224. Pessimism

Pessimism

Continuing Reflections on Violence by Georges Sorel

p33 Pessimism... is a philosophy of conduct rather than a theory of the world; it considers the march towards deliverance as narrowly conditioned, on the one hand, by the experimental knowledge that we have acquired from obstacles which oppose themselves to the satisfaction of our imaginations (or, if we like, by the feeling of social determinism),  and, on the other, by a profound conviction of our natural weakness. These two aspects of pessimism should never be separated, although, as a rule, scarcely any attention is paid to their close connection. 
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2. The pessimist regards social conditions as forming a system bound together by an iron law which cannot be evaded, so that the system is given, as it were, in one block, and cannot disappear except in a catastrophe which involves the whole. If this theory is admitted, it then becomes absurd to make certain wicked men responsible for the evils from which society suffers; the pessimist is not subject to the sanguinary follies of the optimist, infatuated by the unexpected obstacles that his projects meet with; he does not dream of bringing about the happiness of future generations by slaughtering existing egoists.
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p35 In primitive Christianity we find a fully developed and completely armed pessimism: man is condemned to slavery from his birth -- Satan is the prince of the world -- the Christian... awaits the glorious second coming of Christ...

Sixteenth-century Calvinism presents a spectacle which is perhaps even more instructive; but we must be careful not to confuse it... with contemporary Protestantism; these two doctrines are the antipodes of each other... [how is contemporary Protestantism a single doctrine?] Pessimism, which formed no part of the current of ideas which characterized the Renaissance, [Footnote: "At this epoch commenced the struggle between the Pagan love of life and the Christian hatred of this world and avoidance of it" (Hartmann...)] has never been so strongly affirmed as it was by the Reformers. The dogmas of sin and predestination which correspond to the two first aspects of pessimism, the wretchedness of the human species, and social determinism, were pushed to their most extreme consequences. Deliverance was conceived  under a very different form to that which had been given it by primitive Christianity; Protestants organized themselves into a military force wherever possible; they made expeditions into Catholic countries, expelled the priests, introduced the reformed cult, and promulgated laws of proscription against papists. They no longer borrowed from the apocalypses the idea of a great final catastrophe, of which the brothers-in-arms who had for so long defended themselves against the attacks of Satan would only be spectators; the Protestants, nourished on the reading of the Old Testament, wished to imitate the exploits of the conquerors of the Holy Land; they took the offensive, and wished to establish the kingdom of God by force. In each locality they conquered the Calvinists brought about a real catastrophic revolution, which changed everything from top to bottom.

Where's Ivan K. when you need him? So, I'm in heaven with this topic, but where and when is he talking about? Aside from the Puritans in England, I thought most of the violence of this period started with the Catholics attempting to reassert orthodoxy. As in France. Perhaps the Swiss Protestant cantons? The Dutch? I'm going to have to hit Wiki. (Not obvious to me. Though I hadn't really been aware before that most of the European Colonists of Mid-Atlantic America and New England were Calvinist dissenters of one denomination or another including the Dutch, the Huguenots, and the Scotch-Irish Presbyterians of the Appalachians -- like Thomas Sutpen.)

But to just stick with the Puritans, I'm eager to see how these pessimistic paragons of the Reformation turn into the bedrock of the Bourgeoisie of his time.

Calvinism was finally conquered by the Renaissance; it was full of theological prejudices derived from medieval traditions, and there came a time when it feared to be thought too far behind the times; it wished to be on the level of modern culture, and it finished by becoming simply a lax Christianity. [Footnote: If socialism comes to grief it will evidently be in the same way, because it will have been alarmed at its own barbarity.] To-day very few people suspect what the reformers of the sixteenth-century meant by "free examination," the Protestants of to-day apply the same method to the Bible that philologists apply to any profane text; Calvin's exegesis has been replaced by the criticisms of the humanists.

Wendell Berry has made a point very similar to this about texts being considered as if they don't matter. I also don't know what he means by "free examination" and a quick Google search doesn't discover anything. Perhaps there's a problem with the translation?

There follows quite a bit about Pascal with a comment about how Calvinist he was.

p39 The people who believe in natural right are not always implacable enemies of civil struggles, and certainly not of tumultuous rioting; that has been sufficiently shown in the course of the Dreyfus question. When the force of the State was in the hands of their adversaries, they acknowledged, naturally enough, that it was being employed to violate justice, and they then proved that one might with a good conscience "step out of the region of legality in order to enter that of justice" (to borrow a phrase of the Bonapartists); when they could not overthrow the government, they tried at least to imitate it... all the revolutionary disturbances of the nineteenth century have ended in reinforcing the power of the State.

