is broad enough to include historical, philosophical, and political analysis. But Edelstein makes it quite clear at the beginning of the work that "the definition of progress with which the historian begins cannot be that of the philosopher."⁹ Thus any example of recognizing piece-meal improvement in any one field is taken by Edelstein to mean a concept of progress. To be sure, he implies that the criterion for improvement can be either piecemeal or total: "The criterion of improvement can be physical survival, the increase in material riches, or even novelty itself, moral advance, intellectual improvement, or greater happiness. Improvement can be looked for in all sectors of life or in a few alone."¹⁰ But it is quite clear from all of his examples that piecemeal progress was the only kind of improvement that the ancients regarded as possible; it virtually excluded the all-encompassing total view of improvement characteristic of the modern view of progress.

In order to understand the modern viewpoint more completely, it is profitable to examine briefly the view of another author who asserts that the ancients went beyond a piecemeal view of progress and approached the modern view. In The Open Society and Its Enemies, Professor Karl Popper says that Aristotle's teleological view constituted part of the roots of the Hegelian school of modern progressivism. By this Popper means that Aristotle's "progressivism" was based on the Stagirite's notion of ends or final causes. The cause of anything is also the end toward which the movement aims, and this aim is good. The essence of anything that develops is identical with the purpose or end toward which it develops.¹¹ Aristotle uses biological analogies: the teleology of the boy is manhood; if we switch and extend this biological analysis to the political arena, we can say that the end toward which the village develops is the most natural and the highest form of organization: the polis.

Popper says that the doctrine of ends or final causes leads to the "historicist" idea of a historical fate or inescapable destiny which can be used to justify all kinds of horrible institutions such as slavery¹² because they are inevitable. It is true that this "historicist" view that events are inevitable (and to a limited extent predictable) is essential to the modern view of progress. But it is doubtful that Aristotle's doctrine of final causes was as deterministic as Popper implies. Determinism is historical, and even Popper is constrained to admit that Aristotle was not interested in historical trends and made no direct contribution to historicism.¹³ Determinism aside, Aristotle did not see the growth of the city as being synonymous with either moral or technological growth. Technology had reached perfection in some areas and stood in need of further coordination in others.¹⁴ Furthermore, the growth of the political institutions of the city did not necessarily entail a corresponding improvement in morality. Thus Aristotle took care to draw the distinction between the "good man" on the one hand and the "good citizen" on the other; that is, that the good man and the good citizen were identical only in the best city.¹⁵ Theorists of progress, on the other hand, tend to regard moral, technical, and political development as an interrelated whole.

Indeed, the separation of morality from what we call "history" today is one of the distinguishing characteristics of ancient times, assuming that the ancients had a theory of history at all. It is left to Eric A. Havelock in his The Liberal Temper in Greek Politics¹⁶ to put forth the view that the Sophistic idea that virtue can be taught possessed the essential qualities of the modern identification of history and virtue. Havelock starts his thesis with the example of the myth of Prometheus, in which fire was stolen from the hearth of Zeus for the benefit of man.¹⁷ But there is no evidence that this theory is like the modern one. For one thing, as has been pointed out, Prometheus' myth reveals no infinite progress, which is more characteristic of modernity. Prometheus' punishment turns progress into a great illusion, a false hope which is ultimately destroyed. More important, the Sophistic viewpoint that virtue can be taught does not itself prove progress in the modern sense. Havelock maintains that Protagoreanism rationalizes an age of social progress.¹⁸ And it does this in rather the same way that Pericles extols Athens in the Funeral Oration.¹⁹ But again, little indeed can be said about progress in antiquity beyond a vague sense of technical improvement; it lacks a sense of history. As Leo Strauss persuasively argues, "Liberalism implies a philosophy of history. History' does not mean in this context a kind of inquiry or the outcome of an inquiry but rather the object of an inquiry or a 'dimension of reality.' Since the Greek word from which 'history' is derived does not have the latter meaning, philological discipline would prevent one from ascribing to any Greek thinker a philosophy of history at least before one has laid the proper foundation for such an ascription."²⁰ As he points out, there is no evidence from the Greek sources that the Sophists or any other school possessed what we would call a philosophy of history—a philosophy that is peculiar to the modern idea of progress. And the Platonic dialogues, it may be assumed, would have gone out of their way to record such views if they had occurred, since progress is so easily attacked and is so antithetical to the Platonic view of ultimate reality as unchanging.

Finally, even if it can be said that ancient historians themselves had a philosophy of history, that philosophy if it was at all progressive was so only in the larger context of a cyclical view of history such as is found in Polybrus. It remains to ask, however, just what the modern philosophy of history is. In order to do this let us say what it is not. We can do this if we return to Professor Edelstein's book to help us to enumerate the half dozen characteristics that clearly differentiate modern progress from the notions of improvement or "development" which occur in antiquity.

Instead of focusing on the Sophists, Edelstein turns his attention to Seneca, who is singled out as giving a clearer and more comprehensive view of progress than any other ancient thinker and one that, as a consequence, is closest to the view of progress held in the nineteenth century. In Seneca, the door to the future is opened. Mental acumen and study will bring forth new and presently unknown discoveries. Progress has not only led to the present but will be extended into the future. According to Edelstein, this will be so not only in the field of science but in all fields of human activity.²¹

Edelstein asserts that by linking all branches of human activity together, Seneca came closer to the modern theory of progress than anyone else.²² Now, it is true that for modern progressives, progress is not, as we have repeatedly said, a piecemeal process but takes place in all fields, intellectual, moral, political, technical; it extends to liberty of thought as well as to the development of virtue; to science as well as to the eradication of superstition and prejudice. In this way Seneca embodies the first two principles of modern progress.

1. Progress today is multifaceted; each field of human endeavor is looked upon as a member of a team of horses; each animal is held in harness with the others and all advance in the same direction, down the same road. To Edelstein, though not as much to Bury,²³ Seneca fulfilled this view.

2. Most of the thinkers of the past did not speculate on the future as much as comment on the development of the present, but Seneca looked to future development, which is definitely characteristic of the modern view.²⁴

There are four other qualities that neither Seneca nor other ancients mentioned in their idea on development.

3. Despite his forward-looking perspective, Seneca and most of the other ancients (including Lucretius and the atomists) were reconciled to the annihilation of the world.²⁵ Though annihilation was viewed by them as virtually certain, in modern progressive thinking annihilation is open to question. Optimism pervades modern progressivism, not only about the future but about all things human.

4. Not only are modern progressives open to doubt on annihilation, but as a consequence they are open to the idea of "indefinite perfectibility,"²⁶ an optimism that is shared by no known ancient.

5. Though Seneca views annihilation as an eventual certainty and holds that all the great accomplishments of man will be abolished, a new civilization will arise on the ashes of the old one. In this respect, insofar as he has any historical theory at all, Seneca's view is cyclical: civilizations rise and fall, and this viewpoint is almost universal in ancient thought. All advances in civilization are preludes to a subsequent decline or ultimate end. What little independent identity the idea of "history" had at all, it had in the form of a wheel that, in one or another respect, returned to the same place in the order of things. Modern progressivism is a different approach. The latter depicts history as a line—occasionally broken to be sure—destined to rise in an upward direction of indefinite perfectibility. This linear rather than cyclical concept of history is perhaps the most important single attribute of the contemporary view of progress.

