Rioting is not a weapon of the working class

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Below we are publishing a letter from a reader who calls himself Tibor, and our reply. We cannot deal with all the points raised by this very detailed text here, as we do not consider our reply brings an end to the debate. Quite the opposite, we encourage all our readers, and Tibor himself, to use this initial response to continue the discussion, either with more letters or in our public meetings and open meetings.

 

Dear comrades,

This is how Friedrich Engels described the beer riots in Bavaria in early May 1844: “The working men assembled in large masses, paraded through the streets, assailed the public houses, smashing the windows, breaking the furniture, and destroying everything in their reach, in order to take revenge for the enhanced price of their favourite drink […] If the people once know they can frighten the government out of their taxing system, they will soon learn that it will be as easy to frighten them as far as regards more serious matters.” (My emphasis, Tibor). It could thus appear, a priori, that an acquisition of this revolutionary heritage is the authentic marxist stance on riots. In reality, this is not the case. Thus, in the event of the June 2023 riots in France following the murder of young Nahel by the police, the organisations of the communist left defended positions that were at times radically opposed. Some organisations have welcomed the movement, while stating more or less strongly its obvious limits, other groups, such as the ICC to which this letter is addressed, have not hesitated in denouncing the dead end of "mindless violence". These major differences show that, far from being self-evident, the question of riots needs to be the subject of clarification and confrontation. This is the aim of my letter.

Are the riots in the suburbs on the terrain of the working class?

Contrary to the claims of the extreme left of capital, it's wrong to see "anything that happens" as automatically "red", or, expressed less caricaturally, not every social movement is automatically an expression of the working class struggle. To decide whether or not a movement is located on the terrain of the working class, it's important to proceed methodically and to address a number of questions. Broadly speaking, marxists have several ways of identifying the class nature of a movement: the social composition of the participants; the methods and means employed in the struggle; the class nature of the demands. Once these points have been considered, as I shall do in the remainder of this letter, it is still important to place this analysis in a dynamic and historical perspective, which I will do next.

Causes and social composition of the riots

Let's start with the social composition of the rioters. A priori, nobody denies that the majority of the rioters belong to the working class. Indeed, it would be a clear misunderstanding of the situation in the French suburbs to deny that the majority of their inhabitants belong to the working class. When they are not facing unemployment and poverty, these proletarians work for large logistics platforms (like Amazon) or in fictitious self-entrepreneurships designed to conceal the wage form of exploitation (Uber, Deliveroo, etc.). For any materialist concerned with identifying the economic and social causes that ultimately produce these riots, it is obvious that these reactions can be explained on the one hand by the fact that this fraction of the working class is subjected to constant exploitation, characterised in particular by greater poverty, higher unemployment or the absence of the usual provisions (i.e., public services). On the other hand, they are also the product of unrestrained state repression, with humiliation, racial profiling, murder and state-sponsored racism promoted by the police and the judiciary. These riots are therefore a direct reaction to class exploitation and repression, which every revolutionary should welcome as a break with the status quo and a refusal by a fraction of the working class to continue accepting unbearable living and working conditions. As for arguments that see the young rioters as the embodiment of the underclass with its hoodlums and other miscreants, these don't stand up to analysis insofar as it's precisely in the neighbourhoods controlled by drug dealers where nothing has happened, since these criminal groups don't want their "business" disturbed with the threat posed by these riots. Furthermore, the dealers themselves have occasionally acted to stop the riots. While the ICC seems well aware of the working class social composition of the rioters and the social and economic causes of their struggle, it doesn't see what's positive in refusing to put up with the continued class violence (even when it is hailing, correctly, the many slogans like "enough is enough" and "too much is too much" associated with other social movements across the world).

