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Riot. Strike. Riot: The New Era of Uprisings
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.
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.
224 pages, Hardcover
First published May 3, 2016
59 people are currently reading
1081 people want to read
About the author
Joshua Clover
22 books72 followersJoshua Clover was an American poet, writer, professor of English and comparative literature at the University of California, Davis, and revolutionary.
He was a published scholar, poet, critic, and journalist whose work has been translated into more than a dozen languages; his scholarship on the political economy of riots has been widely influential in political theory. He appeared in three editions of The Best American Poetry and two times in Best Music Writing, and received an individual grant from the NEA as well as fellowships from the Cornell Society for the Humanities, the University of California Humanities Research Institute, and Institute of Advanced Study, University of Warwick. His first book of poetry, Madonna anno domini, received the Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets in 1996.
He was a published scholar, poet, critic, and journalist whose work has been translated into more than a dozen languages; his scholarship on the political economy of riots has been widely influential in political theory. He appeared in three editions of The Best American Poetry and two times in Best Music Writing, and received an individual grant from the NEA as well as fellowships from the Cornell Society for the Humanities, the University of California Humanities Research Institute, and Institute of Advanced Study, University of Warwick. His first book of poetry, Madonna anno domini, received the Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets in 1996.
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October 17, 2017
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 certain orthodox Marxists as idealist (and not entirely without reason). By actually grounding an argument about riot and circulation struggle in materialist analysis, Clover is far more convincing.
To be fair, some of the most convincing arguments in this book don't actually belong to Clover, but political economists Brenner and Arrighi's. Brenner's view of the economy as in a long downturn of capital, and Arrighi's analysis of American empire as entering its final cycle, that of circulation, is paired with Clover's analysis (drawn for Marx and other sources) of the types of struggle. Clover argues that the coming period of accumulation based on circulation rather than production will be characterized thus by circulation rather than production struggles - the dominant, though by no means only, form of each being respectively riot and picket strike. Though there's plenty to quibble with, the broad strokes of the argument seem fairly convincing, at least in regards to the largely deindustrialized Global North (the applicability of this argument to the manufacturing-heavy Global South is debatable, but more on that later).
The argument rests heavily on the idea that the global economy, and particularly American Empire, is entering an era where accumulation is primarily derived from circulation rather than production. Since
it is only production that can create value, ie surplus, an era of increased circulation is a type of managed decline. Secular weakness of the economy and continual low growth result in an increased surplus population, inherently racialized. And because “race is the modality through which class is lived,” as Stuart Hall puts it, the growing section of the proletariat that is surplus to accumulation and excluded from the formal economy discover their political subjectivity and express their rebellion first through race. The state responds through an expansion of its methods of control and surveillance over the racialised surplus population, and thus riot in the age of the “Long Bust” of the economy confronts the state and police as the immediate source of its oppression rather than the economy, kept at length through globalized logistic chains. These circulation struggles, at points of reproduction, rather than production, may feature workers in addition to the excluded, but they do not necessarily require workers to appear in their role as workers. Indeed, an excessive focus on workers/workerism and production struggles will exclude and alienate the largest growing section of the proletariat, the surplus population.
Conversely, production struggles rest on the ability to seize a share of growing production. In the shift from an era of production to one of circulation, labor struggles become defensive and can only preserve certain arrangements of capital against others, caught in a trap of “affirming” their own exploitation. Additionally, the shrinking of the economy drains the state of its resources necessary to buy social peace, turning it into all stick and no carrot, making the extracting of concessions at the point of production far less likely.
Clover sees the commune as the final synthesis, the overcoming of the dialectic between the strike of the previous era of production and the riot of our current circulation era. Like circulation struggles, the commune does not feature workers “as workers” and overcomes the limited focus on production to encompass the whole of society, also overcoming what EndNotes would call “the problem of composition” (or rather division) of the proletariat to create a self-organized society for communal survival.
Critiques:
The main critique is the applicability of this thesis universally, being after all, a theory derived from shifts in the global economy, not simply that of America. Arrighi's long cycles feature the emergence of a new economic power rising into its production cycle, eclipsing the declining circulation power, in part funding its production through the latter's efforts to find outputs for financial capital in its circulation era. Yet based on Brenner's analysis of the Long Bust of capitalism, Clover merges the two theories to argue that the early long cycles of capitalism under Florence/Venice/Genoa constituted one element of an even larger cycle of capitalism, that of the first cycle of acquisition through circulation. The cycles of the Dutch Republic/Great Britain/the United States thus constituted a larger cycle of a production era, which has now shifted since the 1970s into a final cycle of circulation. Clover's argument therefore rests on the idea that neither China nor another rising power will be able to meaningfully kickstart the world economy, that any cycle of production that emerges will be localized and based in declining returns compared to previous cycles. So his argument hinges heavily on the outcome of China's current and future economic development, yet he fails to analyze or look at China in any way! I don't think this means the basic argument can be dismissed, and the arguments of Chinese leftist journal Chuǎng point in a similar direction to Clover, but it is pretty absurd that he fails to even devote a subsection to this.
Similarly, the applicability of the argument to struggles in the areas of the Global South where Global North production has been relocated seems dubious. Indeed, militant and frequently violent labour actions at the point of production are a common scene these days in Vietnam, Bangladesh, and China. This is a large portion of the world population left unaccounted for by the book's argument.
Finally, the other big weakness is the separation itself between circulation and production struggle, a division that Clover acknowledges is not so neat as the book conceives it to be. In Viewpoint Magazine's symposium on the book, Amanda Armstrong points out that these two categories are often transcended in struggles. During the era of circulation, the slave rebellion was one of the most common forms of struggle, a production struggle if there ever was one, and one which Clover underplays to focus on food riots. Additionally, the age of production importantly saw the emergence of the mass picket, which dissolved the line between production and circulation, bringing community members to the picket line, and involving many proletarians not in their roles as workers. Indeed, particularly in the increasingly crucial logistics industry, Armstrong points out that to ignore the potential role for labour organizing and production struggles that can break down those barriers would be folly. There's still a role for workers as workers in capital's twilight.
