Radicalism Research Paper

1. Radicalism Is A Relationship Term Not A Content Term

Radicalism is, like conservatism, a relationship term not a content term. It describes not any particular set of aspirations and aversions, but a distance between what exists and what is desired, and the way in which proposed changes are justified. Its particular character is therefore dependent on the historical circumstances in which it exists. Views put forward by radicals in Communist China might be shared by conservatives in Connecticut; the radicalism of California might be the traditionalism of Catalunya. Hannah Arendt’s observation that the ‘most radical revolutionary will become a conservative on the day after the revolution’ may thus describe not only a change of heart following the acquisition of power, but a change in the relationship between a substantive policy which remains consistent, but which moves from opposition to implementation.

2. Some General Features Of Radicalism As A Form Can Be Identified

Despite the contingency of radicalism however, some general features of its form can be identified. Radicalism normally involves the detection or description of principles that are considered to lie at the root of both existing and desired arrangements or ways of thinking. This concentration on a single and logical hierarchy of cause and effect or structure and foundation, is accompanied by a goal and a program that similarly concentrates on a single policy or set of policies the pursuit of which is intended or expected to transform a broad swathe of social life. The transformative keys are as various as are the forms of radicalism: democracy, the market, religious faith.

3. Attempts To Describe Radicalism As A Feature Of Personality Or Social Situation

Various attempts have been made to account for radicalism in terms of the psychological disposition of radicals. This generally has been done by those who do not welcome whatever project radicals may currently be pursuing. These attempts are vitiated by the manner in which a change in the political location of an actor or group can alter the descriptive appropriateness of the term. Stalinists can move from radicalism to conservatism simply by successfully seizing and exercising power. Their critical stance towards established authority comes to an end once they are themselves the embodiment of that authority.

4. Radicalism, Conservatism, Pragmatism, And Traditionalism

Since it goes to the roots, radicalism tends to ignore the complexity of the branches. It has, therefore, been contrasted with pragmatism, traditionalism, and conservatism. This contrast can be misleading. Pragmatism, traditionalism, and conservatism can be terms almost as contentless and historically contingent as radicalism. On the other hand, each of them operates as a matter of both historical fact and logical necessity with principles of selection, and none of them accepts unconditionally all aspects of existing arrangements and practices. Even the most stubborn conservative will have criteria for preferring Renoir to rats. Conversely, radicalism is a part of the tradition of many if not all societies, and the title of the English socialist and Christian Tawney’s collection of essays, The Radical Tradition (1964) was only superficially paradoxical. It is, in other words, a conservative fallacy that tradition is homogeneous. Radicalism is one of its historically contingent components in most if not all societies. It is conversely a radical fallacy that radicalism seeks a transformation of all aspects of a society’s life. A radical program seldom lacks foundations in some existing practices, institutions, or values, however peripheral or subordinated those may be at the time the program is advanced. And if radicals believe their own particular principles are deeply embedded in their society’s traditions, they can recommend a return to roots rather than a departure from them. Franklin D. Roosevelt’s remark, therefore, that the radical is someone with both feet firmly planted in the clouds, misses the point. The radical, rather, is someone who stands on their own patch of solid ground and wants the small cloud which they can see from that real but partial vantage point to encompass the whole sky.

5. Radicalism And Reason

The term ‘radical’ has been used most frequently to describe those who, whilst their criticism may be fundamental, do not reject the democratic and liberal methods of reason and persuasion in favour of insurrection or coup. Radicalism normally implies an appeal to reason, and therefore a dependence on persuasion, reasoned assent, and free individual choice. But appeals to other roots, instinct, faith, national myth are possible and have been made. Radicalism, as a matter of historical nomenclature, is more likely to be used to describe the ambitious advocacy of democracy or markets than of totalitarianism or authoritarianism. But it can describe Fascists who appeal to racial myth or religious extremists who demand that social life be determined, and law applied, on the basis of their interpretation of Christianity, Islam, or Hinduism.