The methods and the means of struggle

It is clear, however, that the causes and social composition of a movement are not sufficient to confirm its class nature. This brings us to the question of the methods of struggle. And this is clearly the crux of my disagreement with the ICC's analysis. The ICC's thesis is expressed as follows: riots are a danger to the working class. We've already mentioned that Engels supported the riot as a form of struggle in 1844. Many proletarian groups have defended similar positions. One example among many is the Third Camp group OCR during the Second World War, which lists anti-police struggles and riots as proletarian political struggles. In contrast to these traditional and historical positions, the ICC article states: "The working class has its own methods of struggle, which are radically opposed to riots and basic urban revolts. Class struggle has absolutely nothing to do with indiscriminate destruction and violence, arson, feelings of revenge and looting that offer no perspective." As a counterpoint, let's quote Friedrich Engels' article again: The working men assembled in large masses, paraded through the streets, assailed the public houses, smashing the windows, breaking the furniture, and destroying everything in their reach, in order to take revenge for the enhanced price of their favourite drink [...]The police, being, as everywhere, obnoxious to the people, were severely beaten and ill-treated by the rioters." This alone proves that on this issue, the ICC is revising the marxist acceptance of violence, rejecting spontaneous, uncontrolled violence on principle. It's the opposite, marxists, far from denouncing violence like any vulgar bourgeois or like the leftist group Lutte Ouvrière (NB: the ICC likes to reject any criticism of its positions on riots as being in every respect similar to that of leftist groups, Trotskyists, Maoists, anarchists, etc. Then how does it explain that its denunciation of the indiscriminate, hopeless violence of the riots is the same, word for word, as the leftist group Lutte Ouvrière?), marxists are defending the same perspective as Marx when he wrote in the 1850 Address to the Communist League: “Far from opposing the so-called excesses – instances of popular vengeance against hated individuals or against public buildings with which hateful memories are associated – the workers’ party must not only tolerate these actions but must even give them direction” (my emphasis, Tibor). Note that in the ICC sentence, the notion of "revenge" is opposed to class struggle, whereas in Marx, it is not only tolerated but must also be organised by communist revolutionaries. What these examples show is that the ICC breaks with the marxist analysis of class violence, refusing, for idealistic and metaphysical reasons, to support violence when it is spontaneous or a minority action, and even if it is a part of the class that resorts to it. At a more fundamental level, the ICC revises marxism in the relationship between violence and consciousness. It believes that a conscious struggle will be the least violent possible. Conversely, a violent struggle will testify to the weakness of the working class. This is in total opposition to the support for class terror of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Trotsky, Miasnikov or indeed Bordiga. Class struggle is, as Marx put it, borrowing a phrase from Georges Sand, "Combat or Death: Bloody struggle or extinction. It is thus that the question is always posed."

Therefore, spontaneous, minority forms of violence, far from being dead-ends, bear witness to an awareness, however embryonic, of this reality. It is a source of support for the future struggle of the working class. The ICC's main criticism of this argument is that violence contributes to the division of the proletariat, when the aim of class struggle is to seek ever greater unity. Clearly, this is a new dogmatic and metaphysical position of the ICC. Unity is not an end in itself, it is only a means to an end, which is to contribute to the working class awareness that it has interests of its own, which radically oppose those of the bourgeoisie, thus necessitating a final offensive against the bourgeoisie and for the establishment of communism. Defending unity as a dogma at every moment of the struggle is a dangerous mistake. During a revolutionary episode, unity is not an initial given, but only a medium to long-term perspective. This is due to the heterogeneity of class consciousness within the proletariat. An example will suffice to illustrate this point: in the autumn of 1918, during the German revolution, Karl Liebknecht's strategic and tactical positions were bound to divide the proletariat into a conscious vanguard and a rear-guard that remained on bourgeois terrain. It was precisely the Social Democrats who denounced Liebknecht as a divider and championed unity. With its metaphysical calls for unity, the ICC would therefore have been on the SPD's side. Fortunately, it is too revolutionary to allow itself to be mystified by its own theoretical errors. What this example illustrates, then, is that it is a mistake to expect every struggle to contribute to unity. If unity remains a perspective, it cannot be achieved at the start of a movement, and revolutionaries have absolutely nothing to fear from breaking unity if it benefits the class struggle, as it does with the use of violence.

