[lbo-talk] Good take-down of John Holloway's latest book

Angelus Novus fuerdenkommunismus at yahoo.com
Sat Nov 13 01:47:06 PST 2010


The problem, though, is that the reviewer makes exactly the same mistake as Holloway: namely in assuming that a form-analytical, fetish-critical approach to Marxism necessitates any specific political orientation.

As Carrol and I have stated repeatedly both here and on lbo-talk, this is simply not the case. There is no immediate relationship between a rigorous understanding of Marx's analysis of the fetishistic mediation of social life in capitalism and "good" politics.

One can have the squishy, New Left green politics of Postone. One can have Holloway's inchoate brand of autonomism. One can have Zizek's Neo-Bolshevism. Or the self-congratulatory armchair wankery of the Platypussies.

I mean, does not Lenin's main contribution consist in stating the truth that there is a gap between Marx's critique of political economy and a political practice aimed at overturning capitalist social relations? We definitely need lots of people reading _Capital_ and the _Grundrisse_, but they are not guides to action. The mistake of Holloway and cohorts is in assuming that they are.



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