[Marxism] Taking Power Seriously: A Response to John Holloway

["M. Junaid Alam" <mjunaidalam@xxxxxxxxxx>]

*Taking Power Seriously: A Response to John Holloway *

*by M. Junaid Alam; April 10, 2005*


full: http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=41&ItemID=7610

John Holloway, well-known left intellectual and author of the popular
anarchist polemic Change the World Without Taking Power: The Meaning of
Revolution Today, recently offered a concise presentation of his
strategic vision on revolutionary change at ZNet. In his essay there, he
strongly rejects the idea of approaching or seizing the state as an
instrument for achieving social change, and encourages the notion of
multiplying various kinds of incipient rebellions that bypass the state
as the most fruitful path to human self-determination.

In advancing his thesis, however, Holloway fails to take stock of
important current political developments or ground his definition of
capitalism in a concrete context. As a result, he makes a number of
simplistic assertions and leans on certain false dichotomies about the
state and the process of revolutionary change. By examining these flaws,
I think it is possible to show that Holloway’s concept of “changing the
world without taking power” is, unfortunately, trapped in a narrow
framework where premises hang from a ceiling of intellectual defeatism
and conclusions crash into walls of political paralysis.

Holloway’s broadside against taking power is stern and unequivocal: he
warns that “focus[ing] our struggle on the state” or “tak[ing] it as a
principle point of reference” “leads us in the wrong direction.” He
writes, “The state…is a form of social relations…developed over several
centuries for the purpose of maintaining or developing the rule of
capital.” Therefore, “we have to understand that the state pulls us in a
certain direction.” How? “It seeks to impose upon us a separation of our
struggles from society”; it “separates leaders from the masses”; it
“pulls us into a process of reconciliation with reality, and that
reality is capitalism, a form of social organization that is based on
exploitation and injustice, on killing and destruction.” Worse, it “also
draws us into a spatial definition of how we do things,” one which not
only “makes clear distinction between the state’s territory and the
world outside,” but also “has no hope of matching the global movement of
capital.” These then are Holloway’s most salient points against
state-centered struggle.

The fundamental problem with all these concerns is that they could be
raised anywhere. For instance, Holloway posits struggle within the state
as a “reconciliation with reality,” as capitulation, because after all
the state represents the “reality of capitalism.” But is the “reality of
capitalism” not everywhere? Private institutions, organizations,
cultural mores, and the entire general social milieu are all thoroughly
penetrated and profoundly shaped by capitalism. Indeed, that is
precisely why all these elements must be resisted and contested in the
first place. What occurs vis-à-vis the state in particular, however, is
not a “reconciliation” with the reality of capitalism, but a
confrontation with the reality of capitalism by forces opposed to
capitalism in its most important arena of control.

full: http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=41&ItemID=7610


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