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Riot. Strike. Riot.: The New Era of Uprisings

Joshua Clover

3.85 · Rating details · 142 ratings · 15 reviews

Ferguson. Tottenham. Clichy-Sous-Bois. Oakland. Within capital’s core, the riot looms increasingly large within the repertoire of struggles. Rather than inchoate spasms or immiserated absence of the revolutionary idea, this book locates the riot within longue durée of capitalist transformation: facts not failures. Just as the turn to the strike two centuries ago signaled r ...more

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Hardcover, 224 pages

Published May 3rd 2016 by Verso

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Oct 17, 2017 Kyle rated it it was amazing

Materialism for insurrectionists.

Up until about Chapter 7, I felt about this book the way I imagine some people feel about Tiqqun or Invisible Committee, a good read not so much for the analysis but for the poetry of language (I'm not really a fan of either of the former's writing or analysis so I'm assuming). By the end I was broadly convinced. The main strength of this book is where so much contemporary anarchist literature fails, in not glamourizing struggle, an approach easily dismissed by c ...more

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Sep 08, 2018 Kai rated it really liked it

This is one of the better and more coherent turns of the contemporary ultraleft, left communism, and/or north american anarchism in recent years. I think Clover is most sympathetic to the communization literature - Dauve, Theorie Communiste, Endnotes - while drawing out the fully racialized conclusions that an analysis 'surplus populations' demands. Clover's analysis is not without problems (most notably a kind of subterranean teleology in its historicism) and I must say I could have done withou This is one of the better and more coherent turns of the contemporary ultraleft, left communism, and/or north american anarchism in recent years. I think Clover is most sympathetic to the communization literature - Dauve, Theorie Communiste, Endnotes - while drawing out the fully racialized conclusions that an analysis 'surplus populations' demands. Clover's analysis is not without problems (most notably a kind of subterranean teleology in its historicism) and I must say I could have done without the attempts to turn analysis into poetry. Overall, however, it succeeds in providing a coherent reading of the importance of riots, which takes them as at least somewhat determined by or resultant from their context (namely, shifts in global capitalism). Chapters 5-7 are particularly effective in this regard.

For the most part, Clover does not fall into the kind of romanticism one finds in insurrectionary thought. But the book is at its absolute worst when this kind of analysis appears: where the riot becomes a form of negation without demands, a kind of anti-politics, a refusal of the very terrain of political organizing. I continue to find this thesis of negation - frequently dressed in language of autonomy, freedom, disorder, irrationality - completely ridiculous. e.g.: "The blocking of traffic, the interruption of circulation as an immediate and concrete project, registered nothing so much as the unquenchable desire to make it all stop." I'm not suggesting that such acts of negation normatively need to express demands, but rather that the perspective that sees in them only negation, disorder, or spontaneous nothingness generally is missing a lot of the behind-the-scenes organizing. No doubt Clover would agree (and an analysis of the State reading of the riot exists at various points). Then why does this perspective float around in the book?

I don't entirely know if Clover is convinced by this thesis anyway...the book seems to vacillate between such a more generically anarchist thesis and a (redefined) communist one, which would be more in keeping with its dialectical method. The closing pages on "the commune" are more suggestive, as is the book's epigraph from Wallace Stevens which suggests that order and disorder coinhabit each other. Maybe this dialectical thesis (and its fleetingness) is what makes it such a good book to think with and through. ...more

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Jul 08, 2016 hami rated it liked it

Shelves: politics-already-read

Very well written, Joshua Clover has gathered a lot of interesting and diverse topics related to historic and contemporary Riots and Strikes. The most memorable and interesting parts of this book for me were the sources that was referenced by the writer to further clarify the point. Overall I recommend this book to everyone, also a great read to further understand political economy in relation to workers movements in historic and contemporary Riots.

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Feb 05, 2017 Rui Coelho rated it liked it

A good summary and introduction to the insurrectionary communist debate. It covers concepts as class recomposition, deindustrialization, surplus population, counterlogistics, communes...

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Jun 21, 2020 Mike rated it really liked it

Clover's Riot. Strike. Riot.: The New Era of Uprisings was exactly the balm of intellectual rigor and honesty I had been looking for after years and years of immature, shitty discourse with regards to protests that are accompanied by looting. I had even written my own three-part screed on social media beseeching ignorant white people to educate themselves about the history of riots, the context of them, and lastly the unspoken message underneath before saying just about anything critical, or, wo Clover's Riot. Strike. Riot.: The New Era of Uprisings was exactly the balm of intellectual rigor and honesty I had been looking for after years and years of immature, shitty discourse with regards to protests that are accompanied by looting. I had even written my own three-part screed on social media beseeching ignorant white people to educate themselves about the history of riots, the context of them, and lastly the unspoken message underneath before saying just about anything critical, or, worse but more frequently, critical and stupid.

