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Capital & Class
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DOI: 10.1177/030981680809500101
2008 32: 3 Capital & Class
Colm McNaughton
Change The World Without Taking Power A critique of John Holloway's

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John Holloways Change the World Without Taking Power is an
attempt to translate the Zapatista experience into Marxist categoriesan
undertaking fraught with many difculties. This review interrogates the four
key issues addressed by Holloway: the state, the nature of power, commodity
fetishism and the meaning and relevance of revolution.
Born in Dublin and now living and working in Mexico City, John Holloway
is one of a small group of intellectualactivists whose work emerges from and
contributes to an autonomist reading of Marxism. Holloways work within
this milieu has largely been concerned with revitalising a Marxist comprehen-
sion of the statethat is, until January , when the masked Zapatistas of
Chiapas, Mexico, burst onto the global scene. After this, he became a commenta-
tor on the role and impact of the Zapatistas on the resistance to exclusive forms
of globalisation. Indeed, his most recent work, Change The World Without
Taking Power, is an attempt to translate the Zapatista experience into
Marxist categories. Holloway is often criticised for focusing so heavily on the
Zapatistas, but in his defence, they do seem to constitute a signicant shift with-
in the emancipatory imagination and, as such, their contribution warrants fur-
ther scrutiny and reflection. In examining Holloways contribution, I will
address four key issues: the state, the nature of power, commodity fetishism and
the meaning and relevance of revolution.
H
olloways critical theory in Change the World Without Taking
Power begins with a reflection on the screaman expression
of our collective anger at witnessing and experiencing
The question of the state
A critique of John
Holloways Change The
World Without Taking Power
Colm McNaughton
Abstract
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oppression. This rage at oppression connects us: it is a recognition
that the world is fundamentally flawed in some way, and this
entails opposition, negativity and struggle against oppression
(Holloway, zooz. i). For Holloway, it is from the anger expressed in
this scream, and not from reason, that thought is born. While it is
possible to sympathise with this perspective to an extent, it seems
somewhat overstated: oppression entails resistance, but this is not
the whole picture, for it also invokes despair, self-destructive
behaviours, and more subtly, conscious and unconscious
identication with the oppressor. Consequently, it is as well to be
wary of any perspective that grounds itself in anger, not only
because it separates reason and emotion,
1
both of which are
needed to inform our decisions, but also because anger is a double
edged-swordfor in overcoming oppression, how can anger also
be transformed so as not to become the very oppressor we started
out ghting against? Any reinvention of the emancipatory
imagination needs to address this crucial problematic.
In contemporary capitalist societies, Holloway points out, there
are numerous ideological mechanisms designed to limit the
reverberations and impact of the scream, and he argues: It is not
so much what we learn as how we learn that seems to smother our
scream. It is a whole structure of thought that disarms us
(Holloway, zooz. ). He wants to offer a counter to this strategy of
containment, not only so that we can hear the rejection of
oppression, but also so that we can creatively respond through
collective action. For Holloway, the scream presupposes we as a
subject. We are the starting point of theory, for the very acts of
reading and writing are based on the assumption of some sort of
community, however contradictory or confused (Holloway, 2002:
4). The idea, though attractive, remains somewhat unconvincing:
we certainly exist in an objective sense, that is, as a collection of
humans with shared faculties and histories; but we do not exist in a
subjective or conscious sense, and in making this argument I am
mindful of Marxs distinction between a class-for-itself and a class-
in-itself (Marx, i,c. i,,). Thus, it is through the struggle to realise
collective projects, grounded in recognition of our
interconnectionsto realise what Marx referred to as the social
individualthat we truly come into being. In a fragmenting and
tumultuous world, it is understandable but also politically
dangerous to assume that we already exist.
For Holloway, the scream reveals a utopian dialectic integral to
our collective subjectivity, which he frames as a tension between
what is and what is not-yet. Our scream, he argues, implies that there
is a two-dimensionality available, in turn, within the tension
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between the two dimensions, which is predicated on the
assumptions that:
We are, but we exist in an arc of tension towards that which
we are not, or are not yet. Society is, but it exists in an arc of
tension towards that which is not, or is not yet. There is iden-
tity, but identity exists in the arc of tension towards non-
identity. (Holloway, zooz. ;)
Blochs notion of the not-yet is grounded in a positive dialectic,
albeit one used in an unorthodox manner. Consequently, Holloways
utopian proposal emanates from the scream, which proposes a fusion
of Blochs not-yet with Adornos negative dialectical appreciation of
identity, is unconvincing. Positive and negative dialectical
appreciations cannot so readily be overcome, for what becomes
apparent in Holloways articulation is not a fusion but rather the
dominance of Adornos negative dialectics. While there is a latent
utopianism implicit in Adornos thinking, it is also understated; and
moreover, it is marred by the inability of the negative dialectic to
produce concrete knowledge (see Habermas, i,,, i,;).
In coming to terms with the failed promises of revolution within
Marxism, Holloway focuses on the relationship of these movements
to the state, and argues: The mistake of Marxist revolutionary
movements has been, not to deny the capitalist nature of the state,
but to misunderstand the degree of integration of the state into the
network of capitalist social relations (Holloway, zooz. i,).
Thus the false premise that informs revolutionary groups is their
assumption that society is the state, and that it is through capturing
the state that society can be transformed. Drawing on the more
anti-statist Marx of The Paris Commune, Holloway contends that
social relations have never coincided with national frontiers, and in
developing this argument he points to the de-territorialising role of
money, wherein There is no reason why employer and employee,
producer and consumer, or workers, who combine in the same
process of production, should be within the same territory
(Holloway, zooz. i,). In making this argument, he is referring to his
own work in theorising the state from an autonomous perspective,
which is not so much concerned with how the economic
determines the political superstructure but rather, with what it is in
particular about the social relations of capitalism that gives rise to
a state (Holloway, zooz. ,).
From the i,;os through to the mid-i,,os, Holloways work was
largely concerned with the shifting relationship of the state to
capital. He contributed to an autonomous Marxist response to the
John Holloways Change The World Without Taking Power
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PoulantzasMiliband debatea debate constituted by Milibands
instrumentalist claim that the state had been captured by the
capitalist class as a result of its political organisation, versus
Poulantzass structuralist argument that the state is capitalist
because of its functions, and acts to disorganise the working class.
