24033741 john holloway no

8/13/2019 24033741 John Holloway No

1/21

John Holloway

No

I.

Holloway could have started with these yeses

and said that at the beginning there are needs,

desires, relations, affects, and their denial by

capital leads us to scream. (Massimo de Angelis)

Why do I start with the scream, No, negativity?1 The

question of negativity and positivity is one of the

central issues often raised by both sympathetic

(Massimo de Angelis) and less sympathetic (Michae

Lebowitz, for example) commentators on the book

This is the main point I want to focus on in the firs

half of this note. It should allow me to address mos

of the criticisms voiced in this symposium. In asubsequent section, I shall address explicitly the other

main criticisms.

II.

Why no? Here are some of the reasons:

a) No is experiential. The no arises directly from

i f h t d It i


2/21

266 John Holloway

revulsion against injustice, exploitation, violence, war. It comes before reflection

before reasoned thought it is pre-rational, but not irrational or anti-rational

b) No is uncouth. It is difficult to take away from its origins, difficult to

civilise, difficult to represent, difficult to convert into the language of politicianor political scientists. However far we may fly into abstract fancies, the n

pushes our face back into the mud of rude anger.

c) No is urgent. We are lemmings rushing towards a cliff. Humanity is on

a highway that leads straight to its own self-destruction. The only possibility

is to say no, to refuse: No, we will not go down this highway to our self

destruction. Not we should go more carefully, or more slowly, or we should

drive on the left rather than on the right, but simply no.

The temporality of no is one of urgency. To think in terms of yeses suggest

a different temporality, the patient construction of another world. This i

important, but we are forced by the destructive dynamic of capital itself into

giving priority to the urgency of the no.

d) No is unity, yes is multiplicity: one no, many yeses. The yeses are necessary

and the multiplicity is desirable. To start with the no is not to deny the

importance of the yeses, but to insist that they must be understood as being

within a negative logic. It is the no that gives internal (rather than external

unity to the yeses.

The yeses invite us to go our own way, to build our own spaces, our own

different movements and ways of doing things. Our unity is then a question

of alliances, of linking up with other likeminded movements. Our no (tocapitalism, to war, to neoliberalism) is something we share, something tha

invites us to connect with other expressions of the same no, a coming togethe

that is not a question of building alliances but of extending our own no.

The yeses invite us to focus on our own autonomous spaces or movements

to strengthen and deepen them. That is important, but we need more than

that. The no leads us rather to think of our struggles as cracks or fissures in

the texture of capitalism, cracks that derive their strength from spreading


3/21

No 267

in positive terms, then I know that our comradeship does not go very far

and I quickly fall into sectarian distinctions. On the other hand, I know tha

we all share the same against, the same no to capitalism. They may be comrades

of the yes only in a limited sense, but they are certainly comrades of the no, andsince no takes priority over yes, I think it important to respect and engage

with them. Yes can easily become the logic of sectarianism, no reminds us o

the unity of our multiple struggles.

e) No is the key to our power. Our power is our power-to-do, but it is

refusal that unlocks it, refusal to do at the bidding of others.

Those who rule always depend on those who are ruled. The capitalists

cannot make profits without their workers, the generals cannot make war

without their soldiers, the presidents and prime ministers cannot rule withou

their subjects. If the servant says no to the master, then the servant is no

longer a servant and the master is no longer a master: both start to become

humans. Those who command live in fear of the refusal of those whom they

command and spend much of their time and a very large part of their resources

trying to prevent it. Refusal is at the core of the struggle for another world

strike, mutiny, boycott, disobedience, desertion, subversion, refusal in a

thousand different ways. In order to make another world, we must refuse to

make capitalism. We make capitalism (as Marx insists in his labour theory o

value). If capitalism exists today, it is not because it was created in the

eighteenth or nineteenth centuries, but because it was created today, because

we create it today. If we do not create it tomorrow, it will not exist tomorrowThe question of revolution is not how do we destroy capitalism, but how

do we stop creating capitalism?

Certainly, refusing to make capitalism makes little sense and has little

perspective unless we do something else instead, unless we unfold our

power-to do all the yeses that de Angelis mentions, but we cannot go very

far with our yeses unless they are grounded in refusal. Our refusal does no

create another world, but it unlocks the possibility of doing so.


