Many people perceive themselves as knowledgeable on ideologies and philosophies entirely predicated upon how niche or esoteric they are. The person portrays themselves as some sort of expert or prophet of the philosophy they claim to represent. In reality, they hold a surface-deep understanding at best of the complexities of the ideology they purport special knowledge of– None so clear to us presently as the Canadian YouTuber, Josh Masters, who otherwise goes by the moniker “Pierre Tru-Dank”. Pierre, an acclaimed communist, has tarnished his already fragile reputation with open collaboration with neo-Nazis such as Shandon Simpson, otherwise known as “Zoran Zoltanous”, publishing articles on his “weekly newsletter”, the Fascio Substack, a swamp of ideologically bankrupt pseudointellectuals.
On July 31st of this year, Pierre Tru Dank released an article entitled “the Political Philosophy of Georges Sorel”, in which the author attempted (and ultimately failed) to grasp and subsequently explain the philosophical framework and the principles upheld by the thinker he is claiming to represent. After all, Pierre Tru Dank claims himself to be a communist “inspired” by Sorel’s theories. One should expect a faithful and honest representation of Sorel’s syndicalist literature, but unfortunately one will not find this within practically any of Pierre’s work.
Among Pierre’s first claims is the notion that Georges Sorel was opposed to the First World War from its inception, a blatant falsity. Let Sorel speak for himself when in a letter to Edouard Berth on October 24th of 1914, he informs Berth “Pareto, like me, sees the profound meaning of this war in the struggle between conservative principles and democracy”, referring to the German Empire as a conservative aristocracy. Georges Valois, his most famed disciple, was already as of the month Sorel wrote to Berth, a commander in the French Army, fighting against the Germans.
Pierre argues that Georges Sorel was in favor of the Marxist concept of the “dictatorship of the proletariat” as well. He cites Georges Platon’s “article in favor of the dictatorship of the proletariat” as evidence of this. Unfortunately Pierre demonstrates his intellectual ineptitude in this statement, as the unfortunate reality is that Platon never wrote an “article” on the dictatorship of the proletariat. What Pierre believes he is referring to, is in reality, Part Three of Platon’s 108 page book titled “Le Socialisme En Grece” which Pierre clearly has never read a single page of, other than the quoted excerpt he attempts to twist out of Georges Sorel’s “Materials for A Theory of the Proletariat”. If Pierre were to actually have read Platon’s book, he would realize that the quote which Sorel is using regarding the dictatorship of the proletariat, is in fact quite negative.
In reality, all democratic or proletarian dictatorships have never directly or indirectly resulted in anything other than the restoration of social inequities. To cite the most significant and decisive experiences: Marius led to Sulla; Julius Caesar appears as the true founder of the crushing hierarchy of social forces known as the Roman Empire, which enshrined slavery and sacrificed all considerations of economic reform to maintain apparent order. What has happened once or several times in history—why wouldn’t it happen again?
Georges Platon, Socialism in Greece
In what form will this revolutionary dictatorship manifest? As a monarchical dictatorship or as a dictatorship of multiple assemblies and committees, as seen during various moments of the French Revolution? Marx does not elaborate, and the form matters little. The revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat—it’s easily said. But, as Shakespeare says, “Words are women, and deeds are men.”
In this (unfortunately quite expansive) quotation which Sorel indeed utilizes, Platon is (although hopeful) analyzing the reasonable doubt which one should have regarding the very concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat itself. Later on, Platon argues that organizing the proletariat in a political manner may potentially transform the very nature of the proletariat itself, which would therefore lead to the restoration of economic injustice rather than its abolition, as if a “morally weak, intelligent portion” of the proletariat gained power, this would be very likely to occur.
The quotation from Sorel is not in fact arguing in favor of the dictatorship of the proletariat, but rather casting a shadow of doubt on the notion altogether. Furthermore, Sorel’s most loyal student, Edouard Berth, would also later express skepticism regarding the dictatorship of the proletariat in his book “From Capital to Reflections on Violence” in which he argued the following:
Proudhon … does not settle for summary formulas like “dictatorship of the proletariat” or “leap from Necessity into Freedom”. He wants to understand what motives will drive the heir to capitalism, what spirit he will be imbued with, and what his legal, social, and moral conceptions will be. Dictatorship of the Proletariat? Very well, but, as Shakespeare says, “words are female, and only actions are male”: through what actions will this dictatorship be expressed? The enormous abyss of communism appears to him as a chasm of misery and servitude; he wants to outline, in this apocalyptic night, precise legal lines, articulations forming a somewhat resistant skeleton for the new order, and he writes The Political Capacity of the Working Classes, where “communism” resolves into “mutualism.”
