A regular contributor gives us their thoughts on the looting taking place in London and all around the UK – is it unprovoked violence or following a dangerous trend?
Amidst the thousands of words spoken on Radio 2 today (Tues 9 Aug) about the recent looting in London and other cities I wasn’t able to hear anyone suggesting that what we were witnessing was actually an unorthodox manifestation of capitalist values. In a society where corporations spend millions continually communicating in multiple ways that you are what you own and that stuff is more important than people it seems unsurprising that people end up believing the message. Of course this leads to certain tensions when large numbers of (especially) young people are then unable to access those life giving objects. But people are creative and if you convince them they need certain things for a full life/status then they will find ways to obtain those things irrespective of the (externalised) cost to those around them. Thousands of young people brought up to believe in capitalist values of the pre eminence of material goods + no hope of financial success = looting. It is therefore particularly galling when you here the elite of capitalist institutions describing this unusual manifestation of their own values as anarchy! No its not, its capitalism’s chickens coming home to roost….and its not as if the looters don’t have a role model. A gang quickly assembled to invade an area, terrorise the inhabitants, steal their goods and not give a damn about the trauma, destruction and damage they cause as long as they have got what they wanted. Does that remind you of anything? How about the invasion of Iraq in 2003? It seems that the current crop of looters may have been watching the news as kids and considered that if that sort of behaviour is OK for the elite it must be OK for them! Except that when working class people do it it’s ‘thuggery’ not ‘humanitarian intervention’!