08 2005

Change the World Without Taking Power

John Holloway

Transcription of a video by O. Ressler, recorded in Vienna, Austria, 23 min., 2004

 
My name is John Holloway; I live in Puebla in Mexico. I teach at the university there in the area of sociology.
My main interest, I suppose, is the critique of capitalism and trying to think about how we can possibly get
out of this dreadful society that we have created and create a more human world.

If you look at the experience of the last century, if you look at the experience of revolutionary governments in
Russia, in China, in Cuba – but Cuba is a more complicated case – or if you look at the experience of
reformist governments, of governments, which have got to power through elections, then I think universally it
is a terrific disappointment, a terrific disillusionment. In no case, has a left-wing government been able to
implement the sort of changes that the people who struggled for its victory wanted. In all cases, what has
resulted is the reproduction of power relations, perhaps, but the reproduction of power relations, which
exclude people, which reproduce material injustices, which reproduce a society that is not self-determining. It
reproduces a society in which people themselves do not determine the development of the society. I suppose
my argument is, that you can analyze it historically: In Russia it happened for such and such a reason, in
China it happened for such and such a reason, in Albania it happened for such and such a reason, in Cuba it
happened for such and such a reason, in Brazil, etc. But then, there comes a point, when it is not enough to
talk about it in terms of specific historical cases. Obviously, we have to try to generalize. The most obvious
conclusion is that there is simply something wrong with the whole idea of trying to transform society through
the state. The failure to transform society through the state has to do with the nature of the state itself, that
the state is not just a neutral institution but a specific form of social relations that arises with the development
of capitalism. And, that it is a form of social relations that is based upon the exclusion of people from power,
that is based on the separation and fragmentation of people.

Changing the world without taking power means what it says it means, namely that we have to change the
world, that is clear. And that we must not think of the struggle to change the world as being a struggle that is
focused on the state and on taking state power. It is important to develop our own structures, our own ways of
doing things. One central aspect of the argument is that it is important to make a distinction between two
concepts of power. That the concept of power conceals an antagonism, an antagonism between our power to
do things or our creative power, on the one hand; and the power to command, the instrumental power of
capital, on the other hand. In other words, if you ask what power means, the most obvious answer is that
power means our capacity to do things. This power, it seems to me, is always a social power, simply because
the doing of one person always depends on the doing of others. It is very difficult for me to imagine a doing
which would not be dependent on the doing of other people. It is clear that our doing here at the moment
depends on the doing of hundreds or thousands of people who created the technology we are using, who
created the concepts we are using, etc.

Our power to do is always a social power, is always a collective power, our doing is always part of the social
flow of doing. If we think of our power to do as a part of a social flow of doing – it is clear there are no clear
divisions between the doing of one person and the doing of another. One flows into another. What one
person has done becomes the precondition of the doing of others. But, in a way in which there are no clear
distinctions, no clear identities, there are no clear dividing lines.

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What happens then, under capitalism, is that this flow of doing is broken, because the capitalist comes along
and says, “That which you have done is mine, I appropriate that, that is my property.” And, since that what
one person has done is the precondition of the doing of others, then the appropriation by the capitalist of that
which has been done gives him the capacity to command the doing of others, to rule over the doing of others.
Through that, the social power to do becomes broken, it becomes transformed into its opposite, which is the
power of the capitalist to command the doing of others.

Capitalism is basically the process of breaking this social flow of doing, breaking the sociality of doing and
breaking therefore our power to do and transforming it into a power over, into something which is alien from
us. So I think that we have to think about our struggle not as the struggle to take power, which would mean
taking their power, but as the struggle to build up our power to do, which is inevitably a social power.

It is important, to see that in this struggle there are two very different concepts of power, and that each
concept has its own logic, a very distinct logic. The logic of capital is a logic of command, it is a logic of
hierarchy, it is a logic of fragmentation. It is a logic, which denies subjectivity. It is a logic which objectifies
the subject. Our logic is just the contrary, it is the logic of coming together, it is a logic of recovering the
subjectivity, which is denied by capital. Subjectivity not as an individual subjectivity, but as a social
subjectivity. It means two very different forms of thinking, two very different forms of action.

For us, trying to think how to change society means having confidence in our own form of action, confidence
in the self-critical development of our own forms of thought and action. Or, another way of putting it, is to
say, if we think of the struggle to change society as class struggle, then it is fundamental to see this struggle as
being asymmetrical. And, once we start to reproduce their forms and once we start to think of our struggle as
being the mirror image of their struggle, then all that we are doing is reproducing the power of capital within
our own struggles.

The revolution I have in mind has to be thought of as a question rather than an answer. On the one hand, it
is clear that we need some basic transformation of society; on the other hand, it is clear that the way that we
have tried over the last century to transform society through the state has failed. So that leaves us with the
conclusion that we have to try it in some other way. We can’t just give up the idea of revolution. I think what
has happened in recent years is that people have come to the conclusion that because the transformation of
society through the state did not work therefore revolution is impossible. My argument is just the contrary,
that in fact revolution is more obviously urgent than ever. But that means rethinking how we can do it, trying
to find other ways. But at the moment, at this stage, this means posing the question and trying to think how
on earth do we develop the question. I think it is important to think that revolution is a question rather than
an answer, because the revolutionary process in itself has to be understood as a process of asking, as a process
of moving out, not of telling people what the answers are, but actually as a process of involving people in a
movement of self-determination.

