Talk:Liberalism and radicalism in France

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Hum, this pages equates "liberals" with "radicaux". Although this might be true under the american understanding of the term, if we are talking about France, this page should be about the "liberaux".

No, the page is about liberals in the international (not the american) meaning of the word (see Liberalism. In France this would include the radical tradition, so therefore the title includes radicalism. Gangulf 21:24, 22 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Lead section

Taz, I'm sorry, I find your new intro paragraph very hard to follow. Do I correctly read your first sentence as saying, in effect, that two unrelated topics have been lumped together in an article, and that this article probably shouldn't exist, but—hey!—we're writing it anyway? Or is something else going on here? - Jmabel | Talk

Yes it's probably be confusing, but there seems to be a misunderstanding of these terms or of French political history. I don't know if this article shouldn't exist, but it certainly looks more like the title of a history dissertation than most others Wikipedia articles. But one thing is for sure: although some might want to re-read the history of France from a liberal point of view (which was the basis of, for example, François Furet's excellent book on the French Revolution), claiming "liberalism" amounted to the same that "radicalism" in France is a gross misunderstanding. Liberalism (both political and economical, although the term itself usually refers in France to economic liberalism) has its roots in Orleanism, that is in monarchists. Radicalism, on the other hand, is Republican (and anti-clerical). To believe that monarchist and Catholic liberals had the same ideas and political goals as anti-clerical Republican Radicals is a bit overviewing the whole of the history of France in the nineteenth century. The causes of this confusion might reside in the fact that the Radical-Socialist Party (note the "socialist" in its title, although it has always been a moderate party) was the Third Republic's most important party. But from there to equates it with liberalism? Orleanist liberals rallied to the Republic after the comte de Chambord's death, but the important division line has remained & explains lots of idiosyncrasies of French history. So, to answer your question, I don't know if "two unrelated topics have been lumped together" here, insofar as we can discuss the differences and division line between liberals and radicals in France, but it is sure that Orleanist liberals were radically opposed to Republican radicals. Tazmaniacs 12:25, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

Carefully reading the main paragraph, it clearly states:

• that the word "liberals" has changed sense in France and asserts that radicaux became equivalent to liberals.
• Furthermore, it asserts that liberalism used to refer to "liberal anti-clericalism" or/and economic liberalism, and then goes on to say "but today, it refers" to Alain Madelin's Démocratie libérale (located at the right-wing of Chirac's former RPR, it is usually considered as neo-liberal and, too be honest, far too liberal to have any chances in France).

These assertions are, on the whole, correct, but biased. First of all, why has anti-clericalism been closely linked to "liberalism" (probably in an attempt to distinguish a coherent, global liberal tradition — conceptual aims that are certainly valid, but no one should ignore that attempting to distinguish a political tradition, including specific authors and groups, can't be totally innocent, as one is depriving these authors from other traditions — see e.g. Philip Pettit's recent attempts to isolate a "Republican" tradition which would differ from both "liberalism" and "socialism")? Anti-clericalism, in France, is related to Republicanism, certainly not to liberalism. Again, Orleanists were Catholics, and the division line among Catholics was rather between Ultramontanists (those who supported Papal intervention) and Gallicans.

Republicans, on the other hand, were all anti-clerical, and this Republican concept of laïcité and anti-clericalism still may be easily used today when distinguishing center, moderate parties or people. If you have any doubts between the differences between the PS and the UMP's policies (after all, a lot of people do wonder in the existence of any real political differences between two parties whom both have embraced liberalism — so should we include the PS here? Isn't Dominique Strauss-Kahn a liberal?), then these could be found in this anti-clericalism point. Although Republican and Socialist anti-clericalism is not as strong today as it was a century ago (with Emile Combes etc.), it still traces a division line between left & right in France. See for example the right-wing strikes in favor of private education in the 1980s, when Chirac's followers refused the Socialist Party's attempts to reduce funding to the private (and, in their huge majority, Catholic) schools. All this to say that identifying anti-clericalism with liberalism seems biased indeed.

