Spencer Beswick

Historian of anarchism, labor, and the left in the Americas / Postdoctoral Associate at Cornell's Humanities Scholars Program / Views my own, not my employer's

Website: emptyhandshistory.com

Last Notes

2025-09-20 12:40:10 UTC

Pretty wild how all the right wing "free speech absolutists" are cheering on Trump's full frontal attack on free speech. It's almost as if they were lying the entire time!

2025-08-06 22:31:54 UTC

- reply

"[Anarchism] is a tradition opposed to domination, a tradition which sees the self-governing community as the norm and the drive to create authoritarian and hierarchical institutions as an aberration. Anarchism began to take shape wherever people demanded to govern themselves in the face of power-seeking minorities.

2025-08-04 22:27:08 UTC

- reply

"But it is easy to see why rulers should fear anarchy and wish to label anarchists as destructive fanatics for they question the very foundations of their rule.

2025-07-29 22:29:13 UTC

Assata Shakur: "There was not a single liberation movement in Africa that was not fighting for socialism. In fact, there was not a single liberation movement in the whole world that was fighting for capitalism.
The whole thing boiled down to a simple equation: anything that has any kind of value is made, mined, grown, produced, and processed by working people. So why shouldn’t working people collectively own that wealth? Why shouldn’t working people own and control their own resources? Capitalism meant that rich businessmen owned the wealth while socialism meant that the people who made the wealth owned it. . .
We're taught at such an early age to be against the communists, yet most of us don't have the faintest idea what communism is. Only a fool lets somebody tell them who the enemy is."

2025-07-26 12:21:38 UTC

"No to US/USSR imperialism. Mayday! Anarchist Contingent" (1988)
One of the most interesting aspects of writing about anarchism in the 1980s-90s is their position re: the Soviet Union as it fell (I'm writing an piece about this now!). They had great hope, but also saw the dangers of capitalist transformation.
Bob McGlynn of "NYC Neither East Nor West," who had extensive contacts with anarchists and other lefty dissidents in Eastern Europe, wrote an article in the Love and Rage newspaper in April 1990 titled "Whoopie! East Bloc Explodes!"
"Watching one Stalinoid dictatorship after another crumble with embarrassing speed is even more fun than drinking beer! (Well almost.)"
. . .
"Many wonder if this [East-West solidarity] movement is over. Not at all. In fact, it’s needed now more than ever."
. . .
"Opposition movements in the Soviet bloc remain. These are made up of anarchists, independent socialists, draft resisters, ecologists, anti-nuclear activists, workers, women, youth, gays. The battle for relative civil liberties may appear to be won, but the war for everything else is on."
. . .
"In many ways, we’re only just beginning. For instance, the sporadic contacts between anarchists in both blocs can now be cemented.
In April an Italian group is sponsoring a large gathering of East and West anarchists – the first time ever. In a sense we are at point zero. Now we can really move."
But despite his hope, McGlynn presciently identified the potential dangers of the Soviet collapse.
"Western capitalism is poised to eat the East alive, through debt and capital penetration.
. . .
The barbed wire and concrete borders are now being replaced by a border less tangible: that of money/commodity relations and rule. And this game, like the old one, has only enough room for a few players."
In 1990, the future was open. McGlynn ends:
"The paradox is that as the world has gotten very interesting recently, it's also simultaneously becoming increasingly monotone and banal. Pepsi power, etc. This, then, is prime territory for adventurers seeking seams in this seemingly seamless whole. It's been remarked that with Stalinism collapsing, we are now 'at the end of history.' Rather, perhaps, we are only at its beginning."
McGlynn's fears were realized: capitalism remade the former Soviet Bloc in its image. Could this have been prevented by more solidarity across borders? Was a libertarian socialist alternative possible? Or was the choice always simply between Stalinism and neoliberalism?
#anarchism #socialism #communism #history
https://kolektiva.social/system/media_attachments/files/114/919/484/630/990/516/original/a864ccf08f184587.jpg

2025-01-25 17:42:58 UTC

It is clear that many (most?) people view democracy as an abstraction that has little bearing on their material lives. For democracy to have any real meaning, we must build structures that enable people to make real decisions about the things that directly impact their lives.
Murray Bookchin called these structures "forms of freedom" and said that "the future assemblies of people in the block, the neighborhood or the district — the revolutionary sections to come ... will be the living nuclei of Utopia in the decomposing body of bourgeois society."