There are successes and failures in Alice Echols’ Daring To Be Bad: Radical Feminism in America, 1967-1975. Principally, she succeeds in the areas of thoroughness, depth, and (in some regards) impartiality. However, her failures in respect to organization, and theoretical differentiation detract from an otherwise promising thesis. She is also blind to some aspects of impartiality that I would like to have seen addressed. In this discussion, I will point first to her successes, then to the shortcomings I found in the book, after which I will reformulate a thesis which can be gleaned from the events she recounts.

That Echols is thorough is beyond dispute. Throughout the book, the level of detail demonstrates a commitment to leaving no stone unturned, and no woman who participated in the formation of the nascent movement unmentioned. From the initial stirrings of unrest that women felt at being sidelined by a male-dominated new left to the internecine battles over the formulation of what exactly a women’s movement ought to entail, Echols’ research is clearly exhaustive. It is impressive and lends the work considerable credibility, even to so skeptical an audience as I should confess myself, at the outset, to be.

From this consistent and dedicated thoroughness arises a depth of detail that allowed me, as I made my way through the book, to come to feel as if I knew the characters involved. Some I even came to care about while others I learned to detest. While I was frequently uninspired by the actual positions they took in their struggle to define an emerging movement, I was rarely uninterested in the struggle itself. I count this as quite an accomplishment in a scholarly work.

But to me, coming to the book with expectations as I did, what impressed me most was Echols’ willingness, frequently demonstrated, to point out where one or another of the personalities involved was wrong as she does, for instance, in discussing the Redstockings’ attempts to explain the decline in their own movement. Echols’ unapologetically states that the Redstockings "did not acknowledge that their faith in a universal sisterhood might have been misplaced." (page 155) This is a critical point, not only in the establishment of credibility for the researcher, but in any analysis of the subject under discussion.

So, what then, is there to find fault with in this work? Well, a number of things. First, the book is organized in such an haphazard fashion as to render some parts of it almost unintelligible. That this is more of a problem at the beginning of the book than at the end suggests several explanations. The easiest is that Echols’ was lightly, or at the least, forgivingly edited. More likely, to my mind, is that the level of detail drops as the book proceeds. Too often Echols ranges across periods of years in a maddeningly meandering fashion, referring at one moment to events in 1969 and in the next sentence jumping back to 1967 and immediately forward to 1970, as often as not making a stop in 1968 along the way.

This tendency, which makes the first three chapters of the book an arduous read, is mediated later by her use of central themes in each subsection. Her discussion of each of the Varieties of Radical Feminism, by differentiating adequately, allowed for a certain structure - which made her persistent lack of chronological consistency easier to navigate. Her discussion of the rise of cultural feminism in the final chapter centers around Robin Morgan so strongly that that chapter is the only one that is readily accessible. Morgan seems to provide a consistent thread that previous topics lacked around which the events discussed can coalesce.

Theoretically, Echols’ book is beset with problems. At the outset she draws lines that divided the actors she will portray. The "politicos," she asserts, are those who "attributed women’s oppression to capitalism, whose primary loyalty was to the left, and who longed for the imprimatur of the ‘invisible audience’ of male leftists." On the other hand, the "radical feminists" were those who "opposed the subordination of women’s liberation to the left and for whom male supremacy was not mere epiphenomenon of capitalism." (page 3) The problem is that the actors themselves consistently refuse to fit into such neatly defined categories. In fact, the entire premise of the book is endangered by Echols’ insistence, to which she must repeatedly allow exception, that these two were the factions involved. Examples of this necessity abound. On page 75, for instance, Echols states that "Allen... was hardly a conventional politico. In fact by May, 1968 she too had grown distrustful of the left." On page 68, the Westside Group, which was founded in Fall, 1967, is described as becoming "more feminist over time" and an, as example, Echols cites an "early 1969 article." Over time? Disingenuous at best, I should say. By way of a final example, early radical feminists could not even decide who or what the actual enemy was, as is described in detail on pages 64-65 (which recounts the sharp contrasts between the visions of radical feminism promulgated simultaneously by Shulasmith Firestone and Judith Brown).

