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Spencer Beswick@spencerbeswick.bsky.social |
456 followers 361 following 343 posts
Anarcho-Historian & Bookmonger at PM Press. Currently teaching at Cornell. I write about anarchism in the late 20th century.
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Spencer Beswick
@spencerbeswick.bsky.social
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Read more in my chapter "Smashing Whiteness: Race, Class, and Punk Culture in the Love and Rage Revolutionary Anarchist Federation (1989-1998)" in the new edited volume DIY OR DIE! from Active Distribution, available now from PM Press 13/13 pmpress.org/index.php?l=...
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Spencer Beswick
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middle class existence do not have universal appeal – certainly not to an oppressed and exploited multi-racial working class. This problem lies at the core of the contradictions of whiteness and revolutionary politics for the white middle class. 12/
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Spencer Beswick
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break from the prevailing order. It is no coincidence that anarchist punks drew heavily on the Situationists, who advocated a ‘revolution of everyday life’ – punks sought to live anarchism. But Thompson cautions that politics based on the particular ontological lack of white 11/
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Spencer Beswick
@spencerbeswick.bsky.social
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something feels wrong.’ Young dissidents found a natural home in the punk scene. Punk offered an intertwined radical lifestyle and politics that appealed to the everyday political orientation of white reproles. Subcultural identity was a way to live one’s politics as a total 10/
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Spencer Beswick
@spencerbeswick.bsky.social
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‘nervous injunctions regularly issued by the army of white middle class dissidents striving to really live.’ This type of politics was expressed as ‘dissidence’, which Thompson explains is a form of ‘cultivated distance’, a ‘state of being set apart from others by a sense that 9/
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Spencer Beswick
@spencerbeswick.bsky.social
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white supremacy. But the material benefits of white skin did not necessarily lead to happiness. Their white middle class experience was alienating in a particular way that produced a fear of not being truly ‘in’ the world. As Thompson puts it, these anxieties yielded the 8/
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Spencer Beswick
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This entailed a total rejection of the mainstream world and a commitment to radically reshaping everyday life. Unlike many people of color, these white rebels felt that they had no alternative cultural tradition to draw upon – indeed, their families were the beneficiaries of 7/
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Spencer Beswick
@spencerbeswick.bsky.social
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As political theorist AK Thompson argues about a similar milieu within the anti-globalization movement, this race and class constellation produced a form of ontological politics that sought a new way of being in the world rather than solely changing the mode of production. 6/
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Spencer Beswick
@spencerbeswick.bsky.social
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They were predominantly white because of the particular historical interplay in the United States between race and class. Because of their reproletarianization, many young white people came to anarchism through the punk scene rather than the labor movement. 5/
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Spencer Beswick
@spencerbeswick.bsky.social
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labor docility and anti-Blackness, this compact broke down in the late twentieth century as neoliberalism produced a generation of downwardly mobile youth. Reproles were what we today might call the precariat: a class defined by its inability to find steady, good paying jobs. 4/
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Spencer Beswick
@spencerbeswick.bsky.social
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accumulation – separating peasants from land to turn them into wage laborers. Day adapts this concept to explain the effects of post-Fordist economic restructuring. Although white people in the United States had made a deal with capital to become ‘middle class’ in exchange for 3/
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Spencer Beswick
@spencerbeswick.bsky.social
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reflect their economic reality. According to Day, they were undergoing a process of ‘reproletarianization’ driven by changes in the global capitalist system. Proletarianization is a Marxist concept used to describe the birth of the modern working class through primitive 2/
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Spencer Beswick
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On punks & reproles 🧵 Love and Rage was shaped by its social base of reproletarianized white punks. In a 1994 position paper called ‘Love and Rage in the New World Order’, Chris Day argues that while most members were the children of the middle class, this did not necessarily 1/
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Spencer Beswick
@spencerbeswick.bsky.social
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"know that then, but only then, will you live a full life, a sound life. ... The struggle for truth, for justice, for equality within the people—can you find a finer thing in life?" 3/3 Peter Kropotkin in "An Appeal to the Young" (1880)
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Spencer Beswick
@spencerbeswick.bsky.social
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"not to govern, but to be inspired in a new milieu; less to teach than to understand the aspirations of the masses, to divine them and to formulate them, and then work tirelessly, continuously, and with all the energy of youth to introduce them into [daily] life— 2/3
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Spencer Beswick
@spencerbeswick.bsky.social
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Peter Kropotkin in "An Appeal to the Young": "All of you who possess knowledge, talents, if you have a good heart, come, you and your companions, and place them at the service of those who need them most. And know that if you come, not as masters but as comrades in the struggle; 1/3
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Spencer Beswick
@spencerbeswick.bsky.social
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Ah thanks just changed the setting!