Further Reading:
China in the era of riots by Chuang
http://chuangcn.org/journal/one/no-wa...
Joshua Clover on circulation struggles and the recent airport protest https://itsgoingdown.org/terminal-sho...
Viewpoint symposium on Riot.Strike.Riot. https://www.viewpointmag.com/2016/09/...
A History of Separation by EndNotes
https://endnotes.org.uk/issues/4/en/e...
Brown v Ferguson by EndNotes
https://endnotes.org.uk/issues/4/en/e...
The Long Twentieth Century by Arrighi
https://www.amazon.ca/Long-Twentieth-...
Imperialism in the 21st Century by John Smith
https://www.amazon.ca/Imperialism-Twe...
The Economics of Global Turbulence by Robert Brenner
https://www.versobooks.com/books/225-...
The Rebirth of History by Badiou
https://www.versobooks.com/books/1124...
Where are We in the Crisis by Théorie Communiste
https://libcom.org/library/where-are-...
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 certain orthodox Marxists as idealist (and not entirely without reason). By actually grounding an argument about riot and circulation struggle in materialist analysis, Clover is far more convincing.
To be fair, some of the most convincing arguments in this book don't actually belong to Clover, but political economists Brenner and Arrighi's. Brenner's view of the economy as in a long downturn of capital, and Arrighi's analysis of American empire as entering its final cycle, that of circulation, is paired with Clover's analysis (drawn for Marx and other sources) of the types of struggle. Clover argues that the coming period of accumulation based on circulation rather than production will be characterized thus by circulation rather than production struggles - the dominant, though by no means only, form of each being respectively riot and picket strike. Though there's plenty to quibble with, the broad strokes of the argument seem fairly convincing, at least in regards to the largely deindustrialized Global North (the applicability of this argument to the manufacturing-heavy Global South is debatable, but more on that later).
The argument rests heavily on the idea that the global economy, and particularly American Empire, is entering an era where accumulation is primarily derived from circulation rather than production. Since
it is only production that can create value, ie surplus, an era of increased circulation is a type of managed decline. Secular weakness of the economy and continual low growth result in an increased surplus population, inherently racialized. And because “race is the modality through which class is lived,” as Stuart Hall puts it, the growing section of the proletariat that is surplus to accumulation and excluded from the formal economy discover their political subjectivity and express their rebellion first through race. The state responds through an expansion of its methods of control and surveillance over the racialised surplus population, and thus riot in the age of the “Long Bust” of the economy confronts the state and police as the immediate source of its oppression rather than the economy, kept at length through globalized logistic chains. These circulation struggles, at points of reproduction, rather than production, may feature workers in addition to the excluded, but they do not necessarily require workers to appear in their role as workers. Indeed, an excessive focus on workers/workerism and production struggles will exclude and alienate the largest growing section of the proletariat, the surplus population.
Conversely, production struggles rest on the ability to seize a share of growing production. In the shift from an era of production to one of circulation, labor struggles become defensive and can only preserve certain arrangements of capital against others, caught in a trap of “affirming” their own exploitation. Additionally, the shrinking of the economy drains the state of its resources necessary to buy social peace, turning it into all stick and no carrot, making the extracting of concessions at the point of production far less likely.
Clover sees the commune as the final synthesis, the overcoming of the dialectic between the strike of the previous era of production and the riot of our current circulation era. Like circulation struggles, the commune does not feature workers “as workers” and overcomes the limited focus on production to encompass the whole of society, also overcoming what EndNotes would call “the problem of composition” (or rather division) of the proletariat to create a self-organized society for communal survival.
Critiques:
The main critique is the applicability of this thesis universally, being after all, a theory derived from shifts in the global economy, not simply that of America. Arrighi's long cycles feature the emergence of a new economic power rising into its production cycle, eclipsing the declining circulation power, in part funding its production through the latter's efforts to find outputs for financial capital in its circulation era. Yet based on Brenner's analysis of the Long Bust of capitalism, Clover merges the two theories to argue that the early long cycles of capitalism under Florence/Venice/Genoa constituted one element of an even larger cycle of capitalism, that of the first cycle of acquisition through circulation. The cycles of the Dutch Republic/Great Britain/the United States thus constituted a larger cycle of a production era, which has now shifted since the 1970s into a final cycle of circulation. Clover's argument therefore rests on the idea that neither China nor another rising power will be able to meaningfully kickstart the world economy, that any cycle of production that emerges will be localized and based in declining returns compared to previous cycles. So his argument hinges heavily on the outcome of China's current and future economic development, yet he fails to analyze or look at China in any way! I don't think this means the basic argument can be dismissed, and the arguments of Chinese leftist journal Chuǎng point in a similar direction to Clover, but it is pretty absurd that he fails to even devote a subsection to this.
Similarly, the applicability of the argument to struggles in the areas of the Global South where Global North production has been relocated seems dubious. Indeed, militant and frequently violent labour actions at the point of production are a common scene these days in Vietnam, Bangladesh, and China. This is a large portion of the world population left unaccounted for by the book's argument.
Finally, the other big weakness is the separation itself between circulation and production struggle, a division that Clover acknowledges is not so neat as the book conceives it to be. In Viewpoint Magazine's symposium on the book, Amanda Armstrong points out that these two categories are often transcended in struggles. During the era of circulation, the slave rebellion was one of the most common forms of struggle, a production struggle if there ever was one, and one which Clover underplays to focus on food riots. Additionally, the age of production importantly saw the emergence of the mass picket, which dissolved the line between production and circulation, bringing community members to the picket line, and involving many proletarians not in their roles as workers. Indeed, particularly in the increasingly crucial logistics industry, Armstrong points out that to ignore the potential role for labour organizing and production struggles that can break down those barriers would be folly. There's still a role for workers as workers in capital's twilight.
Further Reading:
China in the era of riots by Chuang
http://chuangcn.org/journal/one/no-wa...
Joshua Clover on circulation struggles and the recent airport protest https://itsgoingdown.org/terminal-sho...
Viewpoint symposium on Riot.Strike.Riot. https://www.viewpointmag.com/2016/09/...
