Histomat: Adventures in Historical Materialism

'Historical materialism is the theory of the proletarian revolution.' Georg Lukács

Tuesday, August 23, 2011

Tony Cliff on the 1981 riots

The riots and looting have been fantastic, but they have not gone far enough. Because they have not been organised, the kids have attacked shops when they should have been attacking factories. We must teach them to take the bakery, not just the bread...
Quoted in Ian Birchall, Tony Cliff: A Marxist for His Time (Bookmarks, 2011) -also reviewed here and here - for more Marxist analysis of the 1981 riots in Britain see here

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8 Comments:

At 12:08 am, Anonymous Grim and Dim said...

Unfortunately he can't be arrested and deported - I'm sure the Tories wish they could.

 
At 9:32 am, Anonymous resolutereader said...

I presume you've seen the David Alton retrospective on the '81 riots, which mentions that quote?

http://davidalton.net/2011/08/09/the-riots-of-2011-and-the-riots-of-1981/

 
At 1:00 pm, Blogger Snowball said...

Thanks, somehow I had missed David Alton's retrospective on the riots...

For CLR James's take on the 1981 riots - which is helpful given the demonisation of young rioters in the recent riots, see here.

 
At 3:20 pm, Anonymous Anonymous said...

tony cliff of the swp

 
At 7:51 pm, Blogger Snowball said...

well done!

 
At 11:29 am, Blogger carl34 said...

Riots wont do us good. Why don't we just sit and talk about the problem. It will cause damage to properties and we will have a bad record.
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At 2:29 pm, Blogger Snowball said...

Who are the 'us' and the 'we' you are talking about, Carl?

 
At 8:38 am, Blogger Unknown said...

I think this topic is very interesting for modernity. And i know that essay writing service usa can write qualitatively about riots in Britain on 1981.

 

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