[1] A revisionist interpretation of Marxism,[1] Sorel believed that the victory of the proletariat in class struggle could be achieved only through the power of myth and a general strike.
[3] With the seeming failure of syndicalism, he announced his abandonment of socialist literature in 1910, and claimed in 1914, using an aphorism of Benedetto Croce, that "socialism is dead" due to the "decomposition of Marxism".
[1] Sorel became a supporter of Charles Maurras-style integral nationalism (maurrassisme) beginning in 1909, which he considered as having similar moral aims to syndicalism despite being enemies materially.
[10] Otherwise only minimally influencing him, in admiration of Friedrich Nietzsche, Sorel held that an imperialist working class would establish a new aristocracy, which he said was "organizing relations among men for the benefit of its sovereignty" and as a sole source of law.
Against Nietzsche's Übermensch, he compared the general strike with what he called the "apocalyptic myths", or "Yankee Protestantism", of the practical, individualistic American settler ready for any venture, with neither impinging on the freedom of the individual.
Against the idea of centralized imperium, he espouses a Proudhonian balance and devotion to the weak based on family love, which he believed needed to be part of the warrior ethic.
[8] At the same time, he believed that it was the proletariat's task to awaken the bourgeoisie from intellectual stupor to recover its morality and what he said was its "productive energy", as well as the "feeling of its own dignity" that Sorel stated to have been lost because of democratic ideals.
[20] Afterwards, Sorel supported another nationalist newspaper, L'Indépendence, and began writing antisemitic content claiming that France was under attack from "Jewish invaders".
[22] The organization recognized both Proudhon and Sorel as two great thinkers who had "prepared the meeting of the two French traditions that had opposed each other throughout the nineteenth century: nationalism and authentic socialism uncorrupted by democracy, represented by syndicalism".
[23] The society would be dominated by a powerful avant-garde proletarian elite that would serve as an aristocracy of producers, and allied with intellectual youth dedicated to action against the decadent bourgeoisie.
[24] Upon Sorel's death, an article in the Italian Fascist doctrinal review Gerarchia edited by Benito Mussolini and Agostino Lanzillo, a known Sorelian, declared: "Perhaps Fascism may have the good fortune to fulfill a mission that is the implicit aspiration of the whole oeuvre of the master of syndicalism: to tear away the proletariat from the domination of the Socialist party, to reconstitute it on the basis of spiritual liberty, and to animate it with the breath of creative violence.
[27] Based on influence from Sorel, Gramsci asserted that Italy and the West have suffered from crises of culture and authority due to what he described as the "wave of materialism" and the inability of liberalism to achieve consensus and hegemony over society.
[33] When Sorelians initially began to come close to identifying themselves with nationalism and monarchism in 1911, Mussolini believed that such association would destroy their credibility as socialists.