Not a bad article but a shame to finish it off with a tired cliche about the "working class" taking leadership. Why not write instead about the opposition between the bulk of the population and a corrupt elite who benefit from neoliberalism? We remain a class ridden society but a simplistic opposition between the working class and capitalists does not ring true in 2011 - and has not done for decades.

Negri's analysis of Empire/Multitude seems more prescient than Capitalist/Working class at the moment. It doesn't feel like our political class is prepared to accept that reality. Prepare for Civil War.

everybody tries to put his own spin on these events, conservatives blame the deterioration of the family unit, liberals blame the cuts to social welfare, anarchists blame generations of police misconduct and right out racism, and everybody tries to put his own spin, and to promote his own agenda on this. not a single expert admits that they don't understand the context of this. I don't understand, i don't.

I know that all of the above are part of the reason, but I am still missing out a very large piece of of the puzzle, yet I could of predicted these riots years ago.
The TV constantly stream opinions of field experts, but not a single one of a kid who rioted, why? have they got nothing to say? are they just mindless yobs who just want new plasma TVs?

I doubt it, but I am willing to bet some are.
It's easy to romanticise this riot, it's easy to put it into the context that you believe is the one social plague in modern society, it's much harder to listen to people and understand their reason for part taking.

The sad thing is, If they have got an agenda, a list of demands, or a political aspiration, they can get it.
if they said we'll stop if you legalise marijuana, tomorrow marijuana will be legalised, if they said they want all the cops involved to go to prison, tomorrow they will be in court, and if they said they wanted complete autonomy and self managed community, they will get it.

But I have not yet heard a single rioter giving any explanation that will put this in context.

I think, that for the large part of it, people just suddenly realised what power they have if they organise just a little, they become unstoppable, but they haven't yet grasped that they can do more then just burn and steal, they can actually take control over their lives, and once they understand they can get their wildest dreams realised, than a few burned buildings will pale in comparison to what's next to come.

Its not a bad article but as the previous commentator says, everybody puts their own mark on it to interpret it their own way.

What we have here are a number of political slants placed onto events to justify varying world views. Indymedia is a great resource but there are a large number of marxist's here and also those claiming to be anarchists. There are also a large number of nationalist's using Indymedia to spread their own view.

In reality, none of these views and outlooks comes any way close to the reality of the situation as it now stands, to understand that you have to understand the global economy and the modern concept of globalisation. If you can understand that (it's the method the capitalists themselves use) then you can understand the changing face of the international scene. The United States is now in economic decline and that has an effect on the 'ticking over' rate of other economies around the world. To put it in its most simplistic form, it means that nations have become protectionist in advance of the American collapse. After the so-called 'War on Terror' resource war failed, and the financial crisis set in, many nations and government's around the world recognised that they needed other resources to attach their paper currencies too, enter the race for gold, silver and other commodities. That has now completed and a number of governments around the world are now struggling with having bloated economies that are larger than their gold and silver supplies and so cannot be maintained. So we have cuts...lots of cuts.

In the UK, the cuts agenda is fed by the artifical myth that the financial crisis has been caused by corruption and mismanagement of various sections of the global economy such as the housing and debt securities sectors. But capitalism is routinely corrupt. One can say that it is 'organised corruption'. So the idea that corruption can cause its failure is silly to say the least. If that were the case, capitalism would collapse every other day.

Unfortunately, the financial crisis was caused by the global so-called 'War on Terror'. Declare a global war, and the consequences will be global should it fail. The so-called 'War on Terror' failed, and the economies of those nations that have taken part have collapsed. What we are seeing now, is the United States in a period of post war collapse and that collapse is being felt mostly in amongst those nations that have been dependent on the United States for its wealth. In the United Kingdom, the current Government are having to manage a crisis brought about by the failure of the last Government to put distance between UK foreign policy and its US counterpart. So we now have a fairly generic problem that Parliament cannot deal. In short we don't any longer have a political party that is sufficiently distant the situation to be able to convincingly offer a solution. The Labour opposition, having nothing reliable or convincing to say on the matter...because they are the party that brought this crisis into play. The Liberal Democrats are in formation with the Conservative party and are trying to deal with the public sector that is in a state of flux competing for resources that it knows are finite.

Over the previous few days, we have seen one pattern emerge in amongst the burning buildings and rioting...lack of competent policing. Both in numbers and in operational organisation, the police response has been woefully inedaquate. This at a time when the police are facing severe drawing down of staffing levels as front and backline staff are facing job losses. So we clearly have a tragic situation in the killing of Mr Duggen, being left to rot in full view of the public in order to 'safeguard' policing funding during this period of shrinkage of public expenditure. The police are clearly allowing the Government to be placed into a situation in which officers and policing numbers must be seen to be protected...should the same level and degree of rioting occur in the future.

Of course, one could naturally criticise the police for allowing such large-scale violence on our streets, it is always a risk as somebody could have been killed or badly hurt. But one can also criticise the rioters too, as is clearly seen, the majority are itinerant wasters out for consumer goods they can use or sell. This modern day 'working class' have shown themselves once again, to be the sluts of globalisation and the constituent cogs of this repressive engine that helped bring this disastrous war into our peaceful world. This is where the modern idea of repesentation of the 'working class' breaks down. Firstly, the working class don't really exists anymore, you now have just the baseless and morally inconsequential 'consumerist class' and secondly, by fighting to protect one class over another, you act to preserve the idea of class itself.

The only way to understand the situation as it now stands, is to understand that the entire narrative is one of long-term post-war collapse...and that in time of collapse, just as in time of war, the truth is rarely present. We must not allow ourselves to become subject to the political classes who's only 'reality' is to offer bouts of horse-trading once every five years just so they and their friends can live champagne swilling lifestyles at the public expense.

That is not an answer to this problem.