Sorel is highly suspect in progressive circles, of course, and a sympathetic account of his work invites censure. Any defense has to begin by acknowledging what is valid in the case against him. His writing was sloppy and disorganized, his thinking often confused, and his political judgment erratic, to say the least. Like Orestes Brownson, he changed his mind too many times and acquired a reputation for inconsistency. By turns a Dreyfusard, an anti-Dreyfusard, a critic of nationalism, an exponent of nationalism, a monarchist of sorts, and a Leninist of sorts, sooner or later he quarreled with everybody and never gained much of a following. Identified in the public mind with syndicalism, he was eventually disowned even by the syndicalists. Some of the leading thinkers among his contemporaries—Henri Bergson, Benedetto Croce, Vilfredo Pareto, Antonio Gramsci, G. D. H. Cole—spoke well of him; but since those who found his work challenging or claimed to have been influenced by it covered the whole political spectrum, their good opinion merely heightens the impression of inconsistency. If Sorel can be claimed at once by the extreme right and by the extreme left, it is tempting to write him off as a "notorious muddlehead," as Lenin put it, or to draw the familiar conclusion that right- and left-wing extremisms converge in their "apocalyptic view of history and politics," in the words of Edward Shils, which "those who place themselves on the side of the free society" ought to shun like the plague.
Sorel's "polyglot mind," as Irving Louis Horowitz aptly calls it, was full of contradictions. He associated with political reactionaries like Paul Bourget, Maurice Barrès, and Charles Péguy, as well as with radical trade unionists like Fernand Pelloutier and Hubert Lagardelle. He dismissed democracy as the reign of mediocrity. He tended to confuse politics and
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