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Holloway Forum 25
Hopeful voyage; uncertain point ofarrival?Alberto R.
BonnetChange the World Without Taking Power isan extraordinary
book. It's a ship thatweighs anchor in search of thecontemporary
meaning of the revo-lution; that clearly perceives the
reefsconfronting its adventure and, notwith-standing its uncertain
end, advancesconvinced of its arrival in port. Ourcritique can only
be, then, an internalonein both the standard sense of theword, and
in the more intimate sensethat, in these pages, we'll be
travellingtogether.
John Holloway is right in supposingthat the starting point of a
revolutionarycritique is negativity: the rejection of ourdaily
experience of the relations ofexploitation and domination inherent
incapitalist society. Th is starting pointrestores us, damaged
subjects, into thecore of this revolutionary critique and,at the
same time, demands of us anegative dialecticin Adorno's senseas a
dialectic of the revolution. And thisstarting point also restores
the notionof fetishismin the footsteps of theyoung Lukacsas the key
notion of theMarxist critique of capitalist society. Agreat deal of
the best pages in HoUoway'sbook reflects on these not ions
offetishism and negativity as, for example,he outlines the
contention between thetraditions of Marxism as critique andMarxism
as positive science; or thedifference between hard fetishism
andfetishisation-as-process, revealing itsrevolutionary
thinking.
This is a good point of departure.But there is no point of
departure, no
reach a good political port. I think thatHoUoway's hopeful
voyage, notwith-standing his capacity to navigate, has lostits
direction and could take us to anunexpected point of arrival; that
is tosay, to postm ode rn politics, i.e. versionsof liberal
politics, instead of to revolutio-nary politics.The fi rst reef
that Holloway confirontson his trip is that of class
reductionism.Holloway seeks to resolve the importan tpolitical
problem of class antagonism byavoiding reducing the diverse
socialsubjects into onei.e. the working classand, at the same time,
by diluting theminto a multiplicity of the so-called
socialmovements. His manoeuvre consists,then, of redirecting those
subjects andst ruggles in to a com m on , b inaryantagonism,
between power-ro and power-over, wh ich fi-actures the social low
of doingin capi ta l i sm. Th is man oeu vre i svirtuous for many
reasons. One of themrefers to praxisunsuccessful ly.Whereas his
argument seeks to specifythe nature of the antagonism
betweenpower-to and power-over, i t cannotdistinguish it from the
antagonismbetween labour and capital, nor derivefrom this
antagonism the multiplicity ofsocial subjects and struggles. How
toderive patriarchy, for example, from anantagonism between
power-over andpower-to, which cannot be discernedfrom the
antagonism between capitaland labour? Do the capitalist marketand
the state exercise their powerthrough the identification of the
workingclass as a class, or through the atomisa-tion of this class
identity into an aggre-gate of citizens and sellers of their labou
rpower? The manoeuvre leads, then, toan undifferentiated aggregate
of socialsubjects and struggles, with non-iden tity
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26 Capital & Class #85
with workers and class struggle in abroader sense, certainly,
but his ownsuppression of any criterion justifyingthis association,
malgre lui-meme, spreadsfertilizer on the populism of
postmodernpolitics.The second reef tha t Hol lowayconfronts is the
reduct ion of thecapitalist state to an instrument and,once again,
this is another decisivepoli t ical problem for revolut
ionarythinking. Recover ing his previouscritical insight into the
state as a form ofcapitalist social relation, with reference
to the German debate of the Staatsa-bleitung, Holloway can face
this reefsuccessfully.The capitalist state is not a neutraltool
that can be used for building anemancipated society and,
consequently,the revolution cannot be conceived assimply taking
state power. PerhapsHolloway exaggerates the degree to
which revolut ionar ies of the pastconceived the revolution in
such asimple manner, bu t his argument againstsimplistic
conceptions of revolution astaking the power of the state
isconclusive, correctly posing a problemthat is still vital for
revolutionary politics.Holloway restates the question of whatis to
be done with the capitalist state,from the point of view of the
revolu-tionary. But he risks his ship in a moreturbulent sea when
he tries to find analternative answer to this question.The
manoeuvre consists, here, ofthe movement from the affirmation
thatrevolutionary politics cannot be centredon taking the power of
the state as ainstrument, to the affirmation that thestate i tself
is not central to powerrelation s in cap italist society. Th is
laststatement contradicts one of the key
separation between the political andeconomic spheres in
capitalist society.The state is the place ofpower because ofthis
separation between the political andthe economic . Hence the pa r t
i cu-larisation of the state is an illusionbutan objective
illusion, with effects thatcannot be disdained.Holloway's manoeuvre
results in aparadoxica l conclusion: tha t thequestion of what is
to be done with thecapitalist state from a revolutionaryperspective
becomes unimportant, sincethe state is only one amongst other
cent res of power re la t ions wi th incapitalist society. Th is
m anoeuvre leadsus to the micro-politics of the post-modernists,
instead of to revolutionarypolitics.Holloway's ship is damaged
afterhaving confronted the aforementionedreefs. Th e images in the
book's last pagesimages of a merely expressive quasi-
politics (a politics of events), constitutedby an aggregate of
diverse, undifFe-rentiated activities (an area of
activity),prosecuted by an aggregate of equallyundiff^erentiated
social movements (aspace ofanti-power)reveal that damage.Holloway
insists that these are imagesof revolutionary politics. And he
canrightly say that his point of departure,his charts, and the
reefs he confrontson his travels, belong to a rich traditionof
revolut ionary thinking. But thisargument is not enough. Holloway
doesnot offer any criterion that could justifythe classification of
the politics of eventsas revolutionary polit ics, and so itremains
associated with postmodernpolitics. It is not by chance that
Changethe World, along with Negri and Hardt'sEmpire, was received
as a postmodernpolitical manifesto during the revolu-
