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Why all the radicals? Michael Higgins
In this short piece, I do not aim to directly address the contemporary appropriations of and designations of radical; an endeavour that will be pursued in various ways elsewhere in this special issue. Rather, I want to highlight some of the strands and networks of meaning that have attended notions of the radical over the centuries; in producing an admittedly haphazard reading of definitions and usages coming to and retreating from dominance, crossing from mediaeval science to politics, from molecular chemistry to popular medicine. Stemming from this inevitably selective account, I suggest that two factors dominate: one is the history of radical as the articulation of first principles, and the other is the radical as the drive for revolutionary change. At first sight, these stand opposed to one another. At times, “radical” expresses the essential; that which precedes and underpins our perceptual and physical being. At other times, it refers to those who would upend the accepted order; those for whom, as Marx and Engels express it in The Communist Manifesto, “all that’s solid melts into air”.1 Yet, as we see now more than ever, this is a cocktail of meanings that enables new and mutated rhetorics of change founded on claimed relationships with the rudiments of doctrine and of existence: the radical as the self-appointed champion of an original, routinely mythical, order. 17
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The radical as fundamental and inscrutable In the history of science, radical refers to that which is fundamental to the being and development of living organisms. When we look at medieval to early-modern texts, however, it is plain that the taxonomy around the radical would take the place of a post-renaissance explanation of elements, processes, actions: giving rise to assertions of fundamental qualities based as much on myth and intuition as the application of reason. We find this in discussion of the “radical humours”; a preposterous system that attributes health and well-being to the relative prominence of black bile, yellow bile, phlegm and blood.2 It is their very status as “radicals” that accords the humours the privilege of intangibility allied with constant influence; inscrutable to the uninformed but in plain sight of the schooled physician. This is a vision in which the radical humours constitute our very essence, sustaining and composing our physical and mental well-being. The use of radical humours sustain over several centuries, not because of their medical purchase – of which there was conspicuously none – but for their metaphorical strength. It is this evocative power of the inscrutable that Quarles draws upon in his lovelorn “whilst my sorrow-wasting soule was [f]eeding Upon the rad’cal Humour of her thought”,3 and likewise novelist Charles Kingsley accords his water babies “radical humours … of a moist and cold nature”.4 This determination of radical as the irreducible, intrinsic core appears more tangibly in the study of language itself, in referring to the lexical core of a related series of terms: such that “walk” provides the radical that enables “walking” or “walked”. This opportunity for metaphorical transference is clear, and notions of radical also appeared in religious writing, in rhetoric designed to emphasise the irreducibility of the tenets of dogma. In a much-quoted example from 1673, John Bunyan remarks ironically on the doctrinal confidence of the author Mr Fowler in grasping “the very radicals of Christianity”.5
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Before turning to its political vitality, it is worth dwelling on the version of this radicalism that emphasises independence of thought. We see this in playwright Eugene O’Neill’s reassurance in the script of Strange Interlude that his character “is most liberal – even radical – in his tolerant understanding”.7 To be radical To secure a conquest, it was always necessary here is to be non-doctrinal; to betray intellectual to plant a colony, and territories, thus occupied curiosity. While spoken of in hushed tones and settled, were rightly considered, as mere amongst defenders of the establishment, extensions, or processes of empire; as radicalism has intellectual provenance and ramifications which, by the circulation of was used in the names of political organisations one publick interest, communicated with the and cultural movements both deserving and original source of dominion, and which were disreputable. Through such constructions as kept flourishing and spreading by the radical “radical art”, it is easy to see that this intellectual 6 vigour of the mother-country. suppleness was spiced with danger. This frisson Those familiar with Johnson’s damning of hazard, allied with the excitement of the new, assessment of patriotism as a haven of scoundrels was to find later form in the adoption of “radical” will see the irony in this vision of empire and as an item of the highest praise by the US conquest as instruments of a single “publick surf culture of the 1960s. In chuckling at the interest”; an opportunistic emotional affectation of “radical chic” of the late 1960s – commitment to the national cause that inspires with its focus on the aesthetic of the even his familial anthropomorphisation to revolutionary over the struggle for change – “the mother-country”. A thorough reading of Tom Wolfe acknowledged the need to disentangle the pamphlet shows that Johnson remains this fetishisation of rebelliousness from the alert to the hypocrisy of others – asking of the commitment of struggle.8 preeminent American colonists “how is it that Radical and dangerous transformation we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?”