John Holloway (born 1947) is a lawyer,
Marxist-oriented
sociologist and
philosopher, whose work is closely associated with the
Zapatista movement in Mexico, his home since 1991. It has also been taken up by some intellectuals associated with the
piquetero
A ''piquetero'' is a member of a group that has blocked a street with the purpose of demonstrating and calling attention over a particular issue or demand. The word is a neologism in the Spanish of Argentina, coming from ''piquete'' (in English ...
s in
Argentina
Argentina (), officially the Argentine Republic ( es, link=no, República Argentina), is a country in the southern half of South America. Argentina covers an area of , making it the second-largest country in South America after Brazil, th ...
; the
Abahlali baseMjondolo
Abahlali baseMjondolo (AbM, , in English: "the residents of the shacks") is a socialist shack dwellers' movement in South Africa which organises land occupations, builds communes movement in South Africa and the
Anti-Globalization Movement
The anti-globalization movement or counter-globalization movement, is a social movement critical of economic globalization. The movement is also commonly referred to as the global justice movement, alter-globalization movement, anti-globalis ...
in Europe and North America. He is currently a professor at the Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences at the
Autonomous University of Puebla
The Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla (BUAP) (Meritorious Autonomous University of Puebla) is the oldest and largest university in Puebla, Mexico. Founded on 15 April 1578 as Colegio del Espíritu Santo, the school was sponsored by the ...
.
Background
He was born in
Dublin
Dublin (; , or ) is the capital and largest city of Ireland. On a bay at the mouth of the River Liffey, it is in the province of Leinster, bordered on the south by the Dublin Mountains, a part of the Wicklow Mountains range. At the 2016 c ...
, Ireland, and has a
Ph.D
A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is ...
in Political Science from the
University of Edinburgh
The University of Edinburgh ( sco, University o Edinburgh, gd, Oilthigh Dhùn Èideann; abbreviated as ''Edin.'' in post-nominals) is a public research university based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Granted a royal charter by King James VI in 15 ...
.
He is brother to writer and academic
David Holloway, and first cousin to Canadian political activist Kate Holloway and Canadian entertainer
Maureen Holloway
Maureen Holloway is a Canadian radio personality, entertainer and comedian who is best known for her radio segments ''The Last Word''. Until September 1, 2014, Holloway used to broadcast live, weekday mornings, in consecutive segments with the h ...
.
Work
During the 1970s, Holloway was an influential member of the
Conference of Socialist Economists, particularly in his support of an approach to the state as a social form constituted ultimately by class struggle between capital and the working class. This approach was developed primarily through the critical appropriation of aspects of the German
state derivation debate of the early 1970s, in particular the work of
Joachim Hirsch, and led him and
Sol Picciotto to publish "State and Capital: A Marxist Debate", an anthology of texts from the German debate with a critical introduction. This conception of state, social form and class struggle, within the Conference of Socialist Economists developed current that ultimately gave rise to the
Open Marxism
Open Marxism is a school of thought which draws on libertarian socialist critiques of party communism and stresses the need for openness to praxis and history through an anti-positivist (dialectical) method grounded in the "practical reflexivity ...
school of thought in which Holloway remained a significant participant. This current rejects both traditional
Marxist ideas of
state monopoly capitalism
The theory of state monopoly capitalism (also referred as stamocap) was initially a Marxist thesis popularised after World War II. Lenin had claimed in 1916 that World War I had transformed laissez-faire capitalism into ''monopoly capitalism'', ...
and innovations such as
Poulantzas'
Althusserian state theory, and the
Regulation school
The regulation school (french: l'école de la régulation) is a group of writers in political economy and economics whose origins can be traced to France in the early 1970s, where economic instability and stagflation were rampant in the French eco ...
, and affirms the centrality of the class relation between capital and working class, as a struggle.
His 2002 book, ''
Change the World Without Taking Power'', has been much debated in Marxist,
anarchist and
anti-capitalist circles, and contends that the possibility of revolution resides not in the seizure of state apparatuses, but in day-to-day acts of abject refusal of capitalist society – so-called 'anti-power', or 'the scream' as he puts it. Holloway's thesis has been analysed by thinkers like
Tariq Ali
Tariq Ali (; born 21 October 1943) is a Pakistani-British political activist, writer, journalist, historian, filmmaker, and public intellectual. He is a member of the editorial committee of the ''New Left Review'' and ''Sin Permiso'', and con ...
and
Slavoj Žižek. Critics and supporters alike consider Holloway broadly
Autonomist
Autonomism, also known as autonomist Marxism is an anti-capitalist left-wing political and social movement and theory. As a theoretical system, it first emerged in Italy in the 1960s from workerism (). Later, post-Marxist and anarchist tend ...
in outlook, and his work is often compared and contrasted with that of figures such as
Antonio Negri
Antonio "Toni" Negri (born 1 August 1933) is an Italian Spinozistic-Marxist sociologist and political philosopher, best known for his co-authorship of ''Empire'' and secondarily for his work on Spinoza.