6. In addition to all the above characteristics, modern progressivism has an aura of religious certainty about it. In ancient times history meant the possibility of chaos or tragedy, and this was accompanied by a feeling of resignation against the idea of Moira, roughly translated as "fate," which possessed a certain mysterious, unknown quality.²⁷ The modern view of progressive history, on the other hand, sees future progress as not only inevitable but, to a limited extent, predictable on the basis of rational calculation of existing data. It is this character of inevitability which contributes most strongly to the modern views of historical determinism and sees social science as a science of prediction.²⁸ Events had always been characterized by some form of necessity, but only modernity has made this necessity into a virtue.

The idea of progress had its origin in the seventeenth century and matured in the age of Enlightenment. Perhaps no better summaries of the idea of progress are found than in the concluding paragraphs of the Outline of the Historical View ofthe Progress of the Human Mind by the archetypal proponent of the modern idea of progress, the Marquis de Condorcet. In this work, Condorcet puts forth all six of the concepts that make it a new idea in the eighteenth century (though not originating with Condorcet) and an idea that characterizes the following age. (1) Progress occurs in all fields; (2) is projected into the future; (3) rejects inevitable annihilation and the pessimism that goes with it; (4) renders civilization indefinitely perfectible; (5) has a linear view of history; (6) regards the future as having certain inevitable patterns which are calculable.

Condorcet sloughs off the prospect of an apocalyptic end of the world as:

. . . impossible to pronounce on either side [and] which can only be realized in an epoch when the human species will necessarily have a degree of knowledge of which our shortsighted understanding can scarcely form an idea . . . By supposing it actually to take place there would result from it nothing alarming either to the happiness of the human race or of its indefinite perfectibility if we consider that prior to this period the progress of reason will have walked hand in hand with that of the sciences; that the absurd prejudices of superstition will have ceased to infuse into morality a harshness that corrupts and degrades instead of purifying and exalting it.²⁹

Now, this statement does more than describe what we would call "development." It means more than the sophistication of the arts and sciences. By joining a vast number of human activities together and asserting that moral improvement will result from this union, Condorcet depicts the attitude of nearly perfect optimism without which the modern theory of progress would not have arisen. Since progress now means improvement in all fields, the history of all human activity—of mankind itself—is the history of progress. At this point "history" and "progress" become virtually synonymous; so Condorcet opens the future to a definite improvement in all fields, and this improvement is associated with knowledge or "enlightenment." This ever-expanding enlightenment becomes part of the historical process itself; further, this enlightenment not only should take place but, because history is linear, it will take place. Progress is both a pattern of development perceived through historical observation and a law of human inevitability. It is this law of inevitable progress which produces the most extraordinary optimism. Here is Condorcet's concluding paragraph, written shortly before he was driven to suicide by the Terror:

How admirably calculated is this view of the human race, emancipated from chains, released alike from the dominion of chance, as well as from the enemies of progress, and advancing with firm and inevitable step in the paths of truth, to console the philosopher lamenting his errors, the flagrant acts of injustice, the crimes with which the earth is still polluted! It is the contemplation of this prospect that rewards him for all his effort to assist the progress of reason and the establishment of liberty. He dares to regard these efforts as part of the eternal chain of the destiny of mankind; and in this persuasion he finds true delight of virtue, the pleasure of having performed a durable service which no vicissitude will ever destroy. This sentiment is the asylum into which he retires, and to which the memory of his prosecutors cannot follow him: he unites himself in imagination with man restored to his rights, delivered from oppression, and proceeding with rapid strides in the paths of happiness; he forgets his own misfortunes while his thoughts are thus employed; he lives no longer to adversity, calumny, and malice, but becomes the associate of those wiser and more fortunate beings whose enviable condition he so earnestly contributed to produce.³⁰

It is this attribution of an independent character and dignity to history which converted it from a method of inquiry to an object that had such revolutionary consequences. Despite Sorel's contention that the Enlightenment ignored historical necessity, the idea of linear development and advancement in all fields gave "history" a power and coherence it had never attained before. By coming together in all fields progress meant the history of humanity; by becoming linear this advancement was made infinitely good. By becoming infinitely good it strengthened history itself and thereby enabled "history" to become a source of political legitimacy. As long as history was cyclical in nature it could not be used to legitimize a regime. Cycles meant not only improvement but a subsequent decline and fall. Therefore one could not use "history" to justify a regime if the history of that regime would result in ultimate disaster. That is why the ancients found it impossible to justify their best regimes as historical products. Plato's Republic as well as Aristotle's ideal state in The Politics are not historical products; they are in fact specifically anti-historical because history means imperfection and tragedy. The etymology of the word "Utopia" as a "city of nowhere" underscores the character of the Republic whose discussion of "history" ensues only before and after the Republic itself is discussed.³¹ It is "reason" or at least "reasonableness" which justifies the best regime, and this reason never becomes identified with "history." Condorcet and the philosophes, by identifying history with the progress of enlightenment, make reason itself into a historical product.

As a consequence of the idea of progress, then, it was no longer merely reason that served to justify regimes, but "history" itself. In order more fully to understand the concept of legitimacy, we should note that it is that quality or qualities which lend credibility to and secure obedience for a government or regime and its institutions. This concept depends of course on our criteria of legitimacy and morality. Utilitarians, for example, view a regime as "legitimate" if it strives for the maximum of social pleasures. Whatever the school of thought, however, theories of political legitimacy are usually accompanied by what one writer has called the quality of "beneficence";³² of producing certain benefits which other regimes do not do as well, whether it be order, security, pleasures, reason, or what not. But the quality of beneficence could not be attributed to "history" until "history" became an object as well as a method of study, and until this object became devoid of any concept of ultimate decline and fall—that is, of a cyclical nature. When this cyclical aspect of history was removed, and when modernity viewed history as a universally progressive phenomenon, "history" as such assumed the character of an independent object and became possessed of a quality of infinite beneficence for the first time. It was at this point that the idea of history came increasingly to dominate political discourse: if a government is an actual entity, it is viewed as a historical event and as such the "product" of historical development; if "history," is beneficient, then so is the regime. As a product of "history," it becomes the best possible regime, while the best regime (as opposed to the best possible regime) becomes the end of the historical process. But the difference between the best possible regime and the best regime (e.g. Plato's Cretan city of the Laws versus the Republic) is obscured, with the virtual disappearance of the latter. The best regime, in ancient times, assumed the qualities of definition. Plato admitted that the Republic might never be attained in the world of becoming (i.e., history), which is why the most brilliant of the theorists on progress, Karl Marx, could proclaim himself an anti-Utopian.³³ As long as a regime could distinguish between the good man and the good citizen, as long as history was viewed at most as a story, a story of disaster and tragedy, a certain plurality in human affairs was axiomatic. History meant chaos and this meant a complicated clash of motives and events. But when the idea of "history" became linear and was coupled with indefinite improvement, tragedy was replaced by a series of minor setbacks on the path to perfection. Heroes were replaced by "reason" or "world historical individuals"³⁴ who became great, not through great deeds but by their ability to grasp historical necessity. Fate, which had the character of great mystery, was replaced by "history," a history in which everything is either explained or explainable. Tragedy could be explained as a reasonable (necessary) part of the greater plan of historical fulfillment.³⁵

In the world in which tragedy becomes rational and in which everything can be explained, truth assumes a broad unitary character. By becoming historical it becomes part of a broad continuum which obscures the difference between what is and what ought to be, by making both part of the same line extending between past and future. If perfection is possible in this world, events can attain the same unity which had heretofore been characteristic only of Utopias that had in ancient times been explicitly ahistorical. Now, instead of Plato's unitary city, history itself provides man with a sense of oneness with other men and with events themselves.

