Though social theories and philosophical analyses may be termed radical, the primary modern usage of the word radicalism is to designate basic or extreme political challenges to established order. The term (with an upper-case R) came into use in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries to refer to an elite political faction which sought parliamentary and other rationalizing reforms, and became a key root of the Liberal Party in England. Almost immediately, a lower-case usage developed to describe all sorts of political orientations which shared either an analysis of current troubles claiming to go to their roots, or a programme deduced from first principles. Under pressure of the French Revolution and various English popular agitations, attention came increasingly to focus on actual mobilizations—radical actions—rather than merely radical ideas.
Social scientists are still divided in the extent of their emphasis on the importance of rationalistic analyses (for example, Marxist class consciousness) compared to other more directly social sources of radical actions. There are two conventional views among the latter group. One, now nearly discredited, holds that social atomization and marginalization dispose those cut off from the social mainstream to engage in protests which reveal more of their psychological troubles than any serious programme for social change. The other stresses the underlying interests which a common position in relation to some external factor, such as markets or means of production, gives to individuals. Both positions are challenged by empirical findings that a great deal of organization and internal cohesion are necessary to radical collective action. Common objective interests are not necessarily enough to produce concerted action. Activists can hope to achieve this coalescence through further organizational efforts, and they often sec trade unions and similar organizations as way-stations on the road to class organization.
Traditional communities, however, have been the basis of more radical movements than class or any other abstract bonds and formal organizations. The popular radical movements (as opposed to elite radicals) of early industrial Britain acted on radical social roots in reaction to the disruptions of the Industrial Revolution. Though the members of these communities often lacked sophisticated radical analyses, they had visions profoundly at odds with conditions around them. Perhaps even more importantly, they had the social strength in their communal relations to carry out concerted action against great odds for long periods of time; few compromise positions were open to them, unlike the members of the modern working class. These sorts of social foundations continue to be central to radical movements around the world. Peasants and other traditional farmers along with artisans and craft workers form the mainstay of these radical movements.
Social revolutions, the most radical of actual political transformations, certainly have many causes besides anti-governmental radical movements. A state structure weakened by external conflicts or internal disunity may, for example, be essential to the success of a revolutionary movement. Where revolutions succeed, and transform societies rather than only change regimes, two sorts of radical groups have generally been involved. On the one hand, there has usually been a tightly organized, forward-looking, relatively sophisticated group of revolutionaries. On the other hand, there has also generally been a broad mass of protesters and rebels acting on the basis of strong local communities and traditional grievances. The latter are essential to making the revolution happen, to destabilizing the state. The former, however, are much better positioned to seize power during the transformation.
At least in the contemporary world of states and other large-scale abstract social organizations, there is a paradox to radicalism (which may of course be of the ‘right’ as well as the ‘left’). Most radicalism is based on local bonds and tradition, yet when successful, it both disrupts tradition and displaces power towards the centre of society and its large-scale systems of control. This is true even of radical movements aimed at less extreme goals than revolutions. The US civil rights movement could succeed in ending local intolerance and oppression only by forcing an increase of central state power and its penetration into local life. But it could not at the same time make local communities democratic and preserve their autonomy as free realms of direct participation.
Craig Calhoun
University of North Carolina
Further reading
Calhoun, C. (1983) ‘The radicalism of tradition’, American Journal of Sociology 88.
Moore, B. Jr (1979) Injustice: The Social Bases of Obedience and Revolt, White Plains, NY.
