Well fuck me. That sure separated the wheat from the chaff, eh?
It isn’t some tangible form of coincidence that means this is happening now, happening here. The most ideological welfare cuts in a generation and the slow asphyxiation of extra governmental local institutions can not seriously have been thought achievable without significant social unrest. The reaction from the corporate media and the pious “experts” that are parachuted in from nowhere in particular to choke the life out of any further exchange of ideas is, predictably, a colossal misreading. The primary function of the new media class is ostensibly to trigger an immediate solidification of consensus. In times of public disorder, this usually amounts to, at best, a painfully measured gesture towards engagement with wider issues, while at the same time attempting to depoliticize the whole situation. At it’s worst, it is outrightly dismissive of any need for further discussion of structural failing. Instead it chastises any dissenting voices by reminding them that the best thing we can all do now is help with the clean up. Just move on. The latter line of argument, when taken to it’s logical conclusion, merely acts as a more refined filter of more odious views. All this trouble is merely the atavistic responses of a mercifully well hidden underclass.
Now, right here, we move in hypertime. One of the most prominent responses of impotent indignation came in the form of the stern denunciations that this “wasn’t political” any more. “If they are politically motivated, why don’t they go and burn down the Nike store?”. Because capitalism is as much of an ideology as anarcho syndicalism, innit. The looters cross bred opportune criminality with textbook consumerist impulses. Some mutant shit. It is entirely possible to be a non political victim of politics. You can be engaging in an act which is the consequence of a brutal reality. Offered up variants of certain unachievable lifestyles, available to us only through our television screens, vicariously. Or the sociopathic accumulation of personal wealth, obviously .
There is a long established, symbiotic relationship between crime and capital. They are, after all, both based on the intense injustice of exploitation and the appropriation of private property for nefarious ends. But there can hardly be a single radical out there who has actually sought to justify the burning of homes, the victimisation of working people and the increasingly base levels of cut throat invective. We do not seek to absolve any of these people, nor make politically motivated excuses for them. Their actions give us no cause to support them.
The fury we have seen is the product of the socially networked estate. It’s what happens when even the most violent and harmful of memes can result in instant mobilization by a committed few. It is unsightly and, more often than not, can not be controlled. But it was not impossible to predict. As a nation we have long preferred to keep a lid on social anxiety. Even the most vague attempts at meaningful dialogue get watered down before the state arbitrarily sends in the batons and truncheons, stops and searches. The vast majority of the looters were introduced to the carnivorous nature of the state and it’s enforcers before their teens. To live in many of these estates is to die in them. Yet the severity of the crisis is already being undermined, the stock footage now added to the roll call of Toxteth and the poll tax riots. Once again radical left solutions are chastised as inappropriate, as somehow seeking to “explain away” the problem. The problem itself, you’ll notice, now adopts a bizarrely metaphysical air.
The cannibalistic nature of the facts remains. Harassment from the state and criminal violence, often associated with the purest form of capitalism, the drug trade, are endemic in the affected areas. They are an intrinsic part of day to day existence in globalized economies the world over. Already derisory systems of social welfare now face being restructured by the ever present sneer of the ruling class. Every0ne is a suspect, everyone a statistic in what amounts to a remarkably Stalinist interpretation of juking the stats. Perversely, rent is increasingly rising in just about every major conurbation in the country and the current anathema to anything approaching a state sponsored form of employment is emphasised daily by reconstituting essential local services as elements of the indefinable “big society”.
There is a demonstrable gulf between the crime is crime is crime rhetoric of the comfortable, horrifed middle class and those on the ground who are everyday victims of the Met’s insatiable desire to racially profile. The power vacuum facilitated by hackgate is quite another thing altogether. It highlights the endemic selfishness at the heart of authoritarian institutions, with each pretender to the crown enthralled by the next PR stunt, fretting over how this will play with their paymasters. Despite the nakedly peaceful nature of the protest that we are repeatedly told “instigated” the riots, what likelihood that the event would have received anywhere near the amount of coverage were it to have remained simply a vigil? The harsh reality is that only when the oppressive apparatus of the state is subjected to attacks, whether legitimate or illigeitimate, does the coverage begin to descend into Broken Britain territory. That several eyewitnesses have corroborated the claim that trouble only flared up after the police savagely beat a young woman has been curiously absent from most exchanges this week.
It is worth repeating that mindless class on class violence is to be decried at every opportunity. But exactly how mindless is it to loot designer clothing, to jack cars? In a society debased by the all pervasive pursuit of material goods, a society which finds itself incapable of imagining a future beyond the bloated darwinism of it’s addiction to capital, this is the logical outcome. Like the celestial, shape shifting kiddy killer from IT, the hatred towards the system from those entrenched in lives of poverty can only be kept a lid on for so long. Every now and again, every 25 years or so, the levees break and the smug liberal intelligentsia gets it’s knickers in a knot for a few weeks.
This will happen again.
The most outrageous form of indignation practiced by the apologists of neoliberalism (and repeated, as if through osmosis, by the middle brow majority) is the disbelief that the rioting could be directed at the same community from which it sprang. This tends to go hand in hand with the couruscatingly cutting edge observation that “this is just mindless violence”. Setting aside for a moment the fantasy that the unpoliticized can not act politically, and the nonsense that unthinking destruction can ever be decontextualized, this example of anti thought is astoundingly detached from recent (and ancient, for that matter) history. There were no riots in deepest Didsbury, no firebombings in the suburbs. There were riots, looting and violence meted out to those unfortunate enough to live in the surrounding areas. There have been previous, varying levels of civil unrest in every one of the boroughs that burned.
The now ubiquitous aside from a Waterstones employee only highlights the nature of this forcible insurrection against any lack of a fulfilling future. The cry of “If they are angry with the government, why don’t they loot the city hall?”, or some other vacuous strawman bullshit, embodied the reality shy insignificance of the response from those in positions of material comfort. The point, of course, was that the looters preference for Nike trainers and widescreen TV’s is an inbred one. The accumulation of money and the subsequent semiotic appeal of the late capitalist status symbol is not a process that can be even politely described as natural. Inoculated against most progressive forms of intellectualism through the decaying bourgeois values of the education system, constantly reminded by a succession of speed addled reality shows that winning is what matters, coming first in some abstract contest, purchasing “property” with which to maximize profit (will a fucking home not do?)… that the impoverished perversely strive to ape these levels of fetishist unsustainability should hardly be met with great shock.
This is the very real and fundamental endpoint of the monetarist project. Since 1945 succesive governments have wrought untold psychic damage on any remaining smidgens of solidarity amongst the working class. Without any form of collective identity, morals distended through constant exposure to the fallacies of the market, it is delusional to assume that such communities have any great sense of themselves as a cohesive unit. The looters very de politicization and lack of class solidarity is perfectly understandable.
No revolutionary can be expected to condone an attack on workers. But it would be rank cowardice to condemn anyone for stealing that which is denied to them purely by the geographical accident of their birthplace.
