PROBLEMS OF THE COUNTERCULTURE
Prefigurative politics, living as if the revolution had already occurred, created difficulties resembling those posed by cultural revolution and literary radicalism. Like them, it was a necessary enterprise. No person except a hermit can formulate a system of values in isolation or forge an identity without considering the surrounding culture. People require social and institutional support for their individual personalities, validation for their beliefs and choices, and reassurance from those upon whose goodwill they directly or indirectly depend. Even aside from this, any word, gesture, act, or practice takes its meaning from culture--from how it is interpreted by those it addresses or affects. Communication cannot occur in a vacuum; most acts, even those seemingly intimate or private, have public origins and meanings.
Cultural radicals who implement their beliefs in the present must therefore forge an oppositional culture. Eastman and his cohorts who valued individuality, freedom, and self-expression, faced an almost insoluble dilemma. In order to underwrite new values and provide intelligible symbols that help interpret words and actions, any counterculture must generate institutions, mores, and practices that define and thereby limit the counterculture's adherents. Any culture must employ sanctions which bolster approved actions while repressing deviant behavior. The more vulnerable a culture, the more overt and conscious its sanctions must be; and a counterculture is not only by definition threatened by the mainstream, but lacks the weight of law and tradition as enforcement mechanisms. Members of a counterculture will therefore remain ever-vigilant against real or imagined concessions to mainstream values; they will exact conformity and enforce group norms in ways that appear all the more vexatious (especially in a counterculture supposedly based on freedom and individuality) because they are often pervasive, subtle, informal, and difficult to resist. Members of a counterculture are prone to regard mainstream beliefs as heresy and conventional behavior as apostasy. Eastman and Dell, while living in Greenwich Village and embodying many of its bohemian values, complained almost from the beginning about its self-conscious artificiality, its earnest and joyless striving after pagan pleasures, and its unacknowledged demands for conformity. Greenwich Village, Dell found, was not the anarchistic paradise fantasized by Babbits. Its values were all the more internalized and socially enforced for being consciously deviant. Eastman recognized that a pervasive mainstream cultural ideal can define and thus poison revolt against it by setting the rebellion's limits, content, idiom, and tone. He protested that the very term "the Village" signified a "complacent self-labeling [that] was the beginning of a new death."[162]
Floyd Dell abruptly discovered the existence of classes in Greenwich Village--classes based on style of intellectuality, manners, and length of residence--when he broke up with his "high-brow" sweetheart of ladylike manners and relatively long (three years) Village residence for a girlfriend different in every respect. Dell and his ex-girlfriend had been among the Village's "first families. We had come over on the Mayflower, so to speak." The bohemains regarded uptowners with the condescension "of the poorer British aristocracy toward wealthy greengrocers" and new arrivals with the scorn "of Boston Back Bay toward the immigrants landing on the pier." Dell discovered that "the breaking up of a settled though illegal domesticity in Greenwich Village" shocked the bohemian community as much
as the breaking-up of a home in any other part of the United States. A social centre which had been a gathering-place for our friends had been suddenly destroyed, and its destruction was resented.... It was as if a deacon had commenced to go astray..... I had, apparently, violated all the most ancient and sacred traditions of the Village aristocracy.... Greenwich Village was, considering its reputation, an extraordinarily snobbish and sanctimonous place. I, an offender against all its standards, was still welcomed into the society of my old friends; but my new sweetheart was not welcome there.[163]
Resenting his old friends, Dell "abjured their company as readily as I should that of any Presbyterian suburb; but lovers cannot spend all their time alone in each other's delightful company" because a love affair required "some kind of social mileau." So he consorted with the new arrivals, but found that they regarded him "as one of the pillars of a hated Village orthodoxy" and a "moss-backed conservative."[164] Living in a hotbed of radical, creative, individualistic self-expression, Dell found that a seemingly innocuous and private decision placed him in the no-man's land between two hostile and incomprehending subcultures.
Dell discovered that any society and culture drastically limits the private lives of its inhabitants. He fully recognized that "almost all of us are rendered miserable" by "the institutions, evasions, moralities and immoralities, restrictions and rebellions, cowardices and brutalities, hypocracies and scandals, which constitute our present sexual system." However, free love and open relationships lacked social validation, institutional support, recognized forms, and other necessities. "A sense of dislocation from the rest of soceity... must tend to destroy" such relationships, he concluded.[165] Dell found that any counterculture based on equal relationships and mutuality existing amidst a wider culture characterized by hierarchy and acquisitive individualism will encounter problems of its own. The impossibility of "socialism in one country" translates into problems for those seeking equality within one cooperative business, romance, or friendship. The Masses collective encountered its share of these problems, which vitiated but did not destroy its stance "for fun, truth, beauty, realism, freedom, peace, feminism, revolution."[166]
The Masses was, in theory, a cooperative whose owners and contributors decided matters of policy at editorial meetings. Its existence depended partly upon the barbarism of the surrounding society; writers and artists gave it their best work for free because the commercial press rejected truly creative and idiosyncratic material. The liberalization of American culture advocated by The Masses would, ironically, have undermined the magazine; even dedicated artists and socialists would not freely and profusely donate work that sold for large sums and reached large audiences elsewhere. The Masses also received large subsidies from a handful of rich individuals. Although Dell called this dependence the "skeleton in our proletarian revolutionary closet," it was publicly acknowledged and at times deplored. Eastman, who raised the funds, exercised "a practical dictatorship" which raised the ire of other editors and contributors, at times even of Dell himself.[167] Eastman molded the magazine to his tastes, captioned pictures even against the will of their artists, and rejected material which the other owners had voted to accept. (Neither he nor Dell, however, dared print material which the editorial meetings had rejected.) When a significant portion of the artists revolted, Eastman, with proxies from absentees in hand, retained control, largely because there was no practical alternative to his rule. Some of The Masses' most famous artists departed in a huff. "The New York papers," Eastman later remembered, "had a grand time over it." John Sloan, a renowned artist and leader of the rebels, was interviewed by a reporter who sardonically described Sloan's disappointment. "'It just proves that real democracy doesn't work--yet,' he said, adding the 'yet' as he remembered the future Socialist paradise."[168]
