What is Political Radicalism?

Political radicalism is not strictly a province of either socialism or capitalism, nor even of anarchism or authoritarianism; it is not inextricably linked to any specific systematic political, social, or economic ideology.

Written on June 21st, 2011

   It is not even necessarily that political radicalism is primarily driven by any kind of positivist philosophy, i.e., by any kind of tendency towards supporting the freedom of dissidence or contention.

   Rather, political radicalism is primarily driven by an aversion towards compromise, accommodation, and reconciliation.

   Unlike political reactionaries, political radicals do not wish to return political society to some previous state of being, but rather to bring political society into some yet unrealized theoretical state which has never before existed in the geographic locality in which their society operates. It is in this way that political radicalism is a reaction to reactionism itself.

   This is because - while reactionaries see the current state of society and seek to remedy its problems by gradually returning to a previous state - radicals denounce and question the validity of the premises on which both current and previous societies existed.

   Radicals view the solution to most sociopolitical problems as overcoming the limitations of the present reality through the affecting of instantaneous change, whether that change be concrete, physical, and violent (as in revolution); or immaterial, intangible, abstract, and peaceful (as in a philosophical awakening in which the people begin to find the freedom which they seek to be latent in the current reality around them, existing in pockets and waiting to be seized and taken advantage of).

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