Radicalism (from French radical) was a political movement representing the leftward flank of liberalism between the late 18th and early 20th century. Certain aspects of the movement were precursors to a wide variety of modern-day movements, ranging from laissez-faire to social liberalism, social democracy, civil libertarianism, and modern progressivism. This ideology is commonly referred to as "radicalism" but is sometimes referred to as radical liberalism, or classical radicalism, to distinguish it from radical politics. Its earliest beginnings are to be found during the English Civil War with the Levellers and later the Radical Whigs.
During the 19th century in the United Kingdom, continental Europe and Latin America, the term radical came to denote a progressive liberal ideology inspired by the French Revolution. Radicalism grew prominent during the 1830s in the United Kingdom with the Chartists and in Belgium with the Revolution of 1830, then across Europe in the 1840s–1850s during the Revolutions of 1848. In contrast to the social conservatism of existing liberal politics, radicalism sought political support for a radical reform of the electoral system to widen suffrage. It was also associated with a variety of ideologies and policies, such as liberalism, left-wing politics, direct democracy, republicanism, modernism, atheism, secularism, antimilitarism, civic nationalism, abolition of titles, rationalism, casual clothing, redistribution of wealth and property, and freedom of the press.
In 19th-century France, radicalism was originally the extreme left of the day, in contrast to the social-conservative liberalism of Moderate Republicans and Orléanist monarchists and the anti-parliamentarianism of the Legitimists and Bonapartists. Until the end of the century, radicals were not organised as a united political party, but they had rather become a significant force in parliament. In 1901, they consolidated their efforts by forming the country's first major extra-parliamentary political party, the Republican, Radical and Radical-Socialist Party, which became the leading party of government during the second half of the French Third Republic (until 1940). The success of French Radicals encouraged radicals elsewhere to organize themselves into formal parties in a range of other countries in the late 19th and early 20th century, with radicals holding significant political office in Argentina (Radical Civic Union), Bulgaria (Radical Democratic Party), Denmark (Radikale Venstre), Germany (Progressive People's Party and German Democratic Party), Greece (New Party and Liberal Party), Italy (Republican Party, Radical Party, Social Democracy and Democratic Liberal Party), the Netherlands (Radical League and Free-thinking Democratic League), Portugal (Republican Party), Romania (National Liberal Party), Russia (Trudoviks), Serbia (People's Radical Party), Spain (Reformist Party, Radical Republican Party, Republican Action, Radical Socialist Republican Party and Republican Left), Sweden (Free-minded National Association, Liberal Party and Liberal People's Party), Switzerland (Free Democratic Party), and Turkey (Republican People's Party). During the interwar period, European radical parties organized the Radical Entente, their own political international.
Before socialism emerged as a mainstream political ideology, radicalism represented the left wing of liberalism and thus of the political spectrum. As social democrats came to dominate the centre-left in place of classical radicalism, they either re-positioned as conservative liberals or joined forces with social democrats. Thus, European radical parties split (as in Denmark, where Venstre undertook a conservative-liberal rebranding, while Radikale Venstre maintained the radical tradition as a coalition partner of the newly-dominant Social Democrats), took up a new orientation (as in France, where the Radical Party aligned with the centre-right, later causing the split of the Radical Party of the Left) or dissolved (as in Greece, where the heirs of Venizelism joined several parties, largely eventually finding their way to the social-democratic PASOK). After World War II, European radicals were largely extinguished as a major political force except in Denmark, France, Italy (Radical Party), and the Netherlands (Democrats 66). Latin America still retains a distinct indigenous radical tradition, for instance in Argentina (Radical Civic Union) and Chile (Radical Party).
Contents
Overview
Radicalism and liberalism
The two Enlightenment philosophies of liberalism and radicalism both shared the goal of liberating humanity from the remnants of feudalism. However, liberals regarded it as sufficient to establish individual rights that would protect the individual while radicals sought institutional, social/economic, and especially cultural/educational reform to allow every citizen to put those rights into practice. For this reason, radicalism went beyond the demand for liberty by seeking also equality, i.e. universality as in Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité.
In some countries, radicalism represented a minor wing within the Liberal political family, as in the case of England's Radical Whigs. Sometimes, the radical wing of the liberals were hardline or doctrinaire and in other cases more moderate and pragmatic. In other countries, radicalism had had enough electoral support on its own, or a favourable electoral system or coalition partners, to maintain distinct radical parties such as in Switzerland and Germany (Freisinn), Bulgaria, Denmark, Italy, Spain and the Netherlands, but also Argentina (Radical Civic Union), Chile and Paraguay.
