Tag: Movement History

A Year of Anarchist History

I published a lot this year!

My writing on anarcha-feminist abortion struggles was kicked off with my first piece in the Washington Post, “The model for mobilizing to protect abortion rights beyond voting” (May 17)

That same week, I published “‘We’re Pro-Choice and We Riot!’: How Anarcha-Feminists Built Dual Power in Struggles for Reproductive Freedom” (May 19) in It’s Going Down

I was then interviewed with Suzy Subways for the It’s Going Down podcast episode “Lessons From the Fight to Protect Abortion Clinics in the 1990s: A Discussion” (June 17)

My last piece on anarcha-feminist abortion struggle was “Abortion Struggles Beyond Voting: Women’s Liberation, Reproductive Care, and Dual Power” (August 30) for Hard Crackers: Chronicles of Everyday Life’s excellent series on Reproductive Freedom. You can also find me reading this on Youtube here.

I also published a longer piece on the German Autonomen and the Invisible Committee, “Living Communism: Theory & Practice of Autonomy & Attack” (July 29) in Perspectives on Anarchist Theory

I published a short essay, first written in the early covid days, in Perspectives on Anarchist Theory’s Pandemics from the Bottom Up series, “The Quarantine Commune” (September 11). You can also find me reading this on Youtube here.

Finally, I published my first peer reviewed academic journal article “From the Ashes of the Old: Anarchism Reborn in a Counterrevolutionary Age (1970s-1990s),” in the Anarchist Studies journal (email me for a PDF of my article!)

I’m looking forward to writing and sharing more in the coming year! My new year’s resolution is to finish my dissertation, titled “Love and Rage: Revolutionary Anarchism in the Late Twentieth Century.”

New Publication: “From the Ashes of the Old: Anarchism Reborn in a Counterrevolutionary Age (1970s-1990s)”

My first peer reviewed journal article was recently published in the Anarchist Studies journal: “From the Ashes of the Old: Anarchism Reborn in a Counterrevolutionary Age (1970s-1990s).”

Here is the abstract:

After almost a century of Marxist predominance, how did anarchism develop from a marginal phenomenon into a force at the centre of the anti-globalisation movement? This article explores how anarchism was reborn in a counter-revolutionary age. Part one investigates how the New Right’s post-1960s counterrevolution defeated the New Left and remade US society, including by recuperating potentially liberatory elements of social movements. Part two examines how a new generation of radicals critiqued the failures of Marxism-Leninism and popularised the anarchist analysis and principles that provided the foundation for the anti-globalisation movement. The article discusses five examples of the development of anarchist theory and practice: Black/New Afrikan Anarchism, anarcha-feminism, eco-anarchism, punk anarchism, and revolutionary social anarchism. Ultimately, the article argues that anarchism was revitalised in the late twentieth century because it provided compelling answers to the new problems posed by the neoliberal counterrevolution and the crisis of state socialism.

Prefiguration or Dual Power? Infoshops and Revolutionary Anarchism in the 1990s

I recorded my recent talk at the Anarchist Studies Conference and uploaded it to youtube, check it out!

“Spencer Beswick gives a short overview of the anarchist infoshop movement, including its historical roots in West German squats and rapid growth in the US in the 1990s. He also addresses critiques of the model, particularly from the Love and Rage Revolutionary Anarchist Federation, which argued that infoshops should be subordinated to the task of building a revolutionary movement and dual power structures. Love and Rage was inspired by the Zapatistas in Mexico, who they saw as a model and a vision of the future. Ultimately, the debates over infoshops reflected very real differences in revolutionary strategy and tactics that are relevant for today’s movements.

This talk was originally presented at the Anarchist Studies Network Conference in August 2022 on a panel called ‘Prefiguring the Future: Twentieth Century Anarchist Visions.'”

Marxism, Anarchism, and Anti-Colonialism Syllabus

The George Floyd Rebellion of Summer 2020 transformed the terrain of contemporary social struggle. In Fall 2020 I taught an intro class on “Marxism, Anarchism, and Anti-Colonialism” as an attempt to provide a theoretical and historical grounding for students involved in the movement. Here is the syllabus, with links/PDFs for all readings.

