ABSTRACT
The identification of radicalism with an orientation toward the change of alleged core inequities is highly restrictive in two crucial interrelated respects. The identification of radicalism with professed left goals of transformation also leads to confusion and misunderstanding as regards radical movements which gain power. Inequalities and radical protests and rebellions against them have existed throughout history; radicalism is indigenous to the modern world. Rejection of the leftist tendency to consider capitalism the ultimate source of contemporary radicalism does not exclude the possibility, probability, and in many cases the virtual certainty that the capitalist form of economic organization is indeed at the root of radicalism. The cultural dimension of contemporary radicalism brings us directly to the question of the intelligentsia as the principal carrier of this new type of discontent in industrialized democracies. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.