The class nature of demands

Finally, the last dimension to study is that of the demands, and whether or not they are class-based. This is where the weakness of the riots lies. The clarity of the demands and perspectives expressed by a movement is the product of the consciousness manifested by that movement. In this case, it is undeniable that this class consciousness was only embryonic, and that the participants were not aware of belonging to a social class with common interests, namely the proletariat. This was made abundantly clear by the fact that, in addition to class violence (against the police, town halls, prefectures, shopping malls, prisons and other embodiments of capitalism and the repressive bourgeois state), the rioters also attacked their own class, whether physically, by attacking prostitutes (no doubt for reasons of puritanism completely alien to the working class), or materially, by attacking cars (belonging to proletarians! ), schools and hospitals - public services which, though merely palliative, are nonetheless useful for the daily lives of the vast majority of the proletariat. The ICC is therefore right to assert that these struggles do not contribute to the unification of the proletariat. But two points need to be made immediately. Contrary to its claim that the riots are condemned by a majority of the proletariat in the suburbs, the evidence tends to show that the older generation supports the youths in revolt. Nevertheless, these are only some of the testimonies, and it is absolutely impossible for revolutionaries to scientifically assess the degree of support for or rejection of the riots among the proletariat in the suburbs. The second point to make is that, even if it's obvious that the bourgeoisie is doing and will do everything in its power to divide the proletariat by highlighting the violence to limit these struggles and provoke the indignation of the rest of the working class, the task of revolutionaries, rather than crying with the wolves and mingling their cries with those of the bourgeoisie and some workers, is rather to refuse this division and to use their propaganda to show that all these proletarians, whether they take part in the riots or condemn them, contaminated by the false propaganda of the bourgeois media, belong to one and the same class and have common interests. It's this task that the ICC abandons when it merely denounces the riots.

An analysis comparing the struggle against pension reform and the riots in terms of consciousness

Ultimately, what is the level of consciousness of these struggles? First of all, it's important to place these struggles in their historical dynamic. They are emerging in the wake of decades of declining class consciousness on a global scale (since at least the 1980s and the many defeats suffered by the proletariat). It would be absurd (and the ICC agrees) to criticise current struggles for not being on a par with the consciousness of the 1970s, let alone the 1920s. Yet, while the ICC agrees with this for the economic struggles, it rejects this argument for the riots and simply denounces the lack of consciousness. On the contrary, a comparative analysis of the struggles against pension reform and the riots paints an altogether different picture, far more dialectical and anti-schematic, than that of the ICC. This is what I propose to do in concluding this letter.

Being conscious of being a proletarian implies three things: 1) consciousness of belonging to one and the same exploited class with common interests; 2) consciousness of having interests that are antagonistic and radically opposed to those of the bourgeoisie; 3) consciousness of the need to self-organise outside any bourgeois framework. However, in terms of these three criteria, each of these two movements is the mirror image of the other. Thus, the struggle against pension reform is to be welcomed for its massiveness and its tendency to unify the proletariat as a whole, irrespective of occupation, age, gender, etc. (even if localist and corporatist dead ends have been encouraged by the unions, and the proletariat has not yet been able to oppose them). This is a salutary starting point for future struggles. On the other hand, the other two dimensions have been sorely lacking. Union leadership, which was maintained from the beginning to the end of the movement, led to the organisation of light-hearted, legalistic marches and demonstrations in which hatred of the bourgeoisie and understanding the need for a radical, violent struggle against the class enemy were completely lacking. Similarly, there were never any expressions of self-organisation, which was one of the main reasons for the movement's defeat. Once more these limitations were unavoidable in the current historical phase but they should be criticised if the proletariat is to learn the lessons of defeat and move forward.