Course Description:

The US president tweets about “ugly anarchists” and pundits warn of a communist conspiracy to destroy America; meanwhile, abolitionists in Black Lives Matter offer a vision of a society without police, prisons, and capitalism. In a broad historical analysis of the contemporary political moment, this course asks: what do Marxists and anarchists really believe? This writing seminar will explore the theory and practice of Marxism and anarchism with particular focus on race, imperialism, and anti-colonialism. Students will write a persuasive political essay, a film analysis, papers exploring anti-capitalist theory, and historical reflections on national liberation movements. Readings will include Marx, Lenin, Kropotkin, Ho Chi Minh, Fanon, Mao, Mariátegui, the Combahee River Collective, Angela Davis, and more.

Note that the Marx readings all come from Robert C. Tucker’s The Marx-Engels Reader, Second Edition (1978). Here is a PDF.

Course Schedule

Week One: Introduction to Class

Unit One: Marxism

Week Two: The Communist Manifesto

  • Karl Marx, “Manifesto of the Communist Party”(1848) [p. 472-500]
  • Karl Marx, excerpt from “Marx on the History of His Opinions,” [Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy] (1859) [p. 4-5]

Week Three: Wage Labor and Alienation

  • Karl Marx, excerpt from Wage Labor and Capital (1847) [p. 203-206]
  • Karl Marx, excerpt from Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 (1844) [p. 70-84]

Week Four: Marx and Colonialism

Week Five: Marxism-Leninism

Unit Two: Anarchism

Week Six: Introduction to Anarchism

Week Seven: Case Study: Mutual Aid and Coronavirus

Week Eight: Anarchism and Anti-Colonialism

Unit Three: National Liberation and Indigeneity

Week Nine: “Stretching Marxism” with Fanon

Week Ten: Marxism and Indigeneity

Week Eleven: Case Study: The Zapatistas

Unit Four: The Black Freedom Struggle

Week Twelve: Resistance, Marronage, and National Liberation

Week Thirteen: Black Power and Anti-Colonialism

Week Fourteen: Black Feminism and Abolition

Living Communism: Theory & Practice of Autonomy & Attack

I just published an article in Perspectives on Anarchist Theory called “Living Communism: Theory & Practice of Autonomy & Attack.”

This article combines historical insights from the Autonomen with theoretical interventions from the Invisible Committee in order to make several related arguments. First, the commune form creates alternative worlds in which liberalism is combatted and collective struggle against alienation takes place. Second, communes operate according to a unique spatial logic that ruptures capitalist geography, promotes new spatial practices, and establishes non-alienated inhabitation of territory.

Third, the Autonomen and the Invisible Committee theorize and act upon a new conception of communism as a collective practice of living the “good life” in revolutionary struggle rather than as solely a (future) economic system. Fourth, alternative infrastructure provides the means to practice this in daily life. Finally, revolutionary practice entails networks of autonomous communes seceding from the capitalist system to form liberated territories that function as bases from which to attack capitalist state power.

You can read the article for free online at Perspectives on Anarchist Theory!

American Anarchism Syllabus

A few years ago, I taught my first class: a first-year writing seminar called “American Anarchism.” Here is the syllabus, which may be useful to folks looking for a grounding in the history of anarchism in the United States!

“Anarchism, then, really stands for the liberation of the human mind from the dominion of religion; the liberation of the human body from the dominion of property; liberation from the shackles and restraint of government. Anarchism stands for a social order based on the free grouping of individuals…”

-Emma Goldman

“If it is the future you seek, then I tell you that you must come to it with empty hands… You cannot buy the Revolution. You cannot make the Revolution. You can only be the Revolution. It is in your spirit, or it is nowhere.”

-Ursula K. Le Guin

Course description:

Anarchists are notorious for bomb-throwing “propaganda of the deed,” but they have historically been far more likely to reach for a pen than a stick of dynamite. What do anarchists have to offer us as writers? This course explores the history of American anarchism through historical analysis paired with literature and manifestos. We will study the rebellious writing of anarchists like Emma Goldman, David Graeber, and CrimethInc in order to refine our own techniques. Students will write historical essays, artistic and literary analysis, a persuasive political essay, and a manifesto. We will take inspiration from Ursula Le Guin’s affirmation that “writers know words are their way towards truth and freedom, and so they use them with care, with thought, with fear, with delight.”

