Holloway review/interview

[Mervyn Hartwig <mh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Homepage: http://www.bluegreenearth.com

Review/ Interview John Holloway, Change the World without Taking Power.
Pluto 2002.
THE INVISIBILITY OF STRUGGLE

Modest, unassuming and freer from 'jargon' than most of the stuff on
this list:

[snip]

BLUE: Can you describe Change the World's primary message?

JH: The horrors of capitalism today mean that we must think of
revolution or radical social change. But the old idea of making
revolution through taking state power was a disaster. So it is necessary
to liberate the idea of revolution from its association with the state,
to think of changing the world without taking power. But this seems
ridiculous and impossible. It is precisely because we do not have any
easy answers that we must think about what this means. The book does not
give any recipes, but tries to take the argument forward.

[snip]

BLUE: You say there are three ways out of the dilemma (p74). Given your
experience and your knowledge of the way the world is changing, which do
you favour?

JH: The dilemma in question is that the more horrific capitalism gets
(and certainly since September 11 last year), the more urgent radical
change becomes and yet the more impossible it seems to be. I suggested
that there are three ways out: to give up all hope of radical change and
just focus on living with as much dignity as we can (which is a limited
solution, but only very limited and very contradictory, because dignity
is not an individual issue, but means fighting against the whole social
system which is based on the denial of human dignity): to shut our eyes
to what is happening and go on intoning the old dogmas of
revolution-by-taking-power, which seems to me hopeless; or thirdly, to
go as far as we can down the apparently impossible road of changing the
world without taking power, knowing that this road has to be invented in
the process of walking on it. I think that this last is the only option,
and the book is an attempt to do that.

[snip]

I go for the third option. The dominant mood on this list seems to be
the for the second. In relation to Holloway the important thing for
supporters of the second option would seem to be to show that the 'old
idea of changing the world by taking state power' hasn't been a disaster
and doesn't necessarily implicate us in what we're trying to change
('power-over').

Mervyn