Hope in hopeless times

Hope in Hopeless Times?
An Interview with John Holloway [This interview posted on Dec. 21, 2024 is translated from the German on the Internet, https://www.linksnet.de/artikel/48871.]

The Irish-Mexican political scientist John Holloway (b. 1947) has taught at the Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla (BUAP) in Puebla, Mexico, since 1993. In his books, he draws on and develops unorthodox neo-Marxist and anarchist theoretical approaches, among others (1). He is greatly influenced by the Zapatista movement in Mexico, whose rejection of state power and understanding of theory can be summarized in the sentence “We advance in questioning”. On November 8, 2024, he presented his new book “Hope in Hopeless Times” at the Centro Indígena de Capacitación Integral - Universidad de la Tierra (CIDECI-Unitierra) in San Cristóbal de las Casas. CIDECI-Unitierra is an alternative educational center that aims to support and strengthen indigenous communities, with a particular focus on promoting autonomy and self-determination. The event included a lively discussion between Holloway, the audience and a panel that included Rocío Martínez, Jérôme Baschet and Juan López (GWR ed.).

Graswurzelrevolution (GWR): John, could you briefly explain what your new book is about and why it was important to you to present it at CIDECI in San Cristóbal de las Casas?John Holloway: The book is the third in a series that tries to reflect on the meaning of revolution today – and whether it is even possible to speak of revolution anymore. The first book, Change the World Without Taking Power, was published in 2002 and argued that the central reason why the revolutions of the 20th century failed was that they focused on the state and taking power. It is more urgent than ever to break capitalism, but this cannot be done through the state. The obvious question then is: “Yes, but how?”

In the second book, Breaking Capitalism, I suggested thinking about revolution through the creation of cracks in capitalist domination – by recognizing, creating, expanding, multiplying and merging cracks. These cracks are spaces or moments in which we say no to the logic of money and create social relations on a different basis. These cracks are everywhere – large (like the Zapatistas or Rojava) and small (all kinds of resistance, cooperation projects and attempts to create other ways of life). These cracks are always contradictory because we live in a world shaped by capital. But they are all forays into the direction of another world – they are acts of resistance and rebellion.

This third book, Hope in Hopeless Times, is the granddaughter of Change and the daughter of the Crack. It was written in a darker context, where revolutionary hope has become more difficult. Hope takes a slightly different tack. Rather than focusing only on our struggles, it asks whether it is possible to see in our struggles a growing weakness or fragility of capital.
Money is the enemy of hope, money is the enemy of life itself. Hope shows that our resistances and rebellions, even if it doesn't seem so, push money into an increasingly fictitious existence, namely through the expansion of debt. We have put capital in a situation of great fragility, which is both frightening and hopeful for us.

Why was the presentation at CIDECI so important to me? Because CIDECI is closely linked to the Zapatistas and other important struggles.
GWR: In your talk at CIDECI and in your book, you draw on European philosophers like Ernst Bloch (The Principle of Hope) and the Frankfurt School. Do you see challenges or strengths in applying this European ontology to the Global South, particularly in the context of the Zapatista uprising?

John Holloway: I don't think we should think of the world in terms of territorial demarcations. The capitalist world is a world of class struggle, a world in which the rule of money, the rule of capital, attacks us daily and threatens to drive us to our doom. The future of humanity depends on whether we are able to break the organization of society on the basis of the exchange of goods and create something else. It is a global struggle, as the Zapatistas have repeatedly emphasized. People like Ernst Bloch were important inspirations in this struggle.

GWR: If I understand you correctly, you have spoken out firmly against identity politics and instead advocate for a politics that questions the money and exchange logic of capitalism. Is that correct? And how does that relate to indigenous identities and the knowledge and practices of the Maya, which are at the center of the Zapatista movement and have given hope to many in recent years?

John Holloway: Identity includes us, defines us. We are indigenous, German, women, trans, anarchists or whatever. Every declaration of identity puts a label on us – or on others. We lock ourselves into an image. Resistance-rebellion-revolution transcends and breaks through labels and pushes into-against-and-beyond the identitarian. The Zapatistas have been very anti-identitarian from the start. They say: “We are indigenous, proud of our heritage, and more than that: our struggle is for all of humanity. Our struggle is for life against money, that is, for life against death.”Any politics that remains within an identity, without overflowing (2), contributes to the reproduction of capitalist oppression. The rise of the right is nothing more than the identification of anger and labeling the “other” as the enemy.