III

The unitary advance which the linear notion of progress was to make so important in the century following the French Revolution was to extend far beyond society and morality and reach into the province of thought itself. If history was viewed as an extension of all fields of human activity, not the least of which was the "progress of the human mind" itself, the exalted place that "enlightenment" originally had in Condorcet's theory of progress was to give way to the notion that knowledge itself is just another factor in historical progress. For what is "thought" but another human activity that can be "explained" historically? At this point philosophy, which had always meant love of wisdom, began to be simply another pattern of human behavior. The use of prudence which was the way political philosophy confronted corporeal reality gave way to a science of historical prediction; and political philosophy, which had heretofore been a method of inquiry about why we should obey, was transformed into a study of the historical origins and background of ideas. This development is credited to Condorcet's near-contemporary Destutt de Tracy, who in his Eléments d'ldéologie (1801-1815) calls for a "science of ideas."

The importance of this development should be noted primarily for those who do not understand the fundamental character of the change of thinking which converted philosophy into what is called "ideology": the significance of explaining all thought in terms of its historical background had the effect of minimizing the importance of philosophy altogether; that is, of denuding it of any intrinsic value and replacing it with explanations of its place in "history." Thus the liberal idea of, say, limited government was not discussed on the basis of the merits of limiting sovereignty, but was viewed instead as a rationalization or justification of certain social interests—in this case of a dominant capitalist class preventing factory legislation, etc. This tendency is found most prominently in the thought of Karl Marx, who asserted even before he wrote the Communist Manifesto that ideas were the products of material relations.³⁶

It is easy to see, under these circumstances, that the idea of history itself becomes the only viable basis of political legitimacy. If, as in the writings of Marx, all ideas except one's own are placed on the same plane as social classes or conventions, they become as ephemeral as any social phenomena; they pass into nonexistence, just as so much social data changes with those historical preconditions that are proclaimed to have brought them into being.

Thus an idea is "true" only if it is close to actual "historical conditions." If it is not proximate to the historical conditions, it is "false consciousness." For this reason Marx was quite consistent in maintaining the truth of capitalism as compared to feudalism insofar as the former represented a more "advanced" stage of historical development; but that the idea of capitalism in a sense became "false consciousness" when confronted with socialism, while the latter would become false after giving way to communism. Under this approach to ideas, thought loses any permanent quality which distinguishes it from society itself.³⁷

But the notion of ideology, particularly that which is found in Marxism, is further complicated by the appreciation of competing ideas within the same historical periods. Thus capitalism is the ideology of the dominant class, whereas the proletariat whose ideology should be socialism manifests "false consciousness" if it accepts the capitalist argument. Even the temporary efficacy of ideas is weakened when the progress of history is not only used to explain ideas, but is turned against them. For if ideas are only excuses for interests and conscious rationalizations for exploitation, then the idea is not only made temporary but is thrust aside; the idea becomes a mask to be ripped off, if the true face of the proponents is to be discovered.³⁸ Ideas are changed from being temporary explanations to false consciousness and from false consciousness into unconscious falsehood.³⁹

The profound misunderstanding that has arisen with the contemporary use of the term "ideology" should be viewed in this context. An "ideology" is not simply a political idea such as "capitalism" or "Socialism," but is rather a justification or rationalization for a particular group in society. In this respect Marx could not have viewed an ideology as merely a political idea. Rather it is a product of history; as such, only the idea (socialism) which is closest to historical reality is legitimate, and since history progresses, each succeeding idea is more legitimate. Under these conditions, only the progress of history itself can become the ultimate legitimizing idea and the study of ideas becomes historical. But if ideas are studied historically, then the study of ideology is really not a study but a method. Here then ideology as such must be differentiated from the ideological method which is the actual process of unmasking or explaining the "real" or historical basis of political philosophy and all other thought.⁴⁰

IV

Since the imprimatur of historical progress is the one legitimizing concept that the proponents of the concept of ideology can accept (at least if they are consistent), it was only a matter of time before the idea of progress itself would be brought under the microscope of the ideological method. The rather interesting quality of Georges Sorel's The Illusions of Progress is that the ideological method, a consequence of the idea of progress, is itself used against the idea of progress and with it the whole idea of historical inevitability.

As Sorel pictures it, however, progress is an ideology which is not part of Marxism, but a bourgeois creation. His purpose in writing the book is to oppose the bourgeoisie by demolishing "this super-structure of conventional lies and to destroy the prestige still accorded to the 'metaphysics' of the men who vulgarize the vulgarization of the eighteenth century."⁴¹

Methodologically, the concept of ideology has many difficulties. Not the least of these is determining the exact relationship that ideas have to the material conditions out of which they (allegedly) arise. For example, do these conditions "cause" ideas to arise purely and simply; or do ideas arise independently and then become taken over and "used" by particular interests or institutions?⁴² Sorel seems to opt for the latter explanation. This is an important part of Sorel's thinking, for it allows him to attribute to ideas themselves a causative influence—an independence—which might raise eyebrows in more orthodox Marxian circles. Thus Sorel is able to say that the concept of progress could be traced back, not to material conditions but to a purely literary conflict between ancient and modern writers; or that the Voltairian spirit also disappeared as the result of a literary revolution and not on the day that the bourgeoisie somehow "decided" that its interests necessitated a return to the church. The latter explanation Sorel rejects as an "ideological and highly superficial explanation."⁴³

Furthermore, Sorel maintains that the creator of an idea is as free as an artist working with new materials, but that ideas, once formed, establish links with other current ideas and thereby become part of the predominant doctrine of a given period. This period will find in that doctrine certain meanings and interpretations that may be quite different from the initial intention of the author. Similarly, other classes in other periods may take yet another meaning from the idea. Primary importance is granted to what others see as only secondary; where some see only literature, others see philosophy. Thus, the same idea is upheld in radically varying ways according to the social position (class) of the people upholding it. This is as true for the doctrine of progress (which changes form as it is adopted by different periods: it becomes more deterministic in the nineteenth century) as it is for Marxism, which is looked upon by parliamentary socialists with far less seriousness than by the founders of the doctrine.

There is a definite importance to Sorel's attributing a certain independence to moral ideas. Sorel was a moralist; this is the single most outstanding trait of the man, and no explication of his ideas is possible until it is emphasized that the fundamental and underlying principle behind most of his writing was a genuine despair at the moral decadence of modern Europe. Moral rebirth is possible only under conditions that lie outside the idea of progress and the social institutions that foster the idea.