Course Schedule

Unit 1: Introduction to American Anarchism

Week 1: A Beginning

Tue., Jan. 21: Introduction to Class
Thu., Jan. 23: “Are You An Anarchist?”

Week 2: Classical Anarchism
Tue., Jan. 28: Anarchist Communism


Thu., Jan. 30: Anarchy in the US

Week 3: Settler Colonialism, Slavery, and Resistance
Tue., Feb. 4: Settler Colonialism and Resistance


Thu., Feb. 6: Slavery and Resistance

Unit 2: Classical American Anarchism (late 19th/early 20th century)

Week 4: Early American Anarchism
Tue., Feb. 11: Utopian Socialism and Individualist Mutualism

Thu., Feb. 13: Immigrant Anarchism and Haymarket

Week 5: Anarchist Apogee and Decline

Tue., Feb. 18: Syndicalism and the Anarchist Apogee


Thurs., Feb. 20: Propaganda of the Deed and Insurrectionism

  • Lucy Parsons “A Word to Tramps”
  • Luigi Galleani, excerpt from “Propaganda of the Deed,” from The End of Anarchism? (1925)
  • Andrew Cornell, short excerpts from “The Red and Black Scare, 1917-1924” and “A Movement of Defense, of Emergency, 1920-1929,” in Unruly Equality (2016)

Week 6: From the Depression to the 1950s
Tue., Feb. 25: February Break, No Class

Thu., Feb. 27: Depression, Spanish Revolution, and WWII

  • Andrew Cornell, excerpts from “The Unpopular Front, 1930-1939” and “Anarchism and Revolutionary Nonviolence, 1940-1948” from Unruly Equality (2016)

Unit 3: Anarchism in the Long 1960s

Week 7: Long 1960s Part 1: From Civil Rights to the New Left
Tue., Mar. 3: The Avant-Garde and the Civil Rights Movement

  • Andrew Cornell, excerpts from “Anarchism and the Avant-Garde, 1942-1956” and “Anarchism and the Black Freedom Movement, 1955-1964,” from Unruly Equality


Thu., Mar. 5: Anarchism and the New Left

  • Andrew Cornell, excerpts from “The New Left and Countercultural Anarchism, 1960-1972,” from Unruly Equality (2016) (240-279)
  • Murray Bookchin, “Post-Scarcity Anarchism” (1967/68)

Week 8: Long 1960s Part 2: Counterculture and the Rebirth of Anarchism
Tue., Mar. 10: Counterculture


Thu., Mar. 12: Anarchism “Reborn”

Unit 4: New Anarchisms: Anarcha-Feminism, Black Anarchism, and Environmentalism

Week 9: Anarcha-Feminism and Black Feminism
Tue., Mar. 17: Anarcha-Feminism


Thu., Mar. 19: Black Feminism and Anarchism

Week 10: Black/New Afrikan Anarchism and Radical Environmentalism
Tue., Mar. 24: Black/New Afrikan Anarchism


Thu., Mar. 26: Ecology, Primitivism, Earth Liberation

Week 11: Spring Break
Tue., Mar. 31: No Class (Spring Break)
Thu., Apr. 2: No Class (Spring Break)

Unit 5: Punk and Anarchism

Week 12: Punk, Anarchism, and Manifestos
Tue., Apr. 7: Punk and Manifestos


Thu., Apr. 9: Riot Grrrl and Zines

Week 13: Love & Rage, T.A.Z., and the Infoshop Movement


Tue., Apr. 14: Love & Rage (Revolutionary Anarchist Federation)


Thu., Apr. 16: Temporary and Permanent Autonomous Zones

Unit 6: Contemporary Anarchism

Week 14: Anti-Globalization Movement


Tue., Apr. 21: Anti-Globalization/Global Justice Movement


Thu., Apr. 23: 21st Century Anarchism, Earth & Animal Liberation, and the Green Scare

Week 15: Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter
Tue., Apr. 28: Occupy Wall Street


Thu., Apr. 30: Anarchist People of Color and Black Lives Matter

***Friday, May 1: Mayday, International Workers Day***

Week 16: Endings and new beginnings
Tue., May. 5: Whither Anarchism?