If we now look at the riots in terms of these same three criteria, we see that self-organisation is also absent, not in that this movement is organised by the bourgeoisie (unions, leftists) but insofar as it is not organised at all. But where unity was the strength of the movement against pension reform, the weakness of the riots is in its absence. As a result of the actions of the bourgeoisie and the weakness of consciousness within the class, the rioters were pitted against the rest of the proletariat, and this division between proletarians was never called into question (including by the ICC). Finally, whereas the dimension of understanding the need to struggle against the bourgeoisie, the hatred of the enemy, was very much present in the riots, it was absent in the struggle against pension reform.

To conclude, then, it's not a question (as it was with another reader's letter, whose concerns were quite similar to the current ones) of asking which of these two movements is the more radical, nor is it a question of taking one of these two movements as a model and the other as the embodiment of all the dead-ends and pitfalls of the bourgeoisie. Rather, within the framework of a dialectical analysis, attentive to the necessarily contradictory nature of social phenomena, it is a matter of identifying both the signs of an awakening of consciousness within the working class and the expressions of the class's still extremely significant weaknesses in its struggle against the bourgeoisie. This revolutionary task is clearly lacking in the ICC's analysis.

Tibor

ICC reply

First of all, we would like to welcome this letter for several reasons:

- With this text, Tibor is participating in the debate revolutionaries need to have, confronting different arguments, in order to arrive at the most clear and correct positions possible.

- The comrade has made a real theoretical effort to set out the different positions at stake and to base his critique on the history of the workers' movement.

- Understanding the real nature of the riots and their impact on the working class is definitely a very important question for the future.

Tibor's charge against the ICC's position on the suburban riots in France is serious: "the ICC is revising the marxist acceptance of violence"; "like any vulgar bourgeois or like the leftist group Lutte ouvrière"; "for idealistic and metaphysical reasons"; "this is a new dogmatic and metaphysical position of the ICC"; "the ICC would therefore have been on the side of the SPD"...

We will respond to these criticisms later. But the most important thing here is to underline the context in which Tibor makes these criticisms: “Some organisations have welcomed the movement, while stating more or less strongly its obvious limits, other groups, such as the ICC to which this letter is addressed, have not hesitated in denouncing the dead end of ‘mindless’ violence". These major differences show that, far from being self-evident, the question of riots needs to be the subject of clarification and confrontation. This is the aim of my letter.” "Fortunately, [the ICC] is too revolutionary to allow itself to be mystified by its own theoretical errors". In other words, Comrade Tibor sees this debate as taking place within the proletarian political milieu, within the revolutionary camp. And it's in this context that we'll also respond, in a way that's both fraternal and uncompromising.

How should we read the classic texts of Marxism?

Let's start directly with what may appear to be the most solid foundation of our comrade's proofs: his historical quotations.

By quoting Engels and then Marx, Tibor claims to prove that "the ICC is revising the Marxist acceptance of violence". But the historical approach requires an understanding of the writings in their context, their combats, and their evolution.

When Engels describes the Munich beer riots, it was 1844, Germany was still Prussia, King Ludwig I was ruling, and feudalism was clinging to power against the onslaught of the emerging bourgeoisie. The proletarian movement was still immature, and its struggles mostly consisted of pushing as far as possible the advances of the revolutionary bourgeoisie against reactionary feudalism. The June 1848 insurrection in France had not yet taken place. However, it was this movement that brought into sharp focus for the first time the class divisions and the autonomous force of the proletariat capable of standing up directly to the bourgeois republic: "the first great battle was fought between the two classes that divide modern society"[1]. Four years earlier, in 1844, over and above the immaturity and limitations of the movement at the time, Engels hailed the revolt of two thousand workers and the realisation of their collective strength as a small step forward.

