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John Holloway and Alex Callinicos debate strategies for changing the world

redletter | 08.07.2008 17:26 | Analysis | Social Struggles | Zapatista

John Holloway and Alex Callinicos debate strategies for changing the world at the marxism 2008 event.


 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2liVjkA30T4

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 piqueteros in Argentina; Abahlali baseMjondolo movement in South Africa and the Anti-Globalization Movement in Europe and North America.

He was born in Dublin, Ireland, and has a Ph.D in Political Science from the University of Edinburgh. He is currently a teacher at the Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences at the Autonomous University of Puebla.

His 2002 book, Change the World Without Taking Power, has been the subject of much debate in Marxist 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 repeatedly. He is considered by supporters and critics to be broadly Autonomist in outlook, and his work is often compared and contrasted with that of figures such as Antonio Negri.

He is brother to writer and academic David Holloway, and first cousin to Canadian political activist Kate Holloway and Canadian entertainer Maureen Holloway.


Alex Callinicos received his BA and DPhil from the University of Oxford, and was Professor of Politics at the University of York before being appointed Professor of European Studies at King's College London in September 2005. He is a member of the editorial board of International Socialism and is a British correspondent of Actuel Marx. A prolific writer for both the revolutionary and the academic presses, he is a descendant of the famous historian Lord Acton. During World War II his father was active in the Greek Resistance to Nazi occupation, and his mother was a member of the British aristocracy. In 1977 he married Joanna Seddon,[1] a fellow Oxford doctoral student and communist researcher who introduced him to key ideas in Utopian Socialism.[citation needed]
Callinicos first became involved in revolutionary politics as a student at Balliol College, Oxford, and his first writings for the International Socialists (forerunners of the SWP) was an analysis of the student movement of the period. His later writings soon established him in socialist and academic circles as an expert on southern Africa and the French philosopher Louis Althusser. A talented writer and speaker, by the early 1980s he was elected to the Central Committee of the SWP, a position he retains today. In recent years he has been responsible for the SWP’s international work, but he has seen a number of splits in the International Socialist Tendency’s affiliated groups.
He participated in the Counter-Summit to the IMF/World Bank Meeting in Prague, September 2000 and the demonstration against the G8 in Genoa, June 2001. He has also been involved in organising the Social Forum movement in Europe. He is a contributor to J. Bidet and E. Kouvelakis, eds., Dictionnaire Marx Contemporain (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2001), and has written a number of articles in New Left Review. In Redemption, Tariq Ali's Trotskyist satire, he is depicted as the redundant intellectual "Alex Mango".
[edit]Works


redletter
- Homepage: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2liVjkA30T4

Comments

Hide the following 2 comments

great debate

08.07.2008 21:33

excellent debate. Like many in the anti-capiatalist movement who have had their differences with the SWP over the years, on the whole, though their domination of political affiliations has quite often on the one hand stifled and destroyed some of those affiliations over the years because of their over-zealous execution of leninist tendencies (crowding-out of alternative opinion), on the other hand, their output and rate of work has been testament to the ongoing voracity of their argument - ie, that of a need for a political grassroots movement underpinned by socialist critique which engages positively with workers and members of civil society to find common ground. Plainly speaking also, the most prominent struggle since the millenium, quite obviously the Stop-the-War movement, has been propelled primarily by their efforts (those that complain of their domination of it do not speak of an alternative mevement prepared to take on the donkeywork of organising the succession of marches that occurred - though it has to be said that regional Stop-the-War groups are more autonomous than the London centric Stop-the-War central committee, such as Bristol Stop The War who organised 50 coaches to London for the Fenruary 15th 2003 Stop-the-War march).

I think John Holloway's discussion was really enlightening, challenging and thought-provoking, particularly the insight into how the constellation of struggle against capital is in crisis and that of the new constellation against capital manifest in the Zapatista uprising which he cites has having developed within the rise of the anti-globalisation movement - namely the struggle against that which produces capital - namely labour. he quotes Marx recognising the dual nature of labour which he says disappeared from the Marxist tradition completely. Here one might detect a dicotomy between Alex Callinicos and Holloway; it does seem that Alex Callinicos is sitting on the fence in the face of Holloway's assertion of the need for the populating of an alternative reality here and now, when he directs his perspective more particularly to a more grounded and practical interpretation of what constitutes revolutionary struggle, when he talks about strategy (although in his conception of how this process of concentrating the reclaimation of power might come about through a process - quoting Gramsci - between a process of interaction, he is being slightly disingenious if one takes into consideration the SWP's previous history of reformism, political grandstanding and not actually concentrating political effort on any key workers' dispute in this country in any meaningful or concerted way, such as the Dockers strike in Liverpool in 1996/7) . However, Callinicos is right to say that a revolutionary process should collectively take power and reists existing power.

waltzing matilda


Typo, or What!

09.07.2008 06:32

Red letter: You meant: "disorganising", no!

That´s Just my little joke. Actually, I am quite pleased that Alex has moved to my old college, Kings (by the Thames and not the Cam).

Say hello to Dr. Stokes, if you rub shoulders with him in the SCR, although he´s probably shuffled off this mortal coil by now. You know, it was actually him who first discovered that DNA was a double helix, but the poor bugger was too timid to claim it.

Once had an atomic physics tutorial with him which was conducted in total silence for the first half hour (that was the extent of his shyness). Well, after 33 minutes - a record beating the previous by 6 minutes - I came up with a question:

What´s the time? Then I followed up with something a tad more challenging: Can you explain time?

He replied that it was just a measure of movement, or relative velocity.

I followed up with: So, if there´s no movement, then there´s no time.

He thought for 23 minutes and replied: correct.

Yours as ever

Harold Hamlet,.

So, time can’t easily be stopped, but the psychopathic bloodsuckers of the world can be.

Harold Hamlet
mail e-mail: harold.hamlet@virgin.net


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