Thus it is imperative that Sorel not regard morality as simply the product of historical forces but rather grant it some autonomy. He maintains, therefore, that the lowering of the moral level of Europe was not due to the persecution of the Jansenists but that it was the other way around.⁴⁴

Sorel's use of the Marxian theory of ideology recalls to mind his notion of diremptions: "to examine certain parts of a condition or event without taking into account all of the ties which connect them to the whole, to determine in some manner the character of their activity by isolating them."⁴⁵ The difference between Sorel's use of ideology and Marx's is that Marx views ideas as necessarily part of a social whole, much as a physician regards parts of the body, while Sorel views ideology as a method without necessarily relating it either to the whole movement in human society—the totality out of which it arises. The difference between Sorel's diremptive method and Marx's theories is that for the latter the theory of ideology (as well as his other ideas) is viewed as part of a total system, a world view (Weltanschauung). Ideology must be viewed in the context of this total system. For Sorel, it was desirable to extract certain parts of the system and merely "use" them for the purposes of greater understanding of phenomena. It was therefore not necessary to accept the total system, and obviously Sorel does not accept all aspects of Marxism.

But Sorel still takes care to dissociate Marx from his more simplistic followers and to assert that Marxist ideological methods are devoid of simplified notions and vulgar determinism. In this way, Sorel avoids the pitfalls of ideology and the ideological method. By dissociating Marx from vulgar historicism, he can employ constructively one of the aspects of the total theory without having to accept the total theory itself.

Sorel sees Marx's followers as putting forth a far more unitary system than Marx himself,⁴⁶ though he says later that Marxism does indeed share many of the characteristics of the unitary progressive view of the world, which the bourgeoisie first put forth in the notion of progress. The idea of progress has fostered a false sense of social unity in society, and this unity has gone a long way in contributing to social decadence. Sorel's purpose is therefore to use the ideological method (unmasking) to break down an ideology (progress). Sorel rarely faces the fact that the ideological method sprang forth from the very ideology he is trying to destroy. He admits it only covertly by playing down Marx's progressivism. Anyway, by using the diremptive method, the concept of ideology can be separated from the idea of progress; the ideological method is independent (diremptive) from the total system that he is trying to destroy.

In fact the whole purpose in Sorel's writing on progress is to separate the idea from other ideas and to break the idea itself down into its component parts rather than to build up a unified structure or system. As T. E. Hulme wrote some years ago in the introduction to his translation of Reflections on Violence, Sorel saw modern democracy as inheriting most of the ideas of progress which were originally put forth in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. As Hulme notes, modern democracy, in seeing itself as the product of undifferentiated progress in society, fails to distinguish between democracy and progress. Similarly, Sorel's fight against the "radicals" of parliamentary socialism was that they were part of the same movement: they too saw no difference between democracy, socialism, and the workingclass movement.⁴⁷ The idea of progress, in welding all these notions into an interrelated totality, has sapped them of their vitality and moral efficacy. This totality regards itself as possessing moral force; it is actually devoid of morality. It produces only smugness and helps to obscure the truth that contemporary society is not part of the natural order of things.

Sorel's purpose in the Illusions of Progress, and in much of his other writings, is to show that moral superiority has long ago been separated from political progressivism (assuming they were ever joined) and has attached itself to the socialism of independent producers.⁴⁸ In order to keep this superiority intact, the new men of virtue must retain full independence from all the ideas and institutions which are associated with the idea of progress—an idea whose very purpose is to obscure these distinctions and the social conflict which would result from their being made. This is another reason why Sorel does not regard Marx, a theorist of class conflict and strife, as a progressive thinker.

Sorel tries to demonstrate that progress embraces the various institutions of bourgeois society, and it enables these institutions to encompass and thereby to dominate all of the various disparate elements of society into an apparent unity. Rather than representing the natural order of things, progress is in reality part of the ideology of the modern institutions of domination.

The first aspect of this domination has been the quality of continuity. Sorel accepts Tocqueville's version of the French Revolution as having, in reality, strengthened rather than weakened the institutions that grew up in the ancien régime. The ancien régime, bourgeois liberal democracy, and the modern "welfare state" of parliamentary socialism are all different manifestations of the growing power of the institutions of the modern state. Both liberal democracy and parliamentary socialism strengthen the state.

The continuity leads to the second aspect of domination: the elite of one era has survived and strengthened itself in another. Being the ideology of the "victors" of an epoch, the idea of progress serves to mask the interests of the dominant class which inherits power. Democracy itself masks its opposite for, as Sorel says, "nothing is more aristocratic than democracy." Thus parliamentary socialists are compared to officials whom Napoleon made into a nobility and who labored to strengthen the state bequeathed by the ancien régime.⁴⁹ Parliamentary socialism strengthens the state machinery and the economic powers of the state through an elite of intellectual and political professionals, civil servants, hangers on, etc.

In Sorel, the two concepts of elitism and the power of the state go hand in hand. As long as the workers accept the idea of unity in the progressive state, the latter is legitimized, and true moral rebirth is impossible because the domination of the old elite is preserved. Furthermore, the ruling oligarchy by flattery and progressive rhetoric encourages mediocrity in the masses and saps them of their virtue—the simple fighting vigor characteristic of the early Greeks and Romans.⁵⁰

Associated with the idea of continuity in the elite domination of the state is Sorel's third concept of domination; that is, that the idea of progress is essentially a conservative force in society. Instead of emphasizing its revolutionary implications, Sorel depicts the idea of progress as legitimizing each strengthening of the state. But since the state keeps the same characteristics throughout these changes, progress really legitimizes the status quo. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. Sorel's case might have been bolstered if he had further examined the lives of the proponents of progress. Often they are quite as conservatives as Turgot whose "boldness" is responsible for the rise of the third estate but who could remain a loyal servant of the French monarchy—that enlightened despotism which Tocqueville viewed as the real origin of the French Revolution—and who could approve of the hanging of a number of rioters. Condorect, Turgot's less able successor, could proclaim, "I am a Royalist" only shortly before his more evangelical wife urged him into becoming a moderate liberal (Girondin). The postrevolutionary progressives, St. Simon and Comte (and indirectly Hegel), were even more conservative, being sometime supporters of their respective contemporary regimes.⁵¹

But Sorel is aware that the idea of progress can produce not only conservatism but a certain political "quietism." Why act at all if progress makes change somehow "inevitable" anyway? Thus Sorel criticizes Marx for the excessiveness of his Hegelian biases, which produce a kind of passivity in the socialist movement itself. Marx's materialist revision of Hegelian dialectics constitutes the Marxian version of progress. Thus American socialists have greeted the success of trusts with enthusiasm because, according to these socialists, trusts represent the final stages of capitalism before its deliverance to socialism. This rationalist construction of history was, to Sorel, a falsehood. (It is interesting to note that a decade after Sorel's death the German Marxists could proclaim Nach Hitler uns!—after Hitler, us—in which German Marxists actually lent support to the Nazi movement in expectation that it too was a "stage of development.")⁵²

The kind of passive mentality produced by the idea of progress is one of the bases of Sorel's criticism of the radical movement. Progress is a total "law" of human development as well as an ideology; as such it is a rationalistic construction of the human mind which imposes a false sense of unity in society itself. The reason for this is that it is usually rationalistic and positivistic in its base of formulation, and both rationalism and positivism confine themselves to what is at hand. What is shown to the observer is what is true and what is true is what is shown. This circular unity of thought prevents action because the latter depends on breaking out of what is already given; on striking out in new directions. Action is possible only if a judgment is made that is adverse to the system. However, if all judgments are made on the level of historical analysis and all events legitimized as historically necessary, everything is permissible, including conservatism. Here, as one modern philosopher has said, all action and thought become "one-dimensional."⁵³ No distinction is made between what is and what ought to be.

