Re: John Holloway debate

[Dave Carroll <dccarrol@xxxxxxxx>]

------------------------------
>
> Date: Fri, 6 Jun 2003 09:48:48 +0100
> From: Mervyn Hartwig <mh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Subject: Re: John Holloway debate/McLaren
>
> In message , MARIPOWER716@xxxxxxx writes
>
> >I would suppose that everyone strives to find a certain comfort zone in life
> >and in the workforce a billion and one different social acts take place, 
> >which
> >one could identify as "resistance" to "capital" but is hardly the meaning of
> >class struggle.
>
> Hi Melvin,
>
> When Holloway says
>
> >"Our struggle is clearly a constant struggle to get away from capital, a
> >struggle for space, for autonomy, a struggle to lengthen the leash, to
> >intensify
> >the dis-articulation of domination. This takes a million different forms:
> >throwing the  alarm clock at the wall, arriving late for 'work', back pain 
> >and
> >other  forms of absenteeism, sabotage, struggles over tea breaks..."<
>
> he's not in my view saying that this is the meaning of class struggle or
> the main form our struggle should take - he's simply saying that this is
> in fact what we all want to do, 'get away from capital' (don't we?), and
> citing evidence for this.
>
> As a former union organizer, I'm sure you you wouldn't want to uphold
> unions as models of revolutionary organization. While historically
> they've been important in defending workers from the depredations of
> capital, and in certain periods and places have made important gains in
> terms of workers wages and conditions, by and large they've danced to
> the tune of capital instead of struggling to 'get away' from it or go
> beyond it. Politically, through their association with and support for
> social democratic and reformist parties, they've by and large functioned
> to reproduce capital (Lenin's good on this as I recall).

Hmmm...This is where I feel Holloway (and it appears, by extension, you)
becomes dislodged from a materialist analysis and head off into a theory
limbo.  I don't know what Melvin's position on this, but I'm damn proud
of my local as a model of revolutionary organization, at this step in
the struggle.  "While historically", huh?  How about now?  Small and
large unions alike now are organizing all kinds of workers, and the
undocumented migrant workers down here in Southern California should be
at all means encouraged and helped to organize into unions.  Right now,
every one of us should be calling for the unionization of all workers at
one of the MOST important steps for a revolution.  If a real
"non-authoritarian" revolution is ever going to happen, it's not going
to be because, after lives subsumed under capitalist relations, some
metaphysical essence in every person, regardless of class, will
instinctively find the "correct" form of revolution and automatically,
in some metaphysical, ideal way, "know" how to make democracy and
socialism happen.  If you do not want a state socialism to take over,
then you need to organize and move left as many people as you can.
Workers who run rank-and-file unions will learn and be able to create
new forms of democratic institutions.  You do not, absolutely do not,
learn how to do this from academic theorizations of revolution.  And let
me note that I am in the academic workplace, in a department that I'm
sure will be discussing Holloway just as much as Hardt/Negri consumed
people's attention the last two years.  On the other hand, the students
who have formed groups and demand control over the university space, who
argue that students should control and run university facilities, who
form co-ops for food or books, who organize themselves into unions, they
are learning and educating us about a participatory politics that is
part of the socialism I want to be part of.  So maybe Holloway, or you,
will argue that unions, or students, or some equivalent are merely
"dancing to the tune of capital", but just show me a more effective way
of mobilizing as many people as possible to demand control over the
means of production, so that capitalist relations can be overthrown.
Until then, I hear a whole lotta talking, and no organizing.  And there
is no way to "get away" from capitalism without having a revolution;
this, to echo other comments, is petit-bourgeois utopianism.  We are all
part of capitalist relations, and there is no de-linking possible.



>  Even after all
> Blair's crimes against humanity (including workers!) the trade union
> movement in the UK still supports New 'Labour', i.e. neo-liberalism,
> though some sections are defecting. This suggests that besides working
> in and through established working class institutions we need to work
> outside them and develop new forms of struggle. This seems elementary.
>
> >All that is being stated is that
> >no one can escape the system because you are born into a certain specific way
> >of living and producing whether you like it or not.
>
> Well, *Holloway* is not saying this. He thinks capitalism has to go, the
> sooner the better, and furthermore that we can do it.
>
> >Many of them - academic Marxist, came to the conclusion that capitalism can
> >be transformed on the basis of a fight within the mediated forms and altering
> >these forms to produce a correct vision of the world.
>
> Again, this is not in my view what Holloway is saying, just the
> opposite: we have to crap off the mediated forms ('power over') and
> concentrate on 'power to', i.e. precisely what you call 'the material
> aspects of production'. So you actually agree!
>
> >How to take power without political revolution is an absurd question that can
> >only originate in the mind of the bourgeois and petty bourgeoisie -
> >degenerate, intellectual.
>
> Holloway as I read him is not saying that we don't need a revolution,
> including a political revolution. On the contrary! But to achieve it we
> need a different approach from the the old model of seizing power,
> dismantling the capitalist state and instituting a worker's state with
> the vague assurance that this state will 'wither away' some time. He's
> not talking at all about 'how to take power' in the sense of 'power
> over', rather about how *not* to, while changing the world.
>

So maybe his book should be titled, _How Not to Take Power and Not to
Change the World_.  Again, I have not read the book, and I am not eager
to misstate its arguments.  But so far I see idealist formulations of
power, and this does not clarify things. I do not have a problem with
jargon (for god's sake, I'm a cultural studies grad student) but it
needs to be informed by a more intimate history of socialism besides
statist socialism can turn out real bad.  Jesus, that's not a new
insight.

You know, the worst history and (present) of unions, for me, is the
incidence of undemocratic, top-down leadership in some of them, and the
selling-out of international workers by U.S. unionized workers in the
seventies and eighties, when unions were calling for "Buy American" and
ignoring the attack on workers globally by capitalism.  The best part,
and something I work on every day, is the training of new organizers and
the creation of coalitional ties in the community with anti-racist
organizations, the anti-war movements, student democracy groups,
co-operative organizations, etc.  When we can speak of millions of
leaders, and millions of organizers, then we will be discussing a new
form of "power-to-do."

Well, there's more to say, and I only had a few hours of sleep so I may
not have articulated myself as clearly as I'd like.  Hopefully, I have
not dis-articulated myself...

Dave