Bowling for Anarchy: The Revolutionary Anarchist Bowling League

In the late 1980s, the Minneapolis-based Revolutionary Anarchist Bowling League (RABL) theorized and practiced what they called “revolutionary anarchism” and helped build an organized anarchist movement across North America. In “Bowling for Beginners: An Anarchist Primer,” RABL offers an initial definition of anarchism:

Anarchy is not chaos. Anarchy is the absence of imposed authority. Anarchy is a society that is built on the principles of respect, cooperation and solidarity. Anarchy is wimmin controlling their own bodies, workers controlling their own workplaces, youth controlling their own education and the celebration of cultural difference.

reprinted in Love and Rage, Aug 1990

RABL gives a short history of anarchism from the 1886 Haymarket Affair to contemporary squatters movements in order to demonstrate that successful movements all share a common thread of people taking power into their own hands and collectively struggling for a new world. RABL rejected the need for a revolutionary vanguard, arguing that “only the masses, completely involved and in absolute control, can make a real revolution.” In the end, “anarchism is about people empowering themselves to take control and to lead their own lives.”

But since those in power will not give it up without a fight, revolution is necessary. The basic point of unity for RABL was an agreement on the necessity of revolutionary action to reach a classless, stateless society. RABL brought together the most pro-organization and anti-imperialist anarchists in the Twin Cities—and eventually across the US—to advocate a combination of direct action and revolutionary organization.

True to their name, the Revolutionary Anarchist Bowling League crew began referring to “going bowling” as a code for direct action, which could be anything from nighttime sabotage (gluing locks, spray painting, etc.) to acting as a militant bloc at a street demonstration. Many anarchists at the time practiced this sort of small-scale militancy, which could be organized in small affinity groups of friends. RABL’s intervention was to pair this individual and small-group direct action with a vision for a broad anarchist federation.

Anarchism could continue to exist forever on the margins of society in small groups, but if anarchists wanted to actually change the world, they needed to get organized and help build militant mass movements.

Despite their roots in a relatively small city, the Revolutionary Anarchist Bowling League played an outsized role in transforming US anarchism and organizing a national movement at the end of the 20th century…

This is the latest in my new series Fragments of an Anarchist Dissertation. Check out the last post here: RAGE! Anarchism in the Late 1980s

Prefiguring the Future: Twentieth Century Anarchist Visions

A panel I organized for the upcoming Anarchist Studies Network conference was accepted! Titled “Prefiguring the Future: Twentieth Century Anarchist Visions,” it features a new generation of anarchist historians who I’m very excited to collaborate with. You’ll be able to tune in online for the conference August 24-26.

Here’s the panel abstract:

Prefigurative practices are driven by an anarchist ethics that attempts to “build the new world in the shell of the old.” But just what does this “new world” of the future look like, and how do we get there? This panel explores how visions of the future have shaped anarchist strategy and life across the twentieth century in the territory of the US state. Nikita Shepard argues that engagements with the future have been central to queer anarchist thought and practice for over a century, fundamentally shaping visions and practices of sexual and political liberation. Jacqui Sahagian explores how deindustrialization influenced the prefigurative practices and utopian visions of anarchists and artists in Detroit during the late twentieth century. Spencer Beswick explores competing visions of prefiguration and dual power in the 1990s through Love and Rage’s critique of the infoshop movement and their positioning of the Zapatistas as a vision of the future. Richard Saich looks at the 1999 Battle of Seattle and uses the slogan “this is what democracy looks like” to understand the turn-of-the-century anarchist approach to prefiguring the future. Collectively, these papers attempt to use historical analysis to engage with enduring questions of anarchist political theory.

Writing Movement History: Fall 2021 Posts

I was based at the Brooklyn Interference Archive for Fall 2021 conducting dissertation research and interviews with support from Cornell’s Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies. During this time, I wrote sixteen new blog posts, which I am collecting here:

Sept 12: ‘To Repulse The State From Our Uteri’: Anarcha-Feminist Abortion Struggle

Sept 14: ‘We’re Here, We’re Queer, and We Hate the Government!’: Queer Anarchism in Love and Rage