Sloan notwithstanding, the contretemps represented democracy in action. The majority decided against him but also elected Sloan, already Art Editor, Vice President of the corporation. Two other rebels were also made officers. Eastman sympathized with the artists' complaint about the captions and compromised on the substantive issues at stake. But Dell impulsively demanded explusion of the dissidents; after decisively defeating this motion, Sloan and other artists resigned in a huff. Some of them started Spawn, an exclusively art publication, which folded after three issues.[169] Sloan found that participatory democracy breeds informal hierarchies that become evident when controversies erupt. Yet Eastman's dictatorship was at worst an example of "democratic despotism." The editors could depose Eastman whenever they wanted and appoint other editors and officials by majority vote. He was "first among equals" because he did most of the work and raised the necessary funds. (Amused that the paid staff had defeated the unpaid contributors and rich contributors allegedly placated, a mainstream reporter said that "The Masses has been captured by the classes. Economic determinism has again come to bat and lined out a home run.") As Eastman pointed out, he was completely dependent on the other contributing editors for their poetry, prose, and art. Less than a year after Sloan's departure, the majority rejected an important antiwar manifesto Eastman proposed as an offical policy statement. Artist George Bellows echoed Sloan's old complaint, saying that "The Masses has no business with a 'policy.' It is not a political paper.... Its 'policy' is the expression of its contributors." The Masses editors still disagreed about the basic nature of their creation.[170]
Dell later marvelled that "so much good-humored and effective cooperation was possible" between the "artists, men of genius, egotists inevitably and rightfully, proud, sensitive, and hurt by the world," who comprised The Masses. He did not exaggerate when he proudly reminisced that "nobody gained a penny out of the things published in the magazine; it was an honor to get into its pages, an honor conferred by vote at the meetings.... We were actually a little republic in which, as artists, we worked for the approval of our fellows, not for money."[171] This republic had its flaws and acrimonies, its inequalities of power and status; and when The Masses fell victim to political repression, Eastman replaced it with a magazine owned by himself and his sister, and paid its contributors. Nevertheless, during its short life The Masses reasonably approximated the ideal it espoused; and it died not from its own shortcomings but because of savage persecution.
Forging free and equal relationships with women was another aspect of Eastman's countercultural and bohemian enterprise. Unlike the experimental collective which owned The Masses, however, the romantic relationships of Eastman and his friends routinely ended in disaster for almost all participants. Eastman's first marriage ended in divorce while another lover committed suicide; he found stability and happiness only after marrying a woman who accepted, while not imitating, his inexorable philandering. John Reed and Louise Bryant endorsed free love in theory but were tormented by its practice. Art Young grumbled that his conventional marriage ruined his artistic creativity. Such problems arose only slightly because apotheosization of experience and the quest for self-fulfillment as the only real good, is, if literally believed, a nihilistic denial of all morality and concern for others. The men and women clustered around The Masses deeply cared about their partners and spent much of their energy resolving their romantic conflicts.[172] The main reason neither sex could achieve free, equal, and stable relationships was that such relationships lacked social support or any basis in institutional realities.
The ideology and practice of sexual freedom complicated romantic relationships for both sexes. Eastman and his friends associated sexual liberation with feminism, although they were (and remain) separate issues. Although gender equality is compatible with monogamy or "varietism," most contemporary feminists wanted a single sexual standard based on women's traditional ethic of fidelity rather than on male promiscuity. Women who experienced sex outside of marriage were stigmatized far more than their male partners, regardless of Eastman's own values and desires. The risk of pregnancy and its consequences was borne solely by the woman. Because of this, women who practiced free love were afflicted by far more internal doubts than men (who had always been promiscuous) and, whatever their professed beliefs, were often tormented by guilt. Women of Eastman's generation had been taught that a monogamous heterosexual relationship was the proper center of their lives; they could not jettison their entire upbringing by a mere act of the will. Moreover, most women wanted children and regarded motherhood as a vital part of their identities; this made them value permanency in marriage more than their male partners did. Eastman's sister Crystal, a fully liberated woman, desired a child so intensely that she vowed that, if she were not married by her twenty-ninth birthday, she would go to Italy, have a child, and return home claiming that it was adopted. She married, disastrously, 17 days before her deadline.[173]
Sexual liberation had (and has) greatly different social meanings for women than for men. Monogamy and sexual fidelity were not only the underpinnings of a woman's identity, respectability, and social function; they were also her main guarantee of economic survival. Sexual liberation (especially when combined with birth control) freed men from the obligations that formerly accompanied sex (except that with prostitutes), while freeing women mainly from their accustomed role and expectation of support. Women were exhorted that they were men's equals without receiving any of the social supports--equality in education and employment, a redefinition of parenting that included the father as a primary caregiver, day care, or state subsidies for mothers--necessary for real equality. Eastman, of course, advocated most of those social changes (he remained silent about equal parental responsibilities for males); he could not, however, successfully live as if they were actually in place. Although his marriages and relationships were undertaken with the understanding that either person could leave if they wanted, and sexual freedom was usually promised even within the relationship, it is clear that such freedom (traditional male promiscuity) was necessary for Eastman and yet only a verbal concession from most of his women. Greenwich Village conventions required that women demand freedom from monogamy, even if most of them did not want it.
However sincere their intentions, men also had difficulty transcending their upbringings, especially those aspects that assumed a dominant male role and considered women as mere playthings. Dell later satirized "the spiritual hocus-pocus" which substituted for a wedding ring "to give the girl a good conscience." This litany consisted of "quotations and arguments from Edward Carpenter, Havelock Ellis, and other modern prophets, arguments designed to show that love without marriage was infinitely superior to the other kind, and that its immediate indulgence brought the world, night by night, a little nearer to freedom and Utopia." Sexual liberation gave men what they had always wanted--variety in sex without guilt or responsibility.[174]
Men dominated these relationships, though less blatently than traditional ones. Dell acknowledged that men valued power more than equality or freedom and wanted "someone dependent on them" more than "a comrade." Declaring that a couple should share "habits and tastes," Dell listed seven examples of shared interests, all of which involved the man teaching the woman his hobbies "with no pride in his own superiority."[175] Bohemian egalitarianism suspiciously resembled the old idea of "true womanhood," in which an educated wife was valued as a more fit companion for her husband and a better mother for his children. In addition, men could enjoy more frequent and sensual sex with women who also enjoyed it.[176]
Many men harbored contradictory as well as chauvinistic desires. They wanted both a "glorious playfellow" and a demure, caregiving wife. Eastman called his first wife, Ida Rauh, his "friend and slender-bodied mother." Men expected that their partner in the adventure of life would, upon marriage, transmute herself into a wife and mother preoccupied with humdrum household chores. Dell eloquently contrasted the sweetheart, who shares all of her man's life, with the wife, who is imprisoned at home and excluded from that life. "The home is not a rendezvous," he said. "It is not one of the delightful corners of the world where two companions can meet for an adventure," but rather a place "where one keeps his wife."[177] Dell, however, did not explain how wives could remain sweethearts in a society that denied them childcare facilities and meaningful economic opportunities. Nor did Eastman, Dell, or other cultural rebels volunteer for their share of the household chores.
