Critical Thought against the Capitalist Hydra

John Holloway, ROAR Magazine

An honor, a joy to be here. I feel I want to dance, but I won’t do it, I’ll focus instead on what we were asked to do. I shall talk about critical thought and explain how to kill the hydra of capitalism. That’s what it’s about: we talk of the hydra not to frighten ourselves, but to think about how to defeat it. The myth of the hydra had a happy end and we too must reach a happy end.

John Holloway: cracking capitalism vs. the state option

Interview by Amador Fernández-Savater. Translated by Richard Mac Duinnsleibhe and edited by Arianne Sved of Guerrilla Translation. ROAR Magazine

In 2002, John Holloway published a landmark book: Change the World without Taking Power. Inspired by the ‘¡Ya basta!’ of the Zapatistas, by the movement that emerged in Argentina in 2001/’02, and by the anti-globalization movement, Holloway sets out a hypothesis: it is not the idea of revolution or transformation of the world that has been refuted as a result of the disaster of authoritarian communism, but rather the idea of revolution as the taking of power, and of the party as the political tool par excellence.

Open Letter to James Nxumalo, Senzo Mchunu & Jacob Zuma on the Repression in Cato Crest, Durban

To:

James Nxumalo, Mayor, eThekwini Municipality, Durban, South Africa
Senzo Mchunu, Premier, KwaZulu-Natal
Jacob Zuma, President, Republic of South Africa

We are writing to you to express our grave concern at events unfolding in the Cato Crest shack settlement in Durban.

After an illegal eviction in Cato Crest by the eThekwini Municipality in March this year, shackdwellers occupied an adjacent piece of land. They named the settlement “Marikana”. Since then, two activists have been assassinated -Thembinkosi Qumbelo and Nkululeko Gwala. A third, Nkosinathi Mngomezulu, is in critical condition after being shot by the Land Invasions Unit. A number of activists have been seriously beaten by the police. Other activists, including Bandile Mdlalose and S’bu Zikode of the shack dweller movement Abahlali baseMjondolo who have been supporting the residents, have been threatened with death. 

Talking about a revolution with John Holloway

ROAR Magazine

“There is a growing sense throughout the world that capitalism isn’t working; and that the cracks we create in it may really be the only way forward.”

 - San Andrés de Cholula, Mexico, 03/04/13

On the outskirts of Puebla and at the foot of the giant Popocatépetl volcano lies the sleepy Mexican town of San Andrés de Cholula. It is here that, on a sunny April afternoon, we meet John Holloway. Often referred to as “the philosopher of the Zapatistas”, Holloway — who is a Professor of Sociology at the Autonomous University of Puebla — is widely known for his anti-statist conception of revolution and his intellectual support for autonomous anti-capitalist movements around the world. The publication in 2002 of his influential book, Change the World without Taking Power: The Meaning of Revolution Today, unleashed a veritable firestorm of both praise and criticism from fellow radicals and helped to provoke a period of profound introspection in Leftist circles on the meaning and necessity of revolution in the post-Cold War context of globalized financial capitalism.

John Halloway: Rage Against the Rule of Money

John Halloway: Rage Against the Rule of Money from CenterforPlaceCulturePolitics on Vimeo.

Lineages of Freedom

John Holloway

By John Holloway, Grahamstown, 2012

Lineages of freedom. I love the title of the colloquium, with its suggestion of a discontinuous continuity between past and present. It makes me think of Bob Marley: These songs of freedom, redemption songs, redemption songs.

That’s what it’s all about, isn’t it? Redemption. It’s the word that keeps on coming back to me in South Africa. I know that there are people in the room who were imprisoned and tortured in the struggle for a better world. I am sure that many of you will have known people who gave their lives in that struggle. And there must be a sense that this is not what you fought for, that this is not what you dreamed of. There have been great changes, of course, fundamental changes, but I cannot believe that in the world you dreamt of, there would be so much poverty beside so much wealth. I cannot believe that your ambition for South Africa was that it would win first prize as being the most unequal society in the world. I cannot believe that Marikana was part of your dreams. There have been fundamental changes, but the pain of capital is still there, the pain of a form of social organisation that quite literally tears up the earth and destroys the humans, animals and plants that live on it.

Contemporary Social Theory 2010

Contemporary Social Theory

Sociology III

Department of Sociology

Rhodes University

Fourth Term 2012

This year there is a special Contemporary Social Theory course to mark the visit to the Department of Sociology of Professor John Holloway during the fourth term.

The course focuses on specific theorists, as follows:

Week 1: Partha Chatterjee (by K Helliker)

Weeks 2 & 3: John Holloway

Week 4: Alain Badiou (by Michael Neocosmos, UNISA)

Week 5: Samir Amin (by T Alexander)

Week 6: Jacques Ranciere (by R Pithouse, Politics Department).

We are the Crisis of Capital and Proud of It: A Public Lecture by John Holloway 15 October 2012

John Holloway on capitalism & resistance

John Holloway Speaking at the Left Forum 2012

Crack Capitalism by John Holloway

Crack Capitalism, argues that radical change can only come about through the creation, expansion and multiplication of 'cracks' in the capitalist system. These cracks are ordinary moments or spaces of rebellion in which we assert a different type of doing.

John Holloway's previous book, Change the World Without Taking Power, sparked a world-wide debate among activists and scholars about the most effective methods of going beyond capitalism. Now Holloway rejects the idea of a disconnected array of struggles and finds a unifying contradiction - the opposition between the capitalist labour we undertake in our jobs and the drive towards doing what we consider necessary or desirable.