A History of Separation by EndNotes
https://endnotes.org.uk/issues/4/en/e...
Brown v Ferguson by EndNotes
https://endnotes.org.uk/issues/4/en/e...
The Long Twentieth Century by Arrighi
https://www.amazon.ca/Long-Twentieth-...
Imperialism in the 21st Century by John Smith
https://www.amazon.ca/Imperialism-Twe...
The Economics of Global Turbulence by Robert Brenner
https://www.versobooks.com/books/225-...
The Rebirth of History by Badiou
https://www.versobooks.com/books/1124...
Where are We in the Crisis by Théorie Communiste
https://libcom.org/library/where-are-...
October 3, 2018
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.
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.
July 3, 2025
Riot Strike Riot is a definite must-read. Without its insights, there are few intellectual tools ready to explain what contemporary riots represent and what opportunities they might offer. Joshua Clover, who recently passed away, was a critical and illuminating voice, and this text of his offered a profound addition to the literature on riots.
In this text, Clover argues that riots have reemerged because of how capitalism now functions. Today’s capitalism relies heavily on rapidly circulating commodities rather than productive, wage-based labor, making riots both 1) more common and 2) more impactful. Clover also believes riots hold potential for fostering communes that break free from commodity dependence.
Circulation
Clover identifies circulation-dependent capitalism as emerging from a “crisis of profitability.” In simple terms, traditional manufacturing and labor-intensive industries have become less profitable. In 1973, this trend reached an inflection point, triggering mass deindustrialization and pushing companies to generate their profits by quickly moving goods, driven by rapid demand creation (ads, influencers), precise consumer targeting (data collection, prediction), and efficient logistics (fast, global deliveries).
These shifts diminish workers’ ability to wield the traditional strike effectively. Companies require fewer workers and thus have less incentive to meet worker demands. Today’s biggest firms, like those in Silicon Valley, generate massive revenues with relatively few employees compared to traditional manufacturing giants of the past. In 2014, the top three Silicon Valley companies had 137k employees and revenues of $247 billion. Yet, as recent as 1990, the top three Detroit automakers made about the same revenues from nearly 1.2 million employees (Manyika and Chui, 2014).
Surplus Populations
Rather than a robust, actively employed working class, contemporary capitalism increasingly produces a precarious, gig-based, or intermittently employed class — what Clover calls the “surplus population,” generally concentrated in capital-deserted urban areas. Capital no longer has much use for them, and the state manages them through policing, surveillance, and incarceration. Significantly, the explosion of the US prison population coincides with this shift around 1973.
I found this category of analysis incredibly powerful for understanding systemic racism in a more materialist light. Social phenomena like white flight, mass incarceration, and police brutality start to appear less like a nebulous "moral failing" of America, and more like functional elements of a greater capitalist system — providing a better path to struggling against said system. Black Americans are disproportionately subject to being rendered surplus, and system racism helps manage, distribute, and delegitimize that surplus.
Why Riots?
For this surplus population, riots aren’t mere expressions of anger — they’re often necessary for survival. When markets and the state fail to provide necessities, riots become a tool for acquiring goods directly. Clover connects modern riots to historical bread riots, showing how both “set the price” of commodities to zero, similar to the way strikes raise the price of labor.
Today, riots are often sparked by police brutality, but Clover emphasizes that policing alone doesn’t fully explain riots. As Stuart Hall puts it, “race is the modality through which class is lived,” such that police violence is just a catalyst among deeper structural issues, including widespread unemployment and precariousness. Riots become increasingly universal and intersectional over time, because of the expanding production of surplus, addressing broader crises such as immigration enforcement (ICE raids) and student debt. These modern forms of riot Clover dubs “riot prime.”
Riots now directly disrupt capitalism’s vital circulation by blocking roads, highways, public squares, and consumer access points. Such blockades significantly harm companies now reliant on quick commodity movement, provoking swift and aggressive police responses.
Communes
Communes, community care, and mutual aid all pop up amidst riots. They help surplus populations survive through non-market means. Simple enough.
Clover wants to see these forms expand and develop, but doesn’t explain how that could happen. Crucially, I believe the communes have to find a way to go beyond “recirculation,” i.e, re-appropriating commodities, redirecting waste, or using digital mutual aid from wages earned elsewhere. To break from that circuit, you’d need to link various communes and sources of production.
Clover misses an opportunity here by not addressing the surplus populations of rural America — this is a larger limitation of Clover’s descriptive materialism approach, where he only really theorizes the political action that’s already happening. Via America’s countryside — full of workers facing severe neglect and economic despair similar to the urban surplus — there are incredible opportunities to connect struggles. Without that connection, there’s a risk of repeating the historical division of the Paris Commune: a revolutionary urban area, strapped for food, pitted against a reactionary rural population.
Rural regions offer promising opportunities for resistance, highlighted by protests like those against the Dakota Access Pipeline. Rural residents live beside underpoliced arteries of circulatory capitalism. We should build alliances in these supposedly conservative areas.
Clover dismisses contemporary unionization efforts in light of the affordances of riot prime. In my view, that’s a bit of an oversight. Although some leftists (looking at you, Jacobin) overemphasize unions without recognizing their structural limits, it is still true that strategic unionization offers great potential. Namely, unionizing logistics and circulation. Benjamin Fong’s work on Amazon illustrates this: small disruptions at critical distribution points can inflict substantial costs.
What’s urgently needed is connecting logistical union efforts with riots — uniting street actions, port stoppages, rural disruptions, and agricultural support. That combination would be a treasure chest of opportunity in the fight against capitalism.
Finally, the book’s implications leave open interesting questions. How should we reconcile the visible, demand-oriented approach of electoral socialism and the demand-less riot? Can they communicate about one another? Should they collaborate? It is also fruitful to think about how much of this conceptual framework functions in different areas of the Global South, considering that the ideas draw on global events like the Arab Spring.
In this text, Clover argues that riots have reemerged because of how capitalism now functions. Today’s capitalism relies heavily on rapidly circulating commodities rather than productive, wage-based labor, making riots both 1) more common and 2) more impactful. Clover also believes riots hold potential for fostering communes that break free from commodity dependence.