Victorian era Britain possessed both trends: In England the Radicals were simply the left wing of the Liberal coalition, though they often rebelled when the coalition's socially conservative Whigs resisted democratic reforms, whereas in Ireland Radicals lost faith in the ability of parliamentary gradualism to deliver egalitarian and democratic reform and, breaking away from the main body of liberals, pursued a radical-democratic parliamentary republic through separatism and insurrection. This does not mean that all radical parties were formed by left-wing liberals. In French political literature, it is normal to make a clear separation between Radicalism as a distinct political force to the left of Liberalism but to the right of Socialism. Over time, as new left-wing parties formed to address the new social issues, the right wing of the Radicals would splinter off in disagreement with the main Radical family and became absorbed as the left wing of the Liberal family—rather than the other way around, as in Britain and Belgium.
The distinction between Radicals and Liberals was made clear by the two mid-20th-century attempts to create an international for centrist democratic parties. In 1923–24, the French Radicals created an Entente Internationale des Partis Radicaux et des Partis Démocratiques similaires: it was joined by the centre-left Radical parties of Europe, and in the democracies where no equivalent existed—Britain and Belgium—the liberal party was allowed to attend instead. After the Second World War the Radical International was not reformed; instead, a centre-right Liberal International was established, closer to the conservative-liberalism of the British and Belgian Liberal parties. This marked the end of Radicalism as an independent political force in Europe, though some countries such as France and Switzerland retained politically important Radical parties well into the 1950s–1960s. Many European parties that are nowadays categorised in the group of social-liberal parties have a historical affinity with radicalism and may therefore be called "liberal-radical".
By country
United Kingdom
According to Encyclopædia Britannica, the first use of the term radical in a political sense is generally ascribed to the English parliamentarian Charles James Fox, a leader of the left wing of the Whig party who dissented from the party's conservative-liberalism and looked favourably upon the radical reforms being undertaken by French republicans, such as universal male suffrage. In 1797, Fox declared for a "radical reform" of the electoral system. This led to a general use of the term to identify all supporting the movement for parliamentary reform. Jeremy Bentham is believed to have coined the specific noun "radicalism" in the autumn of 1819.
Initially confined to the upper and middle classes, in the early 19th century "popular radicals" brought artisans and the "labouring classes" into widespread agitation in the face of harsh government repression. More respectable "philosophical radicals" followed the utilitarian philosophy of Jeremy Bentham and strongly supported parliamentary reform, but were generally hostile to the arguments and tactics of the "popular radicals". By the middle of the century, parliamentary Radicals joined with others in the Parliament of the United Kingdom to form the Liberal Party, eventually achieving reform of the electoral system.
The Radical movement had its beginnings at a time of tension between the American colonies and Great Britain, with the first Radicals, angry at the state of the House of Commons, drawing on the Leveller tradition and similarly demanding improved parliamentary representation. These earlier concepts of democratic and even egalitarian reform had emerged in the turmoil of the English Civil War and the brief establishment of the republican Commonwealth of England amongst the vague political grouping known as the Levellers, but with the English Restoration of the monarchy such ideas had been discredited. Although the Glorious Revolution of 1688 had increased parliamentary power with a constitutional monarchy and the union of the parliaments brought England and Scotland together, towards the end of the 18th century the monarch still had considerable influence over the Parliament of Great Britain which itself was dominated by the English aristocracy and by patronage. Candidates for the House of Commons stood as Whigs or Tories, but once elected formed shifting coalitions of interests rather than splitting along party lines. At general elections, the vote was restricted to property owners in constituencies which were out of date and did not reflect the growing importance of manufacturing towns or shifts of population, so that in many rotten borough seats could be bought or were controlled by rich landowners while major cities remained unrepresented. Discontent with these inequities inspired those individuals who later became known as the "Radical Whigs".
