The British riots - symptoms aren't causes

An article in the Guardian by Zoe Williams, who has her headed screwed on, discussed vigilanteism and its relation to a functional society.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/aug/10/uk-riots-vigilantism-big-society
I made the following comment:

Zoe writes: "Big society might look like people on the streets with brooms or doner knives; but that's not what functional society looks like."
For a long time society has been very functional - for the bourgeoisie running a capitalist society for their own benefit and enjoying a monopoly of violence (army and police) and public judgement (ie condemnation, punishment and criminalization of their antagonists).
Now not even the bourgeoisie and its public representatives (damn near everyone in politics and the media) can run a functional society. "Those above can't rule, and those below can't be ruled".
Which leads to unofficial attack groups (ultra-right thugs, ultimately death squads) attacking the enemies of capitalism and the bourgeois state, and others who are singled out as scapegoats.
And since the rest of us need to mind our backs, we organize self-defence groups. An "invisible", organized and "orderly" class war breaks surface and becomes visible, 2-way organized (ie polarized) and "disorderly" from the rulers' perspective. And since organization, education about society and politics, creative and benevolent treatment has been cut out of the non-ruling body of those living and working (or jobless) in Britain, no one should be surprised when the social eruptions are disorganized, ignorant, anti-social, apolitical, destructive and malevolent. It happens in the slums of the US (LA) and France (Paris) and now (once more) Britain.
Given all this we should note that given the degree of damage to property there has been very very little damage to person, and given the number of the rioters the state response has been disproportionate, vindictive and divisive, to say the least. A typical image from the riots has been of a half-a-dozen heavily armoured, anonymous (super-hoodied), armed police, with leash-tugging dogs and armoured cars in the background standing over a single unarmed lad who's about to be carted off and done over (if not physically, then civically).
The howls of rage at the symptoms (sometimes ugly symptoms) are hypocritical and cynical given the wilful neglect of the causes underlying these symptoms.
And the causes are inseparable from this bourgeois capitalist society, and will only become more deeply rooted and virulent as this society becomes less and less functional even on its own terms.
Temporary alleviation was achieved with the New Deal and the Welfare State in the 30s and 40s. However, this only occurred in powerful countries after their bourgeoisies were threatened with extinction by colonial independence and revolution - oh, and after a world war that ended with ultra-imperialist Churchill being unceremoniously dumped by the workers who had fought his imperialist war for him.
So now New Deal or Welfare State for a while yet, just more of the same gouging out of living flesh. And more and more panicky squealing and scapegoating from defenders of the state as quo (with no quid).