Circulation
Clover identifies circulation-dependent capitalism as emerging from a “crisis of profitability.” In simple terms, traditional manufacturing and labor-intensive industries have become less profitable. In 1973, this trend reached an inflection point, triggering mass deindustrialization and pushing companies to generate their profits by quickly moving goods, driven by rapid demand creation (ads, influencers), precise consumer targeting (data collection, prediction), and efficient logistics (fast, global deliveries).
These shifts diminish workers’ ability to wield the traditional strike effectively. Companies require fewer workers and thus have less incentive to meet worker demands. Today’s biggest firms, like those in Silicon Valley, generate massive revenues with relatively few employees compared to traditional manufacturing giants of the past. In 2014, the top three Silicon Valley companies had 137k employees and revenues of $247 billion. Yet, as recent as 1990, the top three Detroit automakers made about the same revenues from nearly 1.2 million employees (Manyika and Chui, 2014).
Surplus Populations
Rather than a robust, actively employed working class, contemporary capitalism increasingly produces a precarious, gig-based, or intermittently employed class — what Clover calls the “surplus population,” generally concentrated in capital-deserted urban areas. Capital no longer has much use for them, and the state manages them through policing, surveillance, and incarceration. Significantly, the explosion of the US prison population coincides with this shift around 1973.
I found this category of analysis incredibly powerful for understanding systemic racism in a more materialist light. Social phenomena like white flight, mass incarceration, and police brutality start to appear less like a nebulous "moral failing" of America, and more like functional elements of a greater capitalist system — providing a better path to struggling against said system. Black Americans are disproportionately subject to being rendered surplus, and system racism helps manage, distribute, and delegitimize that surplus.
Why Riots?
For this surplus population, riots aren’t mere expressions of anger — they’re often necessary for survival. When markets and the state fail to provide necessities, riots become a tool for acquiring goods directly. Clover connects modern riots to historical bread riots, showing how both “set the price” of commodities to zero, similar to the way strikes raise the price of labor.
Today, riots are often sparked by police brutality, but Clover emphasizes that policing alone doesn’t fully explain riots. As Stuart Hall puts it, “race is the modality through which class is lived,” such that police violence is just a catalyst among deeper structural issues, including widespread unemployment and precariousness. Riots become increasingly universal and intersectional over time, because of the expanding production of surplus, addressing broader crises such as immigration enforcement (ICE raids) and student debt. These modern forms of riot Clover dubs “riot prime.”
Riots now directly disrupt capitalism’s vital circulation by blocking roads, highways, public squares, and consumer access points. Such blockades significantly harm companies now reliant on quick commodity movement, provoking swift and aggressive police responses.
Communes
Communes, community care, and mutual aid all pop up amidst riots. They help surplus populations survive through non-market means. Simple enough.
Clover wants to see these forms expand and develop, but doesn’t explain how that could happen. Crucially, I believe the communes have to find a way to go beyond “recirculation,” i.e, re-appropriating commodities, redirecting waste, or using digital mutual aid from wages earned elsewhere. To break from that circuit, you’d need to link various communes and sources of production.
Clover misses an opportunity here by not addressing the surplus populations of rural America — this is a larger limitation of Clover’s descriptive materialism approach, where he only really theorizes the political action that’s already happening. Via America’s countryside — full of workers facing severe neglect and economic despair similar to the urban surplus — there are incredible opportunities to connect struggles. Without that connection, there’s a risk of repeating the historical division of the Paris Commune: a revolutionary urban area, strapped for food, pitted against a reactionary rural population.
Rural regions offer promising opportunities for resistance, highlighted by protests like those against the Dakota Access Pipeline. Rural residents live beside underpoliced arteries of circulatory capitalism. We should build alliances in these supposedly conservative areas.
Clover dismisses contemporary unionization efforts in light of the affordances of riot prime. In my view, that’s a bit of an oversight. Although some leftists (looking at you, Jacobin) overemphasize unions without recognizing their structural limits, it is still true that strategic unionization offers great potential. Namely, unionizing logistics and circulation. Benjamin Fong’s work on Amazon illustrates this: small disruptions at critical distribution points can inflict substantial costs.
What’s urgently needed is connecting logistical union efforts with riots — uniting street actions, port stoppages, rural disruptions, and agricultural support. That combination would be a treasure chest of opportunity in the fight against capitalism.
Finally, the book’s implications leave open interesting questions. How should we reconcile the visible, demand-oriented approach of electoral socialism and the demand-less riot? Can they communicate about one another? Should they collaborate? It is also fruitful to think about how much of this conceptual framework functions in different areas of the Global South, considering that the ideas draw on global events like the Arab Spring.
October 24, 2022
read for class
heavy marxist economic theory is painful to read when you hate economics
I wouldve liked a 10 page summary and that wouldve been enough tbh
heavy marxist economic theory is painful to read when you hate economics
I wouldve liked a 10 page summary and that wouldve been enough tbh
June 28, 2025
“The waning of the traditional labor movements in the west and the intensification of a more thoroughgoing dispossession augur the end neither of potentially revolutionary anticapitalist antagonism nor of historical materialism’s analytical force.”
Really good. Dense, especially if you don’t have any background reading economics, labor history, and Marxism. I think most complaints about this book are people that don’t understand it. Which is a shame because when one analyzes the words carefully, the dudes kinda nailing it.
But in simple ol’ cat terms:
Riot was the thing, proletarianization happens, strikes become the thing, then post-industrialization happens, riot becomes the thing again. Riot, strike, riot.
If I was to describe this book in a sentence, it is a look into the future of collective action within the imperial core written a few years ago about today. It is “predictive not prescriptive.”
Rioting and looting are described in economic terms. Why? Because they are a “desperate turn to the question of reproduction, though one dramatically limited by the structure of capital within which it initially operates.” Duh. People in power deserve all the flaming bags of catshit we can sling at em.
