Syndicalism and its instruments of collective action in the conception of Georges Sorel. A critical study

Abstract

Georges Sorel defends that the future of Socialism (based on self-management and the idea of anti-state) is in the autonomous development of workers and trade unions. The Proletariat must acquire full class-consciousness and articulate a strategy that overthrows capitalism system. In Sorel's syndicalist ideology, the final goal consists primarily in self-management of workers unions. In this way, the union is destined to work on a crystallization of experiences and pedagogical issues. This could make possible the birth of a new model of social organization and a new morality of producers that could be an alternative to capitalism. While Orthodox Marxism affirms limits of the consciousness of unions and defends the Party as the instrument of workers' struggle for a new society, Sorel thinks the best instrument is a revolutionary syndicalism and self-managing, because they could be capable to build a new order that could move away centralized State, parties system and parliamentary democracy. The power of work is expressed in the struggle. Sorel affirms that man is above all homo-faber, while the reason is the daughter of technique. The man is linked to its status of producer. The knowledge of phenomena and reference values do not lies on intellectualism that is external to it, but on the development of production process. Understanding is to produce, so the person does not produce is a parasite. That is why the socialist future is to create an autonomous society of producers. That is to verify the last consequences of a class that becomes conscious of itself and “for itself”, forged in a new morality and the overthrow of the capitalist state. The autonomous institutions of workers as class “for themselves” are the true agent of revolution and not the “professionalized” political parties.