. The efforts of his own Both imagined and real, this sense of danger has country, however, as said to proceed on the always attended the use of radical in a political basis of its unshakable fortitude; exhibiting context, positioned as devotees of an extreme that “radical vigour” that established empire interpretation of politics and committed to the in the first place. spread of their ideological canon. Of course, since systems of political belief are composites of the established, the common sense, the controversial, Radical as agility of mind the pragmatic and the idealistic, determinations of “the extreme” are limitlessly interpretative We can therefore see that in its claims to the and should be assessed amid the norms of the fundamental, these iterations of the radical assert age and the intransigence of those in power. The an essence that remains conveniently outside supporters of the parliamentary reform movement our spectrum of vision, and which can used of the 18th century, with their wish to see the to uphold a shambles of ideas from ancient right to vote extended, provide just one example medical quackery to asserting the inert of the retrospectively reasonable deemed extreme dynamism of nations. This is a reading of enough to warrant the description of radical, with radical that sees it as an ideal bearer and its discursive and legal sanction. protector of ideological and primitive hogwash. But much of our contemporary understanding of the radical is directed less towards the insistence on a fundamental as intrinsic and unwavering than with its assertion of a relationship with those fundamentals with a review to mastering and changing them. But this claim to a core essence also applies to those mythical and inscrutable entities around which populations gather. The following extract is from Samuel Johnson’s 1775 pamphlet Taxation No Tyranny, penned in response to the demands for independence from the American colonies:
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Since we have spoken about the notion of radical as fundamental in the mediaeval science of the humours, it is worth noting that this commitment towards forcing transformation finds form in the “free radicals” of molecular chemistry. Atoms or ions with unpaired variance electrons, free radicals have qualities of extremely high reactiveness with other particles. Talk of the fight against free radicals, and their speedy and malignant influence, has entered into the discourses of popular medicine. This iteration of the radical as a thoroughly dangerous type, hostile to the abiding tenets of the established system and bent on its upheaval, has some echoes with the tone of the early association between radicalism and the political left. In the early nineteenth century, radicalism would be routinely collocated with Jacobinism,9 bringing associations with revolutionary France and its bloody undercurrent. With varying degrees of justification, references to radicals would routinely carry connotations of disorder. It was in this mood that MP Mr Henry Brougham turns to the radicals in the debate on Lord Castlereagh’s 1819 Seizure of Arms Bill:
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It appeared then that Westmorland was to be punished, not for any radical principles, of which it had none, but on account of its misfortune in being situated between radical districts. The noble lord happened, however, to be unfortunate in his geography, for Dumfriesshire was situated between the disaffected part of Scotland and Lancashire, and yet it was not included. Perhaps the noble lord might as well urge that Westmorland was included in order to prepare for another measure, to stop the radicals in transitu through that county.10 Amid the establishment-sanctioned political thuggery that gave rise to the Peterloo massacre later in the year, Brougham speaks on behalf of those areas inconvenienced by measures against radical activity. Even from Brougham’s comparatively sympathetic position, a literal interpretation of this contribution designates areas housing radicals positioned as outlaw districts. What we see here is the appropriation of radical as an item in the political lexicon, to be used against those presenting a threat to the established political order. Indeed, we can even detect measures of radicalism with varying levels of menace, such as the seemingly immoderate “radical socialists” of the early 20th century against whom mere radicals such as Herbert Asquith were said to provide a moderating influence.11 Another sustained, and demonstrably revolutionary, example is provided by the radical feminist movement. Finding first expression in a 1912 book by Ellen Key,12 radical feminism refuses the dominant interpretations of systemic oppression, and argues instead that the tenets of inequality and corruption are gender and patriarchal dominance. However, while the focus has been on the radical’s use by and against the left and the forces of political reform, an appropriately situated hegemonic centre can equally mobilise the term against the political right. While early associations between the radical and the right are the exception rather than the norm, Samuel Finer would refer to politically-motivated Egyptian army officers as “right-wing radicals”.13
