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In this
issue:
By Hollie Nicol
 ‘Anti-Power’: The Meaning of Revolution
Today
Change
the World without Taking Power: The
Meaning of Revolution Today
John Holloway
(London:Pluto Press, 2002)
'How to
Change the World Without Taking Power’
is one of the most controversial
insights on anti-capitalist
revolutionary politics to date. At the
basis of this thesis is the theory of
‘anti-power’, the notion that no
struggle against the injustices and
global inequalities manifested
particularly in neo-liberal economic
hierarchical structures will be achieved
by first ‘taking power and then changing
it’. This strategy of ‘capturing power
in order to abolish power’ it proclaims,
is the basis behind the failure of
previously revolutionary actors, such as
Rosa Luxemburg, Trotsky, Gramsci, Mao
and Che Guevara.
The meaning
of revolution then, to build a society
of ‘non-power relations’, cannot be
achieved by ‘conquering power [because]
once the logic of power is adopted, the
struggle against power is already
lost... And if we manage to become
powerful by building a party or taking
up arms or winning an election, then we
shall be no different from all the other
powerful in history’. Furthermore, once
such a ‘hierachy of struggles is
established, conquering political power
is put at the top and all else -
relations, sensuality, playing,
laughing, loving is put aside because it
doesn’t contribute to the ‘goal’’.
The vision of
‘anti-power’ has been much criticised,
most frequently for its lack of
pragmatism: ‘reality and power are so
mutually encrusted that even to raise
the question of dissolving power is to
step off the edge of reality’. This is
acknowledged by the author, who admits
that ‘to ask for a theory of anti-power
is to try to see the invisible.’ Yet, he
also urges us to ‘forget our ‘fear of
ridicule’ and ask then: how can we even
begin to think about changing the world
without taking power?’
Despite
extensive ridicule, since its conception
in 2002, physical manifestations of
‘anti-power’ are apparent. Firstly, in
the post-1994 strategies of the Mexican
Zapatista movement, a landless peoples
struggle of armed actors, who not only
abstain from using such arms, but have
as their central manifesto to create ‘a
world of dignity, or humanity, but
without taking power’. In addition, the
development of the World Social Forum,
the first civil society ‘movement’
structured completely around a
non-hierarchical, anti-power basis.
Whether such
struggles can indeed achieve their goals
is yet to be seen. For the ‘anti-power’
movement, the current point is simply
not to dismiss ‘anti-power’ as an absurd
impossibility simply because it is has
never previously been (properly)
attempted.
Colombia’s Cultural Weapons: The
Super-Citizen and Three-fold Methodology
Colombia has
long been suffering as one of the most
violent territories of the globe,
primarily a result of the constant power
struggles between the paramilitary,
military and guerilla forces.
Recently,
alternative solutions to Colombia’s
violence have been attempted with much
success in the capital, formulated and
strategised primarily by the ‘La Vida es
Segrada’ (Life is Sacred) campaign of
Antanas Mockus, a philosophy and
mathematics lecturer-come-two-term mayor
of Bogota.
At the basis
of this so-called, ‘Super-citizen’
methodology is the concept that people
follow laws and regulations based on
three principles:
1) Fear: If
they do not act in certain ways they
will be punished under national or
international legal guidelines.
2) Morality:
They agree morally with the law and
would not break it even if it were not
illegal
3) Social
exclusion: The action is socially
unacceptable and they will be thus
excluded from their family, social or
community groups if they carry this out.
At the
national level, the response to ‘tackle’
Colombia’s violence concentrates
primarily on ‘Fear’ as the antidote to
illegal violent actions. On a par with
the majority of world powers then the
major governmental responses have been
to strengthen the state military and
increase police presence and power on an
‘us versus them’, ‘good versus bad’
standard dichotomy.
For Mockus,
this dangerously ignores the two latter
reasons for individual and group
behaviour. Within a new wave of action,
both culture and society must be
incorporated more heavily into
‘anti-violence’ initiatives. In line
with this theorisation, Mockus
established a wide and innovative array
of techniques to foster anti-violent
attitudes and behaviour during his
previous term as mayor. These included:
-
hiring
local artists to paint coloured
stars on any piece of road or
pavement within the capital on which
someone had been killed, whether by
traffic fatalities, violent or
political crime. The name of that
person was then written inside this.
-
hiring
local mime artists to socially
embarrass people not crossing roads
at designated zebra crossings (a
major cause of traffic fatalities).
The mimes followed and mimicked such
people throughout the city, the
basis of the strategy being that
Colombians are more fearful of
social ridicule than fines or
regulations.
The success
and popularity of such initiatives, have
not, however, resulted in the extension
of