Many men achieved their contradictory desires for an exciting companion and a traditional wife by the practice of serial monogamy. After numerous tempestuous affairs, Dell decided that he would marry a girl whose "beautiful breasts were perfect for the suckling of babies." He abandoned his search for a literary intellectual or creative artist, fearing that such women desired careers. "I did not want to be married to a girl artist; I wanted to be married to a girl who would not put her career before children--or even before me, hideously reactionary as that thought would have seemed a few years ago. One artist in the family, I was convinced, was enough."[178] Eastman cascaded through one tumultuous affair after another before "settling down" in a marriage that was, for him, a continuation of promiscuity by different means. John Reed and Louise Bryant experienced torments of jealousy unackowledged in their philosophy, as well as spending eons apart pursuing their separate careers. Ben Reitman abandoned Emma Goldman for a traditional wife and family when she faced imprisonment and deportation. Although women as well as men could have their youthful fling, they found as they aged that the entire social mileau which facilitated their free life evaporated. As their socially-defined sexual beauty declined, their lovers married more traditional lovers, and mainstream society denied them both a decent living and social freedom, liberated and sexually expressive women found that they too could settle down, but only to the subordinate position of domestic drudge and sex slave.
Before his second and permanent marriage, Dell had eloquently summarized the dilemma of emancipated women. Because men disliked independent women, creative women who "wish to be human beings as well as wives and mothers" must "choose between two modes of life, each incomplete and unsatisfactory." The liberated woman wanted a full life of creativity and adventure "and the simplest old-fashioned joys and comforts of domesticity." Man will not allow her both; "he does not want to believe that she wants anything he cannot give her," and desired her only as his "private property." She could, therefore, love a man only with "doubt and anger and [a] sense of self-betrayal.... Her soul is divided against itself; of course, in a world in which there is little room for creators, they will be tormented and tormenting creatures."[179]
In this scenario women lost on all counts. They had to break much more decisively than men from their customary role; they received much less social support, took much greater risks, and won only an erstaz equality. Men insisted that women drastically revise their inherited notions about sexuality, romance, and careers--their entire identities--while society obstructed them at every turn. Many men could enjoy their chosen relationships with women without any structural change in the larger society; individual, personal changes in conduct and values (especially among women) sufficed. Female equality, however, required radical social change. Moreover, men who challeged traditional roles emulated no clear role models, and therefore experimented with diverse and truly liberating lifestyles. Women fighting for equality, however, often perceived male lifestyles as exemplary. But the male role was in many ways an unfortunate model which, by opposing career and family, sex and commitment, and intellectuality and emotion, thwarted and distorted women's quest for an authentic, creative life. As Dell commented years later, men thought that women would rest content "with the joy of struggle. But they needed the joy of achievement." Men gained so much more from feminism than women that Dell, foreshadowing Barbara Ehrenreich's thesis about second wave feminism, declared that "we have as the motive behind the rebellion of women an obscure rebellion of men." Dell admitted that men were content with the limited results of feminism "because what we wanted was something for ourselves--a Glorious Playfellow.... But [women] wanted something different--something for themselves.... When they pointed out that, no matter what you said, women had the hardest row to hoe, and that we weren't doing a damn thing to make it easier--when this happened, our masculine feminism began, sadly, to part company with theirs." Men had tired of "the pretty slave with all the slave's subtlety and cleverness" and preferred "a comrade and an equal" only "because it promised to be more fun."[180]
The experience of the Greenwich Village feminists suggests that achieving equality between a man and a woman is nearly impossible when the man can earn a decent living and the woman cannot. Equality cannot be willed into existence by a private compact between two people; the social structure must foster it. If a romantic breakup results in poverty and disgrace for one partner while allowing wealth and respectability for the other, this social reality undermines any supposedly "equal" relationship at every point, regardless of the partcipants' intentions. This remains true even if a particular womn retains her own income or career. In Eastman's day, cultural ideas of womanhood shaped even those women who earned their own living. The Masses defined feminism as "living in relation to the universe rather than in relation to some other person."[181] Individual women could only incompletely realize this ideal when, because of the economic situation of most women, they were socialized for dependence and regarded love as the centerpiece of their lives.
Eastman's first marriage, to Ida Rauh, epitomized the difficulties of pursuing freedom and equality within one relationship. Rauh had independent means and worked for the Women's Trade Union League. An intellectual, she converted Eastman to socialism. The two married for convnience so that they could travel to Europe together while avoiding scandal; returning home, they placed both of their names upon their mailbox. This evoked curiosity. "Our attitude toward the marriage service," Rauh told an inquiring reporter, "is that we went through with it; then we can say afterward we don't believe in it. It was with us a placating of convention, because if we had gone counter to convention, it would have been too much of a bother for the gain. We both have too much work to do, so that if we had decided to dispense with the legal service there would have been such a hue and cry raised that it would have interfered with our work. We would always have had to overcome that obstacle in people's minds before we could have interested them in our real work in life." People should focus on the work their neighbors do, not in the intimacies of their domestic lives; "but as people choose to interest themselves in that tie, we are willing to conform and satisfy them."[182]
Yet this arrangement satisfied nobody. The couple encountered social disapproval and was deluged with hate mail simply for putting their separate names on their mailbox. Although Rauh bravely said that either party was free to leave the marriage whenever they wished, it is clear, as William O'Neil says, that she "did not mean what she said." Her words were "a description of how radicals were supposed to regard marriage, not of their actual union."[183] Eastman also disbelieved both his and Rauh's protestations of freedom; he felt committed, trapped and guilty about feeling trapped. Rauh's and Eastman's unacknowledged feelings poisoned an otherwise satisfactory relationship. Neither partner transcended conventional expectations about the meaning of marriage. Similar doubts and "suppressed desires" tormented John Reed and Louise Bryant both before and after their marriage.
