Sunday, February 9, 2014
The Stigma of Radicalism
I think we can see failure, or ineffectualness, foreshadowed from the very beginning in the title of the novel. He's Felix Holt: The Radical, not Leader of Radicals, not One of Many Radicals. And radical acts and thoughts can hardly be called a movement when there is but one individual who espouses such beliefs and practices. For success to be achieved in radical movements, it's leaders require the charisma to connect with and stir the masses but, as Matt suggests, Felix is incapable of making personal connections to garner in a mass of followers made in his own ideological image. And Harold Transome is not as radical as his political candidacy would suggest.
What it means to be radical, or perhaps the right way to be radical, is often in contention by those who claim to be radical. Harold, the Radical candidate, is really not so radical in his campaigning practices (at least by today’s standards) because he allows his election agents to win him votes as “a man of the people” by purchasing beer for the workmen and rousing them into a frenzy, which will ultimately result into full blown mob riot. Though Felix condemns Harold's campaigning practices, Harold feels beholden to Jermyn for all the help he has given Mrs. Transome and the family estate. It is this indebtedness to one favor for another that creates and maintains the normal political system and prevents radical acts of change from occurring.
Furthermore, the riotous mob marks the Radicals’ cause politically and demonstrates that the only change radicalism will bring is violence, death and destruction. The need for the status quo is reinforced and Debarry wins the election. Neither Harold nor Felix are seen to have calming influences over the working masses. As Marx suggests, it is not enough to be united as by economic class standing, there must be a common class interest and the drunken anger of a mob is fleeting and leads to no change at all because it is not an authentic desire for political change and is regarded as such in the novel.
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Kadee,
ReplyDeleteI think you make a great point in distinguishing the radical politics of Felix from the campaign tactics of "radical" candidate Harold Transome, and how Eliot seems to say that only the dirty tactics of Transome have any influence over the workers. I think brings up a interesting question, one which I tried to get at in my own post: from a "middle class" perspective, does an organized working class exist that isn't demagogic? As you point out, the only organization that seems to work in the novel results from the petty self-interest mobilized by Transome. If all that a working class organization can, for middle class onlookers, be a kind of "bread and circuses" manipulation of "the mob," what does that say about how the middle class sees itself? If working class politics looks to middle class onlookers as a clamoring for spoils, they must distinguish their own politics as different. What does the middle class, as a political entity, think that it wants?
You're right -- Eliot is quite clear that the mob is not motivated by any real political commitment or understanding. Is there any hope for working class politics? And why do we see so little of the DeBarry campaign, if we can call it that?
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