Proletarian violence entirely changes the aspect of all the conflicts in which it intervenes, since it disowns the force organized by the middle class, and claims to suppress the State which serves as its central nucleus. Under such conditions, it is no longer possible to argue about the primordial rights of man. That is why our parliamentary socialists, who spring from the middle classes and who know nothing outside the ideology of the State, are so bewildered when they are confronted with working-class violence. They cannot apply to it the commonplaces which generally serve them when they speak about force, and they look with terror on movements which may result in the ruin of the institutions by which they live. If revolutionary syndicalism triumphs, there will be no more brilliant speeches on immanent Justice, and the parliamentary regime, so dear to the intellectuals, will be finished with -- it is the abomination of desolation! We must not be astonished, then, that they speak about violence with so much anger. 
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Foucault must have loved Sorel. Though one wonders if Sorel would have changed his views had he lived to see the 1930s-60s.

Sorel has something to say about Joseph de Maistre which sent me to Wiki... shit, someone else I have to read. And Ernest Renan. And Henri Bergson.

p52 ...For a long time people have been struck by the fact that religious convictions are unaffected by criticism, and from this they have concluded that everything which claims to be beyond science must be a religion. It has been observed also that Christianity tends at the present day to be less a system of dogmas than a Christian life, i.e. a moral reform penetrating to the roots of one's being; consequently, a new analogy has been discovered between religion and the revolutionary Socialism which aims at the apprenticeship, preparation, and even reconstruction of the individual, -- a gigantic task. But Bergson has taught us that it is not only religion which occupies the profounder region of our mental life; revolutionary myths have their place there equally with religion...

Renan was very surprised to discover that Socialists are beyond discouragement. "After each abortive experiment they recommence their work: the solution is not yet found, but it will be. The idea that no solution exists never occurs to them, and in this lies their strength." ... by the side of the Utopias there have always been myths capable of urging on the workers to revolt. For a long time these myths were founded on the legends of the Revolution, and they preserved all their value as long as these legends remained unshaken. To-day the confidence of the Socialists is greater than ever since the myth of the general strike dominates all the truly working-class movement. No failure proves anything against Socialism since the latter has become a work of preparation (for revolution)...

p53 The works of my friends have been treated with great contempt by the Socialists who mix in politics, but at the same time with much sympathy by people who do not concern themselves with parliamentary affairs. We cannot be suspected of seeking to carry on a kind of intellectual industry, and we protest every time people profess to confuse us with the intellectuals, who do, as a matter of fact, make the exploitation of thought their profession. The old stagers of democracy cannot understand why people should take so much trouble unless they secretly aim at the leadership of the working classes. However, we could not act in any other way. [I'm puzzled by this, too.]

... we... have invented nothing at all, [in the way of Utopias] and even assert that nothing can be invented; we have limited ourselves to defining the historical bearing of the notion of a general strike. We have tried to show that a new culture might spring from the struggle of the revolutionary trades unions against the employers and the State; our greatest claim to originality consists in our having maintained that the proletariat can emancipate itself without being compelled to seek the guidance of the middle classes which concerns itself professionally with matters of the intellect. We have thus been led to regard as essential in contemporary phenomena what was before regarded as accessory, and what is indeed really educative for a revolutionary proletariat that is serving its apprenticeship in struggle. It would be impossible for us to exercise any direct influence on such a work of formation.

We may play a useful part if we limit ourselves to attacking middle-class thought in such a way as to put the proletariat on its guard against an invasion of ideas and customs from the hostile class... 

How is this not arrogant paternalism? And how are these ideas not from the "hostile class"? 

Where does this blind faith in the proletariat come from? Why are they assumed to me so morally different from the nobility and the middle classes? And how is this faith in the dictatorship of the proletariat not another Utopian ideal? It reminds me of the Noble Savage. And since Sorel wants to go back to Christianity and Calvinism, isn't he really asserting that the proletariat is somehow immune from the consequences of "The Fall of Man?" By that standard he is even denying them their humanity.

p54 ... I have said that art is an anticipation of the kind of work that ought to be carried on in a highly productive state of society... this observation has been very much misunderstood by some of my critics, who have been under the impression that I wished to propose as the socialist solution -- an aesthetic education of the proletariat under the tutelage of modern artists. This would have been a singular paradox on my part, for the art that we possess to-day is a residue left to us by an aristocratic society, a residue which has, moreover, been corrupted by the middle class... so little did I think of asking the École des Beau-Arts to provide a teaching suitable to the proletariat, that I based the morale of the producers not on an aesthetic education transmitted by the middle class, but on the feelings developed by the struggles of the workers against their masters.
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