Born in Padua, he became a political p ...
.
His 2010 book ''
Crack Capitalism
''Crack Capitalism'' (2010) is a book by sociologist John Holloway that carries on with the political ideas developed in his earlier '' Change the World Without Taking Power''. Holloway sees the problem of political activism, in terms of those str ...
'' carries on with the political ideas developed in ''Change the World Without Taking Power''. Holloway sees the problem of political activism, in terms of people struggling “in-and-against” the system, as one of continuing to perpetuate capitalism through their commitment to abstract labour. He argues that from the Marxist stand-point of “two-fold nature of labour” or
abstract labour and concrete labour, that
anti-capitalist struggles should be about concrete doing against labour, and not a struggle of labour against capital.
Influences on culture
Music
Composer
Reynaldo Young Reynaldo Young . 1966is a Uruguayan composer, arranger, guitarist, teacher and workshop leader. He has written concert pieces as well as music for dance, theatre, and video – many of them performed worldwide; he is also an active player at the f ...
acknowledges in the performance notes of his piece
ay'tik that ''
Change the World Without Taking Power'' is the "theoretical source which the strategic principles of this score came from." Both Holloway and the composer attended the world premiere of the piece, which took place on 26 July 2002 in
Bretton Hall, West Yorkshire
Bretton Hall is a country house in West Bretton near Wakefield, West Yorkshire, England. It housed Bretton Hall College from 1949 until 2001 and was a campus of the University of Leeds (2001–2007). It is a Grade II* listed building.
History ...
.
Bibliography
Books in English
*''State and Capital: A Marxist Debate'' (1978), , ed. with Sol Picciotto
*''Social Policy Harmonisation in the European Community'' (1981),
*''Post-Fordism and Social Form: A Marxist Debate on the Post-Fordist State'' (1991), , ed. with Werner Bonefeld
*''Global Capital, National State, and the Politics of Money'' (1995), , ed. with Werner Bonefeld
*''
Open Marxism
Open Marxism is a school of thought which draws on libertarian socialist critiques of party communism and stresses the need for openness to praxis and history through an anti-positivist (dialectical) method grounded in the "practical reflexivity ...
: Emancipating Marx'' (1995), , ed. with Werner Bonefeld, Richard Gunn and Kosmas Psychopedis
*''Zapatista!: Reinventing Revolution in Mexico'' (1998), , ed. with Eloína Peláez
*''
Change the World Without Taking Power'' (2002),
*''Negativity and Revolution: Adorno and Political Activism'' (2008) , ed. with Fernando Matamoros & Sergio Tischler
* ''
Crack Capitalism
''Crack Capitalism'' (2010) is a book by sociologist John Holloway that carries on with the political ideas developed in his earlier '' Change the World Without Taking Power''. Holloway sees the problem of political activism, in terms of those str ...
'' Pluto Press (2010)
* ''
In, Against, and Beyond Capitalism: The San Francisco Lectures'' PM Press (2016)
* ''We are the Crisis of Capital: A John Holloway Reader'' (2018)
* ''Hope in Hopeless Times (2022)''
Chapters in English
* "The Grammar of Capital." In ''The Oxford Handbook of Karl Marx'' (2019).
Online articles
Going in the Wrong Direction or Mephistopheles: Not Saint Francis of AssisiTwelve Theses on Changing the World without taking PowerThe concept of power and the ZapatistasDignity's revoltChange the World Without Taking Power complete online text on
Libcom.org
libcom.org is an online platform featuring a variety of libertarian communist essays, blog posts, and archives, primarily in English. It was founded in 2005 by editors in the United States and the United Kingdom. Libcom.org also has a forum and ...
Walking We Ask Questions 2005
Against and Beyond the State 2010
References
Further Reading
*Dinerstein, A., 2018. John Holloway: The theory of interstitial revolution. In The SAGE Handbook of Frankfurt School Critical Theory (pp. 533–549). Sage Publications.
External links
Official web siteIn Perspective: John Hollowayby Paul Blackledge, ''
International Socialism
Proletarian internationalism, sometimes referred to as international socialism, is the perception of all communist revolutions as being part of a single global class struggle rather than separate localized events. It is based on the theory that ...
'', 136 (2012)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Holloway, John
1947 births
Living people
Autonomism
Alumni of the University of Edinburgh
Academics of the University of Edinburgh
Irish anti-capitalists
Irish communists
Mexican communists
Writers from County Dublin
Irish Marxists
Mexican sociologists
Zapatista Army of National Liberation
Mexican people of Irish descent
Far-left politics in Scotland
British Marxists
Marxist theorists