Sorel's criticism of modern social scientists can be seen in this light. Rationalist progressives want to see logical development patterns in everything. As such, "development" is often seen as part of a total scheme of things. All of society is looked upon as being swept along in the progress of events. Modern social scientists, regarded by Sorel as handmaidens of the bourgeoisie, earn their living by placing very different things on the same plane from the love of logical simplicity; sexual morality, for example, is reduced to the equitable relations between contracting parties and the family code to the regulation of debts.⁵⁴ Thus, throughout his works, Sorel directs barbs at the esteemed professors of social science or the "learned sociologists," the "little science," etc.

But whereas the social scientists see primarily a progressive unity, Sorel says that reality is manifested more in chaotic struggle. Rather than viewing the entire world as representing some stage of what is today called "development,"⁵⁵ Sorel sees history as a sea of decline (décadence) punctuated by occasional moments of historical greatness. Only at exceptional periods of human history have manifestations of greatness (grandeur) occurred, and it is quite obvious that Sorel does not regard his contemporary Europe as manifesting any characteristic of "greatness." Greatness occurs only at those rare times when, through heroic acts of human will, men have "forced" history. Sorel's syndicalism, as well as his occasional flirtations with Leninism and fascism, must be regarded as an attempt to find some movement or individual which would personify the new elements of greatness. For example, Lenin is able like Marx himself to combine action with thought. But it should be noted that, unlike Lenin, Sorel from a distance attached great importance to the Soviet workers' councils, which possessed many of the same characteristics that Sorel saw in the French syndicates.⁵⁶ These institutions Sorel saw as alternatives to the harbinger of modern decadence, the modern state. They represented a total revolution or a sweeping aside of the state itself, and they represented the embodiment of a new vitality—Bergson's élan vital—a life force which sustained itself through incessant struggle.⁵⁷

The reason for this is that these institutions placed themselves outside of the old order. They have effectively destroyed the false principle of unity and replaced it with a principle of struggle. The same principle of struggle Sorel saw as embodied in the moral fiber of great regimes: of ancient pre-Socratic Greece, of the early Roman Republic, of early Christianity, and of the Napoleonic armies. These periods were not corrupted by the sophistry of false philosophy. Rather their virtue was brought forth by the necessity of action and it is through action itself more than any other activity that "man discovers his own best qualities: courage, patience, disregard of death, devotion to glory, and the good of his fellows, in one word: his virtue."⁵⁸

It follows, ironically enough, then, that Sorel juxtaposes the false unity of the modern progressives, which legitimizes the parasitic life of the ruling classes by obscuring all struggle, to the Homeric virtues of the early ancients whose unity was solidified by the action of constant struggle with enemy cities. The closest equivalent of the latter is the modern class war.

The ideology of progress and democracy, once free of Hegelian idealism, leads to the separation of thought from action. In order to reunite action with human thought, a radically different type of thinking is necessary. The unity of thought and action is brought about, not through a new rational ideology, but through myth. It is characteristic of myth—as opposed to other types of thinking—that it obscures distinctions; that is because it is similar to a tale told to children and is incapable of separation of fact from fantasy. In his revolutionary myth of the general strike, then, Sorel sees a modern version which has some of the heroic qualities of Homeric myths. But he emphasizes both the vagueness and the psychological nature of the myth which he defines as a group of images, which by intuition alone and before any considered analysis has been made, is "capable of evoking, as an undivided whole, the mass of sentiments which correspond to different manifestations of war taken by socialism against modern society." All logicality and rationality have been set aside and replaced by what we would likely call "impulses." "It is the myth in its entirety which is alone important."⁵⁹

To Sorel, myths cannot be interpreted as being similar to ideology. Ideology is essentially a pejorative term. Sorel views it as a defense mechanism which, once exposed, is destined to fall by being revealed as false consciousness when it becomes surpassed by historical events. But Sorel's myth is the answer to the problem of ideology. The myth is indestructible because by virtue of its own vagueness and its own nonrational composition it can change and refine itself in accordance with practical experience. Ideologies are most likely to be surpassed, precisely because their rational characteristics give them a fixed quality which myths do not possess. It is for this reason that Sorel shares Marx's hostility to Utopias and cites Marx in saying that he who draws a blueprint for the future is a reactionary.

But we may raise the interesting question here of whether Sorel, despite his departures from the Marxian notion of ideology, is not contributing further to the denigration of philosophy. Instead of speaking of a rebirth of philosophy and of reason apart from "history," he offers us myths which become further integrated into practical experience and which constitute not "true reason" but impulse. It is Sorel's view of mythology that stands at the core of the accusations leveled against him as a "fascist." As I have stated at the outset of this introduction, such accusations are fruitless: both fascism and Sorel must stand on their own merits, and little can be accomplished by associating one with the other.

The kind of regime actually envisioned by Sorel at the time in which he wrote the Illusions of Progress (1908) is a regime of producers bound together in their place of work. In the context of their place of work, Sorel respects the idea of a purely technical and economic progress. It is during periods of economic progress, not times of stagnation and decline, that transformations to the new order of things should occur. It is during these times that people best appreciate the artistic basis of technology on the factory floor. Then the productive arts would become infused with the same qualities of mystery and myth which political and religious movements possessed in earlier times. In this same vein, Sorel calls production "the most mysterious form of human activity."⁶⁰

Sorel has an extremely pragmatic view of the world. He insists that by accepting the idea of the general strike, although we know it is a myth, we are proceeding exactly as a physicist does who has complete confidence in his science, although the future will look upon it as antiquated. "It is we who really possess the scientific spirit, while our critics have lost touch with modern science."⁶¹

Sorel's equation of science and art—the "social poetry" of the general strike—is justified by the idea that both dislike reproducing accepted types and being dominated by the external standards artificially imposed by liberal rationalists. The progressives of liberal rationalism are not really progressives. Constant dynamic improvement in a workshop or in society is only possible if the models of production or of society imposed from above by bureaucratic or scientific "experts" in the social and managerial sciences are thrown aside in favor of the new mythology. "Constant improvement in quality and quantity will be thus assured in a workshop of this kind."⁶² It is interesting that a thinker who sets out to debunk the modern idea of progress should conclude the main sections of his two most important works with an affirmation of the material progress of production. It is this constant innovation in the field of production or in everyday experience, carried on within the regime of producers, that constitutes Sorel's version of progress. In this sense, Sorel's idea of true progress is almost as necessary to his perspective as the general idea of progress was necessary to the philosophes. In one way, Sorel represents the idea of progress run amuck. Much of his work—even after the syndicalist period of his writings—consists in the anguished protests of a progressive who has been betrayed and who places the blame on the men of his time rather than on "history," on the lack of sufficient will to control one's environment and not on "unfavorable social conditions." Sorel's desire to control this environment is certainly an idea he shares with modern liberalism. The trouble with the latter, according to Sorel, is that it has lost its will to do so. Sorel would give the social movement a revived moral basis by showing that the liberal idea of progress is really not identical with virtue; virtue belongs only to those who act.

NOTES

¹ I refer to Irving Louis Horowitz' translation of La Décomposition du Marxisme contained in the former's Radicalism and the Revolt Against Reason (New York: Humanities Press, 1961). Reflections on Violence was published in 1950 by the Free Press with an introduction by Edward Shils. It was translated from Réflexions sur la violence in 1920 by T. E. Hulme with three appendixes by J. Roth. Hulme's introduction is available in his Speculations (New York: Harvest Books, n.d.), pp. 249 ff.