4/21

268 John Holloway

aspiration to totality become key categories. There is no continuity between

bourgeois theory and Marxist theory, between the positive theory of capitalism

and the negative theory of revolution. This is important not because negative

theory creates revolution (it is no more and no less than a moment opractice), but because the positivisation of theory hinders the movemen

against capitalism and this is true both of Leninism and of much of th

current theory of the anticapitalist movement.

No is much more difficult for capitalism to assimilate than yes, howeve

alternative the yeses. Negative theory poses rupture as the constan

preoccupation: how do we break from capitalism? Obviously, the only complete

answer is world revolution, but we also look for partial answers on a daily

basis: how do we break now from capitalism? How do we stop reproducing

capitalism, how do we stop making capitalism? The question leads to the

creation of alternative practices, but the alternative practices, unless they are

founded in rupture, run the risk of being easily absorbed.

g) No is asymmetry. No to capital is no to the forms of social relation

implied by capital, no to capitalist forms of organisation. There is, then, a

fundamental asymmetry in class struggle. Our forms of organisation are and

must be radically different from capitals forms of organisation. To the exten

that we imitate capitals forms, we are quite simply reproducing capitalis

social relations. This is the core of the argument against adopting the state

as a form of organisation. The state is an organisational form developed fo

the purpose of excluding people from the social determination of their ownlives. The organisational form developed in many revolutionary struggles to

articulate peoples drive to determine their own lives is the council, or

commune, or soviet, or assembly an organisational form which has inclusion

rather than exclusion as its central principle. The council is asymmetrical to

the state, radically incompatible with the state as form of organisation.

The term anti-power used in the book refers quite simply to the asymmetry

of class struggle, to the fact that anticapitalist forms of organisation are and


5/21

No 269

h) No points to doing and the attempt to understand the world in terms

of doing rather than being: critique ad hominem, as Marx puts it.

i) No opens. It opens a new conceptual world. It also opens a new world

of doing. It opens to all theyeses that de Angelis wants to put as the startingpoint of discussion. But, in a world which negates our yeses, the yeses canno

be the starting point: they can only bloom through negation. Our no is a

negation of the negation, but the negation of the negation is not positive, bu

a deeper negation, as Adorno points out.2 The negation of the negation does

not bring us back to a reconciliation, to a positive world, but takes us deeper

into the world of negation, moves us onto a different theoretical plane.

The no opens cracks, the yes opens autonomous spaces. Perhaps they

look the same, but they are not. The idea of autonomous spaces suggests

a space in which we can enjoy, maintain and defend a certain degree o

autonomy. This is very attractive but also dangerous. If such a space become

self-referential, it can easily stagnate: socialism in one social centre or one

region is probably not much better than socialism in one country. Cracks, on

the other hand, do not stay still: they run, they spread. They cannot be

defended; or, rather, their only defence is to run faster and deeper than the

hand of the plasterer that would fill them.

j) No moves. It pushes against and beyond, experiments and creates. Cracks

run, seek other cracks. A movement that does not move is no movement. I

very quickly becomes converted into its opposite: a barren and stagnant Left

k) No is a question, yes is an answer. No leaves us unsatisfied, wantingmore, asking, admitting that we do not have the answers. No pushes agains

verticality, pushes against dogmatism, pushes us to listen.

l) No is immediate, without mediations. No to capitalism means revolution

now. That is perhaps what most disturbs the more orthodox critics.

III.


6/21

270 John Holloway

the hard work involved in theorising contemporary capitalism and building

the type of mass movements capable of checking the capitalist juggernaut

and creating the objective conditions for revolutionary change. (Binford)

In this view, revolution is a great event. The death of capitalism is conceived

in terms of a dagger blow to the heart: this is not the moment to strike because

the objective conditions for revolutionary change do not exist. (We leave

aside for the moment that many of the proponents of this view have no idea

where capitalisms heart is: they conceive of it in terms of taking state power.

The blow to capitalism is conceived in terms of totality: something that can

happen when there is a Movement or a Party capable of representing thetotality.