This pattern poisoned some of Eastman's subsequent relationships as well. The woman, wanting commitment and stability, nevertheless promised Eastman freedom; Eastman, wanting freedom, felt obliged, constrained, and guilty whether he used his freedom or abandoned it. Rauh bravely said that "We have no theories about marriage.... It is the other people who have the theories.... We simply think for ourselves and live perfectly naturally."[184] However, there is no such thing as living "naturally"; all conduct is culturally mediated. Eastman and Rauh necessarily had a theory and lived "unnaturally" in the America of the Great War era; only conventional people could dispense with theory and simply "live naturally"--that is, in unreflective obedience to the mandates of their culture.
Rauh was utopian and, for a Socialist, curiously myopic, in another part of her statement. Women, she said, must have "the freedom to choose. If a woman is domestic and wants to stay at home and be supported, then she should be free to do that. If she takes care of a home and rears children she is self-supporting just as much as if she worked outside for a salary. But a woman who wants to work at something else, who has a talent or a liking for something outside her home, should be free to do so. Women were not born with pans tied around their necks as a sign that it was their destiny to wash them."[185] However, society and the law denied that mothers, wives and homemakers were "self-supporting"; such women were regarded as dependents, could seldom support themselves and their children, and suffered economic devastation if abandoned by their husbands.
Like Eastman, Rauh believed that individual freedom was the best argument for progressive change. However, her statement falsely assumed that social institutions can be neutral between divergent lifestyles. In fact, any social system facilitates some choices and discourages others. A feminist society would by its very structure devalue and discriminate against old-fashioned patriarchal couples just as patriarchal society thwarts egalitarian relationships. If women attained full equality with men, couples who valued the traditional patriarchal household would encounter obstacles posed by the new egalitarian culture. The government would neither sanction the unequal relationship nor validate male violence against women. Laws and institutions guaranteeing female equality on the job and social support for raising children would ensure a wife's economic independence from her husband, allowing her leverage within the marriage and empowering her to leave it. A woman who theoretically believed that a wife should obey her husband could divorce him whenever she changed her mind; such power would inevitable alter the entire tone of her marriage. Women who were dissatisfied with their husbands would leave, whatever their abstract beliefs, blaming their husbands rather than their theory; they would say, much like John Sloan, "our theory doesn't work--yet."
In an egalitarian society couples who constantly reconstructed the patriarchal household would also suffer relative poverty because they would have only one income instead of the usual two. Their children, raised at home by their mother instead of at daycare centers outside the home, would suffer ostracism or at least social isolation; most other children would regard them and their parents as strange. Their mother would be judged weird and inadequate by the standards of the larger culture; she would default upon the expectations of society and thus in part of herself, whatever her professed beliefs. Her husband would also appear deviant. Only an unusually strong-willed and intellectual woman could dispel doubts that she simply could not fulfill her (new) traditional role (combining family and career), especially when she received social criticism for her unorthodox life. And what are the prospects for such a woman voluntarily accepting an unequal relationship? Moreover, the whole patriarchal concept of woman's nature would crumble in an egalitarian society because social reality would pervasively deny and refute it; the wife and her husband would have to consciously construct their countercultural family, basing it on will and desire rather than any putatively "natural" way of life. This is a large burden for any couple to bear, and one they would likely abandon at the first sign of trouble.
An egalitarian society, in other words, would militate against unequal, traditional, patriarchal lifestyles just as patriarchal society discriminates against and thwarts egalitarian ones. Merely letting individuals choose their own way of life, in splendid isolation from and indifference to surrounding institutions and practices, is impossible. Eastman realized this in the abstract; this motivated his insistence that economic freedom is a necessary (even if not sufficient) condition for every other freedom. But he apparently did not fathom the devastating consequences of economic inequality in his relationship with women who were individually his economic and intellectual equal. Both Eastman and his partners were socialized for a world other than the one they chose to live in; both suffered from disappointment, unacknowledged desires, and guilt. Neither could quite live in the world in which they believed, in isolation from a hostile culture.
Romantic relationships are, of all areas of human life, perhaps least susceptible to reason. Building them by design or conscious philosophical intent is almost impossible, no matter how intelligent and moral the design. Equal relationships are difficult under the best of conditions, combining as they must a life in common with "the solitude of the self." Instead of reinforcing equal relationships, the social and educational systems render them all but impossible. Children mature under the tutelage first of their parents, then of their teachers, and finally of their bosses; even adult friendships are deformed and undermined by considerations of money, power, and status. Nowhere do children or adults gain practical experience in egalitarian relationships, understanding and expressing feelings, or adjudicating disputes on a rational and equal basis. Systems of dominion and exploitation foster inchoate resentments and distortions of personality in abused and abuser alike.
The limits of gender equality imposed by society and suffered by Eastman and his partners did not, however, negate Eastman's positive achievements. Under Eastman's editorship, The Masses became one of the Greenwich Village institutions which offered liberated women a voice and important support. Women who associated with Eastman transcended, in their personal lives, the limited menu of options usually provided by men. Greenwich Village women forged their own institutions--Polly's restaurant, the Liberal Club, Heterodoxy, Mabel Dodge's salon, Emma Goldman's Mother Earth--and participated as leaders in many others. As Dell said, Greenwich Village had diverse meanings.[186] Some women looked for more exciting husbands than they could find on Main Street, some for sexual adventure, others for friendship and a wider life. Some continued their own careers after marriage, some disappeared from public life, and others remained single. If women lacked totally free choices and opportunities as wide as those of the men in their lives, that was not Eastman's fault. The Masses helped female contributors and readers enjoy more options than most other women.[187] Most of the progress was, of course, the women's own doing; but Village feminists were helped along by the sincere, if sometimes muddled, condescending, and incomplete, support of their men. We cannot fairly blame Eastman for failing in an impossible task, the creation of a realm of pure freedom and equality in a virulently patriarchial society. Eastman and his friends achieved much for women, and would have done far more had they not been thwarted by the mainstream society they so implacably opposed.