² Most of the works on Sorel in English were written after 1950. The best of the lot, Horowitz, op. cit., was published in 1961. See also Richard Humphrey, Georges Sorel, Prophet Without Honor, A Study in Anti-Intellectualism (Cambridge: Harvard, 1951); James Meisel, The Genesis of Georges Sorel (Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1953); C. Michael Curtis, Three Against the Republic (Princeton University Press, 1959); H. Stuart Hughes, Consciousness and Society (New York: Vintage ed., 1961), chaps. 3, 5; Scott Harrison Lyttle, "Georges Sorel: Apostle of Fanaticism," in Modern France: Problems of the Third and Fourth Republics (Princeton, N.J., 1951), pp. 264-290. See also the introductory essays by Shils to the Reflections. Neal Wood, "Some Reflections on Sorel and Machiavelli," in Political Science Quarterly, LXXXIII, March 1968, pp. 76-91, is a correction of James Burnham, The Machiavellians, Defenders of Freedom (Chicago: Regnery ed., 1963; first published in 1943).

³ In his introduction to The Wretched of the Earth by Franz Fannon (New York, 1968), p. 14. More important is Sartre's admission that Fannon's writings owe a great deal to Sorel's notion of the creative role of violence. I find it hard to understand why Sartre finds Sorel more "fascist" than Fannon who emphasizes hatred and race more than Sorel does.

⁴ Sorel had a profound influence on Camus. See The Rebel (New York: Vintage ed., 1956), p. 194. Camus speaks only of the illusions of Progress. See also John Bowie, Politics and Opinion in the Nineteenth Century (New York: Oxford, 1967 ed.), p. 403, and H. Stuart Hughes, Consciousness and Society, p. 162. Among Sorel's other works are Contribution à l'étude profane de la Bible ( 1889); Le Procès de Socrate ( 1889); La Ruine du monde antique (1898); Introduction à l'économie moderne (1903); Le Système historique de Renan (1906); La Décomposition du Marxisme, Réflexions sur la Violence, and this work, Les Illusions du Progrès, all of which were published in 1908 at the height of Sorel's syndicalist period and are the only works translated into English; La Révolution dreyfusienne (1909); Matériaux d'une théorie du prolétariat (1919); De l'utilité du pragmatisme (1921); D'Aristote à Marx (1935).

⁵ For a good example of the modern American view of progress, see George Gallup, The Miracle Ahead (New York: Harper, 1965).

⁶ Sorel, La Révolution dreyfusienne (1909).

⁷ Edelstein, The Idea of Progress in Classical Antiquity (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1968), p. xi, cites the definition of Arthur O. Lovejoy and George Boas, Primitivism and Related Ideas in Antiquity, A Documentary History of Primitivism and Related Ideas (Baltimore, 1935), I, 6. For other works on the idea of progress, see J. B. Bury, The Idea of Progress (New York: Dover ed., 1955); Charles Frankel, The Faith of Reason: The Idea of Progress in the French Enlightenment (New York, 1948); John Baillie, The Belief in Progress: A Reevaluation (London, 1953); Frederick J. Teggart, Theory and Processes of History (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1962) and The Idea of Progress: A Collection of Readings (Berkeley, 1949); Ernest Lee Tuveson, Millennium and Utopia (New York: Harper, 1964); R. V. Sampson, Progress in the Age of Reason (London, 1956). Robert A. Nisbet, Social Change and History: Aspects of the Western Theory of Development (New York: Oxford University Press, 1969).

⁸ J. Salwyn Schapiro, Condorcet and the Rise of Liberalism (New York).

⁹ Edelstein, The Idea of Progress in Antiquity, pp. xxix-xxx.

¹⁰Ibid., p. xxix.

¹¹ Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies (New York: Harper paper ed., 1962), II, 5.

¹²Ibid., pp. 7-8.

¹³Ibid., p. 7.

¹⁴ Edelstein claims that the "perfection" envisaged by Aristotle is perfection in all fields (p. 127), but earlier on he says that Aristotle recognizes that some arts have reached a stage of excellence not to be surpassed, whereas the art of money-making is limitless since acquisition knows no limits. But Edelstein seems to ignore an important matter here. Aristotle distinguishes between sound and unsound forms of acquisition, i.e., acquisition based on selfish desire for gain and the sound type of acquisition which is concerned with economics the art of household management, which is limited by the natural needs of the household. The importance of this distinction with regard to modern progress will become apparent. Modern progress prefers limitless acquisition and indefinite improvement, whereas Aristotle prefers natural limits. Also, the very notion of the kind of natural end in Aristotle differs from the eschatological visions of Marxist progressives. (For the modern view of limitless acquisition, see Locke's Second Treatise an Civil, Government, 31, 37, 50; cf. Politics, 1258.)

¹⁵Politics, 1276b.

¹⁶ Yale University Press, New Haven, 1957, chap. 3.

¹⁷Ibid., pp. 52 f.

¹⁸Ibid., p. 176.

¹⁹Peloponnesian War, II, 43.

²⁰ Leo Strauss, "The Liberalism of Classical Political Philosophy," in The Review of Metaphysics, XII (1959), p. 400.

²¹ Edelstein, Progress in Antiquity, pp. 175-176.

²²Ibid., pp. 180, 175.

²³ J. B. Bury, The Idea of Progress (Dover ed., 1955), pp. 13-15. For Bury the value of natural science in Seneca was confined to a few chosen individuals and not mankind at large. The latter constitutes the modern view.

²⁴Ibid., p. 15. Cf. Edelstein, p. 170. Bury and Edelstein agree. (Seneca, Naturales Quaestiones, VII, 25, 4-5). Edelstein would have us believe that even Plato flirted with indefinite future progress. Thus he says (p. 108) that in the Laws Plato asserts that "not everything can have been debased at the end of the previous civilization." But Edelstein concentrates here on the various arts, whereas the central import of the passage cited is that morally speaking men were "manlier, simpler and by consequence more self-controlled and more righteous generally" before the deluge (Laws, 619b).

²⁵Naturales Quaestiones, III, 30, 1. Edelstein, p. 173. Bury, op. cit., p. 15, says that Seneca's belief in the "corruption of the race is uncompromising."

²⁶ The expression is Condorcet's in Outlines of an Historical View of the Progress of the Human Mind, 10th epoch. The anonymous translation is from the London edition of 1795, p. 346.

