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Title: In Defense of Radicalism Author: Jeff Shantz Date: 2013 Language: en Topics: radicalism, radical, radicalization, radicals, theory, anarchist sociology, sociology, criminology Source: Radical Criminology
In the present period few terms or ideas have been as slandered,
distorted, diminished, or degraded as radical or radicalism. This is
perhaps not too surprising given that this is a period of expanding
struggles against state and capital, oppression and exploitation, in
numerous global contexts. In such contexts, the issue of radicalism, of
effective means to overcome power (or stifle resistance) become
pressing. The stakes are high, possibilities for real alternatives being
posed and opposed. In such contexts activists and academics must not
only adequately understand radicalism, but defend (and advance) radical
approaches to social change and social justice.
The first known use of the term radical is in the 14^(th) century,
1350–1400; Middle English coming from Late Latin rādīcālis, having
roots. It is also defined as being very different from the usual or
traditional. The term radical simply means of or going to the roots or
origin. Thoroughgoing. Straightforwardly, it means getting to the root
of a problem.
Radicalism is a perspective, an orientation in the world. It is not, as
is often mistakenly claimed, a strategy. To be radical is to dig beneath
the surface of taken for granted assumptions, too easy explanations,
unsatisfactory answers, and panaceas that pose as solutions to problems.
Radicalism challenges and opposes status quo definitions-it refuses the
self-serving justifications offered up by authority and power.
Rather than a set of ideas or actions, this is a crucial approach to
life. As the existential Marxist analyst Erich Fromm has suggested in an
earlier context of struggle:
To begin with this approach can be characterized by the motto: de
omnibus dubitandum; everything must be doubted, particularly the
ideological concepts which are virtually shared by everybody and have
consequently assumed the role of indubitable common-sensical
axioms…Radical doubt is a process; a process of liberation from
idolatrous thinking; a widening of awareness, of imaginative, creative
vision of our possibilities and options. The radical approach does not
occur in a vacuum. It does not start from nothing, but it starts from
the roots. (1971, vii)
As is true for much of views and practices in class divided capitalist
society, there are two distinct perspectives on radicalism, two meanings
of radicalism. From the first perspective of radicalism as a getting to
the roots-going to the source of problems-the nature of capital must be
understood, addressed, confronted-overcome. Ending capital’s violence
can only be achieved by ending the processes essential to its existence:
exploitation, expropriation, dispossession, profit, extraction,
possession of the commons, of nature. And how can this be accomplished?
Capital and states know-they understand. Thus, the identification of
those acts outlined above-identified, precisely, as radical.
Radicalism, from below, is sociological (and should be criminological,
though criminology has sometimes lagged). It expresses that orientation
to the world espoused by C Wright Mills as the sociological imagination
(1959). Radicalism in its first sense connects history, economy,
politics, geography, culture, seeking to move beyond the easy answers
rigidified unreflexively as “common sense” (which is often neither
common nor sensible). It digs beneath convention and the status quo. For
Fromm:
To “doubt” in this sense does not imply a psychological state of
inability to arrive at decisions or convictions, as is the case in
obsessional doubt, but the readiness and capacity for critical
questioning of all assumptions and institutions which have become idols
under the name of common sense, logic, and what is supposed to be
“natural.” (1971, viii)
More than that, radicalism does not seek nor take comfort in the
constructed moralism peddled by power-by state and capital. A radical
orientation does not accept the false moralism that defines the
acceptability of actions by their acceptability to powerholders or
elites (law and order, rights of states, property rights, and so on). As
Fromm has stated it:
This radical questioning is possible only if one does not take the
concepts of one’s own society or even of an entire historical
period-like Western culture since the Renaissance-for granted, and
furthermore if one enlarges the scope of one’s awareness and penetrates
into the unconscious aspects of one’s thinking. Radical doubt is an act
of uncovering and discovering; it is the dawning of the awareness that
the Emperor is naked, and that his splendid garments are nothing but the
product of one’s phantasy. (1971, viii)
Breaking the law (of states, property) can be straightforwardly just and
reasonable. As upholding the law can be (is, by definition) an act of
acceptance of systems of injustice and violence. The hungry do not need
to justify their efforts to feed themselves. The dispossessed do not
need to explain their attempts to house themselves. The brutalized do
not need to seek permission to stop brutality. If their efforts are
radical-as they know it to mean-real solutions to real problems-then, so
be it.
On other hand is the hegemonic definition asserted by capital (and its
state servants). In this view, distorted through power’s prism,
radicalism is a word for extremism (chaos, disorder, violence,
irrationality). Working class resistance, social movements, indigenous
struggles, peasant uprisings, direct actions, and insurrections in urban
centers-all opposition that challenges (or even calls into question)
property relations, systems of command and control, exploitation of
labor, theft of common resources by private interests-are defined by
state and capital as radicalism, by which they mean extremism, or
increasingly, terrorism.