Five women supporters of The Masses said as much in an announcement in the February 1916 issue urging that female readers financially support the magazine. "In cartoon, in verse, in editorial, in policy, THE MASSES has stood for us all along the line as no other magazine in America has," they said. "When we fight for suffrage, for economic freedom, for professional opportunities, for scientific sex knowledge, there stands THE MASSES, always understanding, always helping." The editors "are genuine warm-hearted feminists. They like us and want us to win."[188]
Cultural radicals who implement their beliefs in the present must therefore forge an oppositional culture. Eastman and his cohorts who valued individuality, freedom, and self-expression, faced an almost insoluble dilemma. In order to underwrite new values and provide intelligible symbols that help interpret words and actions, any counterculture must generate institutions, mores, and practices that define and thereby limit the counterculture's adherents. Any culture must employ sanctions which bolster approved actions while repressing deviant behavior. The more vulnerable a culture, the more overt and conscious its sanctions must be; and a counterculture is not only by definition threatened by the mainstream, but lacks the weight of law and tradition as enforcement mechanisms. Members of a counterculture will therefore remain ever-vigilant against real or imagined concessions to mainstream values; they will exact conformity and enforce group norms in ways that appear all the more vexatious (especially in a counterculture supposedly based on freedom and individuality) because they are often pervasive, subtle, informal, and difficult to resist. Members of a counterculture are prone to regard mainstream beliefs as heresy and conventional behavior as apostasy. Eastman and Dell, while living in Greenwich Village and embodying many of its bohemian values, complained almost from the beginning about its self-conscious artificiality, its earnest and joyless striving after pagan pleasures, and its unacknowledged demands for conformity. Greenwich Village, Dell found, was not the anarchistic paradise fantasized by Babbits. Its values were all the more internalized and socially enforced for being consciously deviant. Eastman recognized that a pervasive mainstream cultural ideal can define and thus poison revolt against it by setting the rebellion's limits, content, idiom, and tone. He protested that the very term "the Village" signified a "complacent self-labeling [that] was the beginning of a new death."[162]
Floyd Dell abruptly discovered the existence of classes in Greenwich Village--classes based on style of intellectuality, manners, and length of residence--when he broke up with his "high-brow" sweetheart of ladylike manners and relatively long (three years) Village residence for a girlfriend different in every respect. Dell and his ex-girlfriend had been among the Village's "first families. We had come over on the Mayflower, so to speak." The bohemains regarded uptowners with the condescension "of the poorer British aristocracy toward wealthy greengrocers" and new arrivals with the scorn "of Boston Back Bay toward the immigrants landing on the pier." Dell discovered that "the breaking up of a settled though illegal domesticity in Greenwich Village" shocked the bohemian community as much
as the breaking-up of a home in any other part of the United States. A social centre which had been a gathering-place for our friends had been suddenly destroyed, and its destruction was resented.... It was as if a deacon had commenced to go astray..... I had, apparently, violated all the most ancient and sacred traditions of the Village aristocracy.... Greenwich Village was, considering its reputation, an extraordinarily snobbish and sanctimonous place. I, an offender against all its standards, was still welcomed into the society of my old friends; but my new sweetheart was not welcome there.[163]
Resenting his old friends, Dell "abjured their company as readily as I should that of any Presbyterian suburb; but lovers cannot spend all their time alone in each other's delightful company" because a love affair required "some kind of social mileau." So he consorted with the new arrivals, but found that they regarded him "as one of the pillars of a hated Village orthodoxy" and a "moss-backed conservative."[164] Living in a hotbed of radical, creative, individualistic self-expression, Dell found that a seemingly innocuous and private decision placed him in the no-man's land between two hostile and incomprehending subcultures.
Dell discovered that any society and culture drastically limits the private lives of its inhabitants. He fully recognized that "almost all of us are rendered miserable" by "the institutions, evasions, moralities and immoralities, restrictions and rebellions, cowardices and brutalities, hypocracies and scandals, which constitute our present sexual system." However, free love and open relationships lacked social validation, institutional support, recognized forms, and other necessities. "A sense of dislocation from the rest of soceity... must tend to destroy" such relationships, he concluded.[165] Dell found that any counterculture based on equal relationships and mutuality existing amidst a wider culture characterized by hierarchy and acquisitive individualism will encounter problems of its own. The impossibility of "socialism in one country" translates into problems for those seeking equality within one cooperative business, romance, or friendship. The Masses collective encountered its share of these problems, which vitiated but did not destroy its stance "for fun, truth, beauty, realism, freedom, peace, feminism, revolution."[166]
The Masses was, in theory, a cooperative whose owners and contributors decided matters of policy at editorial meetings. Its existence depended partly upon the barbarism of the surrounding society; writers and artists gave it their best work for free because the commercial press rejected truly creative and idiosyncratic material. The liberalization of American culture advocated by The Masses would, ironically, have undermined the magazine; even dedicated artists and socialists would not freely and profusely donate work that sold for large sums and reached large audiences elsewhere. The Masses also received large subsidies from a handful of rich individuals. Although Dell called this dependence the "skeleton in our proletarian revolutionary closet," it was publicly acknowledged and at times deplored. Eastman, who raised the funds, exercised "a practical dictatorship" which raised the ire of other editors and contributors, at times even of Dell himself.[167] Eastman molded the magazine to his tastes, captioned pictures even against the will of their artists, and rejected material which the other owners had voted to accept. (Neither he nor Dell, however, dared print material which the editorial meetings had rejected.) When a significant portion of the artists revolted, Eastman, with proxies from absentees in hand, retained control, largely because there was no practical alternative to his rule. Some of The Masses' most famous artists departed in a huff. "The New York papers," Eastman later remembered, "had a grand time over it." John Sloan, a renowned artist and leader of the rebels, was interviewed by a reporter who sardonically described Sloan's disappointment. "'It just proves that real democracy doesn't work--yet,' he said, adding the 'yet' as he remembered the future Socialist paradise."[168]
Sloan notwithstanding, the contretemps represented democracy in action. The majority decided against him but also elected Sloan, already Art Editor, Vice President of the corporation. Two other rebels were also made officers. Eastman sympathized with the artists' complaint about the captions and compromised on the substantive issues at stake. But Dell impulsively demanded explusion of the dissidents; after decisively defeating this motion, Sloan and other artists resigned in a huff. Some of them started Spawn, an exclusively art publication, which folded after three issues.[169] Sloan found that participatory democracy breeds informal hierarchies that become evident when controversies erupt. Yet Eastman's dictatorship was at worst an example of "democratic despotism." The editors could depose Eastman whenever they wanted and appoint other editors and officials by majority vote. He was "first among equals" because he did most of the work and raised the necessary funds. (Amused that the paid staff had defeated the unpaid contributors and rich contributors allegedly placated, a mainstream reporter said that "The Masses has been captured by the classes. Economic determinism has again come to bat and lined out a home run.") As Eastman pointed out, he was completely dependent on the other contributing editors for their poetry, prose, and art. Less than a year after Sloan's departure, the majority rejected an important antiwar manifesto Eastman proposed as an offical policy statement. Artist George Bellows echoed Sloan's old complaint, saying that "The Masses has no business with a 'policy.' It is not a political paper.... Its 'policy' is the expression of its contributors." The Masses editors still disagreed about the basic nature of their creation.[170]
Dell later marvelled that "so much good-humored and effective cooperation was possible" between the "artists, men of genius, egotists inevitably and rightfully, proud, sensitive, and hurt by the world," who comprised The Masses. He did not exaggerate when he proudly reminisced that "nobody gained a penny out of the things published in the magazine; it was an honor to get into its pages, an honor conferred by vote at the meetings.... We were actually a little republic in which, as artists, we worked for the approval of our fellows, not for money."[171] This republic had its flaws and acrimonies, its inequalities of power and status; and when The Masses fell victim to political repression, Eastman replaced it with a magazine owned by himself and his sister, and paid its contributors. Nevertheless, during its short life The Masses reasonably approximated the ideal it espoused; and it died not from its own shortcomings but because of savage persecution.
