“Radical” refers to individuals, parties, and movements that seek to drastically alter any existing practice, institution, or social system. As radicals are highly dissatisfied with the society, they want immediate and revolutionary changes. Extreme leftists challenge the most cherished values and assumptions of society. They reject the institutions of the establishment, and seek a more humane, egalitarian, and idealistic social and political system. Many people may share such ideals. But they lack the idealism, are too selfish and suffer from inertia.
Many radicals espouse violence. Some writers consider pacificists alsoas radicals. Pacifists totally reject violence as a means to achieve justice. They uphold human rights and believe that no one has the right to injure or kill another in pursuit of any goal. Some writers cite Gandhiji and Dr. Martin Luther King as radicals wedded to non violence. Although Gandhiji aimed at profound political and social changes, he was also conservative in many ways.
The causes and aims of Radicalism and its forms have been changing in recent times. Earlier on, Radicalism was associated with anarchism and opposition to the very existence of governments. In India, we tend to associate Radicalism with ultra left movements. In the west, radicalism stood for various movements in recent past.
♤ During the Cold War, Radicalism was associated with proposals to fundamentally alter the capitalist economic and social system.
♤ During the 1960s, the civil rights movement in USA and the beat cultural movement created, in C. Wright Mills’s words, a New Left.
♤ Student movements of the west in 1960s advocated an activist participatory democracy and a radical restructuring of society, either through social revolution, or by ‘tuning in, turning on, and dropping out’. The beat movement developed into the mass “hippie” counterculture, which championed “alternative” living arrangements and philosophies of life.
♤ Feminists opposed denial of work opportunities to women and advocated change in women’s status in homes. They also fought for abortion rights and for equal rights as with men.
♤ The social radicalism of the 1960s also created consumer and environmental movements. Ralph Nader encouraged activist researchers and lawyers to expose and challenge the abuses of corporate power.
♤ In the 1980s, alliances of radicals and liberals challenged and slowed down nuclear power industry, demanded a nuclear freeze and defended reservations for minorities and women and opposed President Ronald Reagan’s “Star Wars” proposal.
Many of these programmes have become part of the liberal democratic agenda in the West. These forms of radicalism are reactions to elite hegemony. One writer observes, “They [radicals] protest against the gap between democratic rhetoric and real life realities. They challenge complacency, think the previously unthinkable, and induce society’s mainstream to mendits ways.” These ideas also inspire Indian protest movements like for women’s entry into temples on equal footing with men.