Re: John Holloway debate/McLaren

[Mervyn Hartwig <mh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Dear Peter,

Thanks for the summary of what John Holloway's on about. It's good to
see that you're not just dimissive, but prepared to engage in
constructive critique. I think we all tend to react by throwing the baby
out with the bathwater when something new comes up, challenging our
existing positions. What we need above all IMO is creative new ideas and
approaches; the old ways haven't worked very well. Holloway doesn't
claim to have all the answers, but he is thinking creatively in relation
to an actual social movement and we should try to listen to what he's
saying with an open mind rather than just reacting negatively from a
fixed position. Anyway I think there's much he's saying we can all agree
about if you understand it right.

> In our work as critical educators, Holloways distinction between power-to
> do (potentia) and power-over (potestas) is instructive. Power-to is a part
> of the "social flow of doing," the collective construction of a "we" and the
> practice of the mutual recognition of dignity.  Power-over negates the
> social flow of doing thereby alienating the collective "we" into mere
> objects of instruction.

Roy Bhaskar makes a similar distinction in his *Dialectic: the Pulse of
Freedom*. As you say, this is instructive and helpful. We presumably all
want to do away with all forms of 'power over' - not just re class,
though this is central, but re gender, race and ethnicity etc. I think
the distinction is entirely in keeping with everything Marx was on
about. The differences only emerge re how to get there.

> Power-over depends upon that which it negates.

Again, I think we can all agree. Power over depends, is parasitic, on
the creativity and work of ordinary people which it couldn't do without
for a moment and which in capitalism literally is negated in the value
form.

> The history of domination is
> not only the struggle of the oppressed against their oppressors but also the
> struggle of the powerful to liberate themselves from their dependence on the
> powerless.

This is something recognized both by Hegel (in the dialectic of the
master and the slave) and Marx - in terms of their deepest real needs,
everybody is the loser from oppression and exploitation. This is partly
what Bhaskar also is getting at when he talks of the whole of human kind
being the minimum necessary unit for emancipation.

> Holloways "movement of negation" or "anti-power"
> suggests to Callinicos that "any attempt to understand capitalism as a set
> of objective structures implies the abandonment of Marxs original
> conception of socialism as self emancipation.  Accordingly, virtually the
> entire subsequent Marxist tradition is dismissed as scientistic and
> authoritarian."

Contrary to what is implied here, I think Holloway's whole position is
informed by Marx's theory of capital, and in particular, as Callinicos
himself says, the theory of commodity fetishism; see Holloway's work on
the capitalist state. As for 'scientistic', I think James Daly has
argued on this list before, persuasively in my view, that the marxist
tradition in the West has indeed tended to operate within the
scientistic paradigm of the bourgeois enlightenment with its emphasis on
controlling and getting and having rather than seeking to move beyond it
to a new paradigm of being and sharing and caring. As for authoritatian,
in Callinicos's own SWP there's still an emphasis on the raised fist and
'smashing the state'. One of the troubles with this sort of approach is
that the power of the bourgeoisie to smash back has increased
exponentially since Marx's time, and another is, as Holloway says, it
locks you in to the same kind of trajectory of 'power over' if you do
succeed and set up your workers' state. Today only synchronized global
resistance by a majority of the people could bring capitalism to an end.
New ways of struggle have to be found, including new ways of appealing
to and involving the majority of people. There are promising beginnings
in the global movement for peace and justice and I would argue (though
it's not without its dangers, like everything else) in the turn to
'spirituality' in some sections of the Left. This could be very
important because people do have spirititual needs and  currently this
is the terrain of the Right. Spirituality  needn't have a religious
meaning (but for religiously minded people of course does) - it can just
mean having confidence in our own capacities to flourish as a species
and build a social order based on solidarity and caring, and in that
sense Holloway's approach is itself spiritual, even though he's an
atheist I think.

> If we are really determined to abolish
> capitalist social relations, it makes less sense to dis-identify with
> working-class struggle than to build more effective forms of working-class
> struggle and organization.

I don't think Holloway is dis-identifying with working class struggle as
such, just locating it within a broader framework to include the
unemployed, the peasantry etc and indeed the whole of humanity.
Everyone's eligible to join in the struggle, including members of the
capitalist class!

>  The overarching goal is to develop the capacity of social movements to
> challenge successfully the core apparatuses of capitalist state power, and
> eventually replace the state altogether. Social  movements can serve as
> points of departure and shed glimmers of hope for an alternative to the
> governing force of capital.  The challenge for us is to translate social
> movements incubated within national borders into a widespread movement
> against capital. As Michael Lwy points out, in an unprecedented time when
> capital permeates lines of demarcation and casts its oppressive force
> through institutions such as the World Bank, International Monetary Fund,
> the World Trade Organization and the U.S. empire, what is lacking "is a
> network of political organizations  parties, fronts, movements, that can
> propose an alternative project inside the perspective of a new society, with
> neither oppressor nor oppressed." The multiplicity of social movements
> (albeit heterogeneous in composition and diverse in their beliefs on how to
> combat capital) do identify the same enemy  the transnational capitalist
> class.

If you take 'eventually' out of the first sentence, I think Holloway
would agree with this. If we're creative and strong enough we could have
radically participatory democracy from the outset instead of yet another
round of 'power over' by control freaks, their bums ensconced in leather
seats.

Mervyn

In message , Peter McLaren <mclaren@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes
> Dear Louis:
> Below are some cut and paste sections from a recent piece I wrote with
> Nathalia Jaramillo. They are the sections that deal with Holloway... We
> critique Holloway via Callinicos.