Forging free and equal relationships with women was another aspect of Eastman's countercultural and bohemian enterprise. Unlike the experimental collective which owned The Masses, however, the romantic relationships of Eastman and his friends routinely ended in disaster for almost all participants. Eastman's first marriage ended in divorce while another lover committed suicide; he found stability and happiness only after marrying a woman who accepted, while not imitating, his inexorable philandering. John Reed and Louise Bryant endorsed free love in theory but were tormented by its practice. Art Young grumbled that his conventional marriage ruined his artistic creativity. Such problems arose only slightly because apotheosization of experience and the quest for self-fulfillment as the only real good, is, if literally believed, a nihilistic denial of all morality and concern for others. The men and women clustered around The Masses deeply cared about their partners and spent much of their energy resolving their romantic conflicts.[172] The main reason neither sex could achieve free, equal, and stable relationships was that such relationships lacked social support or any basis in institutional realities.
The ideology and practice of sexual freedom complicated romantic relationships for both sexes. Eastman and his friends associated sexual liberation with feminism, although they were (and remain) separate issues. Although gender equality is compatible with monogamy or "varietism," most contemporary feminists wanted a single sexual standard based on women's traditional ethic of fidelity rather than on male promiscuity. Women who experienced sex outside of marriage were stigmatized far more than their male partners, regardless of Eastman's own values and desires. The risk of pregnancy and its consequences was borne solely by the woman. Because of this, women who practiced free love were afflicted by far more internal doubts than men (who had always been promiscuous) and, whatever their professed beliefs, were often tormented by guilt. Women of Eastman's generation had been taught that a monogamous heterosexual relationship was the proper center of their lives; they could not jettison their entire upbringing by a mere act of the will. Moreover, most women wanted children and regarded motherhood as a vital part of their identities; this made them value permanency in marriage more than their male partners did. Eastman's sister Crystal, a fully liberated woman, desired a child so intensely that she vowed that, if she were not married by her twenty-ninth birthday, she would go to Italy, have a child, and return home claiming that it was adopted. She married, disastrously, 17 days before her deadline.[173]
Sexual liberation had (and has) greatly different social meanings for women than for men. Monogamy and sexual fidelity were not only the underpinnings of a woman's identity, respectability, and social function; they were also her main guarantee of economic survival. Sexual liberation (especially when combined with birth control) freed men from the obligations that formerly accompanied sex (except that with prostitutes), while freeing women mainly from their accustomed role and expectation of support. Women were exhorted that they were men's equals without receiving any of the social supports--equality in education and employment, a redefinition of parenting that included the father as a primary caregiver, day care, or state subsidies for mothers--necessary for real equality. Eastman, of course, advocated most of those social changes (he remained silent about equal parental responsibilities for males); he could not, however, successfully live as if they were actually in place. Although his marriages and relationships were undertaken with the understanding that either person could leave if they wanted, and sexual freedom was usually promised even within the relationship, it is clear that such freedom (traditional male promiscuity) was necessary for Eastman and yet only a verbal concession from most of his women. Greenwich Village conventions required that women demand freedom from monogamy, even if most of them did not want it.
However sincere their intentions, men also had difficulty transcending their upbringings, especially those aspects that assumed a dominant male role and considered women as mere playthings. Dell later satirized "the spiritual hocus-pocus" which substituted for a wedding ring "to give the girl a good conscience." This litany consisted of "quotations and arguments from Edward Carpenter, Havelock Ellis, and other modern prophets, arguments designed to show that love without marriage was infinitely superior to the other kind, and that its immediate indulgence brought the world, night by night, a little nearer to freedom and Utopia." Sexual liberation gave men what they had always wanted--variety in sex without guilt or responsibility.[174]
Men dominated these relationships, though less blatently than traditional ones. Dell acknowledged that men valued power more than equality or freedom and wanted "someone dependent on them" more than "a comrade." Declaring that a couple should share "habits and tastes," Dell listed seven examples of shared interests, all of which involved the man teaching the woman his hobbies "with no pride in his own superiority."[175] Bohemian egalitarianism suspiciously resembled the old idea of "true womanhood," in which an educated wife was valued as a more fit companion for her husband and a better mother for his children. In addition, men could enjoy more frequent and sensual sex with women who also enjoyed it.[176]
Many men harbored contradictory as well as chauvinistic desires. They wanted both a "glorious playfellow" and a demure, caregiving wife. Eastman called his first wife, Ida Rauh, his "friend and slender-bodied mother." Men expected that their partner in the adventure of life would, upon marriage, transmute herself into a wife and mother preoccupied with humdrum household chores. Dell eloquently contrasted the sweetheart, who shares all of her man's life, with the wife, who is imprisoned at home and excluded from that life. "The home is not a rendezvous," he said. "It is not one of the delightful corners of the world where two companions can meet for an adventure," but rather a place "where one keeps his wife."[177] Dell, however, did not explain how wives could remain sweethearts in a society that denied them childcare facilities and meaningful economic opportunities. Nor did Eastman, Dell, or other cultural rebels volunteer for their share of the household chores.
