Change the World Without Taking Power, 3rd edition

The Meaning of Revolution Today

John Holloway

This new edition of John Holloway’s contemporary classic, Change the World Without Taking Power, includes an extensive new preface by the author.

The wave of political demonstrations since the Battle of Seattle in 2001 have crystallized a new trend in left-wing politics. Modern protest movements are grounding their actions in both Marxism and Anarchism, fighting for radical social change in terms that have nothing to do with the taking of state power. This is in clear opposition to the traditional Marxist theory of revolution which centres on the overthrow of government. In this book, John Holloway asks how we can reformulate our understanding of revolution as the struggle against power, not for power.

After a century of failed attempts by revolutionary and reformist movements to bring about radical social change, the concept of revolution itself is in crisis. John Holloway opens up the theoretical debate, reposing some of the basic concepts of Marxism in a critical development of the subversive Marxist tradition represented by Adorno, Bloch and Lukacs, amongst others, and grounded in a rethinking of Marx’s concept of ‘fetishization’— how doing is transformed into being.

Contents

Acknowledgements
Preface to the New Edition
Preface to the First Edition
1. The Scream
2. Beyond the State?
3. Beyond Power?
4. A Fetishism–The Tragic Dilemma
5. Fetishism and Fetishization
6. Anti-Fetishism and Criticism
7. The Tradition of Scientific Marxism
8. The Critical-Revolutionary Subject
9. The Material Reality of Anti-Power
10. The Material Reality of Anti-Power and the Crisis of Capital
11. Revolution?
12. Epilogue to new edition: Moving Against and Beyond: Reflections on a Discussion
Notes
Bibliography
Index
 

About the Author

John Holloway is a Professor in the Instituto de Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades of the Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla in Mexico. His publications include Crack Capitalism (Pluto, 2010), Change the World Without Taking Power (Pluto, 2005), Zapatista! Rethinking Revolution in Mexico (co-editor, Pluto, 1998) and Global Capital, National State and the Politics of Money (co-editor, 1994).