Now, the paragraph goes on to claim that the French Radicals shared most liberal values with other comparable European parties, despite being a little more statist. This is more or less correct, but still ignores other political distinctions and characteristics, and totally bypass the fact that Radicals were Republicans. As the history of radicalism in France shows, radicals were divided into many trends. Actually, the Radical-Socialist Party was a "party" only in name, at least if you reserve the term for mass parties such as the SFIO or the French Communist Party. They had no voting discipline, etc., and were rather akin to the 19th century circles gathering intellectuals and town mayors. Although until now, I've only stated basic historical facts, I can be a little more provocative by supporting the thesis that in fact, Radicalism had nothing at all with liberalism, and that writing "French Radicals were in effect liberals, although a little bit more statist than other comparable parties", is a bit like writing "The US left-wing is in fact socialist, although a little bit less Marxist (or "collectivist") than other comparable parties" (take a plus and transform it into a minus; what does it mean to oppose "liberalism" to "statism" especially in the French context? If we took this opposition seriously, in fact than we could easily assert (and prove it) that liberalism doesn't exist at all in France, as all French political parties are statist in some sorts of measures. Indeed, even the US supports protectionism (see the WTO's agricultural negotiations) and Chirac certainly is opposed to Alain Madelin's neo-liberalism (in private, Chirac often says things usually heard in ATTAC circles...). So, this reduces the diversity of Radicals and annex them to the liberal tradition, overshading the fact that

• 1/ Radicals were Republicans, hence left-wing, while liberals were Orleanists, hence right-wing ;
• 2/ there is no coherent, united "Radical Party", but only many different individual radicals whom have had different political trajectories. Pierre Mendès-France, in particular, tried to reanchor the Radical party (qui s'était embourgeoisé in the 1930s) in the left-wing after the war, in an attempt which ended with him leaving the party to join the Unified Socialist Party (PSU), something grossly ignored by the previous authors of the article (of course, it sorts of destroy the picture of happy liberal radicals, having some sort of Socialist Radical!:) Some might argue that PMF is a border-case; but this in turn ignores the fact that it is not just for the well-known prestige (:) of "socialism" that the Radicals included this term in their party name.

So how do the authors of this article explains the fact that "French Radicals are in fact equivalent to other liberals" (by "other liberals", hear "Anglo-Saxon liberals", I doubt the authors were refering to Spanish or other liberals) despite being "a little more statist", although they themselves claimed being members of the large Socialist tradition? Would "liberalism" now have turned into a synonym of "socialism"? Or has this assertion got as aim to denounce the "so-called socialism" of the Radicals and thus read them as a right-wing, liberal party? But in this case, shouldn't we in turn include the French Socialist Party in this article, since it has today more or less the same position as the Radicals in the 1920s?

To resume: the authors of this articles have here played on the various senses of the words "liberalism" in a (probably un-deliberate, nonetheless ideological attempt) to annex French Radicalism to the Anglo-Saxon conception of liberalism (which indissolubly mixes both economic & political liberalism together; but "economic liberalism" in France, in its pure form, is not very popular to say the least, and in its mixed, "statist" form, is today shared both by the UMP and the PS; does this makes of the Socialist Party a liberal one? Certainly a thing which could be discussed, although IMO there still are some factors — among which anti-clericalism and support of laïcité, but you could also refer to the UMP vote of the February 2005 law on the "positive values of colonialism", which has finally been repealed by Chirac himself on charges of revisionism... — which distinguish the "liberal" PS from the liberal UMP. That is, the distinction left/right still has a sense in France, and is rooted in France's history. This left/right distinction takes a specific, historic form in each country, and only an ideological discourse would want to universalize it in a world dimension without taking into account these historical, national differences. And, finally, while Radicalism doubtlessly shares some characteristics with political and even economic liberalism, to reduce the former to the latter can only be called an ideological operation, which conveniently forgets the title "Socialist" in the party name, Pierre Mendès-France's fundamental role, and bases itself on the strange operation to annex Republican anti-clericalism to the "European liberal tradition". Thus, the article as written covers all the range of "liberalism" in France, which, since "radicalism=liberalism", goes from PMF's United Socialist Party to Alain Madelin's neo-liberal party (which the original authors of the article simply called "plain liberalism", although in regards to French political life, it is most certainly neo-liberal; they're are very clear traits which impedes one from calling Madelin's party a simple "liberal" one, the first of which is that he reinvicate "Reaganomics" to the French situation).

Should this article be therefore deleted? I don't know, and I don't know if it's possible, nor if it's desirable. It may be actually interesting to compare both radicalism and liberalism, and, all this being said, one can't ignore either that it is also a fact that the Radicals mostly (and not all as this article claim) embraced "liberalism", albeit injecting into it a bit of French statism (dirigisme). Strangely, this article doesn't speaks at all about Gaullism, nor discuss Pompidou or Valéry Giscard d'Estaing. It jumps from the Radicals to Alain Madelin's ultraliberal party. Gaullists were not "liberals", but they weren't "socialists" either. Giscard was doubtlessly a liberal, and followed liberal economic policies, which have little comparable with Madelin's aims. Sorry for being too long... Tazmaniacs 13:17, 16 July 2006 (UTC)