Given the low level of class struggle since the end of WWII, it is to be expected that some on the left would inflate the importance of riots. For example, poet and English professor Joshua Clover wrote a Verso book titled “Riot. Strike. Riot: The New Era of Uprisings” that tries to make a virtue out of the poor conditions we operate under. Since the days of Minneapolis teamsters fighting to build a union are dead and gone, the next best thing is arson and looting since they destroy “the power of the police” and make “your neighborhood uninhabitable for people you don’t want there.” [...]
Going much further than Clover, journalist Vicky Osterweil’s “In Defense of Looting” argues “that looting is a powerful tool to bring about real, lasting change in society”, according to her interviewer for NPR, Natalie Escobar. [...]
When asked to define looting, she describes it as a subset of rioting:
…looting is more common among movements that are coming from below. It tends to be an attack on a business, a commercial space, maybe a government building—taking those things that would otherwise be commodified and controlled and sharing them for free. [...]
For Target, it’s no big deal to have a store looted with its 78 billion dollar valuation. If one store is valued at 10 million dollars, that represents only .000128 of Target’s total value. That’s equivalent to me finding a quarter under a sofa cushion. For the owner of a shoe store, the loss of his goods would throw him into poverty. That’s of little interest, of course, to someone walking off with a pair of Nike’s but it certainly doesn’t advance the cause of BLM. [...]
When I was won over to socialism in 1967, the ideas that moved me back then are the same that move me to write in defense of socialism today. But it wasn’t just a classmate at the New School who helped me reject capitalism, it was taking part in antiwar demonstrations that gave me a sense of the power of mass actions. When are marching with 250,000 people chanting “Out Now!”, you get a feel for what the masses can do when they are ready to challenge the ruling class. [...]
https://louisproyect.org/2020/08/31/marxism-and-looting-a-response-to-vicky-osterweils-npr-interview/
there doesn't seem to be anything here