Georges Sorel and Two Types of Revolution

Georges Sorel had an interesting criticism of Marx's schema of social revolution. Here it is (1903 Preface to Edwin Seligman's Economic Interpretation of History [1903]; in French - apologies for my attempts at translation).

Marx had argued that as productive forces develop they press up against the integument of out-dated social and political relations, which is widely perceived as a constraint. At some point, the integument is burst asunder.

Marx, Sorel argues, based this model upon the French Revolution. (And on this revolution only; the model didn't apply to the transition from the Ancient World to feudalism, for example). It applied pretty well to France in the 1780s: clearly archaic tax and commercial codes constrained commercial relations; they simply "hindered and had no useful role in the production". Indeed (as I've noted) the French Revolution had initial support from many outside commerce, properly so-called, because all propertied classes at least could clearly see an advantage in clearing away the limits to growth.

Productive forces under capitalism, Sorel insisted, were not 'fettered' in the same way as they had been under 'feudal' social relations. There is no foreseeable end to the capacity for economic growth under capitalism. Rather, productive forces are subject to a boom-bust business cycle. They endure periodic collapse, followed at some point by renewed dynamism, but no indefinite stagnation for want of reform of social relations.

A proletarian revolution, moreover, would "exclude industrial leaders and deliver the productive forces to a [working] class without managerial experience". Revolution could not, at least in the short to medium term, emancipate productive forces.

The French Revolution in substance only required swift and fairly painless abolition of irksome remnants of 'feudalism' - famously swept away over one  night on 4 August 1789. The proletarian revolution requires a much more fundamental, protracted, and experimental transformation under the most un-propitious circumstances: "it is frightening to think of the huge quantitative difference between these two things Marx found so similar!"

One can imagine such thoughts would strike a chord with Syriza in Greece. A revolutionary crisis is not a good time to make a revolution. And who replaces the bourgeoisie?

The experience of communism seems to bear out much of Sorel's critique. Revolution in 1917 took place during conjunctural crisis - not just economic, to be sure - and the new regime was duly wracked by its unfolding. The Bolsheviks soon found that they relied upon ex-bourgeois and Tsarist experts to keep the economy running. In the long run, they trained up a new bureaucratic elite (killing much of the old) but there never clearly emerged a proletarian civil society able to rationalise the command economy. Whether a proletarian civil society can regulate a state and economy in a manner analogous to bourgeois civil society must be considered an open question.