Belgium
The territories of modern Belgium had been merged into the Kingdom of the Netherlands in 1815. Aside from various religious and socioeconomic tensions between the Dutch north and proto-Belgian south, over the 1820s a young generation of Belgians, heavily influenced by French Enlightenment ideas, had formulated criticisms of the Dutch monarchy as autocratic. The monarch enjoyed broad personal powers, his ministers were irresponsible before parliament; the separation of powers was minimal; freedom of press and association were limited; the principle of universal suffrage was undermined by the fact that the largely Catholic south, despite possessing two-thirds of the population, received as many seats to the Estates-General (parliament) as the smaller Protestant north; and the Dutch authorities were suspected of forcing Protestantism onto Catholics. These concerns combined to produce a pro-Catholic Radicalism distinct from both the anticlerical Radicalism of France, and the Protestant Liberalism of the Dutch north.
Following the political crisis of 1829, where the Crown Prince was named prime minister, a limited reform was introduced establishing constitutional rights, similar to the charter of rights of France's autocratic Restoration Monarchy; the Belgian Radicals, like their French counterparts, regarded such a charter of rights as insufficient, potentially revocable by a whim of the monarch. Belgian Radicals closely followed the situation in France when, on 26 July to 1 August 1830, a conservative-liberal revolution broke out, overthrowing the autocratic monarchy for a liberal constitutional monarchy. Within a month a revolt had erupted in Brussels before spreading to the rest of the Belgian provinces. After Belgian independence, the Constitution of 1831 established a constitutional monarchy and parliamentary regime, and provided a list of fundamental civil rights inspired by the French Declaration of the Right of Man.
As in Britain, Radicals in Belgium continued to operate within the Liberal Party, campaigning throughout the 19th Century for the property-restricted suffrage to be extended. This was extended a first time in 1883, and universal male suffrage was achieved in 1893 (though female suffrage would have to wait until 1948). After this Radicalism was a minor political force in Belgium, its role taken over by the emergence of a powerful social-democratic party.
France
During the nineteenth century, the Radicals in France were the political group of the far-left, relative to the centre-left "opportunists" (Gambetta: conservative-liberal and republican), the centre-right Orléanists (conservative-liberal and monarchist), the far-right Legitimists (anti-liberal monarchist), and the supporters of a republican military dictatorship, the Bonapartists.
Following the Napoleonic Wars and until 1848, it was technically illegal to advocate republicanism openly. Some republicans reconciled themselves to pursuing liberalism through the socially-conservative monarchy—the 'opportunists'. Those who remained intransigent in believing that the French Revolution needed to be completed through a republican regime based on parliamentary democracy and universal suffrage therefore tended to call themselves "Radicals" – a term meaning 'Purists'.
Under the Second Republic (1848–1852), the Radicals, on a platform of seeking a "social and democratic republic", sat together in parliament in a group named The Mountain. When Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte launched his military coup, Radicals across France rose up in insurrection to defend the democratic republic. This experience would mark French Radicalism for the next century, prompting permanent vigilance against all those who – from Marshall Mac-Mahon to General De Gaulle – were suspected of seeking to overthrow the constitutional, parliamentary regime.
After the return to parliamentary democracy in 1871, the Radicals emerged as a significant political force: led by Georges Clemenceau, they claimed that the socially-conservative liberal republicanism of Léon Gambetta and Jules Ferry had drifted away from the ideals of the French Revolution, and that the Radicals were the true heirs to 1791. In 1881, they put forward their programme of broad social reforms: from then on, the tactic of the main Radical Party was to have 'no enemies to the left' of the Republic, allying with any group that sought social reform while accepting the legality of the parliamentary republic.
The Radicals were not yet a political party as they sat together in parliament out of kinship, but they possessed minimal organisation outside of parliament. The first half of the Third Republic saw several events that caused them to fear a far-right takeover of parliament that might end democracy, as Louis-Napoléon had: Marshall Mac-Mahon's self-coup in 1876, the General Boulanger crisis in the 1880s, the Dreyfus Affair in the 1890s. The Radicals were swept to power first in a coalition government (1899) then in governments of their own from 1902. They finally managed to implement their long-standing programme of reforms, such as the separation of Church and State, or the introduction of secret ballotting. In order to ensure that their legacy would remain unreversed, they unified the local Radical committees into an elector party: the Radical-Socialist Party, the first major modern political party in French history.
Ireland
Irish republicanism was influenced by American and French radicalism. Typical of these classical Radicals are 19th century such as the United Irishmen in the 1790s, Young Irelanders in the 1840s, Fenian Brotherhood in the 1880s, as well as Sinn Féin, and Fianna Fáil in the 1920s.
