The “old liberalism” was in theory individualistic; the “new liberalism” was socialistic. It brought with it such ideas as “the class struggle,” “mass action,” the “cooperative commonwealth.” Freedom was to be gained for all in the form of the “emancipation” of the working class. Youthful intellectuals idealized the proletariat, organized socialist locals, talked about the “materialist interpretation of history,” denounced “the capitalists,” addressed one another as “comrade,” closed their letters to one another with the words, “Yours for the Revolution,” and a few took the trouble to study the writings of Karl Marx. The old liberalism was seen as mere “bourgeois idealogy,” mental slavery, a system of ideas fabricated by the master class in order to keep the working class in perpetual wage slavery. The new liberal felt himself intellectually emancipated. If he was very, very liberal, he styled himself a radical. The movement reached its maximum strength about the year 1910, and then began to decline. It appealed to some who had been liberals of the older American type, but the response of labor was negligible. Radicalism professed to be a spontaneous revolt of oppressed working people. In fact it was a cult, with its dogmas about labor, which existed chiefly among middle-class intellectuals. Its leaders--and it consisted mostly of leaders with very little rank and file--were seldom working men. Although its economic creed is the product of the nineteenth century, a study of the history of this movement would show it to be in direct line of descent from Rousseau. Many of the basic ideas are distinctly Rousseauian. Civilization, which Rousseau hated, is now the wicked capitalist system. There is the same emphasis on the collective will, on mass action, on the idea of revolution, the same belief that The People is the only rightful sovereign, that society exists by virtue of a sort of covenant among men which can be altered at will, and that universal happiness may be attained by changing the system which is responsible for all misery and misbehavior. Radicalism, carried to its logical conclusion, is Communism, in which there is no pretense of liberalism, no place for freedom. It has greatest appeal for a type of mind which is by nature doctrinaire and inelastic, and its propaganda tends to fixed opinion and to illiberalism. A generation ago Nietzsche said of it,