13 Quotes by John Holloway

The struggle is lost from the beginning, long before the victorious party or army conquers state power and ‘betrays’ its promises. It is lost once power itself seeps into the struggle, once the logic of power becomes the logic of the revolutionary process, once the negative of refusal is converted into the positive of power-building.

The real determinant of society is hidden behind the state and the economy: it is the way in which our everyday activity is organised, the subordination of our doing to the dictates of abstract labour, that is, of value, money, profit. It is this abstraction which is, after all, the very existence of the state. If we want to change society, we must stop the subordination of our activity to abstract labour, do something else.

Comradeship, dignity, amorosity, love, solidarity, fraternity, friendship, ethics: all these names stand in contrast to the commodified, monetised relations of capitalism, all describe relations developed in struggles against capitalism and which can be seen as anticipating or creating a society beyond capitalism.

[...] sentir que o mundo está equivocado não significa, necessariamente, que temos a imagem de uma utopia que ocupe o seu lugar. [...] Não necessitamos da promessa de um final feliz para justificar a nossa rejeição a um mundo que sentimos estar equivocado.

We are the sole creators of the system which entraps us.

We need no promise of a happy ending to justify our rejection of a world we feel to be wrong.

Identification is domination.

Doing is inherently plural, collective, choral, communal.

A whole world of horror is contained in the process of definition.