Founding his analysis in a reading of commodity fetishism,
Holloway argued that the PoulantzasMiliband debate was limited
because both thinkers treat the state as a thing that is imposed on
us, rather than as a distinct social form that arises from the
practical activity between people in a society based on generalised
commodity exchange. Holloway argues:
Capital is not external to class struggle, but is the historical
form assumed by class struggle. This derivation of the state
opened the way to an understanding of the state as a partic-
ular form of the capital relation, understood as a relation of
class struggle. (Bonefeld & Holloway [eds.] i,,i. ,c)
While he is correct to point out that capital is not external to
class struggle, we should be wary of reducing capitalist
development to being solely a response to class struggle.
Moreover, Holloways argument is ahistorical, for the existence of
the post-Westphalian state signicantly predates the emergence of
capitalist social relations. This observation exposes an even more
fundamental weakness in Holloways analysis: an inability to
adequately explain nationalism, which not only cuts across but all
too often subverts the class struggle. The appeal of nationalism
and its contradictory relationship to class is most starkly
demonstrated in the case of the First World War, when the labour
movements of different European nations rejected the Second
Internationals appeals for internationalism, supporting their
respective nations war efforts instead. Consequently, millions of
young workers died ghting for the glory of their nations. This
embracing of nationalism by signicant sections of Europes
working classes facilitated the collapse of the Second
International, which was a profound wake-up call for the forces of
revolution. What was it that led so many young men, exploited in
the workplace, to go and ght and often die defending what were
objectively the national interests of the ruling class?
Holloway goes on to assert:
The state is capital, a form of capital. The state is a
specically capitalist form of social relations. The state is so
tightly bound into the global web of capitalist social relations
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that there is no way an anti-capitalist sociality can be con-
structed through the state, no matter which party occupies
the government The path of the state is not the path of
dignity. (Holloway, zoo)
Collapsing the workings of the state and capital, as Holloway
does here, is not only theoretically wrong but also politically
dangerous, for it limits our ability to articulate and respond to the
tensions and possibilities that emerge through the ever-shifting
relationship between the state and capital. Crucially, these sites of
contestation often offer moments ripe for movement and struggle.
The recent struggles in Bolivia against the privatisation of water;
France and Germanys vetoing the US decision to go to war against
Iraq; state-socialist and social-democratic states provision of basic
education, health and welfare, and their indigenous, labour and
environmental legislation, are all cases in point. The interests of
the state cannot be reduced to those of capital, and as such, we must
be constantly reassessing and re-evaluating the potential for
movement available within such conflicts between the market,
sovereign states and emerging global institutions, the latter of
which Holloways theory does not even address.
Holloway goes on to argue that, in the party's focus on building
and eventually capturing the state:
The struggle is lost from the beginning it is lost once
power itself seeps into the struggle, once the logic of power
becomes the logic of the revolutionary process, once the neg-
ative of refusal is converted into the positive of power build-
ing. (Holloway, zooz. i;)
But however critical one might be of party formations, it
seems necessary to more fully appreciate the context in which
such articulations emerge and develop in order to assess their
strengths and weakness, rather than so absolutely dismissing the
history and struggles that gave rise to them. This is especially
relevant since Holloway offers no alternative to the party
strategy; rather, he is content to champion its negation while
castigating those who have and do try to change the world
through a party form. He argues:
The idea of changing society through the conquest of power
thus ends up achieving the opposite of what it sets out to
achieve. Instead of the conquest of power being a step
towards the abolition of power relations, the attempt to con-
John Holloways Change The World Without Taking Power
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quer power involves the extension of the eld of power rela-
tions into the struggle against power. (Holloway, zooz. i;)
Holloway does not seem to be aware that while his essentially
anarchist argument may offer some insight into why revolutionary
movements fail, at the same time it is also essentially a moral stance,
castigating the wrongs of the world but unable to pose an alternative.
The key argument of Holloways theory is thus:
For what is at issue in the revolutionary transformation of the
world is not whose power but the very existence of power.
What is at issue is not who exercises power, but how to create
a world based on mutual recognition of human dignity, on
the formation of social relations which are not power rela-
tions. (Holloway, zooz. i;i)
Holloways arguments regarding the nature of power relations
will be examined in the section that follows, below; however, what I
wish to address now is the abstract nature of his arguments regarding
both the state and the party, and their implicit righteousness.
Holloways discussion has little to say regarding how we are to relate
to the state now; and nor does he examine the implications of his
perspective for the development of a strategy of revolutionary
transition. These are questions to which I will now turn.
The limitations of Holloways comprehension of the state are
clearly apparent in his discussion of liberal democracy. He is
scathing in his attacks on representative democracy, and writes that:
through the ballot box resistance to class oppression is channelled
into an act of individual, private choice between two or more
oppressors (Holloway, i,,i. z,). Furthermore, he contends, to
imagine that you can weaken the old forms of intercourse by
working through them is nonsense (Holloway, i,,i. z,). While
liberal democracy as practised in numerous states across the globe
is often a barefaced example of class rule and manipulation, can we
afford not to examine the nuances and levels of contestations that
emerge and unfold historically? In being so dismissive, Holloway
falls into the trap of mistaking his principles for strategy, which is a
potentially dangerous, though common error. At the level of
principle, Holloway is right that liberal democracy and its implicit
illusions are essential to the efcient running of capitalism. But
where does this understanding leave us? What spaces, discourses
and resources are available for the facilitation of movement and
struggle? At what level of political development do we nd
organised workers and others groups of the oppressed? What
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safeguards are available to defend civil society from the totalitarian
left and right? And, perhaps most crucially, how are we to move from
where we nd ourselves now to where we want to be? In fashioning
responses to these tactical and strategic questions, liberal democracy
can and should not be so glibly dismissed. Laclau and Mouffe
demonstrate that the left cannot merely dismiss the important
political gains and spaces developed through liberal democracy, for
to do so is merely to hand the baton to the far-right and fascist forces
that want to do away with any semblance of democracy and
accountability, permanently.