Hard to explain book. Easy to get wordy. Maybe bullet points:
- riots are a response to price
- strikes grow from riot as the contradiction of surplus value is formed in capitalism
- the strike is a temporal struggle while riot is a spatial one.
- the “affirmation trap” is “that struggles against capital can only be against capital’s existence, rather than for the empowering of labor. Capital and labor find themselves now in collaboration to preserve capital’s self-reproduction, to preserve the labor relation along with the firm’s viability.”
- thus riots become more prevalent during the deindustrialization of neoliberal era - this process is ‘natural’ meaning a result of material reality and not a failure in organizing theory or ideology
- ‘race riot’ is an “inverted term” as “it is not that race makes riots but that riots make race.”
- shits gonna get worse. Race, police brutality, blowback from US continued colonial endeavors, climate refugees, xenophobia, etc etc
- riot strike and riot until we’re free.
Really good. Dense, especially if you don’t have any background reading economics, labor history, and Marxism. I think most complaints about this book are people that don’t understand it. Which is a shame because when one analyzes the words carefully, the dudes kinda nailing it.
But in simple ol’ cat terms:
Riot was the thing, proletarianization happens, strikes become the thing, then post-industrialization happens, riot becomes the thing again. Riot, strike, riot.
If I was to describe this book in a sentence, it is a look into the future of collective action within the imperial core written a few years ago about today. It is “predictive not prescriptive.”
Rioting and looting are described in economic terms. Why? Because they are a “desperate turn to the question of reproduction, though one dramatically limited by the structure of capital within which it initially operates.” Duh. People in power deserve all the flaming bags of catshit we can sling at em.
Hard to explain book. Easy to get wordy. Maybe bullet points:
- riots are a response to price
- strikes grow from riot as the contradiction of surplus value is formed in capitalism
- the strike is a temporal struggle while riot is a spatial one.
- the “affirmation trap” is “that struggles against capital can only be against capital’s existence, rather than for the empowering of labor. Capital and labor find themselves now in collaboration to preserve capital’s self-reproduction, to preserve the labor relation along with the firm’s viability.”
- thus riots become more prevalent during the deindustrialization of neoliberal era - this process is ‘natural’ meaning a result of material reality and not a failure in organizing theory or ideology
- ‘race riot’ is an “inverted term” as “it is not that race makes riots but that riots make race.”
- shits gonna get worse. Race, police brutality, blowback from US continued colonial endeavors, climate refugees, xenophobia, etc etc
- riot strike and riot until we’re free.
May 9, 2025
gonna re-read immediately and take better notes.
i mean pretty profound and rupturing (yeah in a Marxist sense) and i think injects something incredibly profound into the research program of class struggle and its practical, riotous assertions. really helpful read on Capital that then ties itself to (lumpen)proletariat reaction and strategy to not only control but abolish surplus. doesn't fetishize marxism in a way a lot of shit does now but approaches history as method in a way that is able to both kill and redefine working class struggle. rescues a communist history of the riot beyond anarchic stupidity (i think he's a bit kinder about this point). makes basically the same points as a lot of urban theory from the past 30 years (production to circulation/consumption, prevalence of FIRE, time enveloping space/space developing time, spatial fix, the center cannot hold, peripheralization of center/centralization of periphery) but from a new angle and theorizes beyond the "spontaneity" of revolt that a lot of urban theorists grossly rely on, deleting the history, struggle, and racialization of said riots/strikes.
end had me thinking about all of our UCLA strikes and the divides between RnF and UnionMade over how to define a strike and the associated strategies (just removing labor vs disrupting circulation of school resources). and what worked! why was blocking delivery trucks so much more effective (and so heavily militarized/policed) compared to the traditional picket. bonds of solidarity are not enough; we have to blockade. were we still striking or approaching the riot because the tools of the strike were not able to meet the moment at hand (there was no really productive surplus for our labor to capture or control...) should we muddy the waters; is it time again for strike as riot and riot as strike? why not both?
wish there was a bit more around circulation struggle contesting finance and its imaginary (although ofc very real) trades and tentacles.
keeping this in my back pocket forever.
i mean pretty profound and rupturing (yeah in a Marxist sense) and i think injects something incredibly profound into the research program of class struggle and its practical, riotous assertions. really helpful read on Capital that then ties itself to (lumpen)proletariat reaction and strategy to not only control but abolish surplus. doesn't fetishize marxism in a way a lot of shit does now but approaches history as method in a way that is able to both kill and redefine working class struggle. rescues a communist history of the riot beyond anarchic stupidity (i think he's a bit kinder about this point). makes basically the same points as a lot of urban theory from the past 30 years (production to circulation/consumption, prevalence of FIRE, time enveloping space/space developing time, spatial fix, the center cannot hold, peripheralization of center/centralization of periphery) but from a new angle and theorizes beyond the "spontaneity" of revolt that a lot of urban theorists grossly rely on, deleting the history, struggle, and racialization of said riots/strikes.
end had me thinking about all of our UCLA strikes and the divides between RnF and UnionMade over how to define a strike and the associated strategies (just removing labor vs disrupting circulation of school resources). and what worked! why was blocking delivery trucks so much more effective (and so heavily militarized/policed) compared to the traditional picket. bonds of solidarity are not enough; we have to blockade. were we still striking or approaching the riot because the tools of the strike were not able to meet the moment at hand (there was no really productive surplus for our labor to capture or control...) should we muddy the waters; is it time again for strike as riot and riot as strike? why not both?
wish there was a bit more around circulation struggle contesting finance and its imaginary (although ofc very real) trades and tentacles.
keeping this in my back pocket forever.
February 21, 2022
Riot Strike Riot needs a specific call-out for being a waste of paper. Almost impossible to read unless you love torturing yourself with leftist ramblings.
CONVOLUTED. Clover wrote this like he just learned about the thesaurus and used every 10-letter word in the dictionary. COMPLICATED and UNORIGINAL. I HATE when leftists aren't clear with their ideas and instead carry on the tradition of supremacist and inaccessible language. This took so long to read for no reason. Clover has maybe 1-3 good ideas. This book would have should have lived its life as a pamphlet.