Many men achieved their contradictory desires for an exciting companion and a traditional wife by the practice of serial monogamy. After numerous tempestuous affairs, Dell decided that he would marry a girl whose "beautiful breasts were perfect for the suckling of babies." He abandoned his search for a literary intellectual or creative artist, fearing that such women desired careers. "I did not want to be married to a girl artist; I wanted to be married to a girl who would not put her career before children--or even before me, hideously reactionary as that thought would have seemed a few years ago. One artist in the family, I was convinced, was enough."[178] Eastman cascaded through one tumultuous affair after another before "settling down" in a marriage that was, for him, a continuation of promiscuity by different means. John Reed and Louise Bryant experienced torments of jealousy unackowledged in their philosophy, as well as spending eons apart pursuing their separate careers. Ben Reitman abandoned Emma Goldman for a traditional wife and family when she faced imprisonment and deportation. Although women as well as men could have their youthful fling, they found as they aged that the entire social mileau which facilitated their free life evaporated. As their socially-defined sexual beauty declined, their lovers married more traditional lovers, and mainstream society denied them both a decent living and social freedom, liberated and sexually expressive women found that they too could settle down, but only to the subordinate position of domestic drudge and sex slave.
Before his second and permanent marriage, Dell had eloquently summarized the dilemma of emancipated women. Because men disliked independent women, creative women who "wish to be human beings as well as wives and mothers" must "choose between two modes of life, each incomplete and unsatisfactory." The liberated woman wanted a full life of creativity and adventure "and the simplest old-fashioned joys and comforts of domesticity." Man will not allow her both; "he does not want to believe that she wants anything he cannot give her," and desired her only as his "private property." She could, therefore, love a man only with "doubt and anger and [a] sense of self-betrayal.... Her soul is divided against itself; of course, in a world in which there is little room for creators, they will be tormented and tormenting creatures."[179]
In this scenario women lost on all counts. They had to break much more decisively than men from their customary role; they received much less social support, took much greater risks, and won only an erstaz equality. Men insisted that women drastically revise their inherited notions about sexuality, romance, and careers--their entire identities--while society obstructed them at every turn. Many men could enjoy their chosen relationships with women without any structural change in the larger society; individual, personal changes in conduct and values (especially among women) sufficed. Female equality, however, required radical social change. Moreover, men who challeged traditional roles emulated no clear role models, and therefore experimented with diverse and truly liberating lifestyles. Women fighting for equality, however, often perceived male lifestyles as exemplary. But the male role was in many ways an unfortunate model which, by opposing career and family, sex and commitment, and intellectuality and emotion, thwarted and distorted women's quest for an authentic, creative life. As Dell commented years later, men thought that women would rest content "with the joy of struggle. But they needed the joy of achievement." Men gained so much more from feminism than women that Dell, foreshadowing Barbara Ehrenreich's thesis about second wave feminism, declared that "we have as the motive behind the rebellion of women an obscure rebellion of men." Dell admitted that men were content with the limited results of feminism "because what we wanted was something for ourselves--a Glorious Playfellow.... But [women] wanted something different--something for themselves.... When they pointed out that, no matter what you said, women had the hardest row to hoe, and that we weren't doing a damn thing to make it easier--when this happened, our masculine feminism began, sadly, to part company with theirs." Men had tired of "the pretty slave with all the slave's subtlety and cleverness" and preferred "a comrade and an equal" only "because it promised to be more fun."[180]
The experience of the Greenwich Village feminists suggests that achieving equality between a man and a woman is nearly impossible when the man can earn a decent living and the woman cannot. Equality cannot be willed into existence by a private compact between two people; the social structure must foster it. If a romantic breakup results in poverty and disgrace for one partner while allowing wealth and respectability for the other, this social reality undermines any supposedly "equal" relationship at every point, regardless of the partcipants' intentions. This remains true even if a particular womn retains her own income or career. In Eastman's day, cultural ideas of womanhood shaped even those women who earned their own living. The Masses defined feminism as "living in relation to the universe rather than in relation to some other person."[181] Individual women could only incompletely realize this ideal when, because of the economic situation of most women, they were socialized for dependence and regarded love as the centerpiece of their lives.
Eastman's first marriage, to Ida Rauh, epitomized the difficulties of pursuing freedom and equality within one relationship. Rauh had independent means and worked for the Women's Trade Union League. An intellectual, she converted Eastman to socialism. The two married for convnience so that they could travel to Europe together while avoiding scandal; returning home, they placed both of their names upon their mailbox. This evoked curiosity. "Our attitude toward the marriage service," Rauh told an inquiring reporter, "is that we went through with it; then we can say afterward we don't believe in it. It was with us a placating of convention, because if we had gone counter to convention, it would have been too much of a bother for the gain. We both have too much work to do, so that if we had decided to dispense with the legal service there would have been such a hue and cry raised that it would have interfered with our work. We would always have had to overcome that obstacle in people's minds before we could have interested them in our real work in life." People should focus on the work their neighbors do, not in the intimacies of their domestic lives; "but as people choose to interest themselves in that tie, we are willing to conform and satisfy them."[182]
Yet this arrangement satisfied nobody. The couple encountered social disapproval and was deluged with hate mail simply for putting their separate names on their mailbox. Although Rauh bravely said that either party was free to leave the marriage whenever they wished, it is clear, as William O'Neil says, that she "did not mean what she said." Her words were "a description of how radicals were supposed to regard marriage, not of their actual union."[183] Eastman also disbelieved both his and Rauh's protestations of freedom; he felt committed, trapped and guilty about feeling trapped. Rauh's and Eastman's unacknowledged feelings poisoned an otherwise satisfactory relationship. Neither partner transcended conventional expectations about the meaning of marriage. Similar doubts and "suppressed desires" tormented John Reed and Louise Bryant both before and after their marriage.
