Whether you agree with him or not, Steven Poole of the Guardian does review a decent amount of Pluto books, and we’re grateful. Here’s his latest: Crack Capitalism by John Holloway:
Assuming, for the sake of argument, that you want to bring down capitalism, how should you go about it? Holloway urges readers to create “cracks” in the edifice: in lieu of “alienated labour”, choose to do something you think is necessary or interesting. Just reading a book in a park is a good crack, and a person who does this, on Holloway’s analysis, is on a continuum with more apparently impressive dissidents such as guerrilla gardeners, rioting Greek students or his beloved Zapatistas.
The slight German-philosophy-in-translation feel of some of the prose (what are the hyphens doing in “clock-time is the time-in-which we live”?) is perhaps excused by the rather lovely suggestion Holloway floats that, because nouns (“car”, “wall”, “food”) hide the activity that gave rise to them, “anti-capitalist literature should abandon nouns and just use verbs”. The author hastens to add: “but that would be very difficult to write and probably difficult to understand.” That “probably” is infectiously optimistic, much like the suggestion that we should use a car “as a receptacle for planting flowers or carrots”. Guardian readers are urged to try this and report the results.
Some people find this review a bit patronising, but I rather like it. What does everyone else think about it? In the comments, Keith Flett says “John Holloway is a major left-wing thinker and his new book Crack Capitalism deserves more than a rather flippant review by Steve Poole” but I think that it fits in with the spirit of Holloway’s work rather well. I haven’t asked John (perhaps he will chime in here) but I think that being a major left-wing thinker isn’t as relevant to him as the opportunity to get his ideas some mainstream exposure, particularly the (very attractive in this miscellaneous and unfocused age) idea that you don’t have to be an out and out political activist to resist capitalism.
Enough from me, let’s talk. Have you read the book and think the review represents it poorly? Does the review make you want to read the book, or turn you off it? Do you think that low key or ‘part-time’ resistance can really make a difference? The best comment will get a free copy of Crack Capitalism, or another book if you’ve already got that one. Everyone else can resist capitalism through, errr, shopping:
|
|
Crack CapitalismJohn Holloway
|
I thought the book was about the drugs trade until I read the review – crack being a verb, not a noun. I’m curious to know how Holloway defines his subject, because there’s a trap anti-capitalists fall into of defining their opposition in terms which do not make sense – like shopping for example. And here’s another oddity – I’ve just entered a competition to win a book on anti-capitalism. But it’s only odd because capitalism is a noun which hides the activity behind it – the tension between those who must work for money and those whose money works for them…
Many thanks for posting the review. Of course I would have preferred a review that engaged with the issues that the book raises, but it does touch on one of the central provocations: the girl reading her book in the park. The crack represented by the girl in the park can be read in two ways – either as a rather silly “let’s go to the park and capitalism will collapse” (which indeed it would if we all did go), or as a challenge to the left, that unless we can touch people’s hidden revolts, unless we can see and mark out the lines of continuity between the ubiquitous revolts of everyday life and the great uprisings, then we cannot even begin to talk of communising as a real social movement.
In a world (and book review pages?) awash with books that don’t even hint at anything original, John’s ideas are like a breath of fresh air. Poole’s dig at the prose of crack capitalism might be warning readers that Crack Capitalism will be a tad more difficult than the likes of Naomi Klein’s “Disaster Capitalism” or Hitchens most recent rant. But I’ve always found John’s writing to be lucid and accessible even while challenging readers with less familiar constructions; I can’t even count the number of times I’ve used “in-against-and-beyond” in normal conversation without skipping a beat.
It’s no surprise that Poole is is guarded but “infectiously optimistic” about scattered practice of using a car as a planter for planting flowers or carrots, but one only needs to recall the wave of Reclaim the Streets protests where jackhammers tore up the streets to plant trees and sod. http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docid=4537872385598571306
As with the book, I hope it gives teeth to the becoming popular idea of everyday/quotidian resistance. Sabotaging the line, taking sickdays because we’re ‘sick of working’, and scribbling insults to the boss on the bathroom stall all go without question. Why don’t these work with social conflicts that extend outside of the workplace? Obvious examples like Greek anarchists burning down banks or the Zapatistas reclaiming popular sovereignty are glamorous. But what about situations without such moral certainty, where the battle lines haven’t been so clearly drawn?
The idea is to invert Poole’s snark – if ‘over the rainbow’ of a communist revolution all the neighborhood girls are at the park reading books and playing on the swing set, why not start with it? No doubt, short circuiting the revolution with the challenge of “lived communism” might simultaneously improved the material conditions of day to day life while avoiding the rituals of traditional left protest.
I look forward to reading Crack Capitalism in a few month’s when I’ve plowed through my of my doctoral exam reading. Until then, I’ll have to settle with nourishment from the cracks that already starting to snake their way through my life.
Where the Sidewalk Ends
There is a place where the sidewalk ends
And before the street begins,
And there the grass grows soft and white,
And there the sun burns crimson bright,
And there the moon-bird rests from his flight
To cool in the peppermint wind.
Let us leave this place where the smoke blows black
And the dark street winds and bends.
Past the pits where the asphalt flowers grow
We shall walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And watch where the chalk-white arrows go
To the place where the sidewalk ends.
Yes we’ll walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And we’ll go where the chalk-white arrows go,
For the children, they mark, and the children, they know
The place where the sidewalk ends.
Shel Silverstein
I found the review pathetic. It wasn’t a review. I have just finished reading the book and there is much digesting. It has given me a lifeline as it has somehow articulated my ongoing attempts at ‘concrete doing’ as John Holloway would put it. I am not an academic, I am currently running an online free economy that supports peoples arts projects, events, gigs, spectacles, etc and am often left out of academic discourse and critique because i simply dont have the language as it is often kept in the realm of academia, universities, etc. It is not practical. This book went a long way towards rectifying that. It is a call to arms, offers real hope and inspiration.
And I love that poem posted by anarchistwithoutcontent