A comment on Marlowe’s post
I think the formulations “class activity there is none” and “so far as I’ve found yet, there was no class content” do create the impression that we think the riots were not a struggle of a strata of the working class, and thus that the participants were either ‘lumpen proletariat’ or ‘underclass’ or criminal gangs or acted as individuals, simply reflecting the power of capitalist ideology, or more profoundly, of the value-form. I am not saying Marlowe is saying this, but it seems implied. The advantage of that is the honor of the working class is saved by separating it from struggles that are wild outbursts of pent-up anger and frustration, that are without rudder or direction, or that sometimes take forms that affirm the value-form by imitating capitalism in its plundering and violence. Judging from the arrest-records, the participants were overwhemingly working class, both employed and unemployed. They acted clearly collectively, against the police, against the stores. I don’t see how we can maintain that there was no class struggle there. There was clearly also involvment of criminals using the occasion to be criminals, but we cannot reduce the whole event to just that like the mass media tend to do.
That doesn’t mean that we should applaud it. Nor does it imply that the UK riots will have a positive impact on the development of revolutionary consciousness. I think we should be uncompromising in our critique of the riots, but also that the critique should recognize that such riots are indeed class struggle, and will probably become more frequent and intense in the coming years, whether we like it or not.
But if the class struggle would remain limited to riots, no matter how intense they’d be, it would be doomed. Struggle at the points of production is indispensable to give the working class struggle both power and perspective. But in that struggle, the anger and energy displayed by young rebels in the UK, the “current of thoughtfulness” that Marlowe recognized, will also be a needed factor. So rather than distancing ourselves from them, our critique should attack that distance and aim at overcoming it.
Sander
