ABSTRACT
The fragmentation of the ideal, in practice as well as theory, was its fundamental weakness. Moreover, an apparently unequivocal decision for outright rejection had a habit not merely of failing-which rejectionist experiments did with dismaying regularity-but of evolving by imperceptible degrees into acceptance of the system. This happened in different ways, as we shall see in Chapter IX, to syndicalist trade unionism, the co-operative movement, and even to physical-force Chartism. Meanwhile, the working-class ideal, for all its greater plausibility, was extremely vulnerable to seduction by the other two ideals, the more surprisingly by the remarkable revival of the aristocratic ideal which took place in the 1820’s.
