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.

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 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, 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'' 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: 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'' 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
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 Holloway
by 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