And, since revolution is in the future, there is an in the meantime. In the

meantime, there is the hard work involved in theorising contemporary

capitalism and building a mass movement. In the meantime, until the

revolution, we live within capitalism. Within capitalism, we have a space fo

positive theory (and practice). Theorising contemporary capitalism mean

above all talking of capitalist domination or indeed hegemony, the grea

cop-out category, the great crossover concept to bourgeois theory.3 And, indeed

in this perspective, there is no need to make a clear distinction between

Marxism and bourgeois theory since, in this in-the-meantime space (which

may, of course, last for ever, since the objective conditions keep disappearing

over the horizon), we are within capitalism and what we want to do i

understand how capitalism works. In other words, revolution-in-the-futur

turns the revolutionary theory of the present into a theory ofsociety, rathe

than a theory against society, distinct in its sympathies but not in its method

from bourgeois theory. Marxism becomes a left sociology,4 or economics o

political science.

If revolution is in the future, then capitalism is until that future comes. A

duration is attributed to capitalism: it is assumed that capitalism exists unti


7/21

No 27

it is destroyed. Consequently, of course, there is a dominance of structure

Leigh Binford states this very clearly when he says that we

cannot avoid structure either, since capitalist relations of production and

exchange present the overarching system that conditions the relations he

criticises and defines a capitalist epoch: a period during which, whatever

transformations capitalism might experience, capitalism in some form or

other persists.

That is precisely the point: with revolution in the future, capitalism persists

or has a duration until that future comes, and, logically, structuralism rules

(though of course process or agency is also important).

History, in this view, acquires a revered importance. History is the building

up towards the future event. It tells us of the heroic struggles of the past

helps us to understand what went wrong, shows us how the objective

conditions are maturing. Sometimes, this history goes hand in hand with an

analysis of the long-term cycles of capitalism, encouraging us to think tha

the pendulum of history will again swing our way, that however ridiculousit may seem today to dream of communism, the tide will turn in our direction

The other conception of revolution says no: no to capitalism, revolution

now. Revolution is already taking place. This may seem silly, immature

unrealistic, but it is not.

Revolution now means that we think of the death of capitalism not in terms

of a dagger-blow to the heart, but, rather, in terms of death by a million beestings, or a million pinpricks to a credit-inflated balloon, or (better) a million

rents, gashes, fissures, cracks. Since the issue is not when to strike at the heart

it makes no sense to think of waiting until the objective conditions are right

At all times, it is necessary to tear the texture of capitalist domination, to

refuse, to push against-and-beyond. Revolution is now: a cumulative process

certainly, a process of cracks spreading and joining up, but revolution is no

in the future, it is already under way.

W t it i t f bi th th th d th it li i


8/21

272 John Holloway

immediately, but the emphasis is on saying No, refusing, puncturing capitalis

command and (within that) constructing alternative ways of doing things

That any such break will be limited and contradictory and vulnerable to

re-absorption by capital is clear as indeed will anything short of worldrevolution (and even that) but that is not the point. What is important i

that the thrust of the struggle is to go against-and-beyond capitalism now

not in the future. This introduces a completely different language of struggle

a different logic, in which the existence of capital is always at issue. Every

moment is opened up as potentially revolutionary. There is no waiting, no

patience.

There are no mediations, no stepping stones to revolution. The aim is no

to build a force within capitalism which will then (when?) make the revolution

but to break, to push against-and-beyond now. This means taking as one

direct and immediate point of reference not the taking of state power, no

even the building of a movement, but, rather, the creation and making explici

of social relations that project against-and-beyond capitalism, the social relation

for which we are struggling communism, in other words. This question is

often addressed in terms of prefigurative struggle, but perhaps it is better to

think of it as directly figurative: not as a pre-anything but as the immediat

creation of an alternative society. The direct creation of alternative socia

relations has, of course, always been a feature of anticapitalist struggle: thi

is what comradeship means and it is the stuff of classic working-class strikes

the point most emphasised by the participants in the great miners strike inBritain, to take just one example that leaps to mind. Yet this aspect of struggle