All means of state authority control are thrown at containing or
stamping out this radicalism-it is a large part of why modern police,
criminal justice systems, and prisons, as well as the modern military,
were created, developed, and expanded. In addition, and less remarked
upon, are the “soft” practices of state and capital such as the psy
industries which have long included rebelliousness as among the maladies
requiring diagnosis and treatment.[1] As radical pedagogical theorist
Ivan Illich suggests: “True testimony of profound nonconformity arouses
the fiercest violence against it” (1971, 16). Such is the case in the
current context of social struggles, and the repression deployed by
state and capital to stamp out meaningful resistance (and frighten off
soft support).
Yet the views and practices targeted in this construction of radicalism
are really simply those that challenge and contest states and capital
and offer alternative social relations. Even where these movements pose
little or no harm to anyone, even where they are explicitly non-violent
(as in workplace occupations, strikes, indigenous land reclamations),
power poses these activities as radical and extreme (and by association
violent). This is really because such activities raise the specter of
the first understanding of radicalism-that which comes from below-that
which speaks to the perspectives of the oppressed and exploited. That
definition is, in fact, true to the roots of the word and consistent
with its meaning.
The charge of radicalism by powerholders, the question of radicalism
itself, always becomes more prominent in periods of growing struggle. It
is in those periods in which state capital has something to be concerned
about. No longer are attempts to get to the roots consigned to the
margins of social discourse, but that is what power seeks-to stuff it
back into a place of control and regulation. In periods of low struggle
the issue of radicalism is less often posed. That says something about
the nature of the debates over radicalism.
Radicalism of the first meaning is not a kneejerk reaction to social
conditions. For Illich, one must learn to distinguish “between
destructive fury and the demand for radically new forms” (1971, 122).
Where it takes apart, it takes apart in order to build. There is a need
to “distinguish between the alienated mob and profound protest” (1971,
122–123). In Fromm’s perspective:
Radical doubt means to question; it does not necessarily mean to negate.
It is easy to negate by simply positing the opposite of what exists;
radical doubt is dialectical inasmuch as it comprehends the unfolding of
oppositions and aims at a new synthesis which negates and affirms.
(1971, viii)
As the anarchist Mikhail Bakunin has suggested, the passion to destroy
is also a creative passion.
Issues of extremism, introduced by powerholders to serve their power,
are a diversion, a red herring so to speak. Supposedly extreme or
outrageous acts are not necessarily radical, as is suggested in mass
media that often treat them as synonymous. Extreme acts (and more needs
to be said about this misleading term) that fail to get to the roots of
state capital relations, such as misguided acts of violence against
civilians, are not radical. They do not get to the root of capitalist
exploitation (even if frustration over exploitation gives rise to them).
Acts that only serve to reinforce relations of repression or legitimize
state initiatives are not radical.
At the same time, some extreme acts are radical. These acts should be
judged on their real impact on state capitalist power, on institutions
of exploitation and oppression.
Within the state capitalist context extremism is rendered devoid of
meaning. In a system founded on, and subsisting on mass murder,
genocide, and ecocide as the everyday reality of its existence, notions
of extremism become irrelevant, nonsensical. Particularly when used
trivially, flippantly, to describe minor acts of opposition or
resistance, even desperation. In this context, too, the issue of
violence (in a society founded on, underpinned by everyday acts of
extreme violence) or non-violence is something of a phony construction
(one favorable to power which legitimizes its own violence or poses
violent acts like exploitation as non-violent), a rigged game.
Power never admits its own extremism, its own violence, its own chaos,
destruction, disorder. The disorder of inequality, the chaos of
dispossession, the destruction of traditional or indigenous communities
and relationships-the extermination of survival, of the planet itself.
These are real extremist behaviors. They are, in fact endemic to the
exercise of power within state capitalist societies.
The destruction of entire ecosystems for the profit of a few is a
ferociously “rational” act (against the irrationality of radical
approaches to stop such devastation). The extinguishing of entire
communities-the genocide of peoples-to secure land and resources is an
unspeakably extreme action, in ecological and human terms. Yet power
never identifies this as at all radical-it is always simply a fact of
life, a cost of doing business, a side effect of necessary progress, an
unfortunate outcome of history (with no one responsible).
And these are not even the extremes, not even rare outliers of
capitalism-these are the foundational acts of capital’s being-they are
the nature of capital. Colonial conquest, for example, is not an
unfortunate side effect or excess of capitalism-it is its very
possibility, its essence.
Activists who fail to get to the root of social or ecological
problems-who fail to understand what radicalism from below means for
resistance-can be, and generally are, too readily enlisted by state
capital in the hegemonic chorus that assails and condemns, that slanders
and besmirches radicalism. We see this in the context of alternative
globalization movements in which some activists, claiming non-violent
civil disobedience (NVCD) ahistorically, without context, as if it is
some sort of fetish object, who then join the police, politicians,
corporations, and mass media in condemning direct action, blockades,
street occupations, barricades, or, of course, property damage, as being
too radical-as acts of violence. The voices of anti-radical activists
becomes a part of the delegitimation of resistance itself, a key aspect
in the maintenance of power and inequality.