Sept 16: Neither East Nor West: Anarchism and the Soviet Dissolution

Sept 20: On Writing: Identity vs. Practice

Sept 21: Living Communism: Theory and Practice of Autonomy and Attack

Sept 26: Creating ‘New Porn’: Anarcha-Feminism vs. Onlyfans

Sept 29: Reading Amyl and the Sniffers’ ‘Capital’ Politically

Oct 2: Anarchist Oral History Project: Seeking Interviews

Oct 13: ‘Anarcho-Beef People’: Against All Domination at Anarchist Gatherings (1986-89)

Oct 17: Building the Movement: The Rebirth of Anarchism, 1986-89

Oct 19: A Roving Band of Anarcho-Punks: The Vermont Family’s Revitalization of American Anarchism

Oct 28: Analyzing Biden’s Spending Bill: A Debate Between Sectors of Capital

Nov 6: White Workers and Race Treason in Revolutionary Struggle

Nov 23: ‘Feminism Practices What Anarchism Preaches’: Anarcha-Feminism in the 20th Century (Panel Recording)

Dec 8: Learning from Ithaca’s Socialist Mayor: Electoralism and Movement Building

Dec 12: Red and Black Unite: The Paris Commune and Socialist Democracy

Anarcha-Feminism at the San Francisco Men’s Gathering (1989)

There was a lot of defensiveness around, ‘well I don’t participate in the patriarchy, I’m an anarchist, and I don’t believe in that.’

As women organized their own day of workshops before the 1989 San Francisco anarchist gathering, men assembled for a corresponding gender-specific meeting. Despite constituting the majority of attendees to the broader convergence, the men’s meeting was only around a third of the size of the women’s. As some women later pointed out, this was presumably because men felt less need to discuss “men’s issues” than did women. Around 60 men gathered at Delores Park and Fort Funston for a day of workshops and discussions meant both to interrogate their male privilege and to provide support for each other. Despite some promising discussions, the men’s meeting disappointed both its attendees and the women who observed part of it.

Mike E., who lived at the Chaos Collective (the co-op that hosted the women’s conference) and was a core organizer of the San Francisco convergence, helped put together the men’s gathering. He explained to me in an oral history interview last summer that the men were not initially planning to meet but that some key male organizers decided that they needed to “do work around sexism and gender” in solidarity with anarchist women.

Due to a combination of poor planning and defensiveness from some men, things did not go very well. Mike reflects “that to be honest unfortunately we didn’t put the amount of care and work that the women put into their workshops, and so the discussions were not that great. Also, a lot of the men just were not used to having those kinds of conversations. Talking about their role within, you know, the patriarchy. You know, there was a lot of defensiveness around, ‘well I don’t participate in the patriarchy, I’m an anarchist, and I don’t believe in that.’ […] and so, our conversations, honestly, my memory of them is that they were not that productive. There [were] small groups of us who I think had some good conversations, but they were also not that organized.”

In part to try to ease tensions and establish connections, the men broke halfway through the day to have an impromptu soccer game. But, as Mike recounted ruefully, “unfortunately, some of the women who were at their meeting showed up right as the soccer game was going on [laughs], and were like ‘oh really, so we are having conversations about the patriarchy and you guys are bro-ing down, having a soccer game. And this is your way of addressing the patriarchy.’ And that shit busted loose. And so there was a pretty intense confrontation around that, and sort of, you know, um, pretty strong, very pointed and good critique of that. Um, we ended up sitting back down, and sort of having more conversations.”

This confrontation and its fallout did not make it into the official reportback to the Without Borders Chronicle. Instead, they said that “the numbers were somewhat small but many men left the gathering with the feeling of having connected with other men, learning & sharing with each other.” But the report did call out the lack of engagement from men and issued a call to action: “Hopefully more men will plan to attend future mens gatherings. The lack of numbers seems to speak of an evasion or lack of interest amongst many men of the very important topics of men supporting men, men dealing with their own sexism (as well its prevalence in the @ community) and the need to deal with gender issues [that] affects us all.”

The San Francisco men’s gathering was somewhat of a false start. It is certainly easy to criticize its small attendance, the defensiveness of many men, and the ill-fated soccer game. But it also helped to introduce feminist concepts to men who believed that their anarchist politics meant that they couldn’t be sexist. It also built connections and trust between anti-sexist men who would go on to play active roles in promoting feminism in the anarchist movement. The men’s gathering is a good example, warts and all, of the kind of difficult but necessary work that men must do in order to contribute to women’s liberation.