has often been smothered by orthodox theory, which has generally regarded

such questions as secondary, irrelevant or even contrary to party discipline

Struggle is not just a question of content but of form, not just of what we

do but of how we do it. It is anti-fetishistic, de-fetishising, the practice o

critique ad hominem. There is no pretence of taking the standpoint of totality

important is, rather, the aspiration towards totality the cracks that spread


9/21

No 273

What interests us about capitalism is its fragility, not its strength, as Michae

Lebowitz would have it. This is not to deny its strength (which is obvious

enough), simply to say that the hope for humanity lies in finding the weakness

of that strength, its fragility. Unlike Lebowitz, I read Capital not as a theorisationof the strength of capitalism, but of its weakness, as a theory of crisis: the

issue of crisis does not appear only in the third volume but is present from

the opening sentence of Volume I, in the concept of form (a concept to which

Lebowitz, like many Marxist economists, is totally blind). To emphasise the

strength of capitalism leads to a long-term view of revolution, with the

perspective of building up our counter-strength so that, one day, we can seize

the commanding heights (take power), whereas the focus on the fragility o

capitalism points in the direction of exploiting that fragility now, opening up

cracks in the texture of domination wherever we can.

We live, then, not within capitalism, but in-against-and-beyond capitalism

at any moment. Rupture is central, not the Great Rupture-in-the-future, bu

rupture now: how do we and how can we break capitalism now? There is

no in the meantime, no within capitalism within which we can construct our

theory ofsociety, our cosy blend of leftishness and bourgeois theory. Similarly

there is no mixture of process and structure, because the whole point is no

to deny the existence of structure (or identity) but to grasp that we are the

revolt of process against structure, of non-identity against identity, of living

doing against dead congealed labour.

Capitalism does not persist. It has no duration. Marx devoted much ofhis work to showing that capitalism does not persist: it exists only because

we make it. It does notpersist until the day that we destroy it: at the core o

the notion of revolution-in-the-future is a lapping up of the bourgeois concep

of duration. One of Marxs central arguments, that we make capitalism (the

labour theory of value), is simply forgotten. If we make capitalism, then it is

clear that capitalism does not simplypersist: itpersists only to the extent tha

we make it. If we cease to make it, it ceases to persist, and to exist. If we do


10/21

274 John Holloway

and, more important, we lose the source of our capacity to change the world

namely that capital depends on us, that the rulers depend on the ruled. The

problem of revolution is not to destroy an external structure, but to stop

creating capitalism: to shift, decisively and collectively, the balance betweenour two hands.

In other words, we must break history, smash duration, shoot clocks

Revolution is not the culmination of history but the breaking of history and

that means now. History is not the building up to the future revolution

History is a nightmare from which we are desperately trying to awake.

Revolution must drive its cart and its plough over the bones of the dead.

The revolution-in-the-future view tends to construct history (and time

as a prison, as in the view expressed by Leigh Binford (and many others

that this is a time of historical defeat of the working class and therefore

we must act accordingly, put aside our dreams of revolution and work

hard at understanding capitalism-as-it-is and building the movement. Thi

understanding of history incarcerates us, limits our expectations, puts objective

limits on what we can propose or even think. Today is projected onto tomorrow

tomorrow onto the day after and so on, constantly pushing revolution beyond

the horizon of realistic thought. This view of history dulls the senses, limit

what we can see: yesterdays patterns of struggle define what we perceive

as struggle today. Defeat there may be, but the struggle has already moved

on while we are shaking our grey heads about the situation, moved on in

ways that we often do not even recognise. The defeat was of a form of struggleand from that defeat spring new forms of struggle which we are only learning

to see. The decomposition of the working class is turning (and has turned

into a recomposition, but those who look at the world through the lenses o

1970s Marxism cannot see, do not want to see.

History is not on our side. In the revolution-in-the-future view, there is th

view that the tide of history will come back to us, that, one day, the objective

conditions will be right (provided, of course, that we do the necessary hard


11/21

No 275

it is certainly true that human creative capacity has developed to such an

extent that a very different world is possible, the violence of capitalist aggression

seems to be taking us away from the realisation of this possibility and towards

imminent catastrophe. That is why it is important to think of revolution nowrevolution as revolt against the flow of history.