6. Radicalism And Rulers

Were radicalism simply an abstract disposition, then it might be found to characterize equally rulers and their critics. But because of its association with challenges to existing arrangements, if it does characterize rulers, it is presented frequently by them as if they were Davids facing the Goliaths of custom or entrenched interest. Radicalism as a characteristic of government has usually laid great stress on the allegedly tremendous, and unfairly insuperable, obstacles in its path. Radicalism out of power has the real adversary of incumbent elites. Radicalism in power must to an extent invent enemies to maintain its radical credentials. It is not an accident that those most eager to use the powers of government to shape economy, society, or religion to their own favored roots are most likely to detect enemies within.

7. Approbatory And Critical Uses Of The Term

‘Radical’ and ‘radicalism’ have been used with approbatory, pejorative, critical, or neutral tone according to the different historical locations in which they have been employed. Whereas in the 1960s and 1970s ‘radical’ was often used by conservatives to dismiss the proposals of their opponents, by the end of the twentieth century the term could be employed by left and right alike with entirely positive purpose. In the United Kingdom, Prime Minister Tony Blair, after the Labour Party’s election victory of 1997, used radical to mean progressive, optimistic, forward looking, and subsumed socialism and liberalism under the title. The leader of the Conservative Party, William Hague, was equally able to recommend what he termed radical measures, for the term can mean thorough, imaginative, unhidebound.

8. Historical Instances Of Radicalism

As an abstract term, therefore, radicalism lacks content, though it may have a distinguishable form, and can gain substance only in context. Its substantial meanings have, therefore, been historical and particular, proper names rather than taxonomic categories. ‘Radical’ as an adjective qualifying a noun has been more common than ‘radicalism’ as a noun by itself: radical liberalism in eighteenth century Europe; radical philosophy, the radical right, and radical feminism in the twentieth century.

Because any set of arrangements can be subjected to radical appraisal, the terms ‘radical’ and ‘radicalism’ have been applied to an extremely wide range of ideas and movements, from Lollards in fourteenth century Europe, Diggers and Levellers during the English revolution of the seventeenth century, to neo-Nazis in twenty-first century Europe and North American. The earliest substantial use was to describe democrats and liberals in the eighteenth century, those inspired by human rights, and by the examples of the American and French Revolutions. Radical liberalism and radical democracy were movements of active opinion that challenged the old order in Europe with demands based on individual social, civil, and political rights. In the nineteenth century, radicalism concentrated on the extension of political rights. The various fascist movements of the mid-twentieth century have been described as the radical right, in that they were in part an accentuation of aims and aversions already present in conservative and right wing politics. In the 1960s and 1970s, the New Left in Europe and North American was an instance of radicalism with a broad range of targets, but a narrower range of solutions from within which each segment chose its favorite: the abolition of capitalism, the overthrow of gerontocracy, the transformation of consciousness with drugs, or the decentralization and de-industrialization of western society. A different sort of radicalism, though one which also stressed individual liberation, was found within the New Right of the 1980s and 1990s. Here, the character of the radical demand was made more complex by a double track radicalism, on the one hand calling for a root and branch destruction of what were seen as restraints on the market and hence on individual utility maximization and self-fulfilment through choice about the use of property, but on the other calling for a radical imposition of cultural and moral controls, if necessary by government. By the end of the twentieth century radicalism was an aspect of environmental or green theory, and of feminism. Radicalism had, too, religious avatars in the New Christian Right in the US, Islamism in Asia and the Middle East, and political Hinduism in India. But in each case, within the variety of the movement, the breadth of targets was given coherence by the unity of ascribed causes for identified malaises.

9. Conclusion

Not only does the term radicalism lack any firm historical content, it possesses an equal normative flexibility, and is used neutrally and descriptively, and as a term of both approval and condemnation. For those who believe that language is the only reality we have, it provides a congenial illustration.

A radical may be a person with a vision, but it is usually a vision derived from experience, an extension of the radical’s own values to a whole society. There is a conservative foundation for radical politics, which is why, once radicals achieve power, they can appear to shift from change to conservation. Radicals are not for change as such, but only, like conservatives, for particular sets of arrangements, for the cultivation of which change may appear necessary, and for the achievement of which they believe they have identified a single cause or cluster of causes.

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