Holloway - Change the World Without Taking Power

Change the World Without Taking Power

www.plutobooks.com

The Communist Manifesto
Introduction by David Harvey 9780745328461

Revolution, Democracy, Socialism
Edited by Paul Le Blanc 9780745327600

Catching History On The Wing
Foreword by Colin Prescod 9780745328348

Black Skin, White Masks
Forewords by Homi K. Bhabha and Ziauddin Sardar 9780745328485

Jewish History, Jewish Religion
Forewords by Pappe / Mezvinsky / Said / Vidal 9780745328409

Theatre of the Oppressed
9780745328386

Staying Power
Introduction by Paul Gilroy 9780745330723

Change the World Without Taking Power
9780745329185

Socialism or Barbarism
Edited by Paul Le Blanc and Helen C. Scott 9780745329888

First published 2002 and 2005 by Pluto Press
345 Archway Road, London N6 5AA and
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010

www.plutobooks.com

Distributed in the United States of America exclusively by
Palgrave Macmillan, a division of St. Martins Press LLC,
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010

Copyright John Holloway 2002, 2005, 2010

The right of John Holloway to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978 0 7453 2919 2 hardback
ISBN 978 0 7453 2918 5 paperback
ISBN 978 1 7837 1045 4 ePub

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Acknowledgements

There are an awful lot of people to thank for their help in producing this book.

First, my thanks to Elona Pelez, whose mephistophelean presence moves through every word, dot and comma of the book, and without whom I could never even have imagined the unity of constitution and existence: not duration, but nunc stans.

To Werner Bonefeld, Richard Gunn and now Sergio Tischler I owe a great deal for countless shared seminars and discussions over the years, for their support and for their very valuable comments on various stages of this text.

I have been very fortunate in being able to discuss both the text in detail and related ideas with the members of the seminar group on Subjectivity and Critical Theory in the Instituto de Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades in Puebla: to all involved, very many thanks. Two trips to Argentina have also played an important part in helping me to crystallise the ideas contained in this book: the first, to give a seminar in the Instituto Argentino de Desarrollo Econmico, organised by Gustavo Roux and Eliseo Giai; the second to give a week-long intensive seminar on the first draft of the book in the Facultad de Filosofa y Letras in Rosario, organised by Gladys Rimini and Gustavo Guevara: to the organisers and all the participants my deepest thanks. And, while in Argentina, a very special thanks to Alberto Bonnet, Marcela Zangaro and Nstor Lpez for their constant help and encouragement. Jumping from the other side of the world, from Argentina to Scotland, I owe much to the long-term inspiration and encouragement of George Wilson, Eileen Simpson, Maggie Sinclair, Rod MacKenzie, Vassiliki Kolocotroni and Olga Taxidou.

My sincerest thanks too to those others who have been kind enough to comment, often in great detail, on drafts of this book: Simon Susen, Ana Dinerstein, Jorge Luis Acanda, Chris Wright, Jos Manuel Martnez, Cyril Smith, Massimo de Angelis, Rowan Wilson, Ana Esther Cecea, Enrique Rajchenberg, Patricia King, Javier Villanueva and Lars Stubbe. To Steve Wright, thanks for last-minute help with a quotation.

Change the World Without Taking Power vii

To Roberto Vlez Pliego, Director of the Instituto de Ciencias Sociales of the Benemrita Universidad Autnoma de Puebla, heartfelt thanks for his support and for helping to make the Institute an exceptional place to work.

To Aidan, Anna-Maeve and Mariana Holloway, thanks for making the abandonment of hope unthinkable.

To the many others who have helped and encouraged, but whom I do not mention here, please accept my thanks and remember that identification is domination.

Preface to the First Edition

This book was already in the publishing process before the attacks on the World Trade Center occurred, before the bombing of Afghanistan began.

The scream with which the book begins has become louder and more anguished since that date as we witness the arrogant stupidity of those who kill, those who bomb, those who would destroy the human race. The call to think about how we can change the world without entering into the pursuit of power is more urgent than ever.

Most terrible of all is the feeling of helplessness as we watch the televised bombs falling and the bodies being pulled from the rubble. How, in spite of everything, can we understand our own force, our own capacity to create a different world? That is the issue that this book seeks to address.

The deepening world recession is the other phenomenon which has changed since I submitted the manuscript to Pluto Press. I have done nothing to add new data to the discussion of crisis in Chapter 10, but the argument is given extra force by current developments. Again the central issue is: how do we overcome the feeling of helplessness that seems now to pervade everything? How do we understand that, in relation to the crisis as in relation to the war, we are not victims but subjects, the only subjects?

Preface to the New Edition

I am delighted that this book is being published in a new edition, eight years after it first appeared in 2002. Like any author, I want the book to have a life beyond the immediate context into which it was born.

Certainly the moment into which the book was born was important for the impact it made. Nowhere was that clearer than in Argentina: when I presented the book in Buenos Aires in late 2002, there were well over a thousand people at the presentation for me a scary and exhilarating indication of the way in which the idea of changing the world without taking power was an integral part of the social and political upheaval of that moment, the upsurge of neighbourhood assemblies, recovered factories,