Science and Socialism by Georges Sorel (1893)

* Source: Retrieved on 29/4/2022 from UQAC and translated by me. 

* First published: In Revue Philosophique de la France et de l'Étranger T. 35 (JANVIER A JUILLET 1893), pp. 509-511. 

* Notes: I think this is my worst translation so far, so I'll probably come back to it one day.

Dear director,

Allow me to submit to the readers of the Review a few observations suggested to me by the review of M. Bourdeau's work on German Socialism. I fully admit that we have little taste for Marx and his friends, little sympathy for such unsympathetic people as Bebel and Singer; but it is not a question here of appreciating men, it is only a question of doctrines. Philosophers hate socialists; they speak of it only with badly disguised ill humor. Contemporary philosophy battles against chimeras and sails in the empyrean; Marx's new real metaphysics will triumph over the subtle refutations.

K. Marx is not a mediocre thinker: the economists could not follow him on the ground where he placed the question, they opposed him with frivolous arguments. M. Tarde, in his account, compares K. Marx to Hegel: “It is the same tortuous tunnel of enigmatic deductions, tightly and obscurely linked together, interspersed here and there with flashes. Their darkness, to both of them, was part of their strength.”

I cannot understand this judgment; it is not Marx's fault that social problems are complicated; the author declares that there is no specific road for science; everyone will be of his opinion. Capital is no fun; but I don't think anyone would find Aristotle's Politics very entertaining. Undoubtedly, economic questions can be treated lightly; one can just as well put history into madrigals. J.-B. Say and Bastiat are not as painful to read as Marx; but also what can we learn by reading them? One of the merits of the German author was to place social science on the only terrain that suits it (assuming that there is a social science). German socialism with no doubt employs reprehensible means for its propaganda; but the bad faith of the economists has been pointed out a thousand times by the advocates of protection; I believe that the liberal press has not always been above reproach. There is nothing to be concluded from these important deviations. 

For many people, socialism is only a form of Jacobinism: educated people believe that the social question is a pretext for dividing up the spoils of the bourgeois and feeding an army of civil servants at the expense of the taxpayer. Socialism is exploited by the Jacobins, and this is a great misfortune; but also the Jacobins are the only ones who have lend it a hand; and without them would we have obtained some legislative concessions? Do the enlightened classes not have to blame themselves for their negligence?

Besides, any change must be made by force; it is true that this may not be employed in such a brutal manner as at the time of the Revolution; the lawyers of our old kings made reforms in society as serious as those demanded today by socialism: they spoke, in the name of Roman law, of what was called written reason, the marvelous conclusion of ancient speculation.

So what does socialism demand? Let the public force act in accordance with the rules of a rational state. It seems to me difficult to condemn such a claim in France: our fathers had no rest until they had introduced a legislation that they regarded as the rational principles of all society. Our new public law was not established without some difficulties; no one can doubt that it would be quite different without the appalling storms that shook Europe from 1789 until the Treaties of Vienna.

Socialism claims to establish, today, an economic science; if its claim is justified, it has the right to demand the legislative overhaul of the State; its theorems must be applied;

I know very well that an absolute formula may seem very old-fashioned today: we only want to hear talk about empiricism and the relative. Socialists are readily treated as dreamers; they are compared to Plato and Th. Morus. Rational science and utopia are somewhat different things; according to current opinion, they are very similar, science being only a construction of our mind, more or less adapted to real things, but never completely adapted: any absolute conclusion would therefore be forbidden to man. This skeptical conclusion has become that of economists; the moralists still protest a little, for form's sake; but they have great difficulty in maintaining their old ground; almost all are obliged to make concessions to new doctrines. Isn't it an admirable spectacle to see the plebs remaining faithful to the old principles, still believing in right and absolute truth, when those who should lead them no longer believe in them? Scientific skepticism daily aggravates the separation of classes, from the moral point of view. The intellectuals lose all action in the march of minds and society runs the greatest danger, because the direction of souls is almost everywhere left to agitators. The people go to them, because they assume in them the same faith which animates them. 

The opponents of socialism accumulate many captious and subtle objections; I don't have great confidence in this mode of refutation: we still discuss the principles of mathematics every day; we have not answered all the difficulties, all the quibbles of the sophists; the infinitesimal calculus, above all, presents serious difficulties - but all this is pure negation; science always goes forward, without worrying about quibbles to which the geometers do not even respond.

The big question is elsewhere. The ancient reformers did not believe in science; they imagined social receipts intended to make the happiness of humanity. If they spoke of science and sociological laws, it was in a sense far removed from that given to the words of science and laws in physics. Our contemporaries pay very little attention to the conceptions of A. Comte, his bankers and his priesthood. Modern socialism believes that there is a science, a true economic science. Is this thesis justified? This is what should be examined a little more closely than has been done so far; I do not believe that Marx's theories have really been refuted from this point of view. The problem is more difficult than is generally believed. The human mind does not want to be content with the old economic skepticism, it believes that there is something else to do than to record facts, to reason about the balances of profits, to find out if well-being increases faster in one country than in another. All of this research has its uses, I don't disagree, but it's beside the point.

It is not yet a work of science to propose formulas suitable for representing what is called the evolution of societies: these are subjective formulas, which have their practical value, because they allow us to see what that the legislator can do immediately, without too great an embarrassment. But all this does not touch the question yet. Is it true that exchange contains an element capable of entering into a rational science, as K. Marx maintains, or is it only a phenomenon escaping all possible scientific categories, as seems to be believed? Aristotle? If the Stagyrite is right, all socialist theses crumble; Marx knew this well, and he went to great lengths to justify his view. The reasons given by the economists did not convince me; these boring literary men did not even understand what their adversary was talking about.

The problem is of philosophical nature, only philosophers accustomed to studying principles can seriously approach it. I have been looking for a solution to this crucial question for a long time, in vain, and I have not yet found an answer anywhere.

                                                                                         G. Sorel.