²⁷"Moira, it is true, was a moral power; but no one had to pretend that she was exclusively benevolent, or that she had any respect for the parochial interests of mankind. Further—and this is the most important point—she was not credited with foresight, purpose, design; these belong to man and to the humanized Gods. Moira is the blind, automatic force which leaves their subordinate purposes and wills free play within their own legitimate spheres ... " (F. M. Cornford, From Religion to Philosophy [New York: Harper ed., 1957] pp. 20-21). Moira is antithetical to progress because it leads to a sense of resignation about a fixed order in the universe (Bury, p. 19). See also William Chase Greene, Moira: Fate, Good and Evil in Greek Thought (New York: Harper ed. 1963). Recent scholarship has tried to show that the idea of progress dates back to the millenarian and chiliastic thinkers of the Middle Ages. Certainly Augustine and the church fathers, with their severely pessimistic view of earthly human nature, were not progressive thinkers. In placing the good city in heaven, St. Augustine and the church fathers stand in marked contrast to the millenarian sects who placed the good city on earth. Literature on modern revolution makes frequent reference to the apocalyptic battle between good and evil in chiliastic literature, the result being the establishment of the heavenly city on earth. (See Ernest Lee Tuveson, Millennium and Utopia [New York: Harper ed., 1964] and Norman Cohn, The Pursuit of the Millennium [New York: Harper ed., 1961]. The view according to these writers is that the medieval chiliasts, inheriting many of the concepts found in the Book of Revelation and in Jewish apocalyptic ideas, regarded the world as moving toward a final battle which would result in a New Jerusalem.) Yet even Tuveson admits that these sects fell into disfavor for a thousand years after the death of Constantine (p. 14), while Hanna Arendt notes that hysteria should not be confused with a theory of history, that no revolution is made in the name of Christian teachings until the modern age (On Revolution [New York: Viking, 1963] p. 19). Sorel notes the number of Jewish members of Marxist movements; he notes, however, that they are not members of these movements for ethnic reasons but because of their station in life as independent intellectuals. Those who view Marx as "the last of the Hebrew prophets" must contend with the secular and rationalist element which permeates the modern view of history and stands in marked contrast with religious revelation. (Cf. Edmund Wilson, To the Finland Station [New York: Anchor ed., 1940], chap. 5.)

²⁸ Democritus could explain prerecognition of the future through a radically materialist view of the universe, but this universe had no design (F. M. Cornford, Principium Sapientiae [Harper ed., 1965], p. 130). Democritus had little influence (Bury, p. 15).

²⁹ Condorcet, Progress of the Human Mind, 10th epoch, London ed., 1795, p. 346 (italics added). Charles Frankel, in defending Condorcet's view of progress, asserts that the notion of indefinite perfectibility merely implies that man can never assume that we have reached the limit of human hopes. "The principle of the indefinite perfectibility of man is simply the denial that there are any absolutes which the human mind can safely affirm. It is not a prediction about the future; it is a statement of a policy ... " (The Case for Modern Man [Boston: Beacon, 1959], p. 104). But Frankel ignores Condorcet's assertion that "the human species will necessarily have a clearer knowledge" and that this in turn will result in releasing man "from the dominion of chance." (See the final statement from Condorcet below and n. 30.)

³⁰Ibid., pp. 371-372 (italics added).

³¹ By "history" is meant here the affairs of men placed in a sequential order, not the modern view. Cf. Republic, 367e-374e in which the rise of the luxurious state is described; 543a-575. Despite Sorel's oft-repeated contention that the men of the Enlightenment were "ahistorical" and had no appreciation of necessity, it is probably true in this case that it took an ahistorical man to produce a historicist. If Condorcet was not historicist, the failure of the French Revolution was the event which sparked a reliance on historical determinism as a thing far greater than the wills of individual men but whose apparent thoughts worked to a higher unity and realization. It was this resolution of opposites which led Marx as well as Hegel to the camp of the progressives.

³² Bertrand de Jouvenel, On Power (Boston: Beacon), p. 25. The author separates beneficence from force and legitimacy as the common elements in stable power. But he says they cannot be isolated except analytically.

³³Communist Manifesto, III, 3: "The significance of Critical Utopian Socialism and Communism bears an inverse relation to historical development. In proportion as the modern class struggle develops and takes definite shape, this fantastic standing apart from the contest, these fantastic attacks on it, lose all practical value and all theoretical justification. Therefore, although the originators of these systems were, in many respects, revolutionary, their disciples have, in every case, formed mere reactionary sects. They hold fast by the original views of their masters, in opposition to the progressive historical development of the proletariat." For a defense of Utopianism, see Andrew Hacker, "In Defense of Utopia," in Ethics, 65 (Jan. 1955), pp. 135-138.

³⁴ The expression is Hegel's in The Philosophy of History, trans. J. Sibree (New York: Dover, 1956), p. 29.

³⁵ There are numerous critiques of what is known as historicism. See Karl Popper, The Poverty of Historicism (New York: Harper ed., 1964). For a natural law analysis, see Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History (Chicago, 1953), Chap. I. For an existentialist view, see Albert Camus, The Rebel, trans. Anthony Bower (New York: Vintage ed., 1957), Pt. III. See also Karl Jaspers, The Origin and Goal of History (New Haven: Yale, 1953); Sir Isaiah Berlin, Historical Inevitability (London and New York: Oxford University Press, 1954).

³⁶ See The German Ideology (New York: International Publishers, 1947). "The production of ideas, of conceptions, of consciousness, is at first directly interwoven with the material activity and the material intercourse of men .. . the direct efflux of their material behavior" (pp. 13-14; italics added). The importance of the word "direct" is not to be underestimated.

³⁷ "We set out from real, active men, and on the basis of their real life processes we demonstrate the development of ideological reflexes and echoes of this life process. The phantoms formed in the human brain are also, necessarily, sublimates of their material life process, which is empirically verifiable and bound to material premises. Morality, religion, metaphysics, all the rest of ideology and their corresponding forms of consciousness, thus no longer retain the semblance of independence. They have no history, no development..." (ibid., p. 14). By "no longer" Marx does not mean that they did once possess independence, but rather that in contradistinction to German idealist philosophy, ideas in his materialist view "no longer" retain independence. In short "Life is not determined by consciousness but consciousness by life" (p. 15).

³⁸ Hanna Arendt says that even during the French Revolution, the elevation of hypocrisy from a minor sin to a major crime had the effect of doing away with the classical distinction of one's persona or legal mask, a word originally developed from theatrical masks into the concept of a "legal personality" or a "right and duty bearing person." "Without his persona there would be an individual without rights and duties." See On Revolution (New York: Viking, 1965 ed.), pp. 102-103.

³⁹ George Lichtheim says that Marx's vision was that in a rational order, thought determines action. "Men will be free when they are able to produce their own circumstances. Historical materialism is valid only until it has brought about its dialectical negation. . . . " The "mature consciousness which comprehends the necessity of 'prehistory' will not be an ideological one" (The Concept of Ideology and Other Essays [New York: Vintage, 1967], p. 21). As a consequence Marx believed that there were some permanent truths which rise above changing social circumstances. "The concept of ideology illumines the historical circumstance that men are not in possession of the true consciousness which—if they had it—would enable them to understand the totality of the world and their own place in it" (ibid., p. 22). It is true that Marx regarded his own ideas as having some measure of transcendent truth; but Lichtheim admits that Marx refused to recognize the dilemma of asserting all thought as determined on the one hand and some ideas rising above being determined on the other. Lichtheim cites Engels' letter to Mehring of July 14, 1893, in which the former says, "Ideology is a process accomplished by the socalled thinker consciously, it is true, but with a false consciousness. The real motive forces impelling him remain unknown to him; else it simply would not be an ideological process" (Marx, Engels, Selected Correspondence [Moscow, 1953], p. 541; Lichtheim, p. 15). Thus Marx, according to Lichtheim, held that the difference between "objective" and "ideological" thinking is in the ability "to comprehend the particular determinations which condition each successive phase of human activity" (Lichtheim, p. 20). But the young Marx would not have gone along with this Engels formulation. (See nn. 36 and 37 above.) Lichtheim recognizes Marx's own ambiguity on the question of ideology, i.e., that he retained enough Hegelian idealism and Enlightenment rationalism to take ideas seriously. The consequence of the theory of ideology as being the end of all independent thought was a possibility never squarely faced by Marx; even Engels says that we will be subject to necessity even when we do understand its laws, and it is reasonable to include thought in this process of necessity. "Freedom does not consist in the dream of independence from natural laws, but in the knowledge of those laws, and in the possibility of making them work towards definite ends. This holds good in relation both to the laws of external nature and to those which govern the bodily and mental existence of men themselves—two classes of laws which we can separate from each other at most only in thought but not in reality. Freedom of the will therefore means nothing but the capacity to make decisions with knowledge of the subject. Therefore the freer a man's judgment is in relation to a definite question, the greater is the necessity with which the content of this judgment will be determined" (Anti-Düring: Herr Eugen Düring's Revolution in Science [Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1959], p. 157; italics are Engels'). This was written prior to Marx's death. (See the following note.)

