>>24729136
>It says the anarchists who participated in the birth control movement were influenced by Sorel
No it doesn't. It says that syndicalists, inspired by Sorel, believed that "Having children would also be considered a distraction from these revolutionary aims."
This is not "birth control," as such, of the Margaret Sanger variety. Rather, it is consistent with Sorel's view that "the world will become more just only to the extent it becomes more chaste; I do not believe there is a more certain truth."
With this belief corresponding perfectly with his view that "Those individuals who actually accomplish the transformation of virility into violence are les hommes superieurs"; and that "it is the renunciation of things of the flesh that entitles a man to enter the palace of the morally chosen."
Sorel was no Malthusian, indeed in most respects he was anti-Malthusian.
Despite his strong opposition, Sorel did find one point of limited agreement with Malthus. He believed that the proletariat, in a revolutionary society, should exercise a form of voluntary, moral self-restraint in terms of family size. However, this was not due to a fear of overpopulation. Instead, it was to maintain the "military virtues" and moral purity of the working class. For Sorel, a small, disciplined, and morally elevated proletariat was better suited for revolutionary struggle than a large, disorganized, and impoverished one. This was a strategic and moral argument, completely distinct from Malthus's economic and demographic one.
The idea of a "small, disciplined, and morally elevated proletariat" is the very foundation upon which Sorel's concept of revolutionary violence and the "hommes superieurs" is built.
For Sorel, the revolutionary struggle was an all-consuming, heroic enterprise. He saw the proletariat as a warrior class, and a warrior's life is one of discipline, sacrifice, and detachment from the comforts and ties of conventional society. Large families and the domesticity they entail were seen as bourgeois compromises that weakened the revolutionary spirit. They created personal attachments and concerns that could divert a revolutionary's focus and energy away from the collective struggle.
This ethos was even more pronounced for the hommes superieurs, the heroic leaders and moral exemplars. Their role was to be a living myth, a symbol of total commitment to the revolutionary cause. Their lives were not their own; they belonged to the struggle. For them, personal and family life would be a profound distraction from their mission to embody and inspire the revolutionary virtues of honor and a heroic will.
In Sorel's view, the proletariat's "family" was the class itself, and the revolutionary's loyalty was to the cause above all else.
