RADICALISM. - Usually the term serves to indicate the attitude of those ideological and political movements which, reconnecting to the agnostic, individualistic and democratic conception that nourished the French Revolution, set out to achieve the total reform of the existing regime, applying to their ultimate consequences the principles upheld and disseminated by that Revolution. As long as one remains solely on the historical plane, it is difficult to extract from the programs of the parties that have called themselves radical the true meaning of their name, so varied is their practical attitude, adapted to the social conditions of the countries in which they have carried on their activity. English radicalism is one thing, French radicalism another, and Italian radicalism yet another.
Nevertheless, going back to the etymological derivation, one can identify certain common elements which, supplemented by some historical data, can furnish a fairly approximate concept. Radicalism, "from root," in its most general sense means a spiritual and practical attitude, of which there form part, on the one hand, an irreducible opposition to a given existing order and, on the other, the intention of overturning it in order to reform it, applying an ideal and abstract scheme to its ultimate consequences. In this sense of opposition to the past, often accompanied by excessive language in criticism, and of an extremist tendency toward renewal, radicalism can have as its object any human activity, and thus one has been able to speak of a religious, economic, social radicalism, and so on.
Nonetheless the proper and specific object to which radicalism is referred is the social order, toward which it turns with a spirit of implacable criticism, in order to tear down without residue the institutions on which it has rested or rests, and to transform it from its very foundations. The meaning derived from etymology thus remains fundamental to philosophical and political radicalism. It approaches extremism and is often confused with it, although it remains distinct from it by its tendency to obtain the reforms it invokes through legal action, just as for the same reason it is distinguished still more clearly from revolutionary currents. Radicalism could be defined more succinctly as an excessive and intransigent reformism.
Its historical origin helps to bring to light the principles by which its action was inspired: philosophical radicalism, which then furnished the model for equal, though not identical, movements on the continent, was born in England, under the influence exercised in that country by the French Revolution and by the ideological currents connected with it. It is held that the name is due to Bentham, who postulated a radical reform of institutions, in order to break the hegemony of the ruling classes and bring the people into participation in public affairs. The theory he sketched out, which has utilitarianism as its foundation, so consonant with the mercantilist mentality of Victorian England, is individualistic, recognizing as the principle of social life nothing but individual interest, the measure and criterion of the action of public power, whose sole purpose consists in providing for the interest of the greatest number. Moreover it is liberal and democratic, inasmuch as it demands a more active participation of the people in public life and advocates the introduction of universal suffrage.
The distinctive notes of philosophical radicalism, so called because it had a theoretical formulation, to which are linked, besides the name of Bentham, those of James Mill, Macaulay, Grote, Molesworth and others, most of them independent reworkers of the founder's principles, were to be found again in political radicalism. Already in England, having descended from the ideological plane to the social one, it created a political movement which, besides winning over several of the ruling classes and obtaining strong affirmations in parliamentary speeches, spread into the public squares, in order to stir public opinion through rallies. To its credit are to be ascribed several important reforms: the abolition of the prohibitions against workers' coalitions in 1824 and 1825; the emancipation of Catholics in 1829; the great electoral reform in 1832.
Continental radicalism models itself on the English one, from which it receives its motives. It can be considered as the extreme wing of liberalism (v.), from which it draws its ideological directives and practical tendencies, driving them however to extremes, in the drafting of its programs and in their implementation. A common point, which deserves special mention, is that of the separation of Church and State, according to the new law introduced by the French Revolution. For the attainment of this goal, both in France and in Italy and in other countries, radicalism took an intransigent anticlerical attitude, which made it become an oppressor and persecutor of the Church and its institutions. The political parties that took the name of radicals became a refuge and a docile instrument of Freemasonry, with which they merged. Radicalism, absolute democratism, Freemasonry, socialist reformism have not infrequently been in practice synonyms.
Although certain more recent political movements and social regimes have some characteristics proper to radicalism (for example, contempt for the past and a reforming will carried to its utmost limits), they cannot, however, be called radical except according to the most general meaning of the term. Nazism, fascism, communism are not a radicalism in the historical sense, since they lack the individualistic, liberal, democratic and humanitarian presuppositions on which the ideology and action of classical radicalism were founded.
At present radicalism scarcely survives (exceptions must however be made, for example, in France), except as an excessive and intransigent personal attitude, which accompanies passionate temperaments, whose opposite is the reactionary mentality tenaciously attached to the past. Still more radical movements have supplanted it, taking as their own some of the popular demands for which in its time it had fought, and the anticlericalism that always distinguished it. Its criticism lies in its attitude and in its inspiring principles.
In social life one cannot disregard the experiences of the past, making of them a tabula rasa, since its progress consists in the further development of the human conquests already made. Like nature, so society, of which it is an effect, does not proceed by leaps, but by successive acquisitions that perfect its structure. The extremist pretensions of radicalism then clash with the free progress of social institutions, to which the authoritarianism of law, which is a kind of legal absolutism, is repugnant; abstract schemes, finally, must constantly be tested against the possibilities offered by real life, to which every prudent political action must always attend.
The principles of radicalism are derived from the rationalistic agnosticism of the Enlightenment, which poured into the liberal current, and therefore, as an extremist attitude of this ideological and political tendency, they are subject to all the reservations and criticisms directed against it by Catholic social doctrine (v. LIBERALISMO).