Radical

Radical (politics)

Introduction to Radical

Radical (politics), members of a movement that advocates extreme change of political and social institutions. The word was first used in the political sense in England, when the British statesman Charles James Fox asked for “a radical reform” that would extend the franchise to universal manhood suffrage. The term radical afterward indicated those in support of parliamentary reform. After the passage of the Reform Bill of 1832, a measure primarily benefiting the middle class, a group of Radicals allied with the Whig faction in Parliament worked to extend the vote to the working class. When suffrage was further widened by the Reform Bill of 1867, the Radicals organized the new voters and succeeded in transforming the Whig Party into the Liberal Party of the later 19th century.

The British Radicals, led by the philosopher James Mill, the jurist and philosopher Jeremy Bentham, and the political economist David Ricardo, developed a philosophy based on Bentham’s principle of “the greatest happiness of the greatest number.” They proposed as a means to this end the removal of all political and social restraints on economic relations, believing that individuals are free to the extent that their commercial life is unrestricted. British radicalism was an effort to establish private economic expansion as the principle of the modern state.

In France, before the Revolution of 1848, a radical was a supporter of universal manhood suffrage. After 1869 the French statesman Georges Clemenceau led a radical faction away from moderate republicanism, and in 1881 his party called for sweeping reforms; in 1901 the Radical-Socialist Party was formed.

Today, the term radical most frequently is used to indicate extreme liberalism. Reactionary is the term given to an adherent of extreme conservatism. The labels, left and right, respectively, have been attached to these viewpoints. Communism is an example of radical, leftist extremism, and fascism exemplifies the extreme rightist views. ” (1)

Resources

Notes and References

• Information about Radical in the Encarta Online Encyclopedia

Guide to Radical