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New/old radicals As the radical fallen into disrepute, the “third way” project of the 1990s provides a ready example. For all its flaws, Anthony Giddens’ Beyond Left and Right: the Future of Radical Politics14 contributed to a new currency for ideas of the radical, by situating it within a discursive struggle over those qualities we have discussed above: mastery of the core essentials of the social realm and freedom of a revolutionary will. Such that the Conservative was one that held fast to an established order – retrograde rather than progressive – the domain of radicalism had been mainly dominated by the left, and their demands that the class hierarchies of the past be dismantled. Latterly, however, and in a manner discussed by Stuart Hall before,15 the right wing have brought their own form of populist radicalism to prominence. Developing this further, in an explicit rejection of the hegemonic language of mutual care, a radical right are armed with their own pseudo-scientific lexicon of economic determinism, based on the proposition the true “radical” is the force of the market. In its sustained drive to understand that which is fundamental, to expose to discourse what is taken for granted, radicalism has always been designed to be an unsettling term. In mainstream politics, it may be said that the weight of meaning it carried in the 19th century has evaporated, and its use in contemporary political discourse has been surrendered to cliché. Radicalism has a history in understanding and striking at core values, but in its association with the monetarist right it has become a means of rationalising avarice and self-interest. Even on the left, the radical of the third way itself strutted only briefly; a politics of platitude and gesture wearing stolen clothes.
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Only on rare occasions has the radical been at home in mainstream politics. At least partly, this is because the radical is a creature of representation, in particular the manner in which its intensified deployment by the political and media establishment is used to define and marginalise dangers to the political order. However, the radical has a history, pertinence and range of meanings beyond the expressive span of the middle-market press. Just as current representations of the radical emphasise destruction, progressive democrats and the left have embodied its critical intelligence and transformative power. The power of the radical has presented us with many of the mores of liberal democracy – the drive for freedom, the pursuit of fairness – and the courage of future radicals will be in realising these are worth revisiting and enhancing.
Endnotes 1 Marx, Karl & Friedrich Engels (2010) The Communist Manifesto. Harmondsworth: Penguin, p. 4. 2 Reymond, Arnold and Ruth Gheury De Bray (1927) History of the Sciences in Greco-Roman Antiquity. New York: Dutton. 3 Quarles, Francis (1643) Emblemes. Cambridge: RD for Francis Eglesfeild, p. 234. 4 Kingsley, Charles (2006) The Water Babies: a Fairy Tale for a Land Baby. New York: Dover, p. 149. 5 Buyan, John (2016 [1673]) A Defence of the Doctrine of Justification, in http://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo/A30137.0001. 001/1:3?rgn=div1;view=fulltext (accessed 12 February 2016). 6 Johnson, Samuel (1913) The Works of Samuel Johnson (vol 14). New York: Pafraets & Company, p. 93. 7 O’Neill, Eugene (1927) Strange Interlude, at http://gutenberg. net.au/ebooks04/0400161h.html (accessed 1 March, 2016) 8 Wolfe, Tom (1970) “Radical chic: that party at Lenny’s”, New York Magazine, 8 June. 9 McCalman, Iain (1988) Radical Underworld; Prophets, Revolutionaries and Pornographers in London, 1795-1840. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 10 Brougham, Henry (1819). In http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/ commons/1819/mar/14/seizure-of-arms-bill#S1V0041P0_ 18190314_HOC_54 (accessed 12 February 2016). 11 MacCoby, S. (1953) English Radicalism, 1886-1914. London: George Allen and Unwin. 12 Key, E. (1912) The Woman Movement. New York: G.P. Putnam’s/The Knickerbocker Press. 13 Finer, Samuel, E. (1962) The Man on Horseback: the Role of the Military in Politics. New York: Transaction, p.59. 14 Giddens, Anthony (1994) Beyond Left and Right: the Future of Radical Politics. Cambridge: Polity. 15 Hall, Stuart (1988) The Hard Road to Renewal. London: Verso.
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