As for Marx's quote from 1850, Engels almost makes a misreading. The "popular vengeance against hated individuals or public buildings" that had to be "tolerated" consisted, in this case, of the democratic petty-bourgeoisie "carrying out [the] present terroristic phrases" in the context of the German bourgeoisie's struggle against the monarchy and its palaces. The text also repeatedly stresses the need for the proletariat to "organise" itself, and to "centralise" its struggle as much as possible: “the workers must be armed and organised. The whole proletariat must be armed at once with muskets, rifles, cannon and ammunition, and the revival of the old-style citizens’ militia, directed against the workers, must be opposed. Where the formation of this militia cannot be prevented, the workers must try to organize themselves independently as a proletarian guard, with elected leaders and with their own elected general staff; they must try to place themselves not under the orders of the state authority but of the revolutionary local councils set up by the workers. Where the workers are employed by the state, they must arm and organise themselves into special corps with elected leaders, or as a part of the proletarian guard. Under no pretext should arms and ammunition be surrendered; any attempt to disarm the workers must be frustrated, by force if necessary. The destruction of the bourgeois democrats’ influence over the workers, and the enforcement of conditions which will compromise the rule of bourgeois democracy, which is for the moment inevitable, and make it as difficult as possible – these are the main points which the proletariat and therefore the League must keep in mind during and after the approaching uprising.”

This is the reality of the movement at the time, its context and its aims. What does this have to do with today's riots? Does the comrade really believe that this summer's riots made the working class aware that it could "frighten the government" and teach it "that it's just as easy to frighten it for more serious matters"?

Does the comrade now see the gulf between the recent riots crushed in less than a week by police repression and the class struggles of the mid-nineteenth century, years that allowed Marx and Engels to set the goal of "proceeding immediately to the workers' own organisation and arming"?

Let's continue. Because in reality, Marx and Engels' revolutionary action is the exact opposite of what Tibor thinks he finds in a few misunderstood sentences. In The Conditions of the Working Class in England, published in German in 1845, Engels outlines the development of the working class revolt: “The earliest, crudest, and least fruitful form of this rebellion was that of crime. The working-man lived in poverty and want, and saw that others were better off than he. It was not clear to his mind why he, who did more for society than the rich idler, should be the one to suffer under these conditions. Want conquered his inherited respect for the sacredness of property, and he stole. (…) The workers soon realised that crime did not help matters. The criminal could protest against the existing order of society only singly, as one individual; the whole might of society was brought to bear upon each criminal, and crushed him with its immense superiority.”

Neither Marx nor Engels saw violence and law-breaking as revolutionary in themselves, and were prepared to criticise actions that went against the development of working class struggle, even when they appeared spectacular and provocative. Thus, in 1886, Engels sharply attacked the activity of the Social Democratic Federation and its organisation of a demonstration by the unemployed which, while passing through Pall Mall and other wealthy parts of London on its way to Hyde Park, attacked stores and looted wine stores. Engels argued that few workers had taken part, that most of those involved were "looking for a lark, some of them already merry” and that the unemployed who participated “mostly the types who do not want to work anyhow, hawkers, loafers, police spies, thugs”. The absence of the police was “so conspicuous that it was not only us who believed it to have been intentional”. Whatever one might think of some of Engels’ language his essential criticism that “These socialist gentleman [i.e. the leaders of the SDF] are determined to conjure up overnight a movement which, here as elsewhere, necessarily calls for years of work” is valid, revolution is not the product of spectacle, manipulation, or looting.

Isn't approaching history ex nihilo, by fixing a few sentences, taking them from out of context, and making them say what you want them to say, as religious people do with their verses, rather a "dogmatic", "idealistic" and "metaphysical" approach?[2]

Today's suburban riots are a danger for the class struggle to come

On these shaky historical foundations, comrade Tibor erects the load-bearing walls of his argument. In his view, given the current weakness of the proletariat's struggle, its illusions about the state, democracy and so on, the rioters' "hatred" of cops and law enforcement is a step in the right direction:

- "It is rather a question, within the framework of a dialectical analysis, attentive to apprehending the necessarily contradictory nature of social phenomena, of identifying both the signs of an awakening of consciousness within the working class and the manifestations of the still extremely important weaknesses of the class in its struggle against the bourgeoisie".

- “... the dimension of understanding the necessary struggle against the bourgeoisie, the hatred of the enemy, was very much present in the riots, whereas it was absent from the struggle against pension reform".