If you're writing a thesis on riots, strikes, and capitalism, this may be a good reference book.
CONVOLUTED. Clover wrote this like he just learned about the thesaurus and used every 10-letter word in the dictionary. COMPLICATED and UNORIGINAL. I HATE when leftists aren't clear with their ideas and instead carry on the tradition of supremacist and inaccessible language. This took so long to read for no reason. Clover has maybe 1-3 good ideas. This book would have should have lived its life as a pamphlet.
If you're writing a thesis on riots, strikes, and capitalism, this may be a good reference book.
January 19, 2026
prescient in so many ways - much to think about!
December 2, 2020
I read this book in the light of the increase in social movements we have seen globally over the last decade but specifically this year.
Clover argues that riots were common at the beginning of the modern era and were related to price, strikes became the primary form of dissent as wage Labour became the main form of work and now as capital is replacing Labour in many fields surplus Labour organises through riots again, particularly those that revolve around race based interactions with authorities eg. BLM, Tottenham riots.
I don't have a particular issue with this argument, I found it interesting and largely agreed, but I did struggle with the Marxist nature of the analysis. While I think that this analysis of proximity to means of production is likely to be right in the first iteration of riot and Strike, the more recent riot is likely to become influenced by existential threats like the climate catastrophe and traditional anti-capitalism analyses generally don't capture the way this is likely to impact movements. Clover spends no time on this.
Clover also largely neglects the role of riot and strike outside of the economic centre of Western Europe, and the USA. Even making a clearer distinction that he is focusing on this area would avoid the fact that it is hard to see his analysis standing up in a country that doesnt have the same pattern of development as one of those places.
The book is interesting in it's general point. But the point could be made as a historical analysis rather than dense and ivory tower political theory.
Would I read it again? No. Am I glad I read it? Maybe.
Clover argues that riots were common at the beginning of the modern era and were related to price, strikes became the primary form of dissent as wage Labour became the main form of work and now as capital is replacing Labour in many fields surplus Labour organises through riots again, particularly those that revolve around race based interactions with authorities eg. BLM, Tottenham riots.
I don't have a particular issue with this argument, I found it interesting and largely agreed, but I did struggle with the Marxist nature of the analysis. While I think that this analysis of proximity to means of production is likely to be right in the first iteration of riot and Strike, the more recent riot is likely to become influenced by existential threats like the climate catastrophe and traditional anti-capitalism analyses generally don't capture the way this is likely to impact movements. Clover spends no time on this.
Clover also largely neglects the role of riot and strike outside of the economic centre of Western Europe, and the USA. Even making a clearer distinction that he is focusing on this area would avoid the fact that it is hard to see his analysis standing up in a country that doesnt have the same pattern of development as one of those places.
The book is interesting in it's general point. But the point could be made as a historical analysis rather than dense and ivory tower political theory.
Would I read it again? No. Am I glad I read it? Maybe.
August 29, 2016
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.
February 5, 2017
A good summary and introduction to the insurrectionary communist debate. It covers concepts as class recomposition, deindustrialization, surplus population, counterlogistics, communes...
November 3, 2024
Clover puts forward an excellent historical analysis here, marrying Arrighi's periodization of capitalism with Brenner's long downturn. He then uses this to map the predominant tactics of working class (uhhhhh I mean proletarian) agitation against capital, with riots coming to the forefront during periods dominated by circulation, and strikes used in periods dominated by healthy industrial capital. This is the main contribution of the book - using Rosa Luxemburg's maxim of "objective investigation of the sources of [class struggle] from the standpoint of what is historically inevitable" to scientifically understand why the proletariat agitates in the ways that it does.
The strategies pulled from this valuable lesson are less coherent to me, with little in the way of actual strategy put forward. Riots...communal reproduction...(civil war?)...communes. A terrifying if unhelpful prediction, and one that, while difficult to argue with due to being based on prediction alone, is fairly unscientific. But that's okay. As I said, Clover might very well wind up being right anyways.
The main issue I have with this book is the same issue I take with most communization adjacent work (and most Marxists in general to be fair). Namely, the complete inability to question just what communism actually is. Clover mentions that the law of value is only overcome when the break between labor and consumption finally takes place in high communism. But this is just incorrect, and the only major error in the book. Value ceases to exist where private property also does not exist. Communism is the supercession of private property relations with communal property relations, in which all firms are collectively reproduced regardless of their productivity, and everyone's labor is treated the same, once again, regardless of their productivity. When Marx discusses the transition in the CotGP, which Clover cites here (!), what he is actually saying is that sure, there's the bourgeois error of "equal right" in lower stage communism, and that only goes away when you break the connection between labor and consumption (i.e., work as much as you can, take whatever you want) in high communism, but that does not mean you don't have communist social relations in the lower stage.
This error is reproduced all over so-called Marxist circles, most impactfully by Lenin in The State and Revolution, and is one of the main reasons I contend that the proliferation of Marxist sects, brands and currents conceals the fact that most of the underlying assumptions are the same. The same and wrong, I should say. Clover, like the rest of the communization people (who are literally supposed to be the ones defending communism beginning on day one after the revolution or it doesn't begin at all, an idea that is incredibly valuable) and the Leninists to boot, all consistently push communism back to an unreachable horizon. For Lenin, communism is a carrot dangled on the end of a stick by an authoritarian government, for Clover, it's something you have to endlessly suffer to get. But even then you might not get it, because none of these people have any idea what communism actually is.
Oh well. Hopefully Clover is right that us proles will figure it out eventually, without the so-called intellectuals that get it wrong at every opportunity.
The strategies pulled from this valuable lesson are less coherent to me, with little in the way of actual strategy put forward. Riots...communal reproduction...(civil war?)...communes. A terrifying if unhelpful prediction, and one that, while difficult to argue with due to being based on prediction alone, is fairly unscientific. But that's okay. As I said, Clover might very well wind up being right anyways.
