Thinking Like a Radical

Social Democracy, Moderation, and Anti-Radicalism

Bibliographic Data

ID3970308
AuthorsPedro Góis Moreira (0000-0001-7544-1116, Department of Political Science, Texas Christian University, 2800 S University Dr., Fort Worth, 76129 Texas, USA, corresponding author)
Year2023
Volume28
Issue3-4
Pages330-347
Publication date2023-05-19
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe European Legacy (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1084-8770 • E-ISSN: 1470-1316
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/10848770.2023.2182964
OpenAlexW4322739574
LanguageEN
References cited38

The concepts of “radicalism” and “extremism” have been the focus of increasing scholarly attention in recent years, but, surprisingly, there has not been the same kind of effort to specify their opposites, such as the concept of “moderation.” In this article I argue that because “radicalism” and “extremism” have been defined in generally negative terms, we may deepen and refine our understanding of moderation once we are equipped with a more neutral conception of radicalism. Accordingly, I propose a new approach to the study of radical ideologies by comparing them to literary genres. Just as literary genres use tropes that constrain our reading of a text, radical ideologies use tropes—as, for example, the Marxists’ use of “reactionary” or “bourgeois”—that refer to a much wider background dichotomy, on which they base their arguments to discredit those of their opponents or to reinforce those of their supporters. Using this approach, I show how the Marxist theorist and leading German politician Eduard Bernstein (1850–1932)—one of the founders of modern Social Democracy—made a step-by-step critique of the Social Democratic Party’s orthodox Marxist tropes and core narrative that thoroughly undermined their arguments. Bernstein, I further suggest, was a particularly good example of a political moderate because he did not altogether reject the claims of his radical Marxist opponents but rather accepted those parts of their reasoning that he considered valid. By thus opening the way for constructing an anti-radical Marxist narrative, Bernstein’s example shows how moderates can “steal a page” from the radicals’ playbook to create alternative narratives whose central opponents are the radicals themselves. I conclude by briefly discussing two contemporary thinkers—Norberto Bobbio and Karl Popper—who went further than Bernstein in the development of a fully fleshed anti-radical narrative

Aesthetics · Democracy · Epistemology · Ideology · Linguistics · Literature · Marxist philosophy · Moderation · Narrative · Political radicalism · Political science · Politics · Reactionary · Sociology · German legal, social, and political studies · Law · Philosophy · Political theory and Gramsci · Populism, Right-Wing Movements · Psychology · Social Psychology

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