To verify this "dialectical" and indeed "contradictory" analysis, let's start with the comrade's own description of these famous riots: "the last dimension to study is that of the demands, and whether or not they are class-based. This is where the weakness of the riots lies. [...] This was made abundantly clear by the fact that, in addition to class violence (against the police, town halls, prefectures, shopping malls, prisons and other embodiments of capitalism and the repressive bourgeois state), the rioters also attacked their own class, whether physically, by attacking prostitutes (no doubt for reasons of puritanism completely alien to the working class), or materially, by attacking cars (belonging to proletarians!), schools and hospitals - public services which, though merely palliative, are nonetheless useful for the daily lives of the vast majority of the proletariat.”

We agree with the comrade: being able to get around, even if only to go to work, to take care of oneself, to learn to read and write, is still “useful for the daily life of the vast majority of the proletariat". But can the comrade seriously assert that attacking prostitutes, burning down neighbours' cars, buses, schools, hospitals ... how is this comparable to the violent actions of the proletariat in the 1850s?

The comrade is right about one thing: the majority of rioters are working class children. In fact, he quite rightly describes the reality of the suburbs: “it would be a clear misunderstanding of the situation in the French suburbs to deny that the majority of their inhabitants belong to the working class. When they are not facing unemployment and poverty, these proletarians work for large logistics platforms (like Amazon) or in fictitious self-entrepreneurships designed to conceal the wage form of exploitation (Uber, Deliveroo, etc.)” And the rioters are the most crushed, rejected, and excluded part of this precarious working class. The comrade sees this as proof of the working class nature of their violent outbursts. In reality, precisely because of the absence even today of a workers' movement powerful enough to draw into its wake the weakest parts of the class and all strata of society, marginalised working class youth can only sink into nihilism, blind violence, hatred and destruction. This is the reality highlighted by burnt-out cars, buses and schools. An explosion of anger turned against the working class itself.

Yes, but they also burned "shopping malls", "the embodiment of capitalism", as Comrade Tibor protests. There's a misunderstanding here between the romanticism of the comrade who sees these riots from afar and the rioters themselves. Indeed, stores have been looted and shopping malls set on fire. But for the rioters, it wasn't about attacking capitalism and its symbols. Quite the contrary! These attacks reflect the domination of commodity culture rather than a challenge to it. The notion of "proletarian shopping", developed by some, may seem opposed to bourgeois laws and morality, but it is alien to the proletarian framework of collective action to defend common interests. The individual acquisition of commodities never really escapes the most basic premises of capitalist property. At best, such individual appropriation may enable the individual and his relatives to survive a little better than before. That's understandable, but it's by no means a threat to bourgeois domination, or even a hint of a threat.

There's still what the comrade calls "class violence": "against the police, town halls, prefectures, prisons and other embodiments of capitalism and the repressive bourgeois state". This is no longer a simple misunderstanding; it is pure blindness. These riots can't even be compared with the ideology of the black blocs, who really do believe they are attacking capitalism by attacking its symbols. During the riots, young people threw fireworks at police stations and rocks at cops, with no other stimulus than their rage at incessant checks, daily harassment, humiliating violence, habitual racism and sometimes murder, ignominiously called "bravado". It's an explosion of impotent anger. The comrade knows this argument, and he thinks he answers it by saying: “…what is the level of consciousness of these struggles? First of all, it's important to place these struggles in their historical dynamic. They are emerging in the wake of decades of declining class consciousness on a global scale (since at least the 1980s and the many defeats suffered by the proletariat). It would be absurd (and the ICC agrees) to criticise current struggles for not being on a par with the consciousness of the 1970s, let alone the 1920s. Yet, while the ICC agrees with this for the economic struggles, it rejects this argument for the riots and simply denounces the lack of consciousness. On the contrary, a comparative analysis of the struggles against pension reform and the riots paints an altogether different picture, far more dialectical and anti-schematic, than that of the ICC.” Guy Debord often asserted that dialectics could break bricks, but we still doubt Comrade Tibor's use of them in the riot context.

