John Holloway (political scientist)

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John Holloway (Berlin 2011)

John Holloway (* 1947 in Dublin ) is an Irish - Mexican political scientist . He has been teaching at the Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla (BUAP) in Puebla / Mexico since 1993 . In his publications he draws on various unorthodox neo-Marxist theoretical traditions, such as Italian operaism or critical theory , and in some cases reinterprets them or develops them further. His interpretations of these theories also show a strong influence of the Zapatista movement in Mexico. Their rejection of state power and their understanding of theory, which can be summed up in the phrase “preguntando caminamos” (questioningly, let's go ahead) , which Holloway repeatedly quotes, became proverbial and contributed to the broad reception of his theories.

theory

Central theses

He analyzes a political change process along the following lines:

  • The cry: as a consistent awareness of non-identity . He sees the political subject torn apart in alienation , subjectivity can only be imagined in a negative. Holloway re-reads critical theory and refuses to be pessimistic about culture : the relationships are not objective, they have to be re-established subjectively over and over again. H. the fetishism is not completely closed.
  • The doing and the done: under doing he summarizes all social activities, not just wage labor ; under what has been done, the capital that appropriates the content of labor.
  • Anti-power: It works in a completely different logic, which is not a mirror image ( counter-power ) to the ruling power. The goal of anti-power is completely different from that of the current ruling power of capital, which is about the realization of value . Rather, anti-power seeks the establishment of sociality, i.e. unhindered access to social wealth. As a result, Holloway no longer sees the state as the center of the conflict.

Subject-oriented approach: “The Scream” as the starting point of the search

The starting point of Holloway's theory is the scream of the subject. This cry consists in dissonance, the contradiction between what “is” and “not yet”, between the reality of the present and a desirable future. Not "the sensible leaning back and pondering-about-the-secrets-of-existence, as the traditional image of the 'thinker" envisages ", but that of the dissonance (between" is "and" not yet ") ) Resulting dissatisfaction (negativity), the anger, is what drives the thought.

There are two questions that Holloway tries to answer in the following: First, the question of the necessity of this subject-oriented approach in scientific discourse and, second, the question of the cause of the scream, an analysis of the “is” with the aim of identifying the cornerstones of a vision of a possible to work out another future.

The cry consists in the contradiction between the current social conditions and a desirable other world, or in other words: between analysis and vision. Only a dialectical handling of these two dimensions, i.e. a scientific discourse that wants to realize the vision and subjects every step to a new analysis and deduces new steps from it, will do justice to the cry, the desire for change. He thus distinguishes himself from the realistic and normative social theories, which either try to explain the "is" only descriptively and objectify the subject, or normatively fix the vision and thus exclude an ever new evaluation through the analysis. In contrast to Foucault's “Bitterness of History”, which inevitably leads to an adjustment of expectations, Holloway refers positively to the early critical theory of the Frankfurt School , which, along with Ernst Bloch , assumes that the horror that arises from the analysis , hope for a better world grows. The scream does not get its theoretical power from the future existence of the “not yet”, but from its present existence as a possibility . Every other world is negated in the now by the present social circumstances, but it exists as precisely this negation .

The social flow of doing

From this approach emerge the most important basic features for the further course of the theory, the search for a way to overcome the cause of the scream: dialectics and negative thinking . In this, Holloway refers closely to Karl Marx 's critique of political economy in “Capital”. His "intention [...] is to locate those questions that are often described as 'Marxist' in the problem of negative thinking, in the hope of giving negative thinking content and intensifying the Marxist criticism of capitalism ". He takes over from Marx the assumption of the social character of labor based on the division of labor, and abstracts this to the concept of doing. Every action is social because it is conditioned by the actions of others and itself in turn determines the actions of others ("Whatever I do, it is part of the social flow of doing, in which the prerequisite for my doing is doing (or having done) is another, in which the doing of others provides the means of my doing. ”). This “social flow of doing”, a state of the free development of the subject, is what Holloway describes as creative power .