In the current context, the starting point for any emancipatory
project must, at one level, be a defence of liberal democracy. The
strategy must be grounded in a desire to defend and extend
democracy to what I term deep democracy. With that aim, we
might press for more inclusive and participatory forms of
democracy and globalisation. The language and nature of this
articulation will depend very much upon the context. We must
defend liberal democracy and the spaces it creates, wherever it
exists, in order to create the time and space to be able to develop
the people, communities, movements and alternatives that
constitute an anticapitalist politics. The fundamental challenge for
the foreseeable future, for those engaged in this process, will be that
of co-option and compromise: that of how we are to relate to the
liberal foundations of capitalist democracies, which work to
exclude, in order to transform them into more inclusive forms.
Holloways argument that you cannot weaken the old forms of
intercourse by working through them must be more thoroughly
scrutinised. We need to recognise the self-defeatism implicit in this
articulationfor what other realistic options do we have, other
than to begin where we nd ourselves? And in many cases, we begin
in a version of liberal democracy. If we do not start from the
context in which we nd ourselves, with those resources at hand
and with all the limitations that this implies, how, exactly, are to
begin outside of this context? This is not to argue against either the
need for or the value of a revolutionary transformation of
capitalist social relationson the contrary; it is rather to argue that
in developing strategies to engage capital and the state, we must be
able to clearly distinguish between our principles and our
strategies. If we conflate the two, we have defeated ourselves
before we begin. Nor am I defending radical democracy as
proposed by Laclau and Mouffe, for they discard the categories of
class and production, and the ongoing inquiry as to their
relationship with nature, as central dynamics in the construction of
a more inclusive form of globalisation. Our understanding of
John Holloways Change The World Without Taking Power
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revolution within the conditions of global capitalism must begin
with the assumption that Nancy Fraser expresses: that democracy
today requires both economic redistribution and multicultural
recognition (Fraser, i,,;. i;,), which is recognition of deep
democracy. In order to do this, we can also recognise that traditional
articulations of class politics are necessary but not sufcient in
articulating alternative social formations; that is, we must address
the categories of difference, and in this avoid remaining human-
centred but also, crucially, address the question of non-human
nature and the science of ecology. In accepting this foundation,
what becomes apparent is that we are at the cusp of a new
emancipatory politics that has only begun to be articulated. This
awareness is daunting, as well as rich with possibilities.
These criticisms aside, Holloway is right in his suspicion of the
political strategies whose one-dimensional focus is to seize the state.
The seizure of the state constitutes, in Gramscis terms, a war of
manoeuvre, which has been shown to be a limited strategy that
creates the space for the war of position to more fully assert itself. It
is essential to note that Gramscis war of manoeuvre attempts to
sidestep and speed up the transformative process, which in many
cases is very slow and difcult. The war of position, conversely,
which is inherently democratic, is a much slower process though no
less arduous, for its focus is on developing the people, ideas and
communities that can transform civil society in a democratic manner.
Prioritising the war of position does not necessitate a wholesale
rejection of the war of manoeuvre, for in certain contextsand here
I am thinking of East Timors resistance to Indonesian rulethe
possibilities for democracy are predicated on the seizure of the state.
In general, though, in order to avoid the latent totalitarian impulses
and/or the watered-down social forms of neoliberalism available
within the war of manoeuvre, we need to radically rethink its
relationship to the war of position, and prioritise the latter.
In defending liberal democracy at a strategic level, I concede
that if politics is not fundamentally concerned with the
development of a more vibrant and articulate civil society, then the
value of this position is deeply compromised. As we experiment
and propose more inclusive forms of globalisation, we need a more
truncated approach to the state and liberal democracy than
Holloway offers. Perhaps Gustav Landauers commentary on the
nature of the state adds some clarity to this discussion, as he argues
that the state cannot be destroyed by a revolution, since: The state
is a condition, a certain relationship between human beings, a mode
of human behaviour; we destroy it by contracting other
relationships, by behaving differently (cited in Buber, i,,,. ,c).
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Hence, in Landauers perspective, the state can only be replaced
to the extent that it is replaced by another more egalitarian form of
community, which he refers to as the Volk or people. The
development of the Volk happens only as the inner statehood of
people is broken open to allow the slumbering immemorial reality
to be aroused, and thus:
It is the task of the socialists and of movements they have
started amongst the peoples: to loosen the hardening of
hearts so that what lies buried may rise to the surface: so that
what truly lives yet now seems dead may emerge and grow
into the light. (cited in Buber, i,,,. ,
Holloway does not address this crucial inner dynamic of
interpersonal relations that facilitates the reproduction of the state
in peoples lives, and in failing to do so he limits his ability to
comprehend the rupturing of the state formation, and where
possibilities to radically transform these relationships can
commence.
An obvious omission in Holloways arguments regarding the state
is that there is no discussion of the Zapatistas relationship to the
Mexican government, the ambiguous nature of which further
demonstrates his limited comprehension of the state. The guerrilla
war waged by the EZLN lasted twelve days, after which massive
demonstrations across Mexico demanded an end to the civil war.
Consequently, the government and the insurgents began to
negotiate a peace settlement, which culminated in the signing of the
San Andrs Accords in i,,c. In their negotiations with the
government, the Zapatistas tried to include all dimensions of
Mexican civil society in the discussion, although of course, the
question of autonomy for indigenous communities and their
relationship to the state was central. Indeed, it offered the Zapatistas
a chance to revoke this oppressive colonial and historical bond.
The fundamental demands of the Zapatistas were for recognition
by the state and for autonomy. In articulating these demands, the
Zapatistas found themselves on difcult terrain; for on the one hand
they were pushing the state to live up to its own constitution, which
invariably leads to a demand for the writing of a more inclusive
constitution. In order to organise civil society so as to be able to
effectively engage this aspect of struggle, the Zapatista Front was
created in i,,c. On the other hand, in pushing for more autonomy for
indigenous communities, the Zapatistas had to be careful not to
propose pan-Mayan solidarity, which would invariably involve
signicant sections of Guatemalan society, alienating the Mexican
John Holloways Change The World Without Taking Power
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state and its need to defend its sovereignty and thereby giving it
grounds for the Zapatistas extermination. And at the same time as
engaging in this national process, the Zapatistas were also involved in
facilitating international discussions about global resistance to
neoliberalism. So they were engaged both in a campaign to defend
and extend liberal democracy within Mexico, and at the same time
in developing relationships on a global level that demand more
inclusive and international goals.
