“Citizenship” in “Industry”: The Case of Georges Sorel

Abstract

Georges Sorel was of course a critic of “citizenship” in the sense current then as now. But behind his ideal picture of industrial organization there lay a conception of citizenship which derived from an older tradition. This conception in turn modified the themes which Sorel drew from a second tradition, that of thought about “industry.” The result was a vision of industrial organization which displaced civil association by taking some of its typical features for itself. What is represented by notions such as the “myth of the general strike” is not, as some have held, a romantic reaction against modern organization but, on the contrary, a thoroughly modern doctrine of organization as the “sublimation” of civil life which continues to pose problems of relevance today.