Riot. Strike. Riot (Joshua Clover)

Joshua Clover

Riot. Strike. Riot (The New Era of Uprisings)

I thought this would be a romp through various riots and strikes but turns out to be a pretty intellectual piece about the differences between the two and how due to social and economic, and therefore political, conditions have led to the development of strikes from riots and back full circle to riots being the main form of resistance to the capitalist economic order. Written by an American professor who has made some fairly controversial (in the eyes of the media) statements regarding the police this is an academic work. Throughout the language is academic (as in words related to academic analysis that I have to look up) and there are many references to both original agitators and subsequent academic authors that you feel you are assumed to know well. It hit home to me half way through when a paragraph starts "The split in the First International surely needs no rehearsal here..." which both assumes you know what the First International was, what the split in it was and subsequent development of the radical "left" due to that split. Which is all assumed when used to analyse strikes. 

I don't necessarily agree with all the analysis and indeed the point is made that riot and to some extent strikes are often spontaneous and whilst their origins can be analysed to some extent that's just the point - you cannot predict. A bit like chaos theory in that given a certain landscape you can predict something will happen but not exactly what where and when. Interesting point is that you get strikes when the economy is booming, workers wanting more of the profits, whereas riots form when people are not in work to even think about getting more of profits. Some good analysis of class and how since the 1970s the early industrialised countries have had more unemployment, more underemployment, more people getting by in the grey economy and more in work in prisons as part of the industrial incarceration programme.

Very timely as I read this when Trump supporters invaded the Capitol building. Although this was called a riot it wasn't that. It wasn't looting and arson by an excluded group venting their anger with the police or military fighting them off. This was a mob infiltrating the seat of government to get the election result reversed in an attempted coup. The fact that Capitol security allowed it to happen, it was so obvious that the mob were going to march on the Capitol and security did nothing to stop them, shows that those forces were complicit in the action. Sitting presidents don't incite riots - they do however attempt coups. In this case Trump was hedging his bets and wouldn't go all in himself. Hence the far right backlash against him. The real riots are in the streets of big cities where the disenfranchised have nothing to lose.