This ability of the Zapatistas to engage the shifting terrain of
global capitalism marks a quantum leap in the emancipatory
imagination. This shift is expressed and captured in their slogan: we
are a revolution that makes revolution possible (cited in zizek,
zoo,. zoo), in which those organised in struggle and indeed, willing
to take up arms to that end, seek to be the catalysts rather than the
embodiment of change. This is a timely expression of Gramscis
war of position. It is further elaborated on by Subcommandante
Marcoss comment:
We do not want state power. It is civil society that must trans-
form Mexicowe are only a small part of that civil society,
the armed partour role is to be guarantors of the political
space that civil society needs. (cited in Arquilla et al., i,,. c,)
Consequently, the Zapatistas relationship to the state is
ambiguous. While not interested in seizing the state, they are not so
politically naive as to negate the possibility of civil society, or a part
thereof, engaging itself in the struggle to seize the state either
through elections or force of arms. This ambiguity allows both pro-
and anti-state forces within civil society to support Zapatista
demands. Crucially, even though the San Andrs Accords were
signed in i,,c, they have not been acted on by the Mexican state.
Without doubt, the Zapatista rebellion contributed to the overthrow
of Institutional Revolutionary Party rule in Mexico. The result is
that the Zapatistas now exist in a non-place in which they are
technically not at war with the Mexican state, but in which at the
same time, their communities are surrounded by and continually
encroached on by the military and paramilitary death squads.
Holloways theory addresses the philosophical inquiry, How can
we change the world without taking power?(Holloway, zooz. zi). In
responding to this question, he proposes an alternative
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What is power? Can we move beyond its reach?
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comprehension of power and its workings that challenges the
commonly assumed perception that changing the world is, at a
fundamental level, about capturing the levers of powerthat is,
the state. The experiences of the Zapatistas inspire Holloways
project because, in his words, they reveal the possibility of
salvaging revolution from the collapse of the state illusion and
from the collapse of the power illusion (Holloway, 2002: 21).
While Holloways reading of the Zapatistas seems limited, their
discourse regarding civil society is the foundation of what he terms
anti-power, the meaning of which I shall explain in due course. It is
into this space that he proposes to insert a new language of struggle
based on a phenomenological reading of Marxs labour theory of
value.
For Holloway, the scream implies doing, which is basically the
ability to do things; and moreover, doing implies power, power-to-
do (Holloway, zooz. z). In this conceptualisation, power-to is never
individual but always social; that is, doing is always part of a social
flow, but the flow is constituted in different ways (Holloway, zooz.
z). Power-to approaches Marxs category of labour power but
does not contain the theoretical vigour or categorical structure in
which Marx poses his concept. For Holloway, the problem emerges
when the social flow of doing is broken by the powerful, where
they present themselves as individual doers while the rest simply
disappear from sight. In so doing, argues Holloway:
The we of doing appears as an I or as a he: Caesar did this,
Caesar did that. The we is now an antagonistic we, divided
between the rulers (the visible subjects) and the ruled (the
invisible de-subjectied subjects) Power-to now becomes
power-over, a relation of power over others. (Holloway,
zooz. z,)
In essence, power-over is the breaking of the social flow of
doing (Holloway, zooz. z,), which again approximates something
akin to Marxs understanding of capital as the accumulation of
surplus value or dead labour, without having its breadth of
understanding or philosophical acumen.
Holloway argues:
Whereas power-to is a uniting, a bringing together of my
doing with the doing of others, the exercise of power-over is
a separation. The exercise of power-over separates concep-
tion from realisation, done from doing, one persons doing
from anothers, subject from object. (Holloway, zooz. z,)
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This is not to infer that subject and object are constituted by
capitalism. On the contrary, Holloway suggests that subjectivity is
inherent in negativity, which is signied by the scream, and that
negativity is inherent in any society. For Holloway, the separation
between subject and object, doer and done or done-to, acquires a
new meaning under capitalism, leading to a new denition and a
new consciousness of subjectivity and objectivity, a new distance
and antagonism between subject and object:
Thus, rather than the subject being the product of moderni-
ty, it is rather that modernity expresses consciousness of the
new separation of subject and object which is inherent in the
focusing of social domination upon the done. (Holloway,
zooz. i)
In making this argument, Holloway is obviously drawing on
Hegel, but via the numerous mediations of a neo-Kantian
Marxism. The subject Holloway points to is the Kantian subject,
which Hegel critiques in his elaboration of the unfolding of the
non-dualistic subjectthat is, Geist. Consequently, Holloways
argument that the separation of the subject and object is inherent
in the focusing of the social domination of the done is an attempt
to insert his phenomenologically grounded categories into this
dialectical appreciation. The weakness of this approach is that
phenomenology is drawn into the categorical structure of
Marxism without the ontological and epistemological tensions
between these often contrary traditions being adequately
addressed. Moreover, Holloways uncritical acceptance of the
Kantian subject deeply compromises his ability to comprehend the
nature of dualism within global capitalism.
In making this argument, Holloway takes to task Hardt and
Negris understanding of power as the distinction between potentia
and potestas. He argues that their conceptualisation points to a
difference inherent in the subject, whereas what is at issue is an
antagonism over the emergence of subjectivity, or rather, an
antagonistic metamorphosis. Holloway contends that Power-to
exists as power-over, but the power-to is subjected to and in
rebellion against power-over, and power-over is nothing but, and
therefore absolutely dependent upon, the metamorphosis of
power-to (Holloway, zooz. c).
Thus the struggle to liberate power-to is not a struggle to construct
a counter-power, which is Hardt and Negris term for the immanent
power that constitutes the multitudes that can transform Empire, in
which power has been constructed: as the mirror of power and able
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to defeat it, army against army, party against party, with the result
that power reproduces itself within the revolution itself (Holloway,
zooz. c). As an alternative to Hardt and Negris counter-power,
Holloway poses the possibility of anti-power, which, he argues, is
radically different from counter-power in that it is the dissolution of
power-over, the emancipation of power-to (Holloway, zooz. c).
