Radical political thought is hard to define. First of all, “radical” has at least two distinct connotations, as applied to political ideologies or parties. In one sense, any political thought that is far from the mainstream might be called radical. Anything that is too weird to be taken seriously on election day is radical, or, equivalently, “fringe.”
This meaning of the word is a relatively recent innovation, though; it is first attested in 1921. The older political meaning of the term is for the party of radical reform, that is, reforming government or society at its roots (from the Latin radix). That is, the older sense is definitely applicable to the political Left, the parties that seek to change the very basis of the given or inherited social and political system. The possibility of a radical Right is recent. Why would this be so?
I think the shortest answer is: the appearance of capitalism and the rise to political power of the bourgeoisie. As Marx famously declared in the Manifesto of the Communist Party, in 1848:
The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his “natural superiors”, and has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous “cash payment”. It has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervour, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. […]
The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honoured and looked up to with reverent awe. It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid wage labourers. […]
The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society. Conservation of the old modes of production in unaltered form, was, on the contrary, the first condition of existence for all earlier industrial classes. Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind.
The modern world is a world in which the radical reform of society is the norm. Only in such a society could there be radical Right-wingers, for only in such a society could the desire that things not change, or that they change back, require changing society at its roots.
Another effect of this fact of the modern world is that radical political thought is pegged to the historical moment in a way unlike, say, liberal political thought. Hence, studying the radical political thought of 16th century Europe would mean studying the Protestant Reformation, and the various anti-Catholic (or anti-Catholicism-as-it-actually-exists) writers. On the other hand, studying the radical political thought of 17th century Europe would involve the monarchomachs, those who advocated the overthrow of kings, and the early liberal advocates of religious freedom and popular sovereignty. Etc.
So what then is radical political thought today?
I think here that something else Marx wrote was prescient. In 1843, assessing and trying to further the prospects for revolution in his native Germany
The weapon of criticism cannot, of course, replace criticism of the weapon, material force must be overthrown by material force; but theory also becomes a material force as soon as it has gripped the masses. Theory is capable of gripping the masses as soon as it demonstrates ad hominem, and it demonstrates ad hominem as soon as it becomes radical. To be radical is to grasp the root of the matter. But, for man, the root is man himself.
If the root of man is man himself, then it would seem that the radical political project would be to change man himself. Most political theory follows in Rousseau’s footsteps, in that it tries to take men as they are and the laws as they might be. That is, human being is taken as a stable and given fact of the world, and any changes in social or political order or convention are expected to respect this given fact of human being. Radical political thought, following Marx, is not content with this method of proceeding. What if human being is not the independent variable of the history of institutional and political change? What if “man” is not a bedrock datum to be respected as given, but a problem, a work in progress, a project, or a stumbling block to be overcome?
I think much contemporary radical political thought can be read as departing from this problematization of “man,” and I would like to approach this course as an extended meditation on this possibility. There are many ways in which man might be changed. Man might become woman. Man might become animal. Man might become machine. Man might be abolished altogether. The possibilities for thought are numerous. We will explore some of them.
Reading fro Tuesday: Luxemburg, Reform or Revolution?, I & III.
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