In these few lines, there's a misunderstanding, that of the radical difference in nature between the social movement against pensions and riots. By demonstrating, by gathering in the streets in their hundreds of thousands, by beginning to recognise themselves as workers, by perceiving the strength of being united, the workers are fighting on their class terrain. Whatever their level of consciousness, their struggle provides food for thought and organisation. This dynamic approach is essential. Dialectics is movement. Where does the riot lead? Where do these nights of 14-17 year-olds going out to loot stores and confront highly-armed police lead? To a development of working class consciousness? To a strengthening of its ability to organise? Absolutely not. Riots lead to destruction and chaos. They are the opposite of the perspective offered by the proletariat's struggle.

Moreover, we can already see how these riots evolve decade after decade. 2005 in France, 2011 in England, 2023 again in France... the trend is towards more and more violence and looting. They are affecting ever wider swathes of young people, no longer confined simply to the suburbs, but also touching small provincial towns faced with exploding unemployment and no future. And on the other side, the police are increasingly armed and deadly.

To convince himself of the difference in nature between these two types of movement, the comrade should look at what the bourgeoisie says about them. What the "class enemy" says and does is always instructive. On an international scale, riots are always hyper-publicised. Newspapers are full of shocking images, and it's up to the journalist to show the highest flame. In 2005, the headline in the United States was "Paris is burning". Has the bourgeoisie become suicidal by displaying such fine proof of "hatred of the class enemy"? Or is it foolish to publicise struggles that represent an advance for the revolutionary consciousness of the proletariat? Another hypothesis is perhaps more credible: the bourgeoisie publicises riots because the destruction they cause supports its propaganda, spreading the idea that all revolt is destruction: that all violence leads to chaos. By accentuating fear, the bourgeoisie takes advantage of riots to encourage people to retreat, to be atomised, to reinforce the feeling of powerlessness and, ultimately, to present the state as the guarantor of order and protection.

On the other hand, when a social movement develops, a blackout is the rule. Information is released in dribs and drabs. What do we know about the current strikes in the United States? Nothing, apart from the fact that Biden and Trump went to visit the strikers. What images were broadcast during the social movement in France? Burning garbage cans! Black blocs clashing with rows of riot police! When millions of demonstrators gather, the media turn their spotlight on ten burning garbage cans and fifty black-clad youths hurling cobblestones! In 2006, during the movement against the CPE in France, when thousands of insecure students gathered in general assemblies and drew more and more workers, the unemployed and pensioners onto the streets, the internationally renowned Times newspaper ran the headline: "Riots"! Shouldn't this also give the comrade pause for thought?

For Tibor, confronting the police directly, attacking police stations and other public buildings, is a step towards recognising the "class enemy". But isn't this precisely the trap the bourgeoisie set for the working class during the last movement in France? By ordering its cops to provoke and incite, what was it looking for if not for the demonstrations to degenerate into fruitless violence? To frighten people, to discourage them from gathering in the streets, to prevent any discussion or development of consciousness.

It's a classic trap. Already, in May 1968, the first to throw paving stones to draw the most combative behind them into a hopeless fight with the CRS were the infiltrators, the traitors, the informers. Because this type of confrontation with the cops doesn't serve the working class, it serves the ruling class! The history of the workers' movement teaches us that the best reaction to this trap is the exact opposite of futile confrontation, the exact opposite of the lure of the riot. By not giving in to provocation during the movement against pension reform in France, workers have followed in a long proletarian tradition.