The problem is that Holloway does not adequately demonstrate
how this distinction is realised, and when it moves from the realm
of the theoretical into that of social practice.
Understanding power in a capitalist society as the relationship
between power-to and power-over, Holloway muses:
To pose the question of the vulnerability of power thus
requires two steps: the opening of the category of power to
reveal its contradictory character, which has been described
here in terms of the antagonism between power-to and
power-over; and second, the understanding of this antagonis-
tic relation as an internal relation. Power-to exists as power-
over: power-over is the form of power-to, a form which
denies its substance. Power-over can exist only as transformed
power-to. Power-over can exist only as the product of trans-
formed doing (labour) That is the key to its weakness.
(Holloway, zooz. ,o)
In this articulation, he is pointing to a fairly orthodox
appreciation of the dialectical relationship between capital and
labour, albeit one framed in phenomenological terminology. In
order to help unpack the implications of Holloways analysis of
power, I will briefly address the way a reworked labour theory of
value can aid us in comprehending and transforming the workings
of power.
Numerous social movement theorists/activists, and post-
structuralism more generally, criticise Marxs labour theory of
value for its inability to comprehend difference sufciently. While
dynamics of gender, race, nature, nation, ethnicity, sexuality, ability
et al. are framed by capitalist political economy, they cannot be
simply reduced to this dynamic. In defending his reading of Marx,
Holloway encounters the contribution of Michel Foucault as a
representative critic of Marxs understanding of power. Holloway
points out that Foucault argues that it is a mistake to think of power
in terms of a binary antagonism; rather, we must think of it as a
multiplicity of force relations (Foucault, i,,o. ,z). But Holloway
does not take Foucaults observation seriously enough, for it
destabilises his own understanding of the world. Too often, the
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theorising of the relationship between class analysis and difference
is posed in a dualistic either/or fashion, which is of limited use or
value. An inquiry that takes both class and difference seriously,
coupled with a willingness to squarely face the ramications of this
fecund encounter, entails a potentially revolutionary approach,
which seems to me to be the most pressing theoretical task at this
historical juncture.
Holloway critiques Foucaults commitment and focus, in
particular in his defence of micro-practices, since it does not allow
him to comprehend any sense of totality or thus any possibility of
universal emancipation. The weakness of Holloways reading of
Foucault is that he does not adequately address the epistemological
and ontological implications that difference and the struggles for
recognition pose to a Marxist understanding of power.
2
This is not to
suggest that we should reject the category of class or class
analysison the contrary. But reimagined class struggles within
the conditions of postmodernity need to take the challenges of
difference more seriously. This task requires that we be willing to
enter, interrogate, reflect upon and re-theorise the relationship to
dualismand in particular, I believe, to the human relationship to
nature and the relationship of theory to practice.
Due to his inability to adequately engage difference, Holloways
analysis of power remains unable to comprehend the
contradictory, simultaneous existence of the lesbian black
bourgeoise and the white male worker, who nd themselves
situated as oppressor and oppressed. What this points to is an
inherent weakness in Holloways phenomenological categorisation
of power-to and power-over, for they are not as clearly
distinguishable as he would have us believe. I would contend that
there are considerable grey areas within this categorisation, where
certain types of power-over are necessary not only to survival but
also to the functioning of more inclusive, even participatory forms
of democracy and globalisation. Holloway is silent about possible
areas of legitimate forms of authority, such as in childparent and
studentteacher relationships. Furthermore, he does not engage
the question of representation, for even direct forms of democracy
that involve thousands if not millions of people necessitate levels
of representation and accountability. Finally, isnt a certain level of
power-over implied in the human relationship to nature regarding
farming and food production, even if we are able to extract the
prot motive and private property from the process? In assessing
Holloways attempt to theorise and categorise the slippery essence
of power, we are brought face to face with what may indeed be
structural limitations of language to represent dynamics that are
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multi-dimensional and constantly in motiona point made very
aptly by deconstructionists.
For Holloway, commodity fetishism is the central theoretical
problem confronted by any theory of revolution (Holloway, zooz.
,), and as such, he wants to critique the dominant readings of
fetishism as offered by scientic Marxism. In outlining his position,
he caricatures and rejects the positive dialectic as a guaranteed
negation-of-negation happy ending, and defends Adornos negative
dialectics as the open ended negation of the untrue, as revolt
against unfreedom (Holloway, zooz. ,). This position, however, is
unable to sublate the limitations of scientic Marxism, but rather,
gets stuck in negation and therefore merely mirrors that which is
being criticised. Holloways argument also begs the question as to
how exactly Marx came to comprehend the fetishism of the
commodity in the rst place, which Holloway now wants to re-
theorise.
In outlining the basic assumptions of his perspective, Holloway
argues that Marxism as a theory of struggle is inevitably a theory
of uncertainty. Fetishism is (false) certainty, anti-fetishism is
uncertainty (Holloway, zooz. ,). This observation has two crucial
weaknesses: rst, it sets up an false opposition between the certainty
of scientic Marxism and Holloways position of uncertainty
where is there room, in this schemata, for the methodological break
with scientic Marxism present in Luxemburgs socialism or
barbarism thesis?
3
Second, in making this argument, Holloway
reies uncertainty and gets stuck in it. Granted, scientic Marxism
has to a considerable degree been closed and limited in its
epistemological approach to the world, which Holloway is correct to
criticise. But offering Adornos negative dialectic as the alternative,
which negates certainty with uncertainty, is not actually an
improvement on the situation. Will the limitations of certainty be
overcome by its negation of uncertainty? Or rather, is uncertainty
part of the process of critiquing certainty and coming to a new
understanding of knowledge? What I am suggesting is that rather
than Adornos negative dialectic being offered as the alternative to
certainty, it should be contained within a greater Hegelian whole.