Edouard Berth, From Capital to reflections on violence, 1932
Berth here portrays Proudhon as the more level-headed theorist than Marx, arguing that rather than settling for “summary formulas” as Marx does, Proudhon seeks a more concrete understanding of how the socialist revolution will unfold. Pierre Tru Dank objects however, stating that there is no evidence that Sorel preferred Pierre-Joseph Proudhon to Karl Marx, as he argued “there is no evidence to support this assertion” that Sorel “abandoned Marx for Proudhon”.
If only Pierre Tru Dank ever read Sorel other than as a source of incredible and profound confirmation bias would he realize that Sorel does in fact, in almost every instance, prefer Proudhon to Karl Marx, including in every single facet of the class struggle and its related subjects throughout all of human history. If one disagrees with this fact, they can take it up with Sorel, who in his “Materials for a Theory of the Proletariat” explicitly, and unmistakably states “Every time we encounter phenomena in history that seem to be related to a class struggle, we should draw less from Marxist tradition and more from what Proudhon wrote in the “Political Capacity of the Working Classes.”
Pierre attempts to claim Sorel for the sake of Marxism-Leninism, arguing “For Marxist-Leninists, Sorel is considered a right libertarian deviant within official Marxism, not a fascist renegade.” Marxism-Leninism considers Sorel no such thing. Rarely, if ever, will you find a Marxist-Leninist in history referring to Sorel positively at all. In fact, the founder of Marxism-Leninism, Vladimir Lenin himself, deeply despised Sorel’s work.
… There are people who can only think what is entirely devoid of thought. To this class of people belongs the notorious muddler, Georges Sorel, who maintains that the “first two parts” of Poincaré’s book on the value of science are written in the “spirit of Le Roy” and that therefore the two philosophers can be “reconciled” as follows: the attempt to establish an identity between science and the world is an illusion; there is no need to raise the question whether science can have knowledge of nature or not, for it is sufficient that science should correspond with the mechanisms created by us.
Lenin, Vladimir Il’ich (1948). Materialism and Empirio-Criticism
This is an outright rejection of Georges Sorel entirely by the leader of the Bolshevik Revolution and the originator of Marxist-Leninist theory altogether as a “notorious muddler” simultaneously “devoid of thought”. What Pierre would do well to realize is that his position on Sorel is not in fact the Marxist-Leninist position, and that instead, the dominant Leninist position on Sorel is one of utter disdain. Pierre is simply posturing his position as the true and correct Leninist position on Sorel, despite the fact that the two philosophies are in fact completely irreconcilable, something Lenin understood, which Pierre does not. Pierre finishes the article advertising for his favorite brand of online Twitter-communism before stating that Sorel viewed communism as something which should be the starting-point for the development of syndicalism. This is incorrect, as Sorel (which Edouard Berth later points out) was completely opposed to communism, as he argues “Communist literature has flourished in the world in the most spontaneous manner. It does not require much genius to set aside technique, economics and law to yield to the whims of a philanthropic imagination.” Again, this can be found quite easily in Sorel’s “Materials for a Theory of the Proletariat”.
Overall, Pierre Tru Dank, while grasping some facets of Sorel’s theories ultimately fails at constructing a coherent picture of what Sorel’s beliefs truly were, as he butchers Sorel’s relationship with Marxism, Proudhonian thought, the theory of the “dictatorship of the proletariat”, and finally Sorel’s relationship with not only communism, but Marxism-Leninism altogether. It would be worthwhile to note that although Sorel supported the Bolshevik revolution in his life (as did many fascists), once Lenin had died, Sorel’s disciples, including Hubert Lagardelle, Edouard Berth, and Georges Valois, all unanimously decried the Bolshevik revolution as a complete and utter catastrophe. It is easy to cherrypick specific segments of the historical development of ideologies which we are aesthetically attracted to. For some however, it is not easy to engage honestly with a holistic perspective of an ideologies history or its core tenets.
The Seamusite Fascisti 