[Marxism] Comments on Holloway reply to Lebowitz

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

These are comments on a John Holloway reply to Michael Lebowitz that can be 
read in its entirety at: 
http://ricardo.ecn.wfu.edu/~cottrell/OPE/archive/0505/0086.html

John Holloway: The main aim of the book [How to Change the World Without 
Taking Power] was to get people talking and thinking about revolution ? 
revolution in the sense of the abolition of capitalism and the creation of 
a communist society (however one might interpret that). Very explicitly the 
aim was to promote a discussion on the basis of the acceptance of the fact 
that we do not know how to make revolution. Within that framework I put 
forward the argument that capitalism cannot be abolished through the taking 
of state power, and at the end of the book I say ?but we still do not know 
how to make the revolution, we have to think, we have to discuss.?

Comment: This encapsulates the philosophical idealism that runs like a red 
thread through anarchism and autonomist Marxism. Who said that revolution 
is about the "abolition of capitalism and the creation of a communist 
society"? Certainly not Karl Marx who wrote "What we have to deal with here 
is a communist society, not as it has developed on its own foundations, 
but, on the contrary, just as it emerges from capitalist society; which is 
thus in every respect, economically, morally, and intellectually, still 
stamped with the birthmarks of the old society from whose womb it emerges" 
in Critique of the Gotha Programme.

John Holloway: It is fundamental to the argument of the book that the 
expression ?a state of the Paris Commune-type? makes no sense at all. The 
state is a particular form of social relations grounded in the separation 
of the political from the economic and the separation of the public from 
social control and the [Paris] commune is exactly the opposite ? a form of 
social relations directed against the separation of the political from the 
economic and the subjection of society to social control. The commune is a 
quite distinct form of social organisation from the state, a form 
viscerally opposed to the state. To think of the state as any form of 
social organisation makes the whole discussion meaningless. The state is 
always a process of forming social relations (that is social struggles) in 
a certain way, the commune as an organisational form forms them or shapes 
them in a different way. When you say that ?the state has played a central 
role in the struggle against the old order in Venezuela?, then I am not 
sure what this means.

Comment: I find this discussion of the Paris Commune totally confusing. How 
was the Paris Commune "viscerally opposed to the state"? When workers 
seized control of Paris, they instituted their own law and order. The 
problem with the Paris Commune is that it was limited to Paris. The 
bourgeoisie was able to lay siege to it and mount a counter-revolution. The 
main lesson is that it was necessary to generalize the Paris Commune 
throughout France. Obviously, the "small is beautiful" mindset of the 
anarchists and autonomist Marxists would militate against such a strategy. 
It is one thing to evaluate the Zapatista struggle on its own terms as a 
local struggle against capitalist oppression in southern Mexico. It is 
another to fetishize it. With all of the moral capital that the EZLN 
achieved in the early 90s', it was effectively squandered by refusing to 
help build a revolutionary left throughout Mexico. This was a function of 
Subcommandante Marcos's crypto-postmodernism as much of anything. Perhaps 
he has found a better vehicle for his creative urges now: "Mexico's 
Zapatista rebel leader Subcomandante Marcos has joined forces with the 
country's top crime writer to pen a novel. The third instalment of Muertos 
Incomodos (Awkward Dead) was published in the newspaper La Jornada on 
Sunday. Paco Ignacio Taibo II and the masked professor-turned-rebel are 
writing alternate chapters of the tale, said to be based loosely on Marcos' 
real story." 
(<http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4110673.stm>http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4110673.stm)

John Holloway: Clearly the struggle [in Venezuela] did not originate in the 
state: it originated as a class struggle, a popular struggle against the 
manifestations of capitalism. In the 1990s it clearly became focussed on 
the state and the winning of state power, and the process has been 
organised to a fairly large extent through the state in the last few years. 
My question is how this form of organisation affects the development of the 
struggle. Has it, for example, had the effect of diverting anti-capitalist 
struggle into the form of anti-imperialism, a form quite compatible with 
the continuation of exploitation and private ownership? I do not know, I ask.

Comment: Holloway has a sectarian posture when it comes to 
anti-imperialism, just as his fellow autonomists Hardt and Negri do. When a 
semicolonial state mobilizes against US oil companies, it is not good 
enough for them. As long as the workers in Venezuela report to work each 
day and receive a wage, they are unfree even if the oil company has been 
nationalized and profits are diverted into the creation of daycare centers 
and clinics. If John Holloway were a worker in a country like Venezuela or 
Sandinista Nicaragua, he might have a better appreciation for such benefits 
rather than sneer at them.

John Holloway: Has the Venezuelan state managed to liberate itself from the 
need to secure the profitability of capital? And if it has not broken from 
that need, does that mean that it necessarily promote the exploitation of 
labour? And if it has broken the need to secure profitability, this 
presumably can only be on the basis of the creation of an anti-capitalist 
form of social organisation. Is this what?s happening? It seems to me that 
you start thinking from the state (very understandable in your current 
situation) whereas we need to think from society and from social struggle, 
class struggle.

Comment: This is simon-pure sectarian idealism of the Daniel DeLeon 
Socialist Labor Party variety. It is absolutely impossible for any 
revolutionary society to "liberate itself from the need to secure the 
profitability of capital." Even the Zapatistas have to sell trinkets to 
ecotourists to stay afloat. How in the world could Venezuela avoid 
participating in world trade through the sale of oil, even after the total 
overthrow of capitalist property relations? Every country that emerged 
through the advance of capitalism and colonialism is left with an economic 
infrastructure that is highly integrated into the world economy. There is 
something that smacks of Pol Potism in Holloway's idealism, but fortunately 
he is too childish and too detached from power to ever pose a threat.


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