Further, although there existed theoretical frameworks within which Echols could have defined these events, thereby making a contribution to Social Movement Theory, at the very least by providing an example of one in action, she makes no attempt to do so at any time. The early split with the left over the issue of the contradiction between egalitarian rhetoric and intransigent sexism, for instance, afforded an opportunity to illustrate J-Curve Theory. At the same time, the very emergence of a separate women’s movement from the civil rights and radical political movements of the sixties, whether as a result of J-Curve exigencies or otherwise, is a powerful example of political opportunity theory. Echols makes nothing of these possibilities and contents herself with a work of contemporary history. This is not, in and of itself, an indictment, but it is a disappointment.

Lastly, while Echols is generally quite impartial when issues of feminist theory are at issue, she is blind to her own bias, which permeates the book. She frequently mentions "non-Movement" women in respect to the attitudes held of them by the actors under discussion, and does so in an even-handed manner. However, in her own voice she mentions non-Leftists exactly twice in the entire work. The first time is on pages 244-245 where she states that, "by 1973 the women’s movement was also facing a formidable backlash -- one which may have been orchestrated by the male-dominated New Right." This assertion, qualified though it is, stands out in that, unlike so much else of the book, it is completely unsubstantiated. Whereas, should I want details, I can turn to page 47 and discover that the Chicago NCNP convention voted "three-to-one to accept the [black] caucus’ thirteen points," there is not one shred of evidence presented that the "New Right," - which is neither defined nor even so much as mentioned in the rest of the work - made an effort to establish a backlash to the emerging women’s movement.

The only other time non-Leftists are mentioned comes in the Epilogue where Echols credits feminists with the fact that "conservative presidential candidates" endorse child care and equal pay. Echols seems to accept unqualifiedly the leftist ideology that permeated the early radical women’s movement, described by George Frankl as follows:

Many women find a theoretical basis for female liberation in the Marxian concept of
dialectical materialism which, in the words of Engels, ‘is the view that history seeks
the ultimate cause and the great moving power of all historical events in the economic
development of society.’ More and more women accept the notion that if you are
oppressed in society it must be for economic reasons.... (Frankl, page 159)

The fact of the matter, as Frankl suggests, is that, for many of the women who started what came to be known as the women’s movement, it was not a movement for women, but for Socialism. Indeed, in her description of the inability of early movement leaders to agree even on whom the enemy was, Echols herself recounts on page 104 that at the 1968 Sandy Springs Conference,

almost every discussion led back to the critical question.... is the enemy capitalism or
men? One of the most divisive discussions centered around whether the women’s
liberation movement should assume an explicitly anti-capitalist stance. Some women
maintained that a system such as ours could easily accommodate some women’s
demands for equality, thereby co-opting the movement.

That this was a common fear among early movement leaders is also voiced by Florika of WITCH who Echols quotes as saying, "the existing system with its technological sophistication might be able to absorb and accommodate women’s demands" for which reason she advocated directly attacking the system. (page 79) Gail Paradise Kelly noted in 1970 that among many members of the women’s movement "there is a fear of ‘winning’ anything based on the idea that (a) if one’s demands are accepted and capitalism does not fall, the demands were not revolutionary in the first place; and (b) if one’s demands are accepted, then one is co-opted and ends up supporting sexism and capitalism." (Altbach, pages 45-6) And Marlene Dixon asserted in 1969 that working women’s "most immediate oppression is rooted in industrial capitalism and felt directly through the vicissitudes of an exploitative labor market." (Lynn, page 100) So, inequality and sexism are not a working woman’s primary concern. Rather, it is "industrial capitalism."