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Spencer Beswick
@spencerbeswick.bsky.social
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Here's an excerpt from my chapter, "Smashing Whiteness: Race, Class, and Punk Culture in the Love and Rage Revolutionary Anarchist Federation (North America, 1989-1998)." If you can't swing buy the book but want to read my piece, DM me for a PDF!
bsky.app/profile/spen...
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Spencer Beswick
@spencerbeswick.bsky.social
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Available now from PM Press: DIY OR DIE! Do-It-Yourself, Do-It-Together & Punk Anarchism, featuring a chapter by yours truly. It's my first time in a book and it'll make me really happy if you buy it! pmpress.org/index.php?l=...
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Spencer Beswick
@spencerbeswick.bsky.social
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"a distinctly separate and usually professional power at its summit. Republics are beyond the immediate reach of popular control; democracies are not even confronted by the issue of the displacement of power." 3/3
Murray Bookchin, "From Urbanization to Cities" www.akpress.org/fromurbaniza...
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Spencer Beswick
@spencerbeswick.bsky.social
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"A democracy is participatory; a republic, representative. The first involves the exercise of power directly by the people; the second, its delegation to selected surrogates, who then reconstitute the political realm that initially existed at the base of the *koinonia* into 2/
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Spencer Beswick
@spencerbeswick.bsky.social
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Conservatives love to argue that the US is a republic, not a democracy. Fine! Let's be a democracy instead! Murray Bookchin on the distinction: "A face-to-face relationship between active citizens for the purpose of arriving at a consensus is alien to republican systems of government. 1/
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Spencer Beswick
@spencerbeswick.bsky.social
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I have very little in common politically with anyone who finds Max Stirner more compelling than Kropotkin.
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Spencer Beswick
@spencerbeswick.bsky.social
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Peter Kropotkin: "A revolutionary paper must be, above all, a record of those symptoms which everywhere announce the coming of a new era, the germination of new forms of social life, the growing revolt against antiquated forms of social life."
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Spencer Beswick
@spencerbeswick.bsky.social
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Pretty worried that the fascists are gonna win this election in France today. I will say that I think this is good evidence that fascism is not just a ruling class response to capitalist crisis: most of the ruling/capitalist class clearly prefers Macron (and Biden, etc.).
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Spencer Beswick
@spencerbeswick.bsky.social
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"they live off their past, they even accelerate their downfall by tearing each other apart like grumbling crones." 2/2
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Spencer Beswick
@spencerbeswick.bsky.social
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Peter Kropotkin on the elderly, reactionary ruling class in the late 19th C. & also #Debate2024 : "Helpless old men, wrinkled skin and tottering feet, gnawed by constitutional diseases, unable to absorb the flood of new ideas, they squander what little strength left to them, 1/2
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Spencer Beswick
@spencerbeswick.bsky.social
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Peter Kropotkin: "[Revolutionaries] must not stand outside the people but among them, must serve not as a champion of some alien opinions worked out in isolation, but only as a more distinct, more complete expression of the demands of the people themselves."
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Spencer Beswick
@spencerbeswick.bsky.social
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David Graeber: “What if freedom were the ability to make up our minds about what it was we wished to pursue, with whom we wished to pursue it, and what sort of commitments we wish to make to them in the process?”
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Spencer Beswick
@spencerbeswick.bsky.social
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People blaming CNN for Biden's debate debacle have lost their minds. No amount of "fact checking" could make up for Biden being a walking corpse unable to string together a coherent sentence -- let alone present a viable political vision to oppose Trump's fascist fearmongering.
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Spencer Beswick
@spencerbeswick.bsky.social
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"the oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class shall represent and repress them in parliament!" 2/2
www.marxists.org/archive/leni...
