Are riots a viable solution to anything?
Source: Tama66
Social theory can often be quite flowery, not really examining the realities which take place on the ground. Let’s take Revolution, Marx says the proletariat must uprise but how. Are riots a viable means of uprising?
Riots are a viable solution to wanting to break and loot shit. If you mean ‘can riots be used to achieve political success?’, there are certainly many historical cases of policy being changed due to violent uprisings and revolutions (which are really just extensive rioting).
……………………………………………………
Riot is a pejorative term. You may as well be asking if terrorism is a viable solution to anything. Do you mean damaging property, looting, the imposition of martial law by a revolutionary group, unorganized violence…?
……………………………………………………
Riots tend to force governments to take action. Without groups like the Black Panthers, the government would have ignored Martin Luther King. They chose the “safe” option.
In India, you had Bhagat Singh who bombed parliament. The government chose to deal with Gandhi because again he was a “safe” option.
Change isn’t won by nonviolence but is often determined by the nonviolent. Why would a system who has a monopoly on violence be subjugated or reigned in by nonviolence?
I’ll ask a hypothetical as well if you can’t handle a hypothetical then don’t worry about it. If you were a slave during slavery in America would you riot and burn the masters house down, or would you not use violence and just try to “resist”?
……………………………………………………
Not riots, but organized insurrection – yes.
……………………………………………………
I think riots are ONE ELEMENT of a greater political movement.
If Congress passes a law, people rioting probably wouldn’t have any lasting legal affects.
But if there are strikes, lobbying, new bills introduced, boycotts, riots, and a lot of media coverage, you have a pretty good shot of having a congressman or senator or your state governor speak up and start the ball rolling on some change.
……………………………………………………
Depends entirely on the context of the riot and what one is seeking to accomplish. Is the riot isolated or part of a greater insurrection? Is there an organized bloc with weapons or a just simple march where some people are lashing out in retaliation against the police. Who’s shit is getting broken and how much? It goes on and on.
……………………………………………………
If they’re big enough, yeah. The idea is to create a big enough threat to force change.
……………………………………………………
In a vacuum, yes. Riots and armed uprisings can lead to change, or maybe even a whole new government. However, this is very rare. Usually, riots do end poorly for people involved.
But we also have to contextualize riots. Riots in the US will not end well because, without a large scale uprising, the military or police will come in and kick the rioter’s ass. It also makes rational people less sympathetic to the political cause people are rioting for.
……………………………………………………
Even if the rioters were put in power, would they actually make wise decisions?
This is one of the main issues with any sort of socialist revolution. Capitalists get to the top of the various hierarchies in society largely through competence. This makes them wealthy and the socialists resentful. The socialists rise up and kill/scare off the capitalists. Even if the capitalists leave all the resources behind, they take away their intelligence (either through death or through flight). This leaves the socialists with a lot of ‘stuff’ but no real knowledge of what it takes to be successful.
We see this played out over and over in history. Killing the kulaks resulted in a famine. Mao’s great leap forward also banned private farming and labeled those competent farmers as ‘counter-revolutionaries’ – also ended up with millions dead due to starvation. Mugabe killed/scared of the farmers, ends up with a famine and asking them to return not more than 2 decades later.
If you like food on the table, you let competent people be. Competent people thrive within non-socialistic property norms and flee when they are enacted and enforced.
……………………………………………………
No
