SOURCE: An introduction to "The Illusions of Progress", by Georges Sorel, translated by John and Charlotte Stanley, University of California Press, 1969, pp. ix-xxxix.

In the following excerpted foreward and introduction to Sorel's The Illusions of Progress, Nisbet and Stanley, respectively, examine Sorel's view of virtue as action, and attempt to put his work in perspective.

Translator's Introduction

I

Georges Sorel is known to English and American readers mainly through his Reflections on Violence which, aside from one small work,¹ is until now the only one of his dozen books to have been translated. It is not difficult to understand why this is so; the Reflections appeared at a time when there was intense interest in the treatment of socialism, and the work's militant stand against rationalism conformed to the temper of the times. Today, the idea of the creative role of violence in social movements is of great...