RADICALISM. — The term is usually used to designate the attitude of those ideological and political movements which, reconnecting with the agnostic, individualistic, and democratic conception nourished by the French Revolution, have proposed the total reform of the existing regime, applying the principles upheld and disseminated by that Revolution to their ultimate consequences. So long as one remains solely on the historical plane, it is difficult to extract from the programmes of the parties that have called themselves radical the precise meaning of their designation, so varied is their practical attitude, adapted to the social conditions of the countries in which they have carried out their activity. English r. is one thing, French r. another, and Italian r. yet another.
Nevertheless, by returning to the etymological derivation, certain common elements can be determined which, integrated with certain historical data, can provide a somewhat approximate concept. R., “from the root,” in its most general sense signifies a spiritual and practical attitude, consisting, on the one hand, in irreducible opposition to a given existing order and, on the other, in the intention of overthrowing it in order to reform it, applying an ideal and abstract scheme to its ultimate consequences. In this sense of opposition to the past, frequently accompanied by excessive language in criticism, and of an extremist tendency toward renewal, r. may have any human activity as its object; hence people have been able to speak of religious, economic, social r., and so forth.
Nevertheless, the proper and specific object to which r. is referred is the social order, toward which it turns in a spirit of implacable criticism, in order to destroy without residue the institutions on which it has rested or rests, and to transform it from its foundations. The meaning derived from etymology thus remains fundamental to philosophical and political r. It approaches extremism and is often confused with it, although it remains distinct from it through its tendency to obtain the reforms it demands by legal action; for the same reason, it is distinguished even more clearly from revolutionary currents. R. could be defined more synthetically as excessive and uncompromising reformism.
Its historical origin helps to shed light on the principles that inspired its action: philosophical r., which subsequently provided the model for similar, though not identical, movements on the Continent, arose in England under the influence exerted in that country by the French Revolution and the ideological currents connected with II. The name is thought to be due to Bentham, who postulated a radical reform of the 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, founded on utilitarianism, so congenial to the mercantile mentality of England in the Victorian period, is individualistic, recognizing no principle of social life other than 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. It is also liberal and democratic, insofar as it demands more active participation by the people in public life and advocates the introduction of universal suffrage.
The distinctive features of philosophical r., so called because it received a theoretical formulation to which, besides the name of Bentham, those of Giacomo Mill, Maucaulay, Grote, Molesworth, and others are connected—most of them independent reworkers of the principles of the school’s founder—were also found in political r. In England itself, having descended from the ideological plane to the social plane, it created a political movement which, besides winning over several members of the ruling classes and achieving strong affirmations in parliamentary speeches, spread through the streets, agitating public opinion by means of rallies. Among its achievements are several important reforms: the abolition of prohibitions against workers’ combinations in 1824 and 1825; Catholic emancipation in 1829; and the great electoral reform of 1832.
Continental r. was modelled on the English variety, from which it received its motives. It may be regarded liberalism (v.), from which it drew its ideological directives and practical tendencies, though driving them to extremes in the drafting of its programmes and in their implementation. One common point deserving special mention is the separation of Church and State, according to the new law introduced by the French Revolution. To attain this goal, in France as in Italy and other countries, r. adopted an uncompromisingly anticlerical attitude, which made it an oppressor and persecutor of the Church and its institutions. The political parties that took the name of radicals became a refuge and docile instrument of Freemasonry, with which they became indistinguishable. R., absolute democratism, Freemasonry, and socialist reformism have not infrequently been synonyms in practice.
Although some more recent political movements and social regimes possess certain characteristics proper to r. (e.g., contempt for the past and a reforming will carried to its furthest limits), they cannot nevertheless be called radical except according to the term’s more general meaning. Nazism, fascism, and communism are not r. in the historical sense, since they lack the individualistic, liberal, democratic, and humanitarian presuppositions on which the ideology and action of classical r. were founded.
R. at present hardly survives (although exceptions must be made, for example, in France), except as an excessive and uncompromising personal attitude accompanying passionate temperaments, whose opposite is the reactionary mentality tenaciously attached to the past. Still more radical movements have supplanted it, making their own some of the popular demands for which it had once fought, as well as the anticlericalism that always distinguished II. Its criticism lies in its attitude and in its inspiring principles.
In social life, one cannot disregard the experiences of the past, making a tabula rasa of them, since progress consists in the further development of the human achievements already attained. Just as nature, so society, of which it is an effect, does not proceed by leaps but through successive acquisitions that perfect its structure. The extremist claims of r. then come up against the free progress of social institutions, which rejects the authoritarianism of law, a kind of legal absolutism; finally, abstract schemes must constantly be tested against the possibilities offered by real life, to which every prudent political action must always pay heed.
The principles of r. derive from the rationalistic agnosticism of the Enlightenment, which flowed into the liberal current, and therefore, as an extremist attitude within this ideological and political tendency, they are subject to all the reservations and criticisms directed against it by Catholic social doctrine (v. LIBERALISMO).