SOURCE: "Georges Sorel: On Lenin and Mussolini," in Contemporary French Civilization, Vol. II, No. 2, Winter, 1978, pp. 231-52.

In the following excerpt, Rot h examines the influence of the writings of Marx, Prudhomme, Vico, and Bergson on Sorel's system of beliefs.

The noted littérateur Daniel Halévy, for some years a close associate of Georges Sorel, tells a story about Sorel that is too good to be true.¹ In the early 1930s, about a decade after Sorel's death; the ambassadors of Soviet Russia and fascist Italy in Paris, upon hearing that Sorel's grave was in disrepair, independently and almost simultaneously informed the director of the Bibliothèque Nationale of the desire of their respective governments to erect a monument to him. Rolland Marcel, the director of the library who had himself known Sorel, asked Halévy for guidance in this delicate matter. Halévy, somewhat nonplused and not...