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  4. Love and Rage: Revolutionary Anarchism in the Late Twentieth Century

Love and Rage: Revolutionary Anarchism in the Late Twentieth Century

File(s)
Beswick_cornellgrad_0058F_13769.pdf (2.31 MB)
Permanent Link(s)
https://doi.org/10.7298/n6a9-7s03
https://hdl.handle.net/1813/114577
Collections
Cornell Theses and Dissertations
Author
Beswick, Spencer
Abstract

This dissertation examines the post-1960s evolution of North American anarchism in order to rethink the role of the radical left during the neoliberal counterrevolution. I conducted oral history interviews across the United States, as well as archival research in the US, Germany, and the Netherlands, to investigate how anarchists responded to the new social terrain of the late twentieth century. The most significant US anarchist group of this era, the Love and Rage Revolutionary Anarchist Federation (1989-1998), popularized a new vision of revolutionary anarchism that centered anti-racism and intersectional feminism. The dissertation uses Love and Rage’s story to tell a history of anarchism in the 1980s-1990s. I situate this history within the broader development of the left in this era, including Marxism’s decline, the rise of “new social movements,” and struggles against white supremacy, patriarchy, and fascism. Using a bottom-up approach enabled by oral history interviews and a transnational framework connecting Love and Rage with the Mexican Zapatistas and European radicals, I challenge the portrayal of this era as solely a period of retreat on the left. This methodology reveals the subterranean development of new forms of transnational social movements with shared commitments to intersectional anti-state politics rooted in but not reducible to class struggle. I ultimately argue that anarchism was revitalized because it provided compelling answers to new problems posed by the neoliberal counterrevolution: deindustrialization, right-wing backlash, and the demise of state socialism.

Description
303 pages
Date Issued
2023-08
Keywords
Anarchism
•
Marxism
•
Neoliberalism
•
Revolution
•
Social Movements
•
Transnational
Committee Chair
Rickford, Russell
Committee Member
Craib, Raymond
Verhoeven, Claudia
Degree Discipline
History
Degree Name
Ph. D., History
Degree Level
Doctor of Philosophy
Rights
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
Rights URI
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
Type
dissertation or thesis
Link(s) to Catalog Record
https://newcatalog.library.cornell.edu/catalog/16219289

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