All of this suggests that the overthrow of Capitalism was the primary concern of these early feminists and that equality was distinctly secondary. If Capitalism can "easily accommodate" the goal of equality -- so manifestly that its enemies even acknowledge it -- then claiming to want equality while advocating the overthrow of a system that can and will provide it hardly seems to indicate that equality was their primary goal.

Rather these women feared that "without an explicitly anti-capitalist analysis," Echols states, "the women’s movement would be unable to resist the system’s attempts to co-opt it and would merely advance the interests of white, middle-class women." (page 79) Echols herself notes that, in the end, women turned to the market to attempt to "bring Feminism to another level of confrontation." (page 277) "Feminist institutions and businesses appealed to women who wanted to bring about immediate and tangible change in women’s lives." Perceiving the movement as such as not having done so, they sought to acquire "economic power. State power," they saw, was "a ways down the road, but just because we don’t start with it, that doesn’t mean we’re not on the way to getting it." (page 274)

But the movement had succeeded in raising the cultural consciousness such that these new "feminist institutions and businesses" could prosper. And prosper some did, as Echols notes that "over time politics necessarily took a back seat to profit." (page 280)

It is from this evidence that I would reformulate this entire book, using the history recounted and its ultimate outcome as a case in point of the usefulness of "radicals" in a malleable and accommodating system like Capitalism. Since Capitalism can be relied upon to accord with the will of the people in the interest of profit, and since the zealotry of a radical can be a useful means of pointing out the shortcomings of the system, the one is an excellent check on the excesses of the other. But radicals alone cannot accomplish any meaningful goals. The history of the women’s movement is an excellent example of how, by illustrating the inequities that were so deeply imbedded in American culture that even the vanguard of the radical left was intransigently sexist, the entire order was changed.

Helen B. Shaffer wrote in 1973 that the movement’s

greatest triumph has been that it has raised the consciousness of the nation on the
entire question of the role of the female in American society. For women,
consciousness raising has meant a sharpened realization of their stake in women’s
rights, a kind of personal sensitizing to the issue that leads to a feeling of group
solidarity with other women and gives them courage to rebel against their life
situation. For American men, consciousness raising has meant a realization, often
discomforting, that sex equality is a live issue and that the women are serious about
their efforts to realize it. (Dickinson, page 6)

Having succeeded in the laudable goal of consciousness raising, the radicals’ message was no longer so forceful. "That the radical feminist movement was unable to sustain itself," Echols points out, "is hardly remarkable. This is, after all, the fate of all social change movements." (page 285) Consolidating the change did not come at the hands of women who refused to work within the structure of society. Rather, it came as a result of women trying, and sometimes failing (notably, the case of the FEN), at business in the intellectual environment fostered by the vocal and dedicated radicals.

This leads me to the other majour area in which I do not agree with Echols: her assertion that cultural feminism "supplanted" radical feminism. The very fact, as pointed out above, that the radical feminists themselves could not agree on their premises suggests an alternate explanation. The radical women’s movement was too divided in its goals and approaches to be "supplanted." It seems more plausible, therefore, to suggest that the movement evolved into what Echols terms "cultural feminism." That cultural feminism combined aspects of both the "politico" and "radical" viewpoints Echols delineated at the beginning of her work supports this, as does the fact "that feminists themselves were not immune to the growing conservatism of the period." (pages 244-5) Echols avers that "cultural feminism’s vision of social change was profoundly individualistic and far removed from the collectivist impulse that informed radical feminism." (page 251) Seeking more tangible results, and, perhaps, growing a bit older, the radicals took a longer view -- as is powerfully suggested by the quotation above about acquiring state power -- and sought to enjoy the successes they had achieved in the intellectual arena. Whether they were knowingly "co-opted" or imagined that their revolutionary program was merely taking a new course is ir-relavent. Since Capitalism recognizes the primacy of the rights of the individual in a way that collectivist notions of all stripes do not, a "profoundly individualistic" approach afforded much more opportunity for long-term consolidation of those successes than the replacement of Capitalism with any form of collectivism could ever hope to do.