Respectability and its discontents: Sexuality and marginalisation in the Marxist tradition in the United States
Twentieth Century Communism - ISSN 1758-6437
Volume 2021 Number 20 (2021)
Respectability and its discontents: Sexuality and marginalisation
in the Marxist tradition in the United States
Paul C Mishler pages 79-108
Abstract
Since modern radicalism emerged in the wake of the French revolution, radicals and revolutionaries have held divergent perspectives regarding the relationship between personal and social transformation. On the one hand, radicals recognised that the institutions of bourgeois democracy would never allow the working class to achieve the moral, economic and social standards of respectable life, due to poverty, lack of democratic rights, racism and exploitation. For these revolutionaries, the organisation of the working class would allow working-class families to achieve respectable families and community life. On the other, becoming a social revolutionary involved a transformation of personal life as well as social ideology. This was expressed in a critique of conventional sexuality and family life, and experimentation with non-respectable practices in their daily lives. This article explores the ways that this conflict played out over the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It assesses the notion of ‘respectability’ – especially its ‘democratisation’ – among communists in the United States, and engages with questions of how respectability was to be achieved for the working class, where the notion of respectability came from, how it applied to sexuality, and whether it was challenged by a desire for personal liberation amongst those committed to the revolutionary project.
SORRY - you are not registered as being permitted online access to the full text of this article
You have the following options:
- If you are viewing this via an institution or academic library you can ask that your institution takes out a Subscription to this journal.
- If you already have a Personal Subscription please login below
Forgotten your username / password? Click here to locate
- Purchase an annual Personal Subscription
PRINT + DIGITAL personal subscription (£30 / year)
DIGITAL personal subscription (£25 / year)
A Personal Subscription provides immediate access not only to the single article you are seeking, but also to all past and future articles in this journal up to the expiry of your annual (calendar year) subscription. - Purchase immediate access to this single article (UK£7.00) - Buy article Coming Soon
To cite this article
Paul C Mishler (2021) Respectability and its discontents: Sexuality and marginalisation
in the Marxist tradition in the United States, Twentieth Century Communism, 2021(20), 79-108