GWR: How does the struggle against capitalism relate to the struggle for something new? Often, the focus seems to be on resisting something rather than fighting for something. What role does a positive vision or utopia play in your book and for you personally?

John Holloway: Capitalism is a specific form of social cohesion that brings people together essentially through the exchange of commodities and money. It brings people together in a way that literally destroys us. Overcoming capitalism necessarily means developing other forms of social togetherness and other forms of connecting human activities. Whereas capitalism is a totalizing society, subsuming all activity under a single logic (the labor-money-profit-capital logic), we want to create a world that doesn't totalize in the same way, that doesn't impose a single logic, but allows for self-determination on many levels. A world of many worlds, as the Zapatistas say.

GWR: For many, hope and utopia are concepts associated with the future. How do they relate to the past, and why is this connection important?

John Holloway: Hope is a movement in-against-and-beyond. We move from being-in-the-world to pushing against-and-beyond. That is history, that is class struggle, that is where we come from and where we are going. This is our creative wealth. Utopia is not a fixed place that we can reach; it is an overflowing, a pushing into-against-and-beyond. Capital tries to contain us – through the violence of money, of physical force, of education – but we keep pushing, overflowing boundaries.

GWR: As someone who is active in the climate justice movement, I feel like something is missing at the moment. Five years ago, I felt different. I increasingly find myself drawn to concepts like social revolution and the Zapatista saying, “We must walk slowly because we have a long way to go.” Yet in the fight against the climate crisis, we don't have much time. How do you think hope informs our theories of change?

John Holloway: Maybe there is a lack of overflow, a further push. “Climate Justice Movement” is a terrible name, isn't it? It is not about justice, and it is not just about fossil fuels. It is about breaking a form of social organization that is destroying the environmental basis of human existence. Of course it is about social revolution. The problem is that “social revolution” alone sounds too abstract. All struggles are concrete struggles, struggles over concrete issues – and they have to be. But we need the ability to go beyond them. We have to say: “We have to stop the open-cast mine at Lützerath (for example), but we have to go further. We have to stop using fossil fuels, but we have to go further. We have to stop a development based on the chase for profit. We have to break capitalism and create other relations.”I am thinking of a ‘P.S. politics’. We must protect local biodiversity, prevent the extinction of so many life forms – and P.S.: this means that we must change the relationship between humans and other life forms – and P.S.: this means that we must change the organization of human society – and P.S.: this means that we must abolish capitalism and create a communizing society. This “P.S.” is an “and further,” an overflow. How many people who accept the first part of the sentence (“We need to protect local biodiversity”) will agree with the last part (“We need to abolish capitalism and create a communing society”)? We don't know: maybe very few, maybe very many. It is an overflow that we have to articulate – not by starting with the conclusion (“We need a social revolution”), and not by dismissing those at the beginning (“Protect biodiversity”) as reformists.
I don't have the answer to the tension between the Zapatista “we walk slowly because we have a long way to go” and the urgency of destroying capitalism before it destroys us. It's a difficult question. There is an English saying: “More haste, less speed.” Maybe that's the answer.

GWR: Is there anything else you would like to add? And will the book be published in German?

John Holloway: Yes, the book will be published in 2025 by Mandelbaum Verlag in Vienna. It is already being translated by my friend Lars Stubbe, so it will certainly be better than the English original.

GWR: Thanks for the interview and also for helping with the translation, Lars.
Interview: Felix Krawczyk
Notes:1) See also the John Holloway interviews and articles in the GWR: https://www.graswurzel.net/gwr/?s=John+Holloway
2) Note from Lars Stubbe: In Holloway's interpretation, overflowing stands for the embodiment of Hegel's “pure restlessness of life”, namely that life cannot be contained within capitalist or other forms of oppression, and therefore has an inherent hope of liberation.
Interview from: Graswurzelrevolution No. 495, January 2025, http://www.graswurzel.net