When Holloway contends that there is nothing xed to which we
can cling to for reassurance: not class, not Marx, not revolution,
nothing but the moving negation of untruth (Holloway, zooz. ,,),
he is demonstrating his own inability to move beyond an abstract
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negation of Marxism. While this position is fairly popular in the
current context, it is of limited value since it can only know what it
is against, and has immense difculty in articulating what it is
ghting for. This is not to reject the value of deconstruction, but
rather to recognise it as part of a greater process. I would agree with
Holloway that we should not cling to abstract categories; but this
proposition does not entail the rejection of a commitment to the
processes that the notions class, labour and revolution represent
in the real world. Such a commitment necessitates a commitment
neither to certainty nor to uncertainty, but rather an appreciation of
the dialectical relationship of this opposition. This is why
postmodern forms of Marxism are worth considering, for whether
they are conscious of the process or not, they are attempts to bring
Marxism together with its deconstructive negation and move
beyond either/or thinking. Herein lies the move back to Hegel and
the possibilities for the theorisation of alliance politics, which takes
both class and difference seriously.
In order to construct his argument regarding fetishism, Holloway
takes us back to Marxs analysis of the commodity with particular
focus on its dualistic nature, which for Holloway remains the point
of fracture of the social flow of doing (Holloway, zooz. ,c). In
reading Marx, Holloway focuses on the observation that: separation
is the real generation process of capital (cited in Holloway, zooz.
,,). This understanding not only informs Holloways analysis of
power as the separation between the doing and the done, but it also
allows him to weave his take on power back into Marxs analysis.
Holloway contends that commodity fetishism is, therefore, the
penetration of capitalist power-over into the core of our being, into
all our habits of thought, all our relations with other people
(Holloway, zooz. ,o). But how does Holloway think that capitalism
has penetrated to the core of our beingwhat are his criteria for
assessing such totalising? The most glaring weakness of this
position critiquing scientic Marxisms view of fetishism is that the
negative dialectic contains no epistemological criteria for assessing
the validity of claims (see Habermas, i,,. i,;).
Holloway argues that in order to proceed, we must open up the
concept of fetishism categorically. In this, he contends that there are
two dominant ways of reading fetishismthat is, rst, hard fetishism,
where the fetish is a fact and the only possible source of anti-
fetishism lies outside the ordinary, either in the party (Lukcs),
amongst privileged intellectuals (Adorno and Horkheimer), or in
the substratum of outcasts and outsiders (Marcuse) (Holloway, zooz.
). Hard fetishism necessitates taking power where the revolution
is on behalf of others. Counterposed to this perspective is what
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Holloway refers to as fetishisation-as-process. To answer the question
of how we can know such fetishism, he quotes Bloch approvingly in
that:
Alienation could not even be seen, and condemned of rob-
bing people of their freedom and depriving the world of its
soul, if there did not exist some measure of its opposite, of
that possible coming-to-oneself, being-with-oneself, against
which alienation can be measured. (Holloway, zooz. ,)
Thus, the resistance to and rejection of alienation in our daily
practice is the cornerstone of our knowing the process of
fetishism. In making this argument, Holloway offers no criteria as
to how we are to assess the myriad ways in which people resist, or
at least, think they are resisting alienation. He goes on to argue that
if fetishism and non-fetishism coexist, then it can only be as
antagonistic processes. Fetishism is not static but is itself a process
of de-fetishisation/re-fetishisation. Thus understanding
fetishisation-as-process is the key to thinking about changing the
world without taking power in that:
To nd anti-power, we do not need to look outside the move-
ment of domination: anti-power, anti-fetishisation is present
against-in-and-beyond the movement of domination itself,
not as economic forces or objective contradictions or future,
but as now, as us. (Holloway, zooz. ,)
The problem with this perspective is that is Holloway rejects the
standpoint for the critique of ideology, and in offering no alternative,
is swamped in the innumerable machinations of the subject.
He contends that if we abandon fetishisation-as-process, we
necessarily also abandon revolution as self-emancipation (Holloway,
zooz. io, my emphasis). While I would accept this position, I would
also propose that it is time to address the shadow of this
argumentthat is, the emancipation from our limited and
separated notions of the self, which is informed by a Kantian-
Descartian worldview that acts as one of the foundations of
modern views of knowledge and subjectivity. The reinvention of
the emancipatory imagination is predicated on recognising and
responding to the tension within the competing perspectives
available within our notion of self-emancipation. The question
that arises from such a proposition is, from what position can we
begin to question, let alone critique modern notions of the self ?
My response is to return to Marx via Hegels Geist.
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Holloway argues that, central to his reformulation of fetishism:
It is crucial to see the bourgeois nature of our own
assumptions and categories, or, more concretely, a critique of
our own complicity in the reproduction of capitalist power
relations. The critique of bourgeois thought is the critique of
the separation of subject and object in our own thought.
(Holloway, zooz. ,)
In order to engage in this level of self-reflection, he draws on
Adornos negative dialectics and its critique of identity thinking,
which is an attempt to go to the roots of the subject/object dualism
within capitalism. In critiquing identity thinking, though, Holloway
is at pains to distinguish the difference between identifying as an
essential part of thinking, and identifying as a project of
subjectivity in the world. All conceptualisation involves
identication; if we cannot identify we cannot think the
difference is between identication that stops there and an
identication that negates itself in the process of identifying.
(Holloway, 2002: 102, my emphasis).
The identication that negates itself, which Adorno termed
non-identity thinking, is by necessity an open-ended and
inquisitive process, which implies neither dialectical synthesis nor
an eschatological end point. Holloway argues:
To think on the basis of doing is to identify, and, in the same
breath, to negate that identication. This is to recognise the
inadequacy of the concept to that which is conceptualised
thinking on the basis of doing means thinking against-and-beyond
our own thought. (Holloway, zooz. ioz, my emphasis)
What sort of knowledge can be created by thinking against-
and-beyond our own thought?especially when it seems to leave
no room for the discussion of praxis, which is not concerned purely
with abstract reasoning. Moreover, what are the implications of
this essentially deconstructive perspective for our understanding of
class and the possibilities for developing a revolutionary
transformation?
