I don’t have much time for this, but considering the police brutality case in France, I’ll have to ask this question.
I can understand the previous circumstances that lead up to it, just like a general union strike in regards to shitty conditions or shoplifting in regards to inflation, but it seems to me that rioting doesn’t achieve anything, but a justification for mass pro-gov’t reprisal, against ‘looters and property destroyers’. Of course, this is not to say that we should limit ourselves to “peaceful and constructive protests”, that will inevitably turn violent by pro-capitalist reactionary forces.
It would make sense rather to seize and hold public or private buildings, perhaps as a fort, to disrupt the normal way of governance in life, like in Hong Kong’s polytechnic university or at Odessa’s trade union buildings. That way, if gov’t forces try to barge in and protestors consequently have to defend their base of operations, we would have some sort of plausibility in their actions.
probably better to think of riots as a natural outburst of social discontent, which can and should be shaped and guided by revolutionary orgs into productive outlets.
Riots (at least of the form we saw in the US in 2020, and France now) don’t often change much, but riots must be supported without hesitation, because the alternative is to isolate the participants and clear the path for ultraviolent fascist retaliation.
Liberals will always point to the violence and destruction of riots to discredit social causes. You can’t give them an inch. If you do, then all the fascists need to do is have some fucking cop dressed in bloc start a fire to invalidate any social movement ever. We should not celebrate the destruction, but a hell of a lot of shit is going to get destroyed. Class war is not a metaphor.
In the case of 2020, it was one of the first times in a long time that the attempt by obvious agents provocateur to end a protest by escalating it (the AutoZone fire) was rejected on principle. It was this rejection which gave it a modicum of revolutionary potential in the first place. The police precinct would not have been burned to the ground if everybody decided to go home or start turning each other in the second a franchise retail store mysteriously caught fire. The state would not have been caught on the back foot, and we might not have even seen them press charges against Chauvin.
Riots are dangerous situations though. The lawlessness which occurs in a riot does not only apply to the radicals. It applies to the police and the fascist paramilitaries as well. A few days into the riots in Minneapolis, many Black-owned businesses and community institutions began to burn. Proud Boys and Boogaloos used the cover of the mayhem to retaliate, and then wielded their own retaliation rhetorically to accuse the movement of “destroying their own communities.” The cops just straight up started black-bagging people, and a few were even assassinated on the spot.
It is an unsustainable situation which will inevitably burn out, and unless the moment is used to construct new forms of social organization, everybody will come out of it worse for the wear. The radicals in prison. The most vulnerable institutions destroyed. And the cops further empowered to occupy.
It is not productive to encourage aimless violence and destruction, but when you look outside your window and you see open class warfare taking place, the last place a Communist belongs is on the sidelines.
whatever cops say they their jobs are, and whatever the politicians say cops’ jobs are, the truth is cops in western capitalist countries are tasked with enforcing a class relation, and protecting property rights (and by extension, property)
the idea is, if the property owning class essentially owns the cops and uses them to defend their property and interests, it is praxis for the people to destroy that property and antagonize those interests, to show the property owning class two things: One, that the cops can’t really protect their interests once the zeitgeist turns against them, because Two, the cops (and the property owning class, for that matter) are hopelessly outnumbered by the masses. i think it’s clear what the intended message is, as to whether the elite are capable of understanding that message i am not so sure
Riots rarely directly achieve anything related to their causes, but that is not the fault of the rioting masses but us communists, we have failed to organize and educate enough to direct them to create real change. But we will succeed one day.
Also, indirectly, a place where the masses are likely to riot instead of peacefully protesting is a place where the ruling class is at least a little more limited in what they can do.
The USSR started with women doing a bread riot. As did the French Revolution.