Clearly and accessibly presented in the form of 33 theses, Crack Capitalism is set to reopen the debate among radical scholars and activists seeking to break capitalism now.

A Short Introduction to John Holloway

From a pamphlet by the Church Land Programme

John Holloway is a communist philosopher whose work is often described

as being rooted in the autonomist or libertarian traditions.

Holloway was born in Ireland and was involved in important

debates and struggles in Britain. He wrote, for instance, about workers'

struggles at the Nissan car factory in Sunderland in the 1980s. He now

lives in Mexico where he has also been politically engaged, most famously

with the Zapatista movement. His 2002 book Change the World Without

Taking Power became very influential in the struggles against corporate

globalization that had moved around North America and Western Europe

after the huge protests against the World Trade Organisation in Seattle in

November 1999.

‘Politics at a Distance from the State’ Conference

‘Politics at a Distance from the State’ Conference Rhodes University, Grahamstown, South Africa  29th-30th September 2012 The conference is intended as a space at which academics & activists sympathetic to, supportive of, or involved in ‘politics at a distance from the state’ can freely explore, discuss and debate this type of politics. It considers anti-statist politics in South Africa and beyond, including anti-statist moments and currents in the anti-Apartheid movement, and contemporary attempts at building alternative, pre-figurative forms of communality in South Africa and abroad. Attendees will include activists from the 1980s BCM, UDF and trade union movement, writers like John Holloway, Jacques Depelchin, Michael Neocosmos, Richard Pithouse, and Lucien van der Walt (co-author Black Flame), plus today’s movements supportive of 'at a distance' politics, like shack-dweller movement Abahlali baseMjondoloolo.

Umlando ka John Holloway

uRichard Pithouse

U John Holloway uyinculabuchopho eyikomanisi (communist philosopher), umsebenzi wakhe uchazwa njengogxile emizabalazweni yokuzimela kanye nenkululeko yabantu.

U Holloway wazalelwa eIreland wabamba iqhaza emizabalazweni yaseNgilandi. Wayebhala ngemizabalazo yabasebenzi bemboni yezimoto yakwa Nissan eSunderland ngo 1980. Njengamanje usehlala eMexico lapho eyingxenye yomzabalazo wombutho odumile okuthiwa ama Zapatista. Ngonyaka ka 2002 wabhala incwadi ethi Change the World without Taking Power (ukushintsha izwe ngaphandle kokuphatha umbuso). Lencwadi yaba nomthelela omkhulu ekulweni nogombela kwesabo abayizikhondlakhondla zomnotho basemazweni aseMelika nase Europe kumbandakanya nokubhikishela inhlangano yezokuhweba yomhlaba (World Trade Organisation) eSeattle ngo November ka 1999.

Twelve Theses on Changing the World without taking Power

Twelve Theses on Changing the World without taking Power

John Holloway, The Commoner, 2002

I

1. The starting point is negativity.

We start from the scream, not from the word. Faced with the mutilation of human lives by capitalism, a scream of sadness, a scream of horror, a scream of anger, a scream of refusal: NO.

Thought, to be true to the scream, must be negative. We do not want to understand the world, but to negate it. The aim of theorising is to conceptualise the world negatively, not as something separate from practice, but as a moment of practice, as part of the struggle to change the world, to make it a place fit for humans to live in.

But how, after all that has happened, can we even begin to think of changing the world?

After Capitalism: 'In the anti-worlds of daily struggles the world beyond capitalism is to be found'

Going in the Wrong Direction or Mephistopheles: Not Saint Francis of Assisi

by John Holloway, LibCom

Toni Negri's work is enormously attractive, not only for its own merits, but because it responds to a desperate need. We are all looking for a way forward. The old state-centred model of revolution has failed catastrophically, reformism becomes more and more corrupt and barren, yet revolutionary change is more urgent than ever. Negri refuses to give up thinking and rethinking revolution: that is the great attraction of his work.

The problem is that Negri leads us in the wrong theoretical direction.

The Politics of Starving: An Interview with Raj Patel

Chandra Kumar, Upping the Anti

In Stuffed and Starved you write about the international system of food production and distribution. You argue that this system results in starvation and obesity. Can you elaborate?

These problems are an inevitable outcome of the way capitalism controls and distributes food. When you distribute food through a capitalist market, you’re guaranteed two outcomes: people who have money get to eat, and people who don’t have money don’t get to eat. The original imperial idea behind the creation of world food markets was that they would allow people around the world to eat. But under this model people who don’t have money go hungry, and it’s no accident that these people live in the countries where food is grown.

Is it necessary for a liberatory politics to be conducted at a distance from the state?

by Anton Scholtz

Zapata’s blood

Wasn’t spilt in vain

So now the most poor wage war

To reclaim their name

So now the most poor wage war

To reclaim their terrain.

The Politics of Dignity and the Politics of Poverty

John Holloway on the Politics of Dignity and the Politics of Poverty. This is the text and notes for a talk given in Nottingham.

Nottingham

How far is Latin America from Nottingham? It depends on how you measure it. You can measure it in terms of a politics of poverty or you can measure it in terms of a politics of dignity.

If we speak of a Pink Tide in the area, we must remember that Pink is not a primary colour, that what seems to be pink is in fact a blend of colours that combine and conflict. There is a central issue that runs through so-called pink tide in Latin America and the way that we understand it. This is the contrast between a politics of poverty and a politics of dignity.