Riot. Strike. Riot: The New Era of Uprisings

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Award winning poet Joshua Clover theorises the riot as the form of the coming insurrection. Baltimore. Ferguson. Tottenham. Clichy-sous-Bois. Oakland. Ours has become an “age of riots” as the struggle of people versus state and capital has taken to the streets. Award-winning poet and scholar Joshua Clover offers a new understanding of this present moment and its history. Rioting was the central form of protest in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and was supplanted by the strike in the early nineteenth century. It returned to prominence in the 1970s, profoundly changed along with the coordinates of race and class. From early wage demands to recent social justice campaigns pursued through occupations and blockades, Clover connects these protests to the upheavals of a sclerotic economy in a state of moral collapse. Historical events such as the global economic crisis of 1973 and the decline of organized labor, viewed from the perspective of vast social transformations, are the proper context for understanding these eruptions of discontent. As social unrest against an unsustainable order continues to grow, this valuable history will help guide future antagonists in their struggles toward a revolutionary horizon. Acknowledgements xi Introduction: A Theory of Riot 1 A theory of riot. Riot-strike-riot prime. The marketplace and the factory floor. Circulation-production-circulation-prime. Riot and crisis. Circulation struggles. RIOT Chapter 1: What Is a Riot? 35 What is a riot? The economic and the political. The dilemma of reproduction. Chapter 2: The Golden Age of Riot 49 The golden age of riot. The world market. Riot and class struggle. Chapter 3: The Swing, Or, Riot to Strike 61 The swing: riot to strike. Machine-breaking. The many. STRIKE Chapter 4: Strike Contra Riot 77 Strike contra riot. Spectacle and discipline. Too much and too little. Chapter 5: The General Strike 89 The general strike. Engels and Sorel. The inversion of Rosa Luxemburg. Chapter 6: Crossed Wires, Or, Strike to Riot 103 Crossed wires, or riot and strike. Struggle and profit. Revolutions per minute. Riot as modality. RIOT PRIME Chapter 7: The Long Crisis 129 The Long Crisis. The arc of accumulation. The specialization of struggle. The end of the program. Overdetermination. Chapter 8: Surplus Rebellions 153 Surplus rebellions. Proletarianization and racialization. An agenda for total disorder. The public riot. Chapter 9: Riot Now: Square, Street, Commune 175 Riot now: square, street, commune. The square and class alliance. The street and the rift. Commune and catastrophe. Index 195