Change the world without taking power

297 Pages·2010·1.178 MB·English

by  Holloway, John

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Change the World Without Taking Power
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change
the world
without
taking
power
New Edition
JOHN HOLLOWAY
Instituto de Ci encias Sociales y Humanidades
Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla
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First published 2002 and 2005 by Pluto Press
345 Archway Road, London N6 5AA and
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010
www.plutobooks.com
Distributed in the United States of America exclusively by
Palgrave Macmillan, a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC,
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010
Copyright © John Holloway 2002, 2005, 2010
The right of John Holloway to be identified as the author of this work has
been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act 1988.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 0 7453 2919 2 hardback
ISBN 978 0 7453 2918 5 paperback
This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully
managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing
processes are expected to conform to the environmental standards of the
country of origin.
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Designed and produced for Pluto Press by
Chase Publishing Services Ltd, Sidmouth EX10 9JB
Typeset from disk by Stanford DTP Services, Northampton
Printed in the European Union by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham, England
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Contents
Acknowledgements vi
Preface to the First Edition viii
Preface to the New Edition ix
1. The Scream 1
2. Beyond the State? 11
3. Beyond Power? 19
4. Fetishism: The Tragic Dilemma 43
5. Fetishism and Fetishisation 78
6. Anti-Fetishism and Criticism 106
7. The Tradition of Scientific Marxism 118
8. The Critical-Revolutionary Subject 140
9. The Material Reality of Anti-Power 155
10. The Material Reality of Anti-Power and the Crisis of
Capital 176
11. Revolution? 204
Epilogue: Moving Against-and-Beyond –
Reflections on a Discussion 216
Notes 246
Bibliography 265
Name Index 274
Subject Index 276
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Acknowledgements
There are an awful lot of people to thank for their help in producing
this book.
First, my thanks to Eloína Peláez, whose mephistophelean presence
moves through every word, dot and comma of the book, and without
whom I could never even have imagined the unity of constitution
and existence: not duration, but nunc stans.
To Werner Bonefeld, Richard Gunn and now Sergio Tischler I owe
a great deal for countless shared seminars and discussions over the
years, for their support and for their very valuable comments on
various stages of this text.
I have been very fortunate in being able to discuss both the text
in detail and related ideas with the members of the seminar group
on Subjectivity and Critical Theory in the Instituto de Ciencias
Sociales y Humanidades in Puebla: to all involved, very many thanks.
Two trips to Argentina have also played an important part in helping
me to crystallise the ideas contained in this book: the first, to give a
seminar in the Instituto Argentino de Desarrollo Económico,
organised by Gustavo Roux and Eliseo Giai; the second to give a
week-long intensive seminar on the first draft of the book in the
Facultad de Filosofía y Letras in Rosario, organised by Gladys Rimini
and Gustavo Guevara: to the organisers and all the participants my
deepest thanks. And, while in Argentina, a very special thanks to
Alberto Bonnet, Marcela Zangaro and Néstor López for their constant
help and encouragement. Jumping from the other side of the world,
from Argentina to Scotland, I owe much to the long-term inspira-
tion and encouragement of George Wilson, Eileen Simpson, Maggie
Sinclair, Rod MacKenzie, Vassiliki Kolocotroni and Olga Taxidou.
My sincerest thanks too to those others who have been kind
enough to comment, often in great detail, on drafts of this book:
Simon Susen, Ana Dinerstein, Jorge Luis Acanda, Chris Wright, José
Manuel Martínez, Cyril Smith, Massimo de Angelis, Rowan Wilson,
Ana Esther Ceceña, Enrique Rajchenberg, Patricia King, Javier
Villanueva and Lars Stubbe. To Steve Wright, thanks for last-minute
help with a quotation.
vi
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Change the World Without Taking Power vii
To Roberto Vélez Pliego, Director of the Instituto de Ciencias
Sociales of the Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla, heartfelt
thanks for his support and for helping to make the Institute an excep-
tional place to work.
To Aidan, Anna-Maeve and Mariana Holloway, thanks for making
the abandonment of hope unthinkable.
To the many others who have helped and encouraged, but whom
I do not mention here, please accept my thanks and remember that
identification is domination.
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Preface to the First Edition
This book was already in the publishing process before the attacks
on the World Trade Center occurred, before the bombing of
Afghanistan began.
The scream with which the book begins has become louder and
more anguished since that date as we witness the arrogant stupidity
of those who kill, those who bomb, those who would destroy the
human race. The call to think about how we can change the world
without entering into the pursuit of power is more urgent than ever.
Most terrible of all is the feeling of helplessness as we watch the
televised bombs falling and the bodies being pulled from the rubble.
How, in spite of everything, can we understand our own force, our
own capacity to create a different world? That is the issue that this
book seeks to address.
The deepening world recession is the other phenomenon which
has changed since I submitted the manuscript to Pluto Press. I have
done nothing to add new data to the discussion of crisis in Chapter
10, but the argument is given extra force by current developments.
Again the central issue is: how do we overcome the feeling of help-
lessness that seems now to pervade everything? How do we
understand that, in relation to the crisis as in relation to the war, we
are not victims but subjects, the only subjects?
viii
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Preface to the New Edition
I am delighted that this book is being published in a new edition,
eight years after it first appeared in 2002. Like any author, I want the
book to have a life beyond the immediate context into which it was
born.
Certainly the moment into which the book was born was
important for the impact it made. Nowhere was that clearer than in
Argentina: when I presented the book in Buenos Aires in late 2002,
there were well over a thousand people at the presentation – for me
a scary and exhilarating indication of the way in which the idea of
changing the world without taking power was an integral part of the
social and political upheaval of that moment, the upsurge of neigh-
bourhood assemblies, recovered factories, piqueteros and massive
demonstrations that overthrew several presidents in a matter of weeks.
But not only Argentina: Change the World Without Taking Powergave
voice to an idea that was central to the alter-globalisation movement,
to the Zapatista uprising in Mexico, to at least part of the great
upheaval in Bolivia in those years and to the everyday practice of so
many and many and many groups throughout the world, struggling
to find a way forward, a different way of changing society, clear in
their repudiation of the old state-centred politics and all that it
involves in terms of corruption and boredom and using people as
means to an end.
The moment undoubtedly contributed to the impact that the book
has had and the storm of discussion it has aroused. At times I have
felt that I am standing at the edge of the sea, being bowled over by
one wave of commentary after another, the first full of praise, the
next absolute and angry condemnation. Each wave, I confess, has
been a source of delight. The aim of the book is not just to convince
people that radical social change does not lie through the state, but
equally to draw people into a discussion of the meaning of revolution,
of how we can create a different world. The argument against the state
is an argument against a politics of monologue. Anti-capitalist
opposition is and must be polymorphous, polyvocal, polylogical,
necessarily discordant: a We who argue among ourselves, and who
constitute our We by arguing. The book has now been translated into
ix