[1] Sorel is known for his theory that political revolution depends on the proletariat organizing violent uprisings and strikes to institute syndicalism,[2] an economic system in which syndicats (self-organizing groups of only proletarians) truly represent the needs of the working class.

[2] His ideas were influenced by various other philosophical writers, including Giambattista Vico, Blaise Pascal, Ernest Renan, Friedrich Nietzsche, Eduard von Hartmann, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, John Henry Newman, Karl Marx, and Alexis de Tocqueville.

"[4] Sorel often throughout the Reflections takes a highly-skeptical tone toward the French parliamentary socialist reformers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries like statesmen Jean Jaurès, Édouard Vaillant, Georges Clemenceau, and Alexander Millerand.

It is of Sorel's opinion that such politicians were more interested in careerism than social revolution, hence he came to regard their occasionally more radical rhetoric (usually involving the declaration of strikes) as an attempt to shore up votes and intimidate their conservative party opposition, nothing more.

"[6] What Sorel goes on to explain is that utopias are a rationalist approach to social problems; it conforms society to the intellect by drawing up grand schemas for how to alleviate the suffering of the masses before the act itself.

For this reason, Sorel states that "Liberal political economy is one of the best examples of a utopia that could be given"[6] owing to its promises of universal meritocracy and wealth for the working class by the laws of perfect competition by the capitalist market.

He praises the capitalists of the past who were "animated by their conquering, insatiable, and pitiless spirit" as opposed to the modern "middle class, led astray by the chatter of the preachers of ethics and sociology, return to an ideal of conservative mediocrity, seek to correct the abuses of economics, and wish to break with the barbarism of their predecessors..."[8] Here Sorel is attacking the "progressive" bourgeoisie and their liberal parties that preach for charitable policy.

It is mentioned by Sorel, however, that this period of decadence can be rejuvenated by proletarian violence, which will act in an uncompromising manner with the capitalist class and break them of their modern philanthropic and charitable attitudes towards the poor.

Needless to say, Sorel takes great pains with liberalism as a pacifying historical phenomenon; only could proletarian violence in the name of the class war reinvigorate capitalism's lost war-like spirit.

Sorel makes the argument that the coercion employed by the bourgeoisie in the formation of early capitalist history through the state (colonialism, chattel slavery, the eviction of peasants, imperialism, etc.)

In addition to this, Sorel adds another important word on his understanding of myths: "[M]en who are participating in a great social movement always picture their coming action as a battle in which their cause is certain to triumph.

For, in drawing an identical parallel with Nietzsche's theory of master morality, the heroic war has stitched in it "[t]he ardent desire to try ones strength in great battles... to conquer glory at the peril of one's life.