The main issue I have with this book is the same issue I take with most communization adjacent work (and most Marxists in general to be fair). Namely, the complete inability to question just what communism actually is. Clover mentions that the law of value is only overcome when the break between labor and consumption finally takes place in high communism. But this is just incorrect, and the only major error in the book. Value ceases to exist where private property also does not exist. Communism is the supercession of private property relations with communal property relations, in which all firms are collectively reproduced regardless of their productivity, and everyone's labor is treated the same, once again, regardless of their productivity. When Marx discusses the transition in the CotGP, which Clover cites here (!), what he is actually saying is that sure, there's the bourgeois error of "equal right" in lower stage communism, and that only goes away when you break the connection between labor and consumption (i.e., work as much as you can, take whatever you want) in high communism, but that does not mean you don't have communist social relations in the lower stage.
This error is reproduced all over so-called Marxist circles, most impactfully by Lenin in The State and Revolution, and is one of the main reasons I contend that the proliferation of Marxist sects, brands and currents conceals the fact that most of the underlying assumptions are the same. The same and wrong, I should say. Clover, like the rest of the communization people (who are literally supposed to be the ones defending communism beginning on day one after the revolution or it doesn't begin at all, an idea that is incredibly valuable) and the Leninists to boot, all consistently push communism back to an unreachable horizon. For Lenin, communism is a carrot dangled on the end of a stick by an authoritarian government, for Clover, it's something you have to endlessly suffer to get. But even then you might not get it, because none of these people have any idea what communism actually is.
Oh well. Hopefully Clover is right that us proles will figure it out eventually, without the so-called intellectuals that get it wrong at every opportunity.
June 21, 2020
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.
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.
September 29, 2025
The introduction of this book was promising — and is worth reading on its own — but the rest of the book failed to deliver. Clover sets out to investigate why social resistance movements to oppressor classes shifted from riots (pre-17th century), to strikes (until the 1960s or so), and then to riots once again.
His most important contribution is to clearly show that mainstream definitions of strikes and riots are woefully inadequate. Rather than strikes representing organized and peaceful protest while riots use violence to channel inchoate anger, Clover demonstrates that strikes also often turned to violence to make their demands met. Rather, Clover delineates them based on who participates and where. In Clover’s telling, riots are made up of citizens acting at the site of consumption (originally typically the market or port, now usually the public square) while strikes are made up of workers acting in their capacity as producers at the site of production.
Unfortunately, his framing of history as "Riot-Strike-Riot-prime" (an allusion to Marx’s M-C-M’) is overly cute, and restricts analysis rather than aiding it. Facts are thrown together when convenient, rather than building a convincing, scientific argument. Evidence for his thesis is sometimes drawn from history, sometimes from literature, and there is very little in the way of social survey of economic trends and social unrest, which I would want to see as proof of his thesis. Clover neatly sidesteps questions of generalizability to real social relationships between economic mode of development and social mode of conflict by stating he restricts his focus to the west. If riots are the mode of social conflict of pre-industrial production, strikes are the mode of conflict of industrial production, and strike-prime is the mode of conflict of off-shored post-industrial production, we should see these modes shift both across geography and across time. Clover resists testing his thesis, preferring to enjoy the vibes. (The vibes are indeed enjoyable. His writing is a pleasure to read; there are many fun turns of phrases, reminding me of Christian Thorne.)
The final section of my copy had an Afterword, in which the author reflected on how well his work stood up to criticism and time. It is easy to get nothing wrong if you don’t say all that much in the end.
His most important contribution is to clearly show that mainstream definitions of strikes and riots are woefully inadequate. Rather than strikes representing organized and peaceful protest while riots use violence to channel inchoate anger, Clover demonstrates that strikes also often turned to violence to make their demands met. Rather, Clover delineates them based on who participates and where. In Clover’s telling, riots are made up of citizens acting at the site of consumption (originally typically the market or port, now usually the public square) while strikes are made up of workers acting in their capacity as producers at the site of production.
Unfortunately, his framing of history as "Riot-Strike-Riot-prime" (an allusion to Marx’s M-C-M’) is overly cute, and restricts analysis rather than aiding it. Facts are thrown together when convenient, rather than building a convincing, scientific argument. Evidence for his thesis is sometimes drawn from history, sometimes from literature, and there is very little in the way of social survey of economic trends and social unrest, which I would want to see as proof of his thesis. Clover neatly sidesteps questions of generalizability to real social relationships between economic mode of development and social mode of conflict by stating he restricts his focus to the west. If riots are the mode of social conflict of pre-industrial production, strikes are the mode of conflict of industrial production, and strike-prime is the mode of conflict of off-shored post-industrial production, we should see these modes shift both across geography and across time. Clover resists testing his thesis, preferring to enjoy the vibes. (The vibes are indeed enjoyable. His writing is a pleasure to read; there are many fun turns of phrases, reminding me of Christian Thorne.)
The final section of my copy had an Afterword, in which the author reflected on how well his work stood up to criticism and time. It is easy to get nothing wrong if you don’t say all that much in the end.
July 29, 2024
A decent book that attempts to ground riots of the past and present along with strikes within a political economy and historical materialist approach. If anything, it argues that tactics must emerge from concrete historical moments, not necessarily be prescribed in advance of them. The discussion is written in a dense theoretical language, which will most likely be off-putting to most other than political theorists and those most familiar with Marxism. I would probably give the book 3.5 stars based on its somewhat esoteric use of jargon.
Similarly, the analysis, at times, can seem a bit overly broad and mechanistic in the way riot, strike, and what he calls later riots as "riot prime" are differentiated from each other. Granted, Clover insists that these are not so much oppositions but overlayed systems somewhat determined by the historical moment allowing themselves to self-actualize. The book is written from a dialectical position that refuses to see things as oppositions against one another but instead in relation to one another. With that said, this dialectical approach gets somewhat lost at times for sometimes romanticized sweeps of language that attempt to overcompensate the rejection of riots in somewhat grandiose, idealized terms. With all that said, the book offers a good summary of prior discussions of riots and strikes, and it makes a rather sophisticated analysis of why we should not simply dismiss riots of the present as useless endeavors but instead more as indexes of the current state of affairs brough on by deindustrialization and precarity.
