RADICALISM

In the late nineteenth century French Radical republicanism constituted an established political tradition and a new political enterprise. Radicals claimed the heritage of the French Revolution and pledged to complete transformations begun in 1789 and 1793. They participated in a distinctive political culture, which took shape in the 1860s in opposition to the Second Empire. Radicals were principal actors in the audacious project to create a republic in a major European state after 1870. By the first decade of the twentieth century Radicals dominated the Chamber of Deputies and led French governments. While such popularity and authority were not duplicated elsewhere in Europe, smaller Radical groups and parties could be found in Spain and Italy.

radical political culture

In general Radical politicians emerged from the professional bourgeoisie. They were men with lycée and university education—lawyers, physicians, and journalists. They were trained in classical rhetoric and had a passion for words. Politicians were expected to present endless extemporaneous speeches, and their supporters devoured newspapers devoted to parliamentary intrigue, foreign affairs, and serialized novels. Parliamentary deputies mixed with the Parisian avant-garde and frequented popular music halls. Rank-and-file Radicals inhabited small-town provincial France. Especially in the south, teachers, pharmacists, and café owners served as local militants.

Radical political culture was profoundly masculine. Radicals always spoke of "universal suffrage," when they meant universal male suffrage. The citizen was assumed to be a man. Radicalism developed at a moment of extreme gender segregation within the bourgeoisie. Radical politicians inhabited exclusively male environments—the lycée, the university, the law courts, newspaper offices, and the Chamber of Deputies. By the late nineteenth century, women were entering the political arena. Feminists were demanding civil and political rights. A few Radicals, following the logic of their own political beliefs, supported them. Other women passionately and vociferously defended the Catholic Church and denounced Radical anticlericalism. The majority of Radicals became even more convinced of the need to exclude women from political life.

Among the defining tenets of Radical political culture, secularism was paramount. Radical republicans viewed themselves as embattled opponents of an obscurantist and militant Catholic Church. They claimed to defend Enlightenment principles of science and reason. Religion must be excluded from public life. Radicalism drew on and in turn energized the organizations of Freemasons and Free Thinkers. Positivism with its insistence on a knowable objective world was a major philosophical support of this secularism. Kantian moral imperatives and liberal Protestantism tempered this scientism.

Equally central to Radical beliefs was a deep commitment to representative government created and legitimated by universal male suffrage. The authority of the state could only function when based on a fully democratic electoral process. Such a state could only take the form of a republic. Immediately after the establishment of the Third Republic intransigent Radicals condemned the parliamentary institutions inherited from successive nineteenth-century monarchies, viewing them as obstacles to popular sovereignty. However, being ambitious politicians, the Radicals came to terms with parliamentary structures and by 1910 were the dominant force in both the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate. By the first decade of the twentieth century their critics decried Radicals as consummate parliamentarians steeped in pomposity, corruption, and immobility.

The Radicals' republicanism called for active citizens who were bound together by fervent patriotism and whose rights were protected by the state. Steeped in an antiaristocratic tradition, Radicals were suspicious of any privilege. Citizens' independence could be hampered not only by clerical interference but also by economic dependence. Radicals proposed and supported legislation to limit economic privilege and safeguard the ability of workers to function as citizens. They decried class divisions as antithetical to the Republic. They collaborated with socialists on labor reform legislation. They called for a progressive income tax as a measure to support egalitarianism.

The high point of French Radicalism occurred between 1899 and 1910. The Radicals were the unanticipated victors in the aftermath of the Dreyfus affair, the scandal over the Army condemnation of a Jewish officer, Alfred Dreyfus, for espionage. A few idiosyncratic Radicals had been prominent supporters of Dreyfus. As a group, however, Radical politicians had long hesitated to take a position. By 1900 following legislative elections and the formation of a government of "republican defense" the political tilt was clearly in the Dreyfusard direction. Radicals and Dreyfusards shared the same opponents—right-wing nationalists, conservatives, the church, and the military. Radicals seized this opportunity to extend their anticlerical campaign and to promote a more republican political and social life. In 1901 most Radicals, although not all, organized the Radical and Radical-Socialist Party, the first formal party in France. Although a step to greater unity, the party's composite name suggests the continuing diversity within Radicalism.

agenda

The Radical Party collaborated with Socialists and a few moderate republicans in a parliamentary coalition. The 1902 and 1906 legislative and municipal elections were victories for this coalition and Radical-led governments were formed. Their agenda was continuing secularization, moderate social reforms, and further republicanization of French society. Anticlerical measures were enacted that severely constrained the existence of religious congregations and the ability of their members to teach. These were condemned as sectarian attacks on religious freedom, but they had the enthusiastic support of the Radical rank and file. Church and state were formally separated in 1905, and France became the only secular polity in Europe. By 1907 however the government encountered ever more determined and popular Catholic resistance to its efforts to limit church influence and presence. Quietly the state retreated and relaxed the implementation of the most contested laws.

While Radicals called for social reforms, the accomplishments were small. Legislation on obligatory old-age pensions had been debated for years and remained blocked in the Senate. The progressive income tax made little progress. The French working class was increasingly organized and militant. Major strikes demanding legislation for an eight-hour day received little response. Efforts to unionize postal workers alarmed Radicals. The revolutionary antimilitarism of some unions enraged patriotic Radicals. The powerful alliance of the left between Radicals and Socialists unraveled and in 1905 the Socialists withdrew. Finally among the Radicals themselves, never a homogeneous group, tensions increased. Parliamentarians ignored the progressive programs endorsed by party militants at annual congresses. Some Radicals viewed Socialists as dangerous "collectivists"; others saw them and their working-class constituents as natural allies. These differences reflected the persistent tension within Radicalism between efforts to promote the equality of all citizens and the commitment to protect the independent, autonomous individual.

Although still a powerful electoral and parliamentary force in the years immediately preceding World War I, Radicals no longer dominated governments, nor did they set the parliamentary agenda. Their goals had encountered considerable obstacles, perhaps inescapable in a society composed of contending classes, sharply distinguished genders, and diverse cultures. The politics of interest, class, and war invaded their ranks and over-whelmed their agendas. Nonetheless, the political significance of Radicalism and the assumptions of its political culture continued to be influential through the interwar years.

See alsoDreyfus Affair; Liberalism; Separation of Church and State (France, 1905); Socialism.

bibliography

Berstein, Serge. Histoire du parti radical. 2 vols. Paris, 1980–1982.

Mayeur, Jean-Marie, and Madeleine Rebérioux. The Third Republic from Its Origins to the Great War, 1871–1914. Translated by J. R. Foster. Cambridge, U.K., 1984. (This work originally appeared as two separate volumes in French: Jean-Marie Mayeur, Les débuts de la Troisième République, 1871–1898, Paris, 1973; and Madeleine Rebérioux, La république radicale? 1898–1914, Paris, 1975.)

Nord, Philip. The Republican Moment: Struggles for Democracy in Nineteenth-Century France. Cambridge, Mass., 1995.

Stone, Judith F. Sons of the Revolution: Radical Democrats in France, 1862–1914. Baton Rouge, La., 1996.

Judith F. Stone