The Ruin of the Ancient World

La Ruine du monde antique · Georges Sorel · translated by Joshua E. Masters

Why did the ancient world fall? Not to barbarian swords, Georges Sorel argues, but to the slow work of ideas.

In The Ruin of the Ancient World, the author of Reflections on Violence turns Marx's materialist conception of history on the end of pagan Rome. He studies how the Church took over everything the ancient City lost: its moral authority, its wealth, its claim on the loyalty of citizens. He follows the clergy's morals and finances, monastic withdrawal, the dispute over the Altar of Victory, and the rise of a theory of intolerance.

But Sorel isn't only writing about antiquity. Each chapter holds up the fourth century as a mirror to his own time. Intellectuals hungry for power court the workers' movement, and idealist revolutions turn ferocious. Sorel insists that the emancipation of the workers must be the work of the workers alone.

• Sorel's 1901 Note to the Reader and Introduction
• All eleven chapters, with his extensive Notes and Observations
• The essay "Church, Gospel and Socialism," Sorel's reply to Italian social Catholicism
• Sorel's closing Conclusions

Every cent of royalties from the Patreon ebook goes to the translator.

The Misdeeds of the Intellectuals

Les Méfaits des intellectuels · Édouard Berth · translated by Joshua E. Masters

Georges Sorel's closest disciple puts the intellectual class on trial.

Édouard Berth dedicated this book "to my master George Sorel." In it he argues that the professional intellectuals of the Third Republic, with their abstractions and their appetite for power, stand between the producers and the society they actually build. It is a central text of French revolutionary syndicalism, and until now it has never been available in English.

• The translator's Preface on the English Translation
• Berth's Preface, Foreword and Introduction
• All five chapters and the Conclusion, with endnotes

Every cent of royalties from the Patreon ebook goes to the translator.