As we wrote back in 2006: "Students and young people in struggle have no illusions about the role of the so-called 'forces of order'. They are the ‘militias of capital’ (as the students chanted), defending the privileges of the bourgeois class rather than the interests of the ‘population’. [...] However, some of those who had come to lend a hand to their comrades locked inside the Sorbonne did try to argue with the riot police [...]. Those who tried to talk to the riot police were not naive. On the contrary, they showed maturity and consciousness. They know that behind their shields and truncheons, these men armed to the teeth are also human beings, fathers whose children are also going to be hit by the CPE. And that's what the students said to the riot police, some of whom replied that they had no choice but to obey.”[3]

This is what Trotsky wrote about confronting the Cossacks, "those age-old subduers and punishers" [4], in 1917: “But the Cossacks constantly, though without ferocity, kept charging the crowd. (…) The mass of demonstrators would part to let them through and close up again. There was no fear in the crowd. ‘The Cossacks promise not to shoot,’ passed from mouth to mouth. Apparently some of the workers had talks with individual Cossacks. (…) Individual Cossacks began to reply to the workers’ questions and even to enter into momentary conversations with them. (…) A worker-Bolshevik, Kayurov, one of the authentic leaders in those days, relates how at one place, within sight of a detachment of Cossacks, the demonstrators scattered under the whips of the mounted police, and how he, Kayurov, and several workers with him, instead of following the fugitives, took off their caps and approached the Cossacks with the words: ‘Brothers-Cossacks, help the workers in a struggle for their peaceable demands; you see how the Pharaohs treat us, hungry workers. Help us!’ This consciously humble manner, those caps in their hands - what an accurate psychological calculation! Inimitable gesture! The whole history of street fights and revolutionary victories swarms with such improvisations.”

In reality, behind this disagreement over the nature of the riots lies a deeper one: what class violence is. We can't develop this point here. We encourage our readers to dig deeper into the question and come and debate it with us, in writing or at our public meetings.

Our position is summarised in our article Terror, Terrorism and Class Violence[5], available on our website. We'll confine ourselves here to a single quotation: "To go on repeating the tautology that ‘violence equals violence’; to go on demonstrating that all classes use violence; to go on showing that this violence is essentially the same, is as intelligent as seeing an identity between the act of a surgeon performing a caesarean section to bring new life into the world and the act of a murderer killing his victim by plunging a knife into his stomach, simply because both use similar instruments – knives - on the same object - the stomach - and because both use an apparently similar technique in opening up the stomach. The most important thing is not to go on shouting, ‘Violence, violence’, but to underline the differences. To show as clearly as possible why and how the violence of the proletariat is different from the terror and terrorism of other classes."

To overthrow capitalism and build a truly global human community, the working class will be obliged, in the future, to defend itself also by violence against the terror of the capitalist state and all the auxiliary forces of its repressive apparatus, but the class violence of the proletariat has absolutely nothing to do with the methods of the riots in the suburbs.

In the years to come, capitalism will continue to plunge into economic crisis, war, ecological devastation and barbarism. Two types of movement will develop: on the one hand, reactions of despair and outbursts of nihilistic violence; on the other, social movements on the terrain of the working class, with all its weaknesses, but carrying solidarity, discussion and hope.

If, for revolutionaries, all the reactions of the oppressed, all the cries of pain and revolt, attract sympathy, true solidarity is that which points out the pitfalls and dead-ends, that which participates in the development of working class consciousness, its organisation and its revolutionary perspective.

The collective effort to clarify the situation must continue, because in the long term, this is a vital question for the struggle of the working class, and therefore for all humanity.

 

Pawel, 3 October 2023

 

 

[2] As for the historical support the comrade hopes to find in the OCR ("One example among many is the Third Camp group OCR during the Second World War, which lists anti-police struggles and riots as proletarian political struggles"), it's a support that slips away and then trips Tibor up. Let's just recall what our ancestors in Internationalisme wrote in August 1946 on this subject: on the OCR "They have unfortunately kept this taste for agitation for its own sake, agitation in a vacuum, and have made this the very basis of their existence as a group [...]They see the failure of the CR simply as the result of a certain precipitousness while in fact the whole opera­tion was artificial and heterogeneous from the start, grouping militants together around a vague and inconsistent programme of action."  (The task of the hour: formation of the party or formation of cadres; Reprint from Internationalisme no.12

[5] Terror, Terrorism and Class Violence International Review 14 (1978)

Rubric: 

Correspondence on riots in France