This does not mean that history is unimportant, but, in the argument fo

revolution now, there is no need to pay it the same reverence as in the

revolution-in-the-future argument. However we analyse our present historica

situation, there is no option but to break with capitalism now, to try to recognise

the ways in which people are already breaking with capitalism and to try

and expand and multiply these breaks: our revolt does not depend on history

History is important, no doubt, as the history of our struggles, but it is

important to recognise that that history is a history of struggles against history

Above all, history is not a benevolent force leading us towards a happy

ending, but just the contrary. The history which we are making is filled with

the potential of another world, but is going very fast in the opposite direction

And vice versa: the history which we are making is going very fast in the

opposite direction, but it is filled with the potential of another world.

There are two distinct concepts of time here. The revolution-in-the-future

view is a pivotal concept. The revolutionary event acts as a pivot between

two temporalities: the temporality of patience and waiting and preparing

and then the temporality of rupture and rapid change to a different society

The argument for revolution now also involves two temporalities, but verydifferent ones. First comes impatience, rupture, break, revolution in every

way possible, supported then by the patient construction of a different world

the temporality of the explosive Ya basta!, followed by the temporality o

we walk, we do not run, because we are going very far. In the first view, i

is patience that takes the lead, in the second it is impatient urgency that shows

the way, with patience following in support.


12/21

276 John Holloway

I think that most of the main criticisms are addressed by the No, bu

perhaps it is now better to take each of the authors in turn and address their

principal points. It should be clear that, however unkind my replies may be

I am immensely grateful to all of the contributors to the symposium for takingup the books invitation to discuss the meaning of revolution today. It is thi

sort of discussion (whether hostile or friendly) that makes the writing of the

book worthwhile. (Let me say here in the text, and not just in a footnote, tha

I am also extremely grateful to the editors ofHistorical Materialism for creating

this space for discussion.7)

There is an overall tonality that shapes Leigh Binfords argument. We are

living in dark times, under conditions of working-class defeat, and it i

simply not realistic to think of revolution under these circumstances. The

attempt to do so, he argues, leads me to a strong dose of reductionism which

bypasses the hard work involved in theorising contemporary capitalism

My response is that the times are far darker than he seems to realise, that the

destructive forces of capitalism are now so great that we cannot take it fo

granted that humanity will exist in fifty or a hundred years time. There i

no alternative but to think about revolution today. My question is not is i

realistic to put forward a theory of revolution today?, but rather how, in

these miserable times, can we conceptualise revolution?. My driving force

is hope, but I am very aware that it is a hope against hope. The realism

advanced by Binford (and many of the other critics) is built upon an assumption

of stability which is very far from realistic. If, as Binford, claims, the onlyway of putting revolution on the immediate agenda is through a strong

dose of reductionism, then perhaps the response should be well, so be it

that is what we need to do. But I do not agree that that is the case, nor tha

the argument of the book is reductionist. What the book proposes is that the

antagonistic organisation of human doing is the key to understanding capitalism

and the potential for revolution, but that the only way in which we can

perceive that doing and its potential is critically, through the critique of the


13/21

No 277

Most of the other points raised by Binford have to do with our basic

difference of perspective. Thus, when he says that my perspective on

classes-in-process creates problems for the analysis of dominant groups, this

causes me no sleepless nights, simply because I am not interested in theanalysis of dominant groups but in the movement of capital as a socia

relation. Capitalists are of interest as personifications of capital, but not as

dominant groups. Similarly, his concept of hegemony does not touch the

point, since, despite his attempt to broaden the concept, hegemony is still a

conceptualisation of domination, and my argument is that the great disease

of the Left is that, by starting our discussions of capitalism from domination

we effectively incarcerate ourselves within the domination we are trying to

criticise.

Michael Lebowitz claims that my book represents a profound rejection o

Marx. He develops this argument in relation to Capital and in relation to the

Communist Manifesto and The Civil War in France (he does not actually refer

to this work, but he does speak of the Paris Commune).