In order to analyse class, Holloway inserts Adornos non-
identity thinking into Marxs comprehension of fetishism and
concludes that:
Identity implies denition Denition is the description of
an identity which is distinct from other identities
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denition constitutes otherness Denition excludes us as
active subjects the we-who-want-to-change-the-world
cannot be dened. (Holloway, zooz. cz)
In making this argument, Holloway resists the very possibility of
denition to argue that dening class leads to a blinkering of the
perception of social antagonism (Holloway, 2002: 141). Class
struggle, then, is the struggle to classify and against being classied,
and Holloway argues:
We do not struggle as working class, we struggle against being
working class, against being classied it is the unity of the
process of classication (the unity of capital accumulation)
that gives unity to our struggle, not our unity as members of
a common class working class identity is seen as a non-
identity; the communion of struggle to be not working class
We exist against-in-and-beyond capital and against-in-
and-beyond ourselves everyone is torn apart by the class
antagonism It is only in so far as we are/we are not the
working class that revolution as the self-emancipation of the
working class becomes conceivable. The working class cannot
emancipate itself in so far as it is working class. It is only in
so far as we are not working class that the question of eman-
cipation is even posed. And yet, it is only as far as we are the
working class (subjects torn from their objects) that the need
for emancipation arises. (Holloway, zooz. i,,i,,)
However, Holloway seems here to conflate class struggle with a
form of identity politics. Working-class identity and the
transformative power of solidarity that can unfold from this
identity are means, not ends in themselves. The aim of class
struggle, as Marx frames it, is to transform the material basis upon
which the very production of class is based. The struggle to
transform capitalist social relations is predicated on the ability of
the working class to move from being a class-in-itself to a class-
for-itself, which entails the development of class consciousness. In
order to be effective in their struggles, workers need to be able to
identify with and learn from local, national and international
dimensions of the class struggle, which is why addressing the
problematic of who constitutes the working class is so central to
Marxism. Holloways analysis lacks any discussion of praxis as
outlined in the Theses on Feuerbach, in which Marx explains how it is
only by their practical experience of struggle that people can
liberate themselves from fetishism. This understanding is
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embodied in Eduardo Galeanos expression: We are what we do to
change what we are: our identity resides in action and in struggle
(Galeano, i,. i,o). Dismissing the possibility of dening the
working class heralds the death of Marxism. Holloway takes a
phenomenological approach, and argues that the working class
denes itself by what it doesthat is, that it is a self-dening
process with no necessary objective criteria. In contrast, Marx
denes class through the social relationship, which objectively
exists and can be understood. Through his rejection of the very
possibility of sociological denition, Holloway falls into a
subjectivism that offers no viable criteria for discriminating among
many innumerable claims for and proposals of different actions.
Central to Holloways project is the desire to reinvent the meanings
and practices associated with revolution. In the process of forging
the space for an autonomist and more libertarian reading of
Marxism, I would argue that he too quickly and glibly dismisses
scientic Marxism. In remaining almost exclusively in the realm of
theory, Holloway tends to caricature and unnecessarily simplify the
history of the struggles that constitute scientic Marxism. While
my intention is not to defend scientic Marxism, it is important to
recognise that there are many tensions within this tradition, out of
which numerous lessons can be gleaned, especially regarding the
relationship of oppositional forces and the state.
In categorically rejecting scientic Marxism, Holloway begins to
outline his alternative understanding of revolution, the starting
point of which is the Rousseauean observation that property is the
means by which freedom is reconciled with domination. Enclosure
is the form of compulsion compatible with freedom (Holloway,
2002: 206). Holloways understanding of revolution is grounded in
recent autonomist discussions regarding enclosure and the ending
of the commons.
4
Holloway writes, It is not enough to flee, to scream
for the scream to grow in strength, there must be a recuperation
of doing, a development of power-to. That implies a re-taking of
the means of doing (Holloway, zooz. zo). With this, Holloway is
reformulating a fairly orthodox understanding of revolution as the
need to seize the means of production into his own terminology
regarding the scream and the relationship of the doing to the done.
He goes on to argue, our struggle, then, is not the struggle to make
ours the property of the means of production, but to dissolve both
property and the means of production (Holloway, zooz. zio). In
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making this argument, Holloway is pointing out that the very
categories of property and the means of production are
themselves the result of habitual separation between the means of
doing from doing, which is a result of the rupture of doing
(Holloway, zooo. zo,). In other words, it is not enough to merely
seize the means of production, for we must also be able to
transform the fragmentation of the social flow of doing which is
the precondition of our doing, which engenders separation in our
thinking (Holloway, zooo. zo,zio). As previously argued, I remain
unconvinced by Holloways phenomenological categorisation of
doing and done as a way to understand the workings of power in
capitalist societies; but despite this, he demonstrates the insidious
nature of dualityoften characterised as the separation of the
knower and the knownthat lies at the very heart of the problem
of revolutionary praxis. The reinvention of the emancipatory
imagination must be grounded in an ability to reflect on and
maintain an awareness of our most basic assumptions regarding the
constitution of the self and the way knowledge is constructed.
Developing his argument, Holloway goes on to argue, Capital
is the movement of separating, of fetishizing, the movement of
denying movement. Revolution is the movement against
separating, against fetishizing, against the denial of movement
(Holloway, zooz. zio). While I can appreciate what Holloway is
trying to do in offering a basic opposition between capital and
revolution, I believe that he is ultimately unsuccessful in
articulating the essence of this relationship. How can capital be
the movement of denying movement? Certainly, to a degree,
capital denies the movement of labour from the South to the
North; but at the same time, it is supportive of information and
capital flows across all sorts of boundaries, and has been able to
transform forms of resistance to capitalism into fashionable new
commodities that perpetuate its very existence. Holloways
argument reies the meaning of revolution, and does not
adequately recognise the central importance revolution has to the
very reproduction of capital. A lucid example of this relationship
is the military Keynesianism of the USA under Reagan in the
1980s, which was an effective response to its own economic woes
as well as to the insurgencies in Central America. The challenge
seems to be as follows: how can we create and reproduce an
understanding of what is, while at the same time keeping alive
the possibilities of what can be, based on the principles of
dignity, democracy and justice?
