SOURCE: "Rationalism and Commitment in Sorel," in Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. XXXIV, July-September, 1973, pp. 405-20.

In the following excerpt, Vernon draws distinctions between traditional interpretations of Marxism and Sorel's interpretation.

In this essay I shall explore Georges Sorel's thought in the light of two contrasting conceptions; the idea that history forms an intelligible whole, knowledge of which provides criteria for political action, and the idea that no valid criteria exist for evaluating our actions, which rest on nothing more than a personal decision. The former idea is what Sorel thought of as "rationalism"; it is not what is thought of as rationalism today; in fact, later theorists have rejected that notion as an irrational one.¹ The latter idea is what is now described as "commitment"—though this term is not always used with a sense of its real implications—and is the theory which has...