⁴⁰ For the logical conclusion of Marx's historical materialist analysis of ideas, see Karl Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia. Mannheim faces the consequences of Marx's theory of ideas, which sees its culmination in what Mannheim calls the sociology of knowledge. Like Marx, Mannheim sees the perfected ideological method—the sociology of knowledge—as gradually transforming "the Utopian element" in man's thinking into thought which is more and more coterminous with historical reality and thus losing its function of opposition. "But the complete elimination of reality-transcending elements from our world would lead us to a 'matter of factness' which ultimately would lead to the decay of the human will.. . . The disappearance of utopia brings about a static state of affairs in which man himself becomes no more than a mere thing. We would be faced then with the greatest paradox imaginable, namely, that man, who has achieved the highest degree of rational mastery of existence, left without any ideals, becomes a mere creature of impulses. Thus, after a long, tortuous, but heroic, development, just at the highest stage of awareness, when history is ceasing to be blind fate, and is becoming more and more man's own creation, with the relinquishment of utopias, man would lose his will to shape history and therewith his ability to understand it" (Ideology and Utopia, An Introduction to the Sociology of Knowledge, trans. Louis Wirth and Edward Shils [New York: Harvest Books ed., n.d., originally published in 1936], p. 262).

⁴¹ See below, p. 152.

⁴² For an elaboration of the problems which the ideological method poses, and the ramifications which this has for a science of knowledge, see Robert Merton, Social Theory and Social Structure (Glencoe: Free Press, 1957 ed.), pp. 460 f.

⁴³ See below, p. 9.

⁴⁴ See below, p. 10.

⁴⁵Reflections on Violence (New York: Collier ed., 1961), p. 259. The editor of this volume, Edward Shils, thinks that Sorel may have coined the word "diremption" as no English equivalent can be found.

⁴⁶ Lichtheim agrees with this judgment but for different reasons than Sorel. He sees Marx as retaining enough Hegelian idealism that a certain dualism remains in his system between Marx's ideas—pure knowledge—and ideology. (See n. 39 above.) However, he also recognizes that this theory looks to the unity of mankind, an attribute of progressivism. (See The Concept of Ideology, p. 22.) But it was left to the positivists to bring the concept of unity to its logical conclusion. It was no longer an ideal but actually existed. Thus Marx was right in asserting that the Utopian successors of St. Simon such as Auguste Comte were reactionary. This was true, however, because of their positivism, as much as their utopianism.

⁴⁷ T. E. Hulme Speculations (Harvest Books ed., n.d.), pp. 249 ff.

⁴⁸ This is the basic theme of the Reflections on Violence.

⁴⁹Ibid., pp. 275-276; see also p. 94 where he discusses Tocqueville's view of the conservatism of the French Revolution.

⁵⁰ What is called "consensus" in American political science and politics is anticipated by Sorel in his discussion of parliamentary socialists who must have workingclass, middle-class, and upper-class constituents. Only in this way can they obtain influence (Reflections, p. 120). See also La Ruine du Monde Antique Conception matérialiste de l' histoire (Paris, 3d ed., 1933) for the classic concept of virtue as seen by Sorel.

⁵¹ For a lively and sympathetic portrait of the great progressive thinkers, see Frank E. Manuel, The Prophets of Paris (New York: Harper ed., 1965). See especially pp. 15, 45, 58, and 111 for the moderation and even conservatism of Turgot, Condorcet, and St. Simon. For Comte's emphasis on order, see pp. 274-286. For Hegel's practiced conservatism, see his attack on the "English Reform Bill" in Carl Frederich, ed., The Philosophy of Hegel (New York: Modern Library, p. 540).

⁵² For an excellent portrait of the actual conservatism not to say quietism of the German Social Democracy, see J. P. Netti, Rosa Luxemburg (London: Oxford University Press, 1966), Vol. II passim. (See also n. 40 above.) Rosa Luxemburg's quarrel with Kautsky, the great theorist of Marxism who proved conservative in actual practice, is detailed.

⁵³ The expression is Herbert Marcuse's, One Dimensional Man (Boston: Beacon, 1964). Marcuse's Hegelianism obscures his appreciation of the connection between progress and the one-dimensionality of existence, but he seems to suspect it. See especially, pp. 188-189.

⁵⁴Reflections, p. 147.

⁵⁵ The literature of modern political science, particularly in the fields of comparative government and sociology, seems to inherit many of the progressive conceptions. The "functional" theorists seem particularly interesting in this respect. See, for example, Gabrial A. Almond and G. Bingham Powell, Jr., Comparative Politics: A Developmental Approach (Boston: Little Brown, 1966). "The independent nation has become a nearly universal phenomenon. The past several decades have seen a national explosion on the continents of Asia and Africa. This has produced an extraordinary confusion of cultures, and mixtures of archaic and modern institutional forms. In some way this confusion must be brought to order, and the capacity to explain and predict must be reaffirmed" (pp. 214-215). The authors claim that they "will not repeat the naiveté of Enlightenment theorists regarding the evolutionary progression in political systems" (215). But the authors' concluding paragraph poses "the ultimate question of the Enlightenment. Can man employ reason to understand, shape, and develop his own institutions. .. . ? The modern political scientist can no longer afford to be the disillusioned child of the Enlightenment, but must become its sober trustee" (pp. 331-332). The authors agree that ethical judgments on the system are important although they ignore them. However Seymour Martin Lipset, Political Man (Garden City: Doubleday, 1959) reveals a great concern for democracy.

⁵⁶ See the appendix to the Reflections entitled "In Defense of Lenin."

⁵⁷ See Irving Louis Horowitz, Radicalism and the Revolt Against Reason, for an analysis of Bergson's influence on Sorel.

⁵⁸ Georges Sorel, "Essai sur la philosophie de Proudhon," in Revue Philosophique, XXXIII (1892), XXXIV (1892), cited in James H. Meisel, The Genesis of Georges Sorel (Ann Arbor, 1951), p. 96. See also Neal Wood, "Some Reflections on Sorel and Machiavelli," in Political Science Quarterly, LXXXIII, no. 1, March 1968, pp. 79-80.

⁵⁹Reflections, pp. 126-127.

⁶⁰Ibid., p. 148, and Illusions below, p. 156.

⁶¹Ibid., p. 150.

⁶²Ibid., p. 242, and Illusions below, p. 156.