"Change the world without taking power"

Creative power is social. On the other hand, he puts instrumental power . This is also doing, but it is doing that interrupts the social flow of doing. It is doing that negates the free doing of others, deprives them of the means to do it. If there is instrumental power, then creative power only exists as negation. The existence of instrumental power is the cause of the scream. The contents with which Holloway fills the concept of instrumental power are taken from Marx's analysis of capitalism: First, the expropriation of the doers (the workers) from the means of doing (means of production ) through private property . Second, the fetish of capital , the behavior of people according to the rules of exchange of goods , which appear to be natural and natural; Holloway places him at the center of his argument. In this context he points out that the instrumental to the creative power is in a dependent relationship. Your own doing creates the product and thus also the basis of the fetish, “doing negates itself”. This dependence of the doer on the done, of instrumental power on the doing, represents the crisis of capitalism.

Holloway is based on the failure of the left attempts to change the world in the 20th century. In the context of the power discussion described above, he crystallizes that these attempts, whether reformist or revolutionary , have one thing in common: The attempt to form a counter-power in order to conquer state power . But if the cause of the scream, which is the starting point of all thinking, lies in the existence of instrumental power, then the establishment of a counter-power, which is itself also instrumental power, only contributes to the continued existence of this. Rather, to change the world it must be about the creation of an anti-power.

The anti-power becomes the embodiment of the scream. The cry has a negative (destructive) and a positive (constitutive) side. On the one hand, it is resistance to instrumental power and the spreading property relations; on the other hand, it constitutes free spaces in which capitalism cannot live and thus enables creative power. These free spaces presuppose common forms of organization, which are different depending on the phase of the struggle (the revolution). Revolution does not describe a point in time, but a process at the end of which the liberated person stands. The fetish of property must be contrasted with the creation of friendship, love, solidarity and community . Holloway does not propose a dogmatically determined way of change, but rather insists on the dialectic between analysis and vision within a fragmented movement that patches together the societal nature of doing.

Fonts (selection)

  • Change the world without taking power . 6th edition. Westphalian Steam Boat, Münster 2018, ISBN 978-3-89691-514-6 (first edition: 2002).
  • Regionalization of world society . Westphalian steam boat, Münster 1993.
  • The two times of the revolution . 3. Edition. Turia & Kant, Vienna 2006, ISBN 978-3-85132-458-7 .
  • Blue Monday: About time and work discipline . (with Edward P. Thompson ). Edition Nautilus, 2007, ISBN 978-3-89401-538-1 .
  • Break up capitalism . 1st edition. Westphalian steam boat, Münster 2010, ISBN 978-3-89691-863-5 .
  • We are the crisis of capital ... and proud of it. The San Francisco Lectures. Unrast Verlag, Münster 2017, ISBN 978-3-89771-229-4 .

Essays

See also

Web links

Selection of Holloway translations by the Wildcat group (see also Operaismus ):

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ John Holloway: Changing the World Without Taking Power . 6th edition, Westfälisches Dampfboot, Münster 2018, ISBN 978-3-89691-514-6 , p. 10.
  2. ↑ John Holloway: Changing the World Without Taking Power . 6th edition, Westphalian steam boat, Münster 2018, p. 18.
  3. ↑ John Holloway: Changing the World Without Taking Power . 6th edition, Westfälisches Dampfboot, Münster 2018, p. 19.
  4. ↑ John Holloway: Changing the World Without Taking Power . 6th edition, Westfälisches Dampfboot, Münster 2018, p. 39.
  5. ↑ John Holloway: Changing the World Without Taking Power . 6th edition, Westfälisches Dampfboot, Münster 2018, p. 61.
personal data
SURNAME Holloway, John
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Irish-Mexican political scientist
DATE OF BIRTH 1947
PLACE OF BIRTH Dublin