Japan
Japan's radical-liberalism during the Empire of Japan was dissident because it resisted the government's political oppression of republicanism. Rikken Minseitō, who supported the Empire of Japan's system at the time, were classified as "conservative". Therefore, the radical liberal movement during the Japanese Empire was not separated from socialism and anarchism unlike the West at that time. Kōtoku Shūsui was a representative Japanese radical liberal.
After World War II, Japan's left-wing liberalism emerged as a "peace movement" and was largely led by the Japan Socialist Party.
Since Japanese conservatism was influenced by Shintoism, Japan's radical liberalism and democratic socialism against it were influenced by Christianity.
United States
One of the trends of the American radical movement was the Jacksonian democracy, which advocated political egalitarianism among white men.
Radicalism was represented by the Radical Republicans, especially the Stalwarts, more commonly known as Radical Republican. A collection of abolitionist and democratic reformers, some of whom were fervent supporters of trade unionism and in opposition to wage labor such as Benjamin Wade.
Later political expressions of classical Radicalism centered around the Populist Party, composed of rural western and southern farmers who were proponents of policies such as railroad nationalization, free silver, expansion of voting rights and labor reform.
Continental Europe and Latin America
In continental Europe and Latin America, as for instance in France, Italy, Spain, Chile and Argentina (Radical Civic Union), Radicalism developed as an ideology in the 19th century to indicate those who supported at least in theory a republican form of government, universal male suffrage and, particularly, anti-clerical policies.
In German-speaking countries, this current is known as Freisinn (literally "free mind", or "freethought"), as in German Freeminded Party from 1884 to 1893, then Eugen Richter's Freeminded People's Party; and the Free Democratic Party of Switzerland.
The Freethinker parties, located mainly in the Netherlands, Scandinavia and German-speaking countries, included:
In Switzerland:
The Radical movement (or "Free-thinking" movement in the German-speaking cantons), not yet a political party, emerged during the period of Regeneration, starting 1830 (coincident with the French July Revolution). It became the dominant political force under the 1848 Constitution, holding all seven posts in the Federal Council until 1891.
The Radical-Democratic Party (PRD; in French-speaking Switzerland), also known as the Free-minded Democratic Party (FDP; in German-speaking Switzerland) existed from 1894 to 2009. It started as a centre-left party but gradually moved to the centre-right in the course of time. It was still by far the strongest party until the 1940s, holding at least four of seven posts in the Federal Council. Under the 1959 "magic formula" it held two of seven posts in the Federal Council.
The Radical-Liberal Party (PLR), or FDP. The Liberals (in the German-speaking regions), was formed in 2009 by the merger of PRD/FDP with the smaller, more right-leaning Liberal Party of Switzerland.
In the Netherlands:
Radical League (1882–1901)
Serbia and Montenegro
Radicalism had played a pivotal role in the birth and development of parliamentarism and the construction of the modern Serbian state leading to the Yugoslavian unification. The People's Radical Party formed in 1881 was the strongest political party and was in power in the Kingdom of Serbia more than all others together. The 1888 Constitution of the Kingdom of Serbia that defined it as an independent nation and formalised parliamentary democracy was among the most advanced in the entire world due to Radical contribution and it is known as The Radical Constitution. In 1902, a crack had occurred in which the Independent Radical Party left and "the Olde" remained in the party, leading the original People's Radical Party to stray far from progressivism and into right-wing nationalism and conservatism. In the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, the Independent Radicals united with the rest of the Serbian opposition and the liberal and civic groups in the rest of the new country, forming the Yugoslav Democratic Party, while several Republican dissidents formed a Republican Party. The NRS had promoted Serb nationalism and put itself as the defender of Serb national interests. Democrats and Radicals were the dominant political parties, especially since the exclusion of the Communists. Later far-right parties such as the Yugoslav Radical Union and the Serbian Radical Party adopted the title "radical" as allusion to NRS.
In Montenegro, a People's Party was formed in 1907 as the country's first political party and remained the largest in the period of country's parliamentary history until the Yugoslavian unification. Later, a True People's Party was formed, which never got widespread popular support and whose bigger part had joined the original NS, but the difference was not ideological and instead was opposition and support of the Crown and sometimes in foreign relations to Serbia (the clubbists were the crown's dissidents and supporters of the people as well as Serbia as a regional power and brotherly ally—the rightists were generally anti-democratic and autocratic monarchist and also distrustful to the Serbian government's acts on the national plan).