For Lebowitz, Capital is an attempt to explain precisely how capitalism

reproduces itself and why. For me, that is not the case. Like many others, I

take seriously the subtitle of Capital, namely that it is intended to beA Critiqu

of Political Economy. Capital, in other words, is not a work of political economy

but a critique of political economy, which pierces the categories of politica

economy to reveal the self-antagonistic organisation of work under capitalism

and then goes on to derive from this pivotal dual character of labour theforms of existence of capital. Marx presents his own work very clearly in

these terms in the summary that he gives in Chapter 48 of Volume III.9 Marx

devotes his life work to the critique of political economy precisely because

he is concerned to show the transitory character of capitalism, its fragility

Hence the centrality of crisis, to which I have already alluded; hence too the

centrality of the concept of form, a category which Lebowitz has apparently

censored from his copy of the book (and quite rightly so, of course, since i


14/21

278 John Holloway

the centrality of the sale of labour-power is displaced by the sale of

commodities; the exploitation of labour by the fetishism of commodities.

It would have been correct, he suggests, to focus rather (as Marx did) upon

commodity production as a condition for the exploitation of the wage-labourer

I do not think that such a separation can be made. Marx is concerned in

Capital with the specific historical form that exploitation takes under capitalism

In this society, exploitation is mediated through the sale and purchase o

labour-power as a commodity. The existence of labour-power as a commodity

means, inevitably, that there is a generalisation of commodity production and

that all social relations are fetishised. This general commodification is not jusa side-effect of exploitation (as Lebowitz would have it), but is inseparabl

from the capitalist form of exploitation. I do not substitute fetishism fo

capitalist exploitation, as Lebowitz claims: I argue, rather, that they are

inseparable. I do not think that Marx sees commodity production as a mere

condition for the exploitation of wage-labour.

What is at issue in this difference of interpretation? For Lebowitz, the

principal consequence of my interpretation seems to be that it leads me to a

broad concept of class struggle, in which there is no reason to attach particular

significance to the producers of surplus-value. For me, Lebowitzs interpretation

de-radicalises Marx. The separation of exploitation from commodity production

suggests that it might be possible to get rid of exploitation in a commodity

producing society (that it might be possible to have a socialist market, or tha

value might have some role to play in communist society), whereas I think

it is clear that Marxs argument is that the elimination of exploitation mean

the elimination of commodity production and exchange and, therefore, a

radical transformation of relations between people. The struggle against capita

cannot be reduced to the struggle of the direct producers of surplus-value

against surplus-value production: it is, inevitably, also the struggle agains

commodity production by all of us who are riven by the self-antagonistiorganisation of work under capitalism.


15/21

No 279

this programme has in some details become antiquated. One thing especially

was proved by the Commune, viz. that the working class cannot simply

lay hold of the state machinery and wield it for its own purposes.10

In Marxs study of the Commune in The Civil War in France, he pays grea

attention to the forms of organisation developed in the Commune, forms

that are radically distinct from the state, fundamentally asymmetrical to

the state. Lebowitz argues that Marx concluded from the experience of the

Paris Commune that the struggle should be fought through a state of the

Commune-type. This is Lebowitzs, not Marxs expression: Marx is quite

clear that the Paris Commune is not a state. To speak of a state of theCommune-type, is both disturbing and dangerous. It is disturbing because

it suggests that Lebowitz has understood nothing of the argument of Change

the World, which hangs on the distinction between the state and a commune

(or council): he has understood some of the implications of the argument

which he does not like, but has not understood the argument itself. But, much

more seriously, to speak of a state of the Commune-type (or indeed a sovie

state, a kindred barbarity) is profoundly dangerous. It is dangerous because

it conceals the distinction and the inevitable conflict between two differen

and antagonistic forms of social relation: the state and the commune (or

council) the one developed to exclude people from determining their society

the other designed to articulate social self-determination. This is not just a

question of conceptual clarity: the concealment of the distinction has served

historically to justify the suppression of councils by the state in the name o

the working class, to justify the suppression of the working class in the name

of the working class.

What more can I say in response to Michael Lebowitz? Please, Michael, go

and read Marx again, without fear of the radical implications.

Daniel Bensad makes a number of arguments in his critique of the book

The question of anti-power I have already dealt with explicitly. The othepoints I take up here relate to the Zapatistas, history and newness.