Similarly, the analysis, at times, can seem a bit overly broad and mechanistic in the way riot, strike, and what he calls later riots as "riot prime" are differentiated from each other. Granted, Clover insists that these are not so much oppositions but overlayed systems somewhat determined by the historical moment allowing themselves to self-actualize. The book is written from a dialectical position that refuses to see things as oppositions against one another but instead in relation to one another. With that said, this dialectical approach gets somewhat lost at times for sometimes romanticized sweeps of language that attempt to overcompensate the rejection of riots in somewhat grandiose, idealized terms. With all that said, the book offers a good summary of prior discussions of riots and strikes, and it makes a rather sophisticated analysis of why we should not simply dismiss riots of the present as useless endeavors but instead more as indexes of the current state of affairs brough on by deindustrialization and precarity.
August 24, 2025
This is a much more interesting book than I was expecting. Clover historicises the tactics of radical protest from riot to strike and back to riot, associating the change with the shifting focus of capitalism from primarily deriving profit from production through the declining rate of profit which moves focus on to capturing surplus value from circulation as production becomes less effective as a means of accumulating value. I find Clover's thesis, linked as it is to the changing nature of capitalism and its relationship to the proletarian class very persuasive. Seen from the perspective of the Occupy movements and the riots following the killing of Michael Brown in Missouri Clover's focus is on the development of riot as the modern expression of proletarian opposition to the state. While Clover doesn't directly extend this to cover the regressive riots in the UK associated with far right agitation, it feels like his thesis could with a little thought be part of an explanation, based around a proletarianised surplus without ready access to means of reproduction.
In short a thoughtful theory of how proletarian revolt has changed over time in response to changes in the nature of capitalism, with an opening for further development into something that could theorise the nature of protest in the modern UK and US.
In short a thoughtful theory of how proletarian revolt has changed over time in response to changes in the nature of capitalism, with an opening for further development into something that could theorise the nature of protest in the modern UK and US.
August 17, 2025
Clover, while trying to make insightful points about Marxism and its relation to social unrest today, ultimately veers into a mechanically materialist form of analysis. He is too eclectic when he pulls from various different Marxists, many of whom would disagree with each other and with Clover on how his analysis of deindustrialization affects the forms of social protest. He claims that the riots of today are a product of deindustrialization, starting from the 70s onwards. While there has been a fall off in strike activity, clover ignores the organizational aspect of this question and the broader state of the world.
The failures of strikes and left wing organizing isn’t mechanically based on just the state of industrial concentration (clover ignores workers in the public and service sector) , but also on the lack of revolutionary leaders and organizations owing to both counter insurgency and theoretical failings. By concentrating this trend of strikes into riots, you can ignore the need for a theoretically sound leadership and instead fall into economism, tailing each mass protest for its spontaneity.
Also, his writing style is overly complicated for the length of this book and what he discusses.
The failures of strikes and left wing organizing isn’t mechanically based on just the state of industrial concentration (clover ignores workers in the public and service sector) , but also on the lack of revolutionary leaders and organizations owing to both counter insurgency and theoretical failings. By concentrating this trend of strikes into riots, you can ignore the need for a theoretically sound leadership and instead fall into economism, tailing each mass protest for its spontaneity.
Also, his writing style is overly complicated for the length of this book and what he discusses.
March 25, 2022
The broad concept of this one is highly useful and provocative in its periodisation. Compelling in its engagement with CoPE and the historical elements of riot. Good section on the mass strike, and on actions existing on the riot/strike spectrum including the violence of strikes.
Wanted a bit more from the strike part, maybe overcorrected in its broadly successful efforts to legitimise riot as opposed to strike with more orthodox socialist types.
Was predictably not a fan of the poetics of riot, invisible committee etc type nonsense. More endnotes less tiqqun please ultras.
Wanted a bit more from the strike part, maybe overcorrected in its broadly successful efforts to legitimise riot as opposed to strike with more orthodox socialist types.
Was predictably not a fan of the poetics of riot, invisible committee etc type nonsense. More endnotes less tiqqun please ultras.
October 22, 2025
A book with an admirable and increasingly rare form in that it sets out, in explicit historical materialist terms, a strong thesis and then substantively argues the case for it. You love to see it. The value-theoretic core of the work remains strong and consistent; Clover has produced a very constructive intervention. It is usually the case in works like this to catch them drifting into a kind of high rhetorical reverie and that does occasionally happen here, but not enough to distract in the slightest from everything worth grappling with.
January 18, 2021
Superbly written and an expert elucidation of political struggles "from below" in the now deindustrialising West. Found that it veered a little too off piste at times into deeper engagements with critical political economy than perhaps necessary given the book's length. Its focus on the West confounds as a more thorough engagement with processes elsewhere I think would have added to, rather than detracted from, the wider argument.
April 30, 2020
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
Want to read
November 13, 2020Left on hold for a while. Introduction is dizzying and all over the place going back and forth about the start of the Riot, then Strike within a specific time division per centuries, then runs on theory of Capital and returns to Riot. Initially difficult to follow but once on the Riot prime chapter things are linear and a bit more easy to follow. Will return to it later.
February 21, 2017
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.
August 1, 2020
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.
The topic is interesting, but truthfully I didn't feel as if I gained any useful insights.
December 26, 2020
Important read for any aspirational communist, which for any agency reading this I am not. Clover's writing is a welcome refuge from predominant forms of left-wing political prose (including my own, clearly).
June 6, 2020
dense but important
especially makes a good case for all forms of rioting (INCLUDING LOOTING) as a way to reset markets and prices
especially makes a good case for all forms of rioting (INCLUDING LOOTING) as a way to reset markets and prices
August 14, 2022
Super interessant. Veels te weinig belicht dit boek.
January 20, 2023
very helpful for my thesis
April 10, 2023
considering I had to read this as reference for my seminar paper on marcel duchamp… I don’t hate it as much as I expected to
January 29, 2025
3.5
Lots of great stuff here and lays out its methodology pretty clearly. The last half got too economic-focused for me to really follow.
Lots of great stuff here and lays out its methodology pretty clearly. The last half got too economic-focused for me to really follow.
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