This is a very general answer obviously. I think we can fill in details much more by looking at what is actually
happening, by looking at struggles that are going on. Not just copying them necessarily, but looking at them
critically, looking at the way in which certain movements have been trying to develop autonomous forms of
action, the way in which they have been developing the concept of dignity, the way in which they have been
breaking down the separations between politics and economics, the way in which they have been developing
new organizational forms.

For me, the Zapatista uprising has been of an enormous importance, the uprising in 1994 and the whole
experience of the last ten years. I think this for two reasons: Partly, because they rose up, they rebelled; they
revolted at a time when it seemed there was no longer any space for revolt in modern society, in modern
capitalism. But it is much more than that. It is also the fact that they have proposed a rethinking of the whole

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concept of rebellion, the whole concept of what revolution or revolt means. And I think part of that is
precisely the question of proposing a different logic, a different language, a different temporality, a different
spatiality, which is not symmetrical to the language and temporality of capital and of the state.

For example, after the initial uprising, one of the first important events, I suppose, was the diálogo de San
Andrés, the dialogue between the Mexican government and the Zapatistas in San Andrés, this town in
Chiapas. And normally, one would think of a dialogue, a negotiation as a symmetrical process between two
sides. And I think one of the important things was that the Zapatistas from the beginning made clear: First of
all that they weren’t going to negotiate and, secondly, that this wasn’t a symmetrical process. That it wasn’t a
symmetrical process they underlined, for example, by their dress, by insisting on wearing their own traditional
dress, by insisting, at least in one occasion, on using their own language, and not simply bowing to the use of
Spanish. One of the interesting points that came up was the question of time, for example. At one point,
when the two sides, the government and the Zapatistas, had reached a provisional agreement or proposal, then
the Zapatistas said, “Fine, we have to take this to our people and we’ll have to discuss it.” And the government
said, “No, you have to decide, we need an answer within two days.” And the Zapatistas said, “Nonsense, you
have to understand that we have a different time, and that we have processes of discussions.” And the
government representative said: “How can you say, you have got a different time? I see that you are wearing a
Japanese watch, the same as I am.” And Comandante Tacho responded that these people from the government
think that time means clock. “For us that is not the meaning of ‘time’, for us ‘time’ is different.” And they
took about two months to give their response.

But precisely it’s the awareness from the beginning that rebellion meant confidence in their own structures,
confidence in their own sense of time, confidence in their own sense of space. And this idea of “time” for
example is very much tied up with the whole question of democratic structures, the whole question of
insisting that decisions have to be reached through a process of community discussion. Because if you insist
that decisions have to be reached through a process of community discussion, then obviously this takes a lot of
time, it is just a different sense of time.

So that this asymmetry, this lack of symmetry between the logic of domination on the one hand and the logic
of revolt on the other hand is something which is absolutely fundamental for the Zapatista movement from
the beginning. And this is emphasized time and time again in their communiqués, in their use of stories, in
their use of jokes, in their use of poetry, etc. And all of those things which seemed at first to be a kind of
decoration, secondary to the process of revolt, you gradually come to realize that, in fact, no, it is central to
the revolt itself that they are proposing and insisting upon a different way of conceiving the world and a
different way of conceiving relations between people.

Whereas the traditional concept of revolution, I think, was very much based on a military metaphor, on the
idea, that you have got a clash between two armies essentially; and that, in order to defeat the enemy, then
basically you accept the methods of the enemy. Just one army to defeat the other army, which is organized in
exactly the same way as the other army. And, I think it is very important that the Zapatistas break with this,
and that they say, “No, that is not it!” The way to revolt, the way to rebel is to develop a language and a way of
doing things, that the state simply does not understand. And they have done that consistently over and over
again in the last ten years.

Very often we think of the problem of revolution, in terms of how to destroy capitalism. I think that we have
to break with this, simply because if we think in terms of how we can destroy capitalism, we very quickly
convince ourselves that it is impossible. Because to think about destroying capitalism is to imagine capitalism
as this great big monster that exists, this huge big monster with its armies, with its education system, with its
control of the media, with its control of material resources, etc. And here are we, a little lost, how can we
possibly destroy this big monster? And my argument is that we have to get away from this metaphor of

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destruction and to think of it in other ways.

Capitalism exists not because we created it in the nineteenth century or in the eighteenth century or
whenever. Capitalism exists today, only because we created it today. If we don’t create it tomorrow, then it
won’t exist. It appears to have an independent duration, but in fact that is not true. In fact, capital depends
from one day to the next on our creation of capital. If tomorrow we all stay in bed, then capitalism will cease
to exist. If we don’t go and create it, then it won’t exist any more. If we begin to think of capitalism in terms
of how we stop creating it, if we think about the question of revolution in terms of how we stop creating it,
then this doesn’t solve the problems. It doesn’t mean that capitalism will actually disappear tomorrow – or,
who knows, but perhaps it won’t disappear tomorrow. But if we think of revolution in terms of how to stop
creating capitalism, then somehow we dissolve the image of capitalism as this huge monster that is opposed to
us. And we can begin to open up possibilities, a new hope and a new way of thinking about revolution, a new
way of thinking about transforming society.

An ideal society would be self-creating. If it is self-creating, if it is self-determining; then, in a sense, it doesn’t

 
The text has been edited by Harald Otto in the course of the project transform (http://transform.eipcp.net).