225. Class War

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Introduction

Reflections on Violence by Georges Sorel

Introduction to the First Publication -- Sorel
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p58 Socialism is a philosophy of the history of contemporary institutions, and Marx has always argued as a philosopher of history when he was not led away by personal polemics to write about matters outside the proper scope of his own system...
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Each time an outrage occurs, the doctors of the ethico-social sciences, who swarm in journalism, indulge in reflections on the question, Can the criminal act be excused, or sometimes even justified, from the point of view of the highest justice. Then there is an irruption into the democratic press of that casuistry for which the Jesuits have so many times been reproached.
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p59 It is not the business of the historian to award prizes for virtue, to propose the erection of statues, or to establish any catechism whatever; his business is to understand what is least individual in the course of events... And so I am not at all concerned to justify the perpetrators of violence, but to inquire into the function of violence of the working classes in contemporary Socialism. 

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Chapter 1 - Class War and Violence
p65 A. To most people the class war is the principle of Socialist tactics. That means that the Socialist party founds its electoral successes on the clashing of interests which exist in an acute state between certain groups, and that, if need be, it would undertake to make this hostility still more acute; their candidates ask the poorest and most numerous class to look upon themselves as forming a corporation, and they offer to become the advocates of this corporation; they promise to use their influence as representatives to improve the lot of the disinherited. Thus we are not very far from what happened in the Greek states; Parlimentary Socialists are very much akin to the demagogues who clamoured constantly for the abolition of debts, and the division of landed property, who put all the public charges upon the rich, and invented plots in order to get large fortunes confiscated. "In the democracies in which the crowd is above the law," says Aristotle, "the demagogues, by their continual attacks upon the rich, always divide the city into two camps . . . the oligarchs should abandon all swearing of oaths like those they swear to-day; for there are cities in which they have taken this oath -- I will be the constant enemy of the people, and I will do them all the evil that lies in my power." Here certainly is a war between two classes as clearly defined as it can be; but it seems to me absurd to assert that it was in this way that Marx understood the class war, which, according to him, was the essence of Socialism.

I wonder that he references the Greeks and not the Roman Tribunes. But I'm not that familiar with Parliamentary Socialism at this time. And I wonder what Sorel (and Aristotle and Marx) would think of Trump's popular core constituency? The (economically) disenfranchised supporting a party furthering the interests of the wealthiest class. It is a sort of "class war," or at least a spite war, against the middle classes, which would make some kind of sense to Marx and Sorel except that the wealthiest class is itself the highest rung of the middle classes.

I believe that the authors of the French law of August 11, 1848, had their heads full of these classical reminiscences when they decreed punishment against all those who, by speeches and newspaper articles, sought "to trouble the public peace by stirring up hatred and contempt amongst the citizens." The terrible insurrection of the month of June was just over, and it was firmly believed that the victory of the Parisian workmen would have brought on, if not an attempt to put communism into practice, at least a series of formidable requisitions on the rich in favor of the poor; it was hoped that an end would be put to civil wars by increasing the difficulty of propogating [sic] doctrines of hatred, which might raise the proletariat against the middle class.

Nowadays Parliamentary Socialists no longer entertain the idea of insurrection... but the means of acquiring power may have changed without there being any change of mental attitude. Electoral literature seems inspired by the purest demagogic doctrines... It [Parliamentary Socialism] makes its appeal to workmen, to small employers of labor, to peasants; and in spite of Engels, it aims at reaching out to farmers; it is at times patriotic; at other times it declares against the Army... 

p66 In the end the term "proletariat" became synonymous with oppressed; and there are oppressed in all classes... Henri Turot... has written a book on the "proletariat of love," by which title he designates the lowest class of prostitutes. If one of these days the suffrage is granted to women, he will doubtless be called upon to draw up a statement of the claims of this special proletariat.

1848 was also at the heart of Dostoevsky's concerns in The Brothers K. I would guess that, as little historical knowledge as the average American has, he or she would be particularly in the dark about 1848. I would further guess this ignorance would extend even to the descendants of liberals who fled Europe for America at the time -- like me. In France, 1848 restarted the peculiar political dance the French kept performing in these years. In Germany 1848 began setting the stage for the even more disastrous 2nd and 3rd Reichs. And in America, applying what I'm learning from Sorel about Protestantism, it reinforced the state with a populous force of liberal, mostly non-Calvinist Germans -- like my Catholic ancestors. (The migration of Catholic Irish at this time was also important, though slightly less politically motivated.)