Such public disavowals of resistance serve to justify, excuse, and
maintain the very real violence that is capital. Perspectives, including
those of activists, that condemn resistance, including, for example,
armed resistance, are simply enabling apologizing for, justifying the
continued and expanded (it always expands in the absence of real
opposition) violence of state capital.
Survival is not a crime. Survival is never radical. Exploitation is
always a crime (or should be). Exploitation is only ever the norm of
capitalist social relations.
Powerholders will always seek to discredit or delegitimize resistance to
their privilege and deployment of loaded (misconstructed and
misconstrued by powerholders) terms like radicalism will be a tactic in
this. One can follow the reconstruction of the term “terror” to see an
example of such processes. The term ‘terror’ was initially used to
designate state violence deployed against anyone deemed to be a threat
to instituted authority, to the state. (Badiou 2011, 17) Only later-as
an outcome of hegemonic struggle-did terror come (for state
powerholders) to designate actions of civilians-even actions against the
state.
And it often works. Certainly, it has played a part in the dampening or
softening of potentialities for alternative globalization movements, as
has been the case in previous periods of struggle. In this such
anti-radical activists inevitably bolster state capitalist power and
authority and reinforce injustice.
Yet we need to be optimistic as well. The charge of radicalism from
above (assertive on the surface) is also a cry for help on behalf of
power. It is a plea by power to the non-committal sectors, the soft
middle, to tilt away from the resisting sectors and side with power
(states and capital) in re-asserting the status quo (or extending
relations and practices they find beneficial, a new status quo of
privilege)-the conditions of conquest and exploitation.
Radicalism (or extremism, or terrorism) is the charge used by power to
quell unrest by drawing support toward the ruling interests. In that
sense it suggests a certain desperation on behalf of the powerful-one
that should be seized upon, not played into or alleviated.
In periods of rising mass struggles, the issue of radicalism is
inevitably posed. It is in these times that a radical orientation breaks
through the confines of hegemonic legitimation-posing new questions,
better answers, and real alternatives. To oppose radicalism is to oppose
thought itself. To oppose radicalism is to accept the terms set out by
power, to limit oneself to that which power will allow.
Anti-radicalism is inherently elitist and anti-democratic. It assumes
that everyone, regardless of status, has access to channels of political
and economic decision-making, and can participate in meaningful ways to
address personal or collective needs. It overlooks the exclusion of vast
segments of the population from decisions that most impact their lives
and the unequal access to social resources that necessitate, that impel,
radical changes.
Activists, as well as sociologists and criminologists, must defend
radicalism from below as the necessary orientation to struggle against
injustice, exploitation, and oppression and for alternative social
relations. Actions should be assessed not according to a legal moral
framework provided by and reinforced by state capital (for their own
benefit). Assessment should be made on real impacts in ending (or
hastening the end of) injustice, exploitation, and oppression, on the
weakening of state capital. As Martin Luther King suggested, a riot is
simply the language of the unheard.
Self-righteous moralizing and reference to legal authority, parroting
the voices of state capital, is an abdication of social responsibility
for activists. For sociologists and criminologists it is an abandonment
of the sociological imagination which in its emphasis on getting to the
roots of issues has always been radical (in the non-hegemonic sense).
Critical thinkers and actors of all stripes must defend this radicalism.
They must become radicals themselves.
Debates should focus on the effectiveness of perspectives and practices
in getting to the roots of social problems, of uprooting power. They
should not center on fidelity to the law or bourgeois morality. They
should not be constrained by the lack of imagination of participants or
by the sense that the best of all worlds is the world that power has
proposed.
Again, radicalism is not a tactic, an act, an event. It is not a matter
of extremes, in a world that takes horrifying extremes for granted. It
is an orientation to the world. The features of radicalism are
determined by, and in, specific contexts. This is the case now in the
context of mass mobilizations, even popular uprisings against statist
austerity offensives in the service of neoliberal capitalism. Radicalism
always threatens to overflow attempts to contain it. It is because it
advances understanding-poses social injustice in stark relief-that it is
by nature re/productive. It is, in current terms, viral.
Jeff Shantz, Salt Spring Island, Summer 2013
Badiou, Alain. 2011. Polemics. London: Verso
Fromm, Erich. 1971. “Introduction.” Celebration of Awareness: A Call for
Institutional Revolution. New York: Doubleday Anchor
Illich, Ivan. 1971. Celebration of Awareness: A Call for Institutional
Revolution. New York: Doubleday Anchor
Mills, C. Wright. 1959. The Sociological Imagination. London: Oxford
University Press.
Rimke, Heidi. 2011. “The Pathological Approach to Crime: Individually
Based Theories.” In Criminology: Critical Canadian Perspectives, ed.
Kirsten Kramar. Toronto: Pearson Education Canada, 78–92
---. 2003 “Constituting Transgressive Interiorities: C19th Psychiatric
Readings of Morally Mad Bodies.” In Violence and the Body: Race, Gender
and the State, ed. A. Arturo. Indiana: Indiana University Press, 403–28
[1] For more analysis on this, see Heidi Rimke’s on-going work (2011,
2003)