The central thesis of Fishbein's study of the pre-World War I Green-which Village radicals revolves around their failure to adapt the insights of Freudian psychology to a socialist analysis of American culture and society. The radicals of 'The Masses', Fishbein argues, turned to Freudian-ism in their crusade against America's neo-puritanism but only as a "tool in their personal liberation." Their bourgeois egotism prevented a "genuine attempt to fuse Marxism and Freud-ianism" causing the strands of political and psychological radicalism to unravel in the post war period. Consequently, "the left found itself without an ideology that could explain the relationship between radicalism and personal life. Cultural and political radicals parted ways and the left entered a period of temporary decline."

The differences between cultural and political radicalism and to what extent they did coexist in this period are not developed in her analysis. Fishbein dispenses with the complex relationship between cultural and political radicalism by invoking

Christopher Lasch's argument that the pre-war village radicals "... attached greater importance to a cultural transformation of American society than they did to political reform per se." Fishbein elaborates this perspective by faulting village radicals for borrowing from antirationalist European thinkers like Bergson and Nietzsche to provide indirect justification for the uncritical subjectivity of the "new paganism". The eclecticism of these radicals mitigated against the development of a coherent theory of social change, Nietzsche was invoked to argue against the evils of civilization, Freud to champion free love, "Marx to buttress the family, and syndicalism to explain the industrial Workers of the World (I.W.W.) in a veritable orgy of misinterpretation."

An example of Fishbein's inability to understand the relationship between culture and political radicalism can be seen in her critique of the aesthetic of 'The Masses'. Critical of 'The Masses' efforts to pioneer on-the-spot coverage of labor protest and their use of cartoons and graphics to dramatize the class struggle, Fishbein misunderstands their politization of culture. Instead she focuses on what she describes as an absence of a marxist theory of art. "The problem of style," Fishbein goes on to argue, "posed a fundamental challenge to the radicals' self image."

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in her view, the ingredients of a socialist expression of art demand a crafted, more self conscious aesthetic form. This, she argues, was inimicable to their Bohemian elan based on spontaneity and authenticity. The essence of the political sensibility and style of 'The Masses' and village radicals was developed through their involvement with labor struggles and the i.W.W. By ignoring this aspect of their history, Fishbein misses the very reasons why the village radicals believed in "direct" reportage as the most effective way of communicating their analysis.

In her discussion of the "new feminism" Fishbein relies heavily on Aileen Kraditor and June Sochen, concluding that "radical feminists did not outlive the war" because "village feminists were too individualistic to leave viable organizations in their wake." Judith Schwartz's study. Radical Feminists in Heterodoxy, Greenwich Village 1912-1940, documents the continuity between pre and post war village feminist communities. Fishbein neglects this important source.

The Progressive Era was marked by the emergence of an organized middie class reform movement aimed at ameliorating labor discontent as well as opposing repressive methods used by government and big business to suppress labor disorder. While the period was marked by a trend toward

less repression of the labor unions, the same was not true of repression directed toward cultural and political radicalism. For the most part, Fishbein ignores the historical context of the emergence of an important sector of this movement—an intellectual proletariat, and the political repression directed against this type of radicalism. Missing the material and political basis of their radicalism, Fishbein sees the village radicals as merely attacking the symbols of the repressive order they were struggling to tranform. To explicate this "symbolic crusade" among village radicals Fishbein concentrates on the writings of diehard romantics like Hutchins Hapgood, Floyd Dell, and Mabel Dodge, conservative socialists like Morris Hiilquitand John Spargo, while at the same time championing the liberal philosophies of John Dewey and Walter Lippman. Those whose radicalism does not fit neatly into her theory—Art Young, Lou Rogers, John Reed, Louise Bryant, Crystal Eastman, etc. —are ignored or selectively treated to support her argument.

Fishbein concludes that "traditional vulnerability in matters of the heart" blinded village radicals to their revolutionary purpose. She claims that even the "more political rebels like Emma Goldman were prone to find love subversive" to their radical commitment. Bound to

conceptions of psychology and sexuality that are in themselves bourgeois, Fishbein sees the village radicals as caught in the most exploitative forms of bourgeois relations. Thus, she dismisses their struggles to transform themselves as social and sexual beings. The end result is to view the village radicals as neurotics and ineffectual rebels, "victims of their incapacity to repress, sublimate or fulfill their powerful sexual drives." Rebels in Bohemia is psychohistory at its worst.

— Sal Salerno