#11

Sternhell, Sorel and myth:

"To the rationalist concept of natural rights Sorel opposed the theory of myths. Myths are 'systems of images' that cannot be broken up into their component parts, but must be accepted in their totality as historical forces. 'When one stands on the ground of myths,' said Sorel, 'one is safe from all refutation': a failure 'can prove nothing against socialism.' A general strike is a myth; it 'must be regarded as an undivided whole; consequently, no detail of its execution can contribute anything to an understanding of socialism. One should even add that one is always in danger of losing something of that understanding when one attempts to split this whole into parts.'" (78)

myth permits martial mobility (Sorel the Bergsonian), freedom from the mire of consensus, compromise, and the fragmentary: "The idea of class struggle fulfills this function of promoting movement; it is in fact a myth aiming at the maintenance of a state of continuous tension, scission, and catastrophe, a state of covert war, a daily moral struggle against the established order. [...] To the idea of justice, that 'vapor,' as Maurras always called it, 'that old lag, ridden for centuries by all the renewers of the world deprived of surer means of historical locomotion,' as Rosa Luxemburg said, Sorel opposed the idea of the strike, which is a 'phenomenon of war.'"

cult of jeanne d'arc