Yossi Schwartz ISL (RCIT section in Israel/Occupied Palestine) 31.10.2026
The demonstrations in France that include not only Anti French capitalist government but internationalist solidarity with the Palestinians and Algerian flags is magnificent. A small part of the protesters are looting stores and damaging public places. To win this great struggle a working-class revolutionary leadership is a must. The looting of stores must be rejected as harmful to the building of a revolutionary leadership and damage- the struggle.
Unfortunately, there are some idiots who consider themselves great revolutionaries who defend and praise the rioting and the looting. I mean the British SWP. In their Socialist worker they wrote :”looting works. It enables the poor to enjoy the exclusive commodities held up as symbols of success. More often, it means families get necessities they can’t afford. Looting—or “proletarian shopping”—is an effective means of direct expropriation”
“When something is looted, it ceases to be a commodity and is removed from the cycle of exchange and profit. It is liberated through shared activism—rioting and looting are not individual acts.”
“Rioting and looting can challenge the authority of the state and the logic of capitalism“
While Vladimir Lenin famously defended the popular revolutionary sentiment of “looting the looters” (grab nagrablennoye) as a crude but historically justifiable form of class vengeance against the bourgeoisie, he aggressively denounced its translation into individual looting, chaotic self-enrichment, and localized plunder. Following the October Revolution, Lenin recognized that localized, unregulated pillaging directly undermined the centralized economic discipline and state administration necessary to sustain the dictatorship of the proletariat. He argued that individualistic property is dangerous for resurgence of petty-bourgeois anarchy rather than true socialist redistribution.
The following primary texts illustrate Lenin’s systematic denunciation of individualized looting, structured with scholarly endnotes.
In his landmark report to the All-Russia Central Executive Committee in April 1918, Lenin explicitly attacked the mentality of individuals seizing property for personal benefit:
“The petty bourgeois who hoards his thousands is an enemy of Soviet power, and he wants to look after these thousands exclusively for himself. More than that: the individual who says, ‘I will grab all I can for myself, and the rest can go hang,’ is a product of old society, an enemy of the common cause. He must be combated just as ruthlessly as the big capitalists.” [4]
In the same address, Lenin warned that treating expropriation as a free-for-all for individual gain would destroy the young Soviet Republic:
“If we use the term ‘looting the looters’ to mean individual enrichment, or to mean that every factory or district can grab what it wants without accounting to the central authority, then we are not building socialism. We are sliding into pure anarchy. We must transform the slogan ‘loot the looters’ into a strict, state-regulated process of accounting and control.” [5]
Writing on the immediate tasks of the Soviet government, Lenin identified individual theft and lack of labor discipline as existential internal threats to state survival:
“We must ruthlessly suppress those who engage in individual plundering, property grabbing, and the avoidance of work. The old society left us a legacy of individuals who think only of taking as much as possible from the state and giving as little as possible back. This individualistic, thief-like attitude must be crushed through revolutionary tribunals and labor discipline.”[6]
Lenin frequently addressed the psychological carryover of capitalism, where workers or peasants sought to act as mini-capitalists through uncoordinated seizures:
“The workers and peasants must understand that there is no salvation outside of the centralized Soviet state. When an individual worker or peasant treats a state asset as his own private booty—saying, ‘I have taken my share, the rest does not concern me’—he is acting not as a socialist, but as a petty-bourgeois speculator. This type of looting is a betrayal of the revolution” [7]
Endnotes:
[1] https://socialistworker.co.uk/in-depth/riots-arent-mindless-they-are-political
[2] Ibid
[3] Ibid
[4]V. I. Lenin, “Report on the Immediate Tasks of the Soviet Government,” Session of the All-Russia C.E.C. (April 29, 1918), Collected Works, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1972, Vol. 27, pp. 293–294.
[5] Ibid., p. 297. (Lenin delivered this specific elaboration to counter the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries and Anarchists who favored decentralized, autonomous expropriations rather than state-directed nationalization).
[6] V. I. Lenin, “The Immediate Tasks of the Soviet Government,” originally published in Pravda No. 83 (April 28, 1918); reprinted in Collected Works, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1972, Vol. 27, pp. 264–266.
[7] V. I. Lenin, “Six Theses on the Immediate Tasks of the Soviet Government,” written between April 29 and May 3, 1918; reprinted in Collected Works, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1972, Vol