This pattern poisoned some of Eastman's subsequent relationships as well. The woman, wanting commitment and stability, nevertheless promised Eastman freedom; Eastman, wanting freedom, felt obliged, constrained, and guilty whether he used his freedom or abandoned it. Rauh bravely said that "We have no theories about marriage.... It is the other people who have the theories.... We simply think for ourselves and live perfectly naturally."[184] However, there is no such thing as living "naturally"; all conduct is culturally mediated. Eastman and Rauh necessarily had a theory and lived "unnaturally" in the America of the Great War era; only conventional people could dispense with theory and simply "live naturally"--that is, in unreflective obedience to the mandates of their culture.
Rauh was utopian and, for a Socialist, curiously myopic, in another part of her statement. Women, she said, must have "the freedom to choose. If a woman is domestic and wants to stay at home and be supported, then she should be free to do that. If she takes care of a home and rears children she is self-supporting just as much as if she worked outside for a salary. But a woman who wants to work at something else, who has a talent or a liking for something outside her home, should be free to do so. Women were not born with pans tied around their necks as a sign that it was their destiny to wash them."[185] However, society and the law denied that mothers, wives and homemakers were "self-supporting"; such women were regarded as dependents, could seldom support themselves and their children, and suffered economic devastation if abandoned by their husbands.
Like Eastman, Rauh believed that individual freedom was the best argument for progressive change. However, her statement falsely assumed that social institutions can be neutral between divergent lifestyles. In fact, any social system facilitates some choices and discourages others. A feminist society would by its very structure devalue and discriminate against old-fashioned patriarchal couples just as patriarchal society thwarts egalitarian relationships. If women attained full equality with men, couples who valued the traditional patriarchal household would encounter obstacles posed by the new egalitarian culture. The government would neither sanction the unequal relationship nor validate male violence against women. Laws and institutions guaranteeing female equality on the job and social support for raising children would ensure a wife's economic independence from her husband, allowing her leverage within the marriage and empowering her to leave it. A woman who theoretically believed that a wife should obey her husband could divorce him whenever she changed her mind; such power would inevitable alter the entire tone of her marriage. Women who were dissatisfied with their husbands would leave, whatever their abstract beliefs, blaming their husbands rather than their theory; they would say, much like John Sloan, "our theory doesn't work--yet."
In an egalitarian society couples who constantly reconstructed the patriarchal household would also suffer relative poverty because they would have only one income instead of the usual two. Their children, raised at home by their mother instead of at daycare centers outside the home, would suffer ostracism or at least social isolation; most other children would regard them and their parents as strange. Their mother would be judged weird and inadequate by the standards of the larger culture; she would default upon the expectations of society and thus in part of herself, whatever her professed beliefs. Her husband would also appear deviant. Only an unusually strong-willed and intellectual woman could dispel doubts that she simply could not fulfill her (new) traditional role (combining family and career), especially when she received social criticism for her unorthodox life. And what are the prospects for such a woman voluntarily accepting an unequal relationship? Moreover, the whole patriarchal concept of woman's nature would crumble in an egalitarian society because social reality would pervasively deny and refute it; the wife and her husband would have to consciously construct their countercultural family, basing it on will and desire rather than any putatively "natural" way of life. This is a large burden for any couple to bear, and one they would likely abandon at the first sign of trouble.
An egalitarian society, in other words, would militate against unequal, traditional, patriarchal lifestyles just as patriarchal society discriminates against and thwarts egalitarian ones. Merely letting individuals choose their own way of life, in splendid isolation from and indifference to surrounding institutions and practices, is impossible. Eastman realized this in the abstract; this motivated his insistence that economic freedom is a necessary (even if not sufficient) condition for every other freedom. But he apparently did not fathom the devastating consequences of economic inequality in his relationship with women who were individually his economic and intellectual equal. Both Eastman and his partners were socialized for a world other than the one they chose to live in; both suffered from disappointment, unacknowledged desires, and guilt. Neither could quite live in the world in which they believed, in isolation from a hostile culture.
Romantic relationships are, of all areas of human life, perhaps least susceptible to reason. Building them by design or conscious philosophical intent is almost impossible, no matter how intelligent and moral the design. Equal relationships are difficult under the best of conditions, combining as they must a life in common with "the solitude of the self." Instead of reinforcing equal relationships, the social and educational systems render them all but impossible. Children mature under the tutelage first of their parents, then of their teachers, and finally of their bosses; even adult friendships are deformed and undermined by considerations of money, power, and status. Nowhere do children or adults gain practical experience in egalitarian relationships, understanding and expressing feelings, or adjudicating disputes on a rational and equal basis. Systems of dominion and exploitation foster inchoate resentments and distortions of personality in abused and abuser alike.
The limits of gender equality imposed by society and suffered by Eastman and his partners did not, however, negate Eastman's positive achievements. Under Eastman's editorship, The Masses became one of the Greenwich Village institutions which offered liberated women a voice and important support. Women who associated with Eastman transcended, in their personal lives, the limited menu of options usually provided by men. Greenwich Village women forged their own institutions--Polly's restaurant, the Liberal Club, Heterodoxy, Mabel Dodge's salon, Emma Goldman's Mother Earth--and participated as leaders in many others. As Dell said, Greenwich Village had diverse meanings.[186] Some women looked for more exciting husbands than they could find on Main Street, some for sexual adventure, others for friendship and a wider life. Some continued their own careers after marriage, some disappeared from public life, and others remained single. If women lacked totally free choices and opportunities as wide as those of the men in their lives, that was not Eastman's fault. The Masses helped female contributors and readers enjoy more options than most other women.[187] Most of the progress was, of course, the women's own doing; but Village feminists were helped along by the sincere, if sometimes muddled, condescending, and incomplete, support of their men. We cannot fairly blame Eastman for failing in an impossible task, the creation of a realm of pure freedom and equality in a virulently patriarchial society. Eastman and his friends achieved much for women, and would have done far more had they not been thwarted by the mainstream society they so implacably opposed.
Five women supporters of The Masses said as much in an announcement in the February 1916 issue urging that female readers financially support the magazine. "In cartoon, in verse, in editorial, in policy, THE MASSES has stood for us all along the line as no other magazine in America has," they said. "When we fight for suffrage, for economic freedom, for professional opportunities, for scientific sex knowledge, there stands THE MASSES, always understanding, always helping." The editors "are genuine warm-hearted feminists. They like us and want us to win."[188]