Clover's methodology here is interesting and, rest assured, while my economics degree and casual understanding of Marx got me a lot of places here, Clover does ensure that despite the more difficult, theoretical passages inlaid here and there, the crux of the issue gets reiterated clearly. At times dense but worthwhile, it should not be an overall discouragement because there are too many valuable takeaways that are discernible to those who haven't studied Capital with formal rigor.

My original predilections toward the necessity, and/or inevitability, of riot given the system in which we are trapped were, at some point, approaching an asymptotic limit to my own reason and abilities. This book helped me exceed past my personal limit into a higher strata of information, methodology, and solid theoretical underpinning to emphasize the points I have wanted to make - as a white ally to the Movement 4 Black Lives - and therefore most of its resources are invaluable.

I do agree with some fellow reviewers here that are pondering to what extent Clover's analysis relies on a sort of phantom teleology; it never gets called out but I did mark in my margins several times - and saw concerns about similar things in the reviews here - about little components of certain arguments being a bit reliant on a historical narrative, if that's the right word. But there's more than enough argument here that maintains solid ground that is well worth investigating.

A beautiful passage in it made me wonder: to what extent are the police seeing "a riot" when they see one Black man on the street selling loosies? Is the existence of a black man - given how racialized the inequality in this country is - seen by the police (a state commodity, at best) as a threat to order, a disruption of the fabric of things, a riot in and of itself? Is this the mindset that makes these over-militarized fascists dehumanize their victims so quickly, because the status quo they make an oath to defend is for the extinction of the "surplus population," a sort of always-already riot, in order to quell the dissent embodied by Black existence?

There's a lot more that this book has to offer, and it is a staggering eye-opener. Delightful and well-deserved digs at Jacobin for a myopic socialism are also included, which should make this a recommended read for this moment most definitely. ...more

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Apr 30, 2020 Guillaume rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: essay, usa, entremonde, economy

Analyse pointue, érudite et technique des différents contextes socio-économique, ainsi que des différents rapports au Travail, à la production et à la circulation des marchandises, à travers les siècles, qui ont pu amener les populations opprimées à se soulever, et comment. Emeute - Grève - Emeute prime

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Feb 20, 2017 Jordan rated it it was ok

Shelves: nonfiction, politics, socialism, economics, labor, history

Clover's analysis of rioting and striking and how they relate is in-depth and insightful but is one of the worst examples of using unnecessarily complex language to get a point across that I've ever seen. Reading this was a chore.

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Aug 01, 2020 Hanna rated it it was ok

Phew, that was a tough read for me. I lack the theoretical background and as a non-English-speaking native I found Clovers poetic style of writing extrememly hard to understand.
The topic is interesting, but truthfully I didn't feel as if I gained any useful insights.

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Jun 06, 2020 manasa k rated it really liked it

dense but important
especially makes a good case for all forms of rioting (INCLUDING LOOTING) as a way to reset markets and prices

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Jun 10, 2020 Jason rated it liked it

Shelves: non-fiction

This book was not for me. This is for people who read a lot more than I do. I don't know whether or not I'm smart enough for it but I sure as shit know I don't have enough time to read all the theory I'd need in order to slot this book into the conversation it's in. Oh well. Maybe recommended if you do read more Marxism than I do?

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Mar 05, 2017 Jonathan added it

rinse and repeat.

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Jul 27, 2018 J. rated it really liked it · review of another edition

L'émeute est généralement négligée par les marxistes, taxée d'apolitisme et renvoyée à la spontanéité. Joshua Clover s'attache à la théoriser et à comprendre la succession des formes de contestation dans la durée. Aux origines du capitalisme, l'émeute est la forme de lutte dominante, s'attaquant à la circulation des marchandises. Puis, lors de la révolution industrielle et jusqu'à l'après-guerre, la grève lui succède, visant désormais la production. Depuis les années 1960, avec la désindustriali ...more

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Mar 23, 2016 Andy rated it really liked it

An extremely useful economic historical theory of riot-strike-riot prime.
Clover's book provides not only the tools but the provocation to engage riots and strikes much more in thought and discussion. Delineating the two while marking their relations, and thinking through their sites and associations. Riots against prices at scenes of circulation--the marketplace / Strikes against wages (albeit prices of a kind) at scenes of labor--the factory floor.

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Jun 09, 2016 Vanessa rated it really liked it

Shelves: ebook, nonfiction, netgalley, history

Engaging intellectual exploration of the impetus behind, and the difference between, the riot and the strike, how they are deployed and to what purpose, and the usefulness of this tool of the people in contemporary political and economic strife.

I received an ecopy from the publishers and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

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