The Marxist Internet Archive has over 180,000 articles but there are
none favorable toward riots before the 1960s when they became
commonplace in the USA and eventually inspired similar actions in
Europe. The handful that were written post-1960s were hardly celebratory.
For example, in a long and interesting article by Chris Harman titled
“The Summer of 1981: a post-riot analysis
<https://www.marxists.org/archive/harman/1981/xx/riots.html>”, you get a
justification of them as an inchoate response to racial oppression but
with a caveat. They can never have the staying power and impact of a
political strike organized by the workers movement, as was typical in
the 1930s:
Riots, by contrast, cannot by their very nature last very long or result
in the building of rooted, permanent organisation. They are
characterised by clashes with the forces of the state on the streets.
Yet a riot cannot hold the forces of the state back from a particular
neighbourhood for more than a couple of days at most (unless of course,
it develops into something more than a riot, into a revolution that
destroys the ability of the state to concentrate its forces in one
locality.) Once the police have retaken control of the locality, the
crowds that provided people with a feeling of collective power are
dispersed. People are driven back into the isolated homes, the segmented
experiences, from which the riot drew them. Within days collective
exhilaration, the festival of the oppressed, has been replaced by the
old atomisation, powerlessness, apathy. The riot always rises like a
rocket – and drops like a stick.
In the excerpt above, the notion that a riot turning into a revolution
is simply advanced as a theoretical possibility but not one upheld by
Harman who continues to make the point that riots are temporary rifts in
capitalist society.
full:
https://louisproyect.org/2020/08/31/marxism-and-looting-a-response-to-vicky-osterweils-npr-interview/
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