Alex Callinicos on changing the world without taking power August 12, 2007

The huge wave of anti-war protests on 15 February were an astonishing demonstration of just how formidable a movement of resistance to imperialism is now developing around the world. But we should have no illusions about the power of our enemies. Politically, Tony Blair has never been weaker. But he still presides over a state that has formidable coercive power.

The Metropolitan Police may have been on their best behaviour on 15 February, but the tanks at Heathrow were a piece of political theatre designed both to frighten and to intimidate. Elsewhere the message has been less subtle. Anti-war activists in Egypt have been arrested and tortured. In New York on 15 February the police penned the demonstrators in and beat them up when they protested. These were just small glimpses of the concentrated violence that every state can deploy against those who challenge it.

Werner Bonefeld on changing the word without taking power (part III) August 12, 2007

III

Negation is the only path towards emancipation

(Agnoli)
Holloway”s critique of fetishism is excellent. It sets him apart from both Althusserian structuralism and Negrian ontological being outside capital. His book expresses however more than just the frustration with these approaches. Fundamentally, his critique shows capital as a form of human social relations and thus as a form that exists only in and through labour. In short, his book is subversive.

Werner Bonefeld on changing the word without taking power (part II) August 12, 2007

Now-Time (Jetzt-Zeit): blasting open the continuum of history

(Benjamin)

In structuralist conceptions, now-time is and is not the time for revolution. It is not the time for revolution because for revolution to be made effective, conditions have to be right. This view contains an element of banality. Revolutions indicate that conditions were right and the absence of revolution indicates that conditions were not right. Behind this banality, however, lurks a question that is as unfavourable to human self-emancipation as the mirror image from which it is derived, the bourgeois principle of the political leader: who decides when conditions are right – better: who commands the revolutionary battlefield? This question derives from conceptions of the working class as a thing in-itself. Condemned to reproduce capitalist structures, class struggle is firmly embedded within the project of capital as the subject and opposition to capital is thus seen to breath in bourgeois ideological clouds of freedom, equality and Bentham. Working class struggle can, as Lenin had it, only produce economic consciousness, or trade union consciousness. Political consciousness of a revolutionary kind is presumed to be structurally impossible and has, thus, to be brought to the workers from the outside. This revolutionary conception takes its cue from Engel”s notion of revolution as “humanity”s leap from the realm of necessity to the realm of freedom” (Engels, 1973, p. 226). This conception of revolution as a leap depends thus on the introduction of a new subject that competes with capital for the directorship of the class struggle, that is, the party. The party becomes the theoretical guardian and organisational embodiment of the historical role of the working class to make socialism. Lenin”s idea that the masses by themselves are incapable of revolutionary consciousness denies the possibility of revolution as the self-emancipation of the working class and, instead, confirms that revolutionary change can only be brought about from above, forcing, as it were, the working class to ‘leap’ into communism. In this struggle between two subjects, capital and the party, the seizure, retention and employment of power becomes the sine qua non for either the continued existence of the working class as a structure reproducing agency or its transformation into socialist Man – a Man of standardised issue and thus a Man who, no longer exploited by the owners of the means of production, becomes an object of technocratic planning in the workers state that regulates the economy ostensibly on behalf of the workers. In this conception, Now-Time is a continuum of power that leaps from one historical form to another on the basis of time as (economic) measure, that is, labour remains the measure of all things and thus a resource.

Werner Bonefeld on changing the word without taking power (part I) August 12, 2007

Truth has not harmed anybody, except the messenger

(Adorno)

Marxists agree amongst themselves that class struggle is the motor of history. Yet, controversy rages over the question about the social constitution of class struggle – should it be derived from the objective laws of capitalist development, presupposing class as a thing in-itself that requires transformation into a class for-itself with the help of the party? Or is the world of capital divided between an already existing revolutionary subject, now reformulated as the bio-power of the life-world of the multitude, and the capitalist system that, like a machine, seeks – and this ever more unsuccessfully – to contain the multitude within the parameters of capitalist command? The former conception belongs to the history of structuralist approaches that Althusser focused and summarised; the latter to the autonomist tradition that Negri represents in ever more distorted forms.

Robert Allen on changing the world without taking power August 12, 2007

THERE is no economic crisis, no crisis of capital, no crisis of parliamentary politics? And if there is a problem, our bureaucrats, politicians, statespeople, scientists and technocrats will fix it. There is nothing to worry about. So rest easy. The bombers have gone to kill the nasty babies to make the world safe for our children to grow up in. And democracy will ensure that fascism and totalitarianism never return to our societies.

Michael Loewy on changing the world without taking power August 12, 2007

Dear John,

Sorry for the delay, but finally I had the time – and the plesure – to read your book. It is a remarkable essay, thought-provocative and truly radical – in the original sense of the word, “ going to the roots of the problems ”. It brings to the fore, in an impressive way, the critical and subversive power of negativity.

Before I try to map my areas of agreement and disagreement with you, let me first briefly state my own standpoint, my own political and philosophical options, which are the “ position ”, the Sitz-im-Leben , from where I try to assess your contribution.

I am, and have been during the last thirty years, a member – a “militant” – of the Fourth International. I don’t define myself as “ Trotskyst ” because, in spite of my admiration for Lev Davidovitch Bronstein, I draw my political inspiration mainly from Rosa Luxemburg. I will try in a moment to explain my disagreements with your reading of Rosa.

I consider myself a Marxist, but I’m very much interested in the Anarchist tradition, and some of my books are celebrations of libertarian socialism. And I’m also a great admirer of the Zapatista movement that goes without saying. Philosophically, my main references are George Lukacs and the Frankfurt School (mainly Walter Benjamin).

Can we change the world without taking power? August 12, 2007

by John Holloway; April 06, 2005

1. I don’t know the answer. Perhaps we can change the world without taking power. Perhaps we can not. The starting-point – for all of us, I think – is uncertainty, not knowing, a common search for a way forward.

2. We are searching for a way forward, because it becomes more and more clear that capitalism is a catastrophe for humanity. A radical change in the organisation of society, that is, revolution, is more urgent than ever. And this revolution can only be world revolution if it is to be effective.

3. But it is unlikely that world revolution can be achieved in one single blow. This means that the only way in which we can conceive of revolution is as interstitial revolution, as a revolution that takes place in the interstices of capitalism, a revolution that occupies spaces in the world while capitalism still exists. The question is how we conceive of these interstices, whether we think of them as states or in other ways.