Socialism and radicalism

Greenslade, William

Abstract

This chapter examines the flowering of radical and socialist political cultures at the fin de siècle in which forms of collectivism, as against individualism, gain increasing prominence. The influence of Comtean Positivism, Philosophical Idealism and secularist thinking has a direct bearing on the evolution of socialism in the 1880s, marked by shifts in allegiance by radicals from secularism to socialism and a pronounced growth in socialist societies and periodicals. This is a period characterised by economic depression, high unemployment and collective industrial action in support of improved wages and working conditions. But these concerns bring into focus a key unresolved conflict in socialist thought and practice: broadly between those, such as the Webbs, who saw socialism as an instrument for political advance and material improvement, and those, like William Morris, for whom socialism was ‘a whole way of life’ - a politics located in the realm of the personal. The rise of the reputation of the socialist Edward Carpenter up to 1914, and then his subsequent neglect in the post-war period is symptomatic of a shift in priorities, as the Labour Party, gaining parliamentary representation before the war, and now, periodically in government, becomes the instrument for maintaining the State in the face of the crisis of international capital.

• Publication Date: Aug 2, 2007
• Peer Reviewed: Not Peer Reviewed
• Pages: 73-89
• Book Title: The Cambridge Companion to the Fin de Siecle
• ISBN: 9780521615617
• Keywords: socialism, radicalism
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/1025916
• Publisher URL: http://www.cambridge.org/gb/knowledge/isbn/item1172747/?site_locale=en_GB