16/21

280 John Holloway

or their practice. I state this clearly, simply because a number of critics have

used their criticism of my book as a pretext for attacking the Zapatistas, bu

the two questions are quite distinct.

The more substantive point that Bensad makes, to the effect that theZapatistas have simply made a virtue of necessity, that they have concluded

from the proximity of the United States that taking power is impossible in

Mexico and have therefore chosen not to want what they cannot achieve in

any event, is peculiar. It can be read in two senses. It might mean that the

Zapatista discourse is cynically manipulative: they really want to take power

but, since this is not realistic in Mexico, they develop an alternative discours

about not taking power to cover their own incapacity a silly argument, i

I may say so. Alternatively, it could mean that, since taking power is not a

realistic option in Mexico, the Zapatistas have rightly concentrated on an

alternative strategy of building up autonomous structures of (anti-)power. I

that is Bensads argument, then one would have to ask whether taking state

power is a more realistic option in France or the UK and, if not, whether he

is arguing that a similar (Zapatista) strategy should be pursued by the Lef

in those countries as well. It is a pity that Bensad does not develop his

argument more clearly.

The issue of history I have already discussed. The importance we attribute

to history is clearly related to how we conceive of revolution. If, as I suggest

we think of revolution here-and-now, then the notion of history as human

trajectory must be abandoned. In this sense we must take seriously WilliamBlakes advice: Drive your cart and your plough over the bones of the dead

Certainly, it is important to recognise our continuity with the struggles of th

past, but we do this best by ploughing those struggles into the soil of our

present struggle, not by building monuments. Taking Blakes aphorism as a

title, I already wrote a reply to Bensads initial criticism of the book and the

last part of his article in this issue is a response to my reply. In what follows

I shall focus specifically on his final comments.


17/21

No 28

no, you must study history Stalinism. The concept of Stalinism is used to

break (and worse, to avoid even thinking about) the link between forms o

revolutionary organisation and the outcome of the revolution, between the

revolutionary event and the bureaucratic counter-revolution (Bensads thirdpoint). Bensad goes further and portrays the argument that there might be

a connection (not a strict genealogical continuity, for I never maintained

that) between the Bolsheviks form of organisation and the outcome of the

revolution as a right-wing argument (a reactionary thesis), when he knows

quite well that it was an argument put forward by the Left (Pannekoek, fo

example) from the time of the Russian Revolution. So, yes, in the face of such

arguments, it is difficult not to want to spit: but better to restrain myself.

Critical history: yes, of course. This was already clear in the article to which

Bensad is claiming to respond, where I argued that we need

A history of broken connections, of unresolved longings, of unanswered

questions. When we turn to history, it is not to find answers, but to pick up

the questions bequeathed to us by the dead. To answer these questions, theonly resource we have is ourselves, our thought and our practice, now, in

the present.11

On Maoists and Pol Pot: if we follow Marx in arguing that we create capitalism

then the central issue of revolution is how we stop making capitalism. This

is not a symbolic question, as Bensad wishes to portray it, but a very practical

question. Refusal has to be at the core of revolutionary thought.Bensad says Holloway blots out with his spit the criticisms that Atilio

Boron, Alex Callinicos, Guillermo Almeyra and I have made of his work. It

is not so: with Boron, Callinicos and Almeyra I have, on different occasions

debated the points at issue in public and in a comradely atmosphere of mutua

respect, and I have also published written replies to all of them.

Finally, Bensad says, on five or six occasions, that there is nothing new

about the argument of the book. I have no problem with that. The book is

ft ll St t l i t t ti ll th d i t ti


18/21

282 John Holloway

however, that this is not an adequate discussion, nor with the degree of detai

that he would like to see. In part, this is because the intention of the book

was more modest than that: the book asks, quite explicitly: How can we even

begin to think of changing the world without taking power?.12 The aim of thbook was to open a discussion and, certainly, I now feel the need to advanc

further with this discussion. The Epilogue to the new edition in English attempt

to do this by developing the notion of moving against and beyond capital.