Ever vigilant in his critique of scientic Marxism, Holloway
argues for a non-instrumental concept of revolution (Holloway,
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zooz. zi,). By instrumentalism, he means engaging with capital on
capitals own terms, accepting that our own world can come into
being only after the revolution. But capitals terms are not simply
a given, they are an active process of separating (Holloway, zoo,.
zi,). Holloways observation begs the question as to who, what and
how we can engage capital not in its own terms? While Holloway
is correct in recognising that capitals terms are an active process
of separating, he does not adequately demonstrate what this
process of separation is or how it can be reversed, transformed or
otherwise avoided. Holloways focus is more directly on taking
scientic Marxists to task for separating means and ends in their
comprehension of revolution. Thus, Holloway argues that
revolution should not be reduced to a continual process of
organisation-building, and that certainly there must be an
accumulation of practices of oppositional self-organization, but
this should be thought of not as a linear accumulation, but as a
cumulative breaking of linearity (Holloway, 2002: 214). For
Holloway, the aim of events is not to build a centralised
organisation but, in the words of Benjamin, to blast open the
continuum of history (cited in Holloway, 2002: 214). While these
comments are perhaps inspiring, for those interested in looking
for a way beyond the limitations of Marxism-Leninism and social
democracy they are vague, and offer little to the development of
a transitional politics.
Holloways reading of the central categories of Marxism such
as the state, power, class and fetishism, are in response to the crisis
of identity within Marxism. This crisis marks for Holloway:
A liberation from certainties: from the certainties of capital
but equally from the certainties of labour. The crisis in
Marxism is a freeing of Marxism from dogmatism; the crisis
of the revolutionary subject is the liberation of the subject from
knowing. (Holloway, zooz. ziz, my emphasis)
It is alarming that Holloway should actually champion the
liberation of the subject from knowing. What is even more
disturbing is that he tries to make a connection between this
perspective and the Zapatista reinvention of revolution, writing:
We do not know we have lost all certainty, but the open-
ness of uncertainty is central to revolution. Asking we walk,
say the Zapatistas. We do not ask only because we do not
know the way, but also because asking the way is part of the
revolutionary process itself. (Holloway, zooz. zi,)
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While openness to uncertainty is central to a revolutionary
perspective, it does not require that we lose all certainty. In posing
this argument, Holloway fundamentally misrepresents the
Zapatista struggle, trying to squeeze their experiences into his
negative categorical structure. It must be pointed out that any
political movement against oppression that grounds itself in a
negative dialectical perspective forfeits the ability to produce
concrete knowledgethat is, the ability to reflect upon its own and
others experiences, and to respond accordingly.
Theorising revolution in a post-Zapatista context, Holloway
makes explicit a link between his own anti-politics and the ability
to assert alternative ways of doing, referring to:
Strikes that do not just withdraw labour but point to alterna-
tive ways of doing; university protests that do not just close
down the university but suggest a different experience of
study; occupations of buildings that turn those buildings into
social centres revolutionary struggles that do not just try
to defeat the government but transform the experience of
social life. (Holloway, zooz. zi, my emphasis)
In making this argument, Holloway is once again proposing the
anarchist argument that there exists an absolute dualism between
social life and the state in which no shades of grey exist. In
critiquing scientic Marxism, he is able to draw on anarchist
critiques of the cult of personality and democratic centralism and
to recognise some problems inherent in seizing the state to good
effect. But in their acceptance of the anarchist demonisation of the
state in all forms and in all contexts, Holloways arguments are of
limited revolutionary value. In offering a critique of revolution as
an orchestrated event conducted by a party, Holloway reiterates the
utopian impulse that is too often derided in scientic Marxism: to
propose that revolution has become a question or a process of
questioning. He argues that in this unfolding there has been a basic
shift from the politics of organisation to the politics of events. The
essential difference implied within this shift is in the way we relate
to time: revolution as events moves from building for the future to
become an expression in the present moment. Holloway argues,
At their best such events are flashes against fetishism, festivals
of the non-subordinate, carnivals of the oppressed, explo-
sions of the pleasure principle, intimations of the nunc stans.
For revolution is the explicit unication of constitution and
existence, overcoming the separation of is and is not, the end
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of domination of dead labour over living doing, the dissolu-
tion of identity. (Holloway, zooz. zi,)
But we might ask more critically whether Holloways
perspective really articulates a postmodern pastiche of
revolutionary politics. In this pastiche, has revolution itself become
another postmodern cultural commodity to be consumed by fluid
and schizophrenic subjects caught within the web of what Jameson
calls the perpetual present? It is not clear whether Holloways
theoretical can answer or reflect on this critical question, since he
tends to assert rather than explain the dynamics that constitute his
understanding of revolution. Thus, while he invokes Meister
Eckharts nunc stans,
5
there is no explanation or discussion of its
meaning or its relationship to the pleasure principle. Moreover, his
proposition that revolution is the explicit unication of
constitution and existence is also sadly left unexamined. Although
Holloway does point out key areas for consideration in any effort to
go beyond the historical limitations of traditional understandings
of revolution, there are crucial weaknesses in his analysis that
vitiate its validity as emancipatory theory.
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Salleh, A. (i,,;) Ecofeminism as Politics: Nature, Marx and the Postmodern
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1 The political implications of the separation of reason and emotion
have probably best been addressed within eco-feminismrecent
examples include Plumwood (i,,) and Salleh (i,,;). Hegels
John Holloways Change The World Without Taking Power
Notes
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Capital & Class 95
Phenomenology of Spirit (i,;;) also addresses this question, though it is
a much more difcult text to engage with.
2 For a more thorough discussion of the tensions between struggles for
redistribution (class) and those for recognition (differences), see the
recent debates between Nancy Fraser and Axel Honneth, Redistribution
or Recognition: A PoliticalPhilosophical Exchange (zoo).
3 Luxemburgs socialism or barbarism thesis is outlined in her
pamphlet, The crisis of social democracy (i,i,), available in Waters
(ed.) Rosa Luxemburg Speaks (i,;o).
4 For an introduction to some of the autonomist discussions regarding
enclosure, see Midnight Notes (i,,z), and the website
<www.thecommoner.org>.
5 Nunc stans is a term from the work of Meister Eckhart, a Christian
mystic of the Rhineland region in the thirteenth century. It points to
there being no separation between time and beingthat is, between
the creation and the creator. While Holloway uses the term, he merely
inserts it, unexplained, into a secular context.
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