BiblioVault - Books about Holloway, John

Austerity and Revolt, Volume 113

Werner Bonefeld and John Holloway, special issue editors

Duke University Press

In recent years we have witnessed massive demonstrations of denial, refusal, and rejection exploding in one country after another. The squares of the world have become organizational focal points for rebellion and repression. What does such collective negation mean, and what comes afterward? This issue explores the forms of a reinvigorated, experimental communism: councils, assemblies, communes, squares, occupys, horizontalism, recovered factories, and cooperative farms and community gardens. Practitioners of this new model of “communism as communizing” attempt to change fundamental social relations from the bottom up.

By combining insider knowledge with sophisticated theoretical scrutiny, the contributors to this issue approach eruptions of rebellion from a variety of historical, economic, and methodological perspectives. Writing not only about but also within such forces of progressive resistance around the world, they investigate the complex, hopeful, and contradictory process of creating new social, economic, and political structures through negation.

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Beyond Money

A Postcapitalist Strategy

Anitra Nelson

Pluto Press, 2022

'A fascinating portal into arguments about why we need to get beyond money' - Harry Cleaver

What would a world without money look like? This book is a lively thought experiment that deepens our understanding of how money is the driver of political power, environmental destruction and social inequality today, arguing that it has to be abolished rather than repurposed to achieve a postcapitalist future.

Grounded in historical debates about money, Anitra Nelson draws on a spectrum of political and economic thought and activism, including feminism, ecoanarchism, degrowth, permaculture, autonomism, Marxism and ecosocialism. Looking to Indigenous rights activism and the defense of commons, an international network of activists engaged in a fight for a money-free society emerges.

Beyond Money shows that, by organizing around post-money versions of the future, activists have a hope of creating a world that embodies their radical values and visions.

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Change the World Without Taking Power

The Meaning of Revolution Today

John Holloway

Pluto Press, 2019

After a century of failed radical projects, the concept of revolution itself is in crisis. By asking deep questions about the nature of humanity, work, capitalism, organization, and resistance, John Holloway looks sharply at modern protest movements and provides tools for creating new strategies. A profound search for a theory of social change, Change the World Without Taking Power clears away the cobwebs of revolutionary socialism in order to renew the fight for the ending of capitalism and the construction of a new, fairer world. With a new preface from the author, this update of a classic work in revolutionary thought is published to coincide with Pluto Press’s fiftieth anniversary.

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Crack Capitalism

John Holloway

Pluto Press, 2010

Crack Capitalism, argues that radical change can only come about through the creation, expansion and multiplication of 'cracks' in the capitalist system. These cracks are ordinary moments or spaces of rebellion in which we assert a different type of doing.

John Holloway's previous book, Change the World Without Taking Power, sparked a world-wide debate among activists and scholars about the most effective methods of going beyond capitalism. Now Holloway rejects the idea of a disconnected array of struggles and finds a unifying contradiction - the opposition between the capitalist labour we undertake in our jobs and the drive towards doing what we consider necessary or desirable.

Clearly and accessibly presented in the form of 33 theses, Crack Capitalism is set to reopen the debate among radical scholars and activists seeking to break capitalism now.

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Hope in Hopeless Times

John Holloway

Pluto Press, 2022

In this final part of his ground-breaking trilogy, John Holloway expertly fuses anti-capitalism and anti-identitarianism, and brings hope into the critique of political economy and revolutionary theory, challenging us to find hope within ourselves and channel it into a dignified, revolutionary rage.

Hope lies in our richness, in the joy of our collective creativity. But that richness exists in the peculiar form of money. The fact that we relate to one another through money causes tremendous social pain and destruction and is dragging us through pandemics and war towards extinction.

Richness against money: this battle will decide the future of humanity. If we cannot emancipate richness from money-capital profit, there is probably no hope. Money seems invincible but the constant expansion of debt shows that its rule is fragile. The fictitious expansion of money through debt is driven by fear, fear of us, fear of the rabble. Money contains, but richness overflows.

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Negativity and Revolution

Adorno and Political Activism

Edited by John Holloway, Fernando Matamoros, and Sergio Tischler

Pluto Press, 2009

How can activists combat the political paralysis that characterises the anti-dialectical Marxism of Foucault, Derrida and Deleuze, without reverting to a dogmatic orthodoxy? This book explores solutions in the 'negative dialectics' of Theodor Adorno.

The poststructuralist shift from dialectics to 'difference' has been so popular that it becomes difficult to create meaningful revolutionary responses to neoliberalism. The contributors to this volume come from within the anti-capitalist movement, and close to the concerns expressed in Negri and Hardt's Empire and Multitude. However, they argue forcefully and persuasively for a return to dialectics so a real-world, radical challenge to the current order can be constructed.

This is a passionate call to arms for the anti-capitalist movement. It should be read by all engaged activists and students of political and critical theory.

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Open Marxism 3

Emancipating Marx

Kosmas Psychopedis

Pluto Press, 1995

The third of four volumes in the Open Marxism series, this book explores dialectics, epistemology, social emancipation, value theory, historical materialism and the relationship between feminism and Marxism.

The contributors argue that sociological heritage which grew up under the banner of scientific Marxism has had a detrimental effect on the movement of socialist thinking. The 'emancipation of Marx' implies both freeing Marx from the understanding of the 20th century and the freeing of the human spirit from the control of capital.

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Open Marxism 4

Against a Closing World

Ana Cecilia Dinerstein

Pluto Press, 2019

The publication of the first three volumes of Open Marxism in the 1990s has had a transformative impact on how we think about Marxism in the twenty-first century. 'Open Marxism' aims to think of Marxism as a theory of struggle, not as an objective analysis of capitalist domination, arguing that money, capital and the state are forms of struggle from above and therefore open to resistance and rebellion. As critical thought is squeezed out of universities and geographical shifts shape the terrain of theoretical discussion, the editors argue now is the time for a new volume that reflects the work that has been carried out during the past decade. Emphasising the contemporary relevance of 'open Marxism' in our moment of political and economic uncertainty, the collection shines a light on its significance for activists and academics today.

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Open Marxism 4

Against a Closing World

Ana Cecilia Dinerstein

Pluto Press, 2019

The publication of the first three volumes of Open Marxism in the 1990s has had a transformative impact on how we think about Marxism in the twenty-first century. 'Open Marxism' aims to think of Marxism as a theory of struggle, not as an objective analysis of capitalist domination, arguing that money, capital and the state are forms of struggle from above and therefore open to resistance and rebellion. As critical thought is squeezed out of universities and geographical shifts shape the terrain of theoretical discussion, the editors argue now is the time for a new volume that reflects the work that has been carried out during the past decade. Emphasising the contemporary relevance of 'open Marxism' in our moment of political and economic uncertainty, the collection shines a light on its significance for activists and academics today.

[more]

Subalternity, Antagonism, Autonomy

Constructing the Political Subject

Massimo Modonesi

Pluto Press, 2013

In this bold and innovative book, Massimo Modonesi weaves together theory and political practice by relating the concepts of subalternity, antagonism and autonomy to contemporary movements in Latin America and elsewhere.

In a sophisticated account, Modonesi reconstructs the debates between Marxist authors and schools of thought in order to sketch out informed strategies of resistance. He reviews the works of Gramsci, Negri, Castoriadis and Lefort, and engages with the arguments made by E. P. Thompson, Spivak, Laclau and Mouffe.

Subalternity, Antagonism, Autonomy firmly roots key theoretical arguments from a range of critical thinkers within specific political movements in order to recover these concepts as analytical instruments which can help to guide contemporary struggles.

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