Behind this objection of de Angeliss is a related point, that I do not devote

enough attention to the question of organisation. I think there is a problem

here, an assumption on de Angeliss part that the question of organisation

and the question of capital are distinct. Capital, we know, is a form of socia

relations, but this means that it is a form of organisation, a form of bringing

together subjects in a way that negates their subjectivity: this can be followed

into the details of our everyday interaction. Fetishism is a question o

organisation, and anti-fetishism (the struggle for us to relate to one anothe

as subjects, the struggle for dignity) is and must be the basic principle o

anticapitalist organisation. This too is a question of detail, the stuff of daily

struggle all over the world at the moment, waged over such key concepts a

dignity, horizontality, love [amorosidad], but there are no rules to be laid down

and, anyway, my argument is that, beyond the details and problems o

horizontality (excellently discussed by others),13 what we need is to integrate

these many struggles conceptually into an understanding of capital and

anti-capital as organisational forms.I do not follow de Angeliss point on clashing powers-to. The contras

between power-over and power-to relates to the bi-polar antagonism in

the organisation of doing in capitalist society: a bi-polar antagonism in

which doing exists antagonistically as labour, use-value as value, power-to

as power-over. To dilute this into a multitude of powers-to is to dilute the

class antagonism into a multitude of antagonisms (rather than seeing the

multitude of antagonisms as the form in which class struggle exists), and tha


19/21

No 283

hoping for when I was writing the book. The book contains some arguments

that are experimental, many points at which I felt in the course of writing

think this is right, but it would be good to have somebody to discuss it with

in more detail, or it would be good if some reviewer could take it up anddevelop it further or argue against it. This is just what Stoetzlers commentary

does. Thus, he argues, for example, that I conflate three different meanings

of negativity: I think this is probably right, that there is, indeed, a slippage

from one concept to another. What I am not yet clear about is whether this

is a harmful slippage and what its political implications are. Stoetzler suggests

that it leads either to an affirmation (sometimes pride) of being a (bourgeois

producer-creator-subject, or its rejection: for me, however, the combining o

screaming and doing in the concept of negation leads to an affirmation (and

indeed pride) of being doers-against-labour. And so it is with many o

Stoetzlers points: they are very helpful indications of the tensions and

contradictions that exist in the book but, often, I disagree with his judgements

Thus, for example, when he says that the concept of anti-power is dangerous

as long as it remains under-determined because it may, for example, include

anti-Semitic or even fascist forms of anticapitalism, then he is right and this

is a problem that should be discussed: but I think the determination is no

so much a theoretical determination or process of exclusion as one that can

only come about through the forms of articulation of the struggle (counci

organisation, for example). When he says at the end of his commentary tha

it is perhaps part of [the] appeal [of the book] that it gives expression to reacontradictions by being itself contradictory, then I am delighted. The book

is intended as a stimulus to move forward, not a correct statement of

revolutionary theory.

Certainly, I do have a difference with Stoetzler. At the end he says perceptively

A criticism of the weak sides of the book can almost entirely be based on

its strong sides: or, in other words, selective reading can construct either acrowd-pleasing, romantic anti-global-capitalism Holloway, or an austere


20/21

284 John Holloway

through their austerity and think politically, and thereby transform their own

theory. Stoetzler is clearly happier in the world of austerity, and that I respect

but that too must be criticised. However, to criticise this is deliberately to

venture (with care) where austere angels fear to tread and it is no doubt fromthis that many of the tensions of the book arise. But I would not change that

My hesitation in writing this last part of the article is that I have no wish

to defend the book. The aim of the book is to promote discussion, a discussion

that moves forward, that recognises that we all desperately want to change

the world but that none of us knows how to do it.

References

Adorno, Theodor 1990, Negative Dialectics, London: Routledge.

Holloway, John 2003, Conduis ton char et ta charrue par-dessus les ossements demorts, ContreTemps, 6: 1609.

Marx, Karl 1972, Capital, Volume III, London: Lawrence and Wishart.

Marx, Karl and Friedrich Engels 1969, Manifesto of the Communist Party, MoscowProgress Publishers.

Sitrin, Marina (ed.) 2005, Horizontalidad: Voces de poder popular en Argentina, BuenoAires: Chilavert.

Thwaites Rey, Mabel 2004, La Autonoma como bsqueda, el Estado como contradiccinBuenos Aires: Prometeo.


21/21

24033741 john holloway no

Documents