Rogueish

I remember a time when a copper could clip a young fellow round the ear and send him on his way. I remember a time when the most violent thing in the charts was the Foxtrot, when nuns rode to morning service on bicycles, while mist rose from the countryside. And I remember when rioters had some respect, and some principles. Not like today’s mob. Today’s mob, would-you-Adam-and-Eve-it, have been known to half-inch items that they otherwise could not afford to purchase or otherwise honestly come by. This practise is described in the ‘lingo’ (a mutilated argot in which inarticulate young people communicate) as ‘looting’. The ‘looting’ craze has swept the hitherto respectable subculture of rioting during the last generation, (not insignificantly, the generation after which I personally happened to arrive). Where once, rioters could be depended on to only hurt their own/outsiders (delete as appropriate), they now hurt their own/outsiders (delete as appropriate). It used to be possible, in the good old days of rioting, to leave your back door open. Today, however, consumerism has left us with stuff worth nicking. The new neoliberal rioter is a Thatcherite. The decent working class values of old - hard graft, family, community, and a good kick up the arse - have been replaced by the values of the Carphone Warehouse. ‘Greed is good’ is the slogan upon which these feral yobs have been raised. They are Thatcherites. That is why they should have their benefits taken away, and they should be reported to the police, conscripted, and deported. It never did me any harm… (Contd, p. 94, and ad infinitum).

Irrational, uncontrollable, impermeable to logic and unpredictable in its movements, these undesirables have once again ruined the party for everyone, as they have done from Paris 1789 to Caracas 1989. In Fanon’s inimitable words: “the masses, without waiting for the chairs to be placed around the negotiating table, take matters into their own hands and start burning…”

To use the word “mob” is a fundamentally political gesture. It is an effort by governing elites and conservative forces to delegitimize and denigrate popular resistance, to empty it of all political content by drawing a line of rationality in the sand. To make demands is reasonable, but since “the mob” is the embodiment of unreason, it cannot possibly make demands.

To claim that these riots are somehow different, somehow ‘neoliberal’, because of the allegedly novel phenomenon of mass looting, is asinine.

Thatcherism unchained the feral instincts of capitalism (the “animal spirits” of the entrepreneur they coyly named it) and nothing has transpired to curb them since. Slash and burn is now openly the motto of the ruling classes pretty much everywhere. This is the new normal in which we live. This is what the next grand commission of enquiry should address. Everyone, not just the rioters, should be held to account. Feral capitalism should be put on trial for crimes against humanity as well as for crimes against nature. Sadly, this is what these mindless rioters cannot see or demand.

INSUFFICIENTLY DIALECTICAL. The idea of holding capitalism to account is absurd, and the rioters at least understand that much. In any case, capitalism doesn’t need to be “put on trial” (bourgeois justice would obviously let it off), it needs to be destroyed. Harvey has made some great contributions to Marxist theory, but there’s a streak of Proudhonianism in his attempts to paint neoliberal capitalism as somehow a “scam” or “feral,” going back to the analysis of “accumulation by dispossession,” which is useful in the specific context Harvey first introduced it, but taken as an independent and defining feature of neoliberalism, ends up letting the everyday workings of capitalism off the hook.

As it is, the pro­fu­sion of com­modi­ties is a gen­uine and pow­er­ful com­pen­sa­tion for op­pres­sion. It is a bribe, but like all bribes it of­fers con­crete ben­e­fits—in the av­er­age Amer­i­can’s case, a de­gree of phys­i­cal com­fort un­par­al­leled in his­to­ry. Under pre­sent con­di­tions, peo­ple are pre­oc­cu­pied with con­sumer goods not be­cause they are brain­washed but be­cause buy­ing is the one plea­sur­able ac­tiv­i­ty not only per­mit­ted but ac­tive­ly en­cour­aged by our rulers. The plea­sure of eat­ing an ice cream cone may be minor com­pared to the plea­sure of mean­ing­ful, au­tonomous work, but the for­mer is eas­i­ly avail­able and the lat­ter is not. A poor fam­i­ly would un­doubt­ed­ly rather have a de­cent apart­ment than a new TV, but since they are un­like­ly to get the apart­ment, what is to be gained by not get­ting the TV?

Consumerism as applied to women is blatantly sexist. The pervasive image of the empty-headed female consumer constantly trying her husband’s patience with her extravagant purchases contributes to the myth of male superiority: we are incapable of spending money rationally: all we need to make us happy is a new hat now and then. (There is an analogous racial stereotype—the black with his Cadillac and magenta shirts.)

Relevant to the criticism of looters as “consumerist.”

The insurrectionary youth seem to understand better than most what these goods are – theirs. They grasp the fetish character of commodities and the theft of property as time. In a radical way, the youth grasp, and break, the distinction between use value and exchange value.

It is a horde of people taking everything, for it implies also the total nature of the theft. Not tactical, nor careful, not sly. It is a moment of total abandon, defined by the fact that it treats all it comes into contact with as within reach. The verb is just a version of the noun loot, which means “booty” or “stolen property.” And so too the relation it has to the stores, streets, city, and world in which it takes place: it sees all as already booty, property already theft, gathered, hoarded behind glass and steel.

Word up, kids…

Going to assume this article was written last time there were riots on this scale in Tottenham, back in 1985.