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Spencer Beswick
@spencerbeswick.bsky.social
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Lenin: "Democracy for an insignificant minority, democracy for the rich—that is the democracy of capitalist society. . . Marx grasped this essence of capitalist democracy splendidly when, in analyzing the experience of the Commune, he said that 1/2
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Spencer Beswick
@spencerbeswick.bsky.social
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Instead, we need to build our own politics, our own strategies, and our own material force from the ground up. We need to do the work to transform our own communities and build another world. 13/13
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Spencer Beswick
@spencerbeswick.bsky.social
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There is real room for DSA to continue running local, state, and congressional candidates in the next four years. But we cannot put any faith into working with Biden or pushing him left. This will only distract and disempower us. 12/
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Spencer Beswick
@spencerbeswick.bsky.social
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The Black-led uprising of 2020 has produced an astonishing social transformation. This should be our model for political work, not collaboration with the Democratic elite. This is not to say that everyone must become an anarchist and completely reject electoral politics. 11/
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Spencer Beswick
@spencerbeswick.bsky.social
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In the past 6 months the political terrain has been transformed again. Defunding the police has become a real possibility. Police and prison abolition are being seriously discussed. This did not come from electoral work but rather from autonomous organizing and street rebellion. 10/
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Spencer Beswick
@spencerbeswick.bsky.social
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Capitalism and white supremacy were put at the center of political discourse. The US left came out of the Obama years stronger than at any time since the 1970s – not because of Obama, but in spite of him. Our lessons do not end there. 9/
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Spencer Beswick
@spencerbeswick.bsky.social
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These movements constructed themselves as autonomous grassroots forces with radical anti-systemic politics. They gave up on Obama’s promise of change and decided to forge their own paths. In doing so, they transformed the terrain of struggle. 8/
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Spencer Beswick
@spencerbeswick.bsky.social
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After that, orienting ourselves towards Biden will not pull him left. Instead, it will pull us right and tear us apart. What should we do instead? We should learn from the left under Obama, particularly Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter. 7/
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Spencer Beswick
@spencerbeswick.bsky.social
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Biden will likely introduce a number of reformist measures related to racial justice, climate change, covid stimulus bills, etc. There is a chance to push these reforms as far as they will go. But that window will quickly close. 6/
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Spencer Beswick
@spencerbeswick.bsky.social
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Indeed, it is much more likely that Biden spends his term attempting to work with a few moderate Republicans to find compromises that pull him even further to the right. That said, there will be a short window in the first months of his term in which 5/
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Spencer Beswick
@spencerbeswick.bsky.social
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Biden has clearly signaled his allegiances. He campaigned to the right: moderate Republicans and the suburban middle class were his (aspirational) base. He has repudiated the left at every turn. Why would we expect this to change upon inauguration? 4/
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Spencer Beswick
@spencerbeswick.bsky.social
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Instead, we need to build an autonomous movement from below, taking lessons from Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, and the past six months of Black-led uprisings against police brutality and white supremacy. 3/
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Spencer Beswick
@spencerbeswick.bsky.social
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But we should have no illusions about the possibility of pushing Biden to the left, especially with a split or Republican Senate. Strategically orienting ourselves in relation to the Biden presidency is a recipe for defeat, demobilization, and disempowerment. 2/
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Spencer Beswick
@spencerbeswick.bsky.social
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In Nov 2020, I made a zine: "We Can't Push Biden Left: For An Autonomous Movement." Here's the text: Many on the left have beaten a consistent drum lately: elect Biden and then push him to the left. I understand the position and I did vote for Biden, if only to remove Trump. 1/
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Spencer Beswick
@spencerbeswick.bsky.social
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"Uncommitted" voters in the Dem primaries looking pretty smart right now.
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Spencer Beswick
@spencerbeswick.bsky.social
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Trump is destroying Biden, my god. Biden are you ok man? This is brutal. We're fucked.
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Spencer Beswick
@spencerbeswick.bsky.social
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"In order to defeat fascism for good, we need to organize mass movements that address the root causes of our social crisis and fight for a better world." 4/4 @truthout.bsky.social
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Spencer Beswick
@spencerbeswick.bsky.social
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"to the status quo. This approach also fails to address the real grievances many people have with the failures of these institutions and the Democratic Party. . . Anti-fascism must be embedded in broader struggles against oppression and exploitation. 3/
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Spencer Beswick
@spencerbeswick.bsky.social
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"We need to address the root causes of the deepening crisis and provide an alternative vision of a better world. When the left limits its activity to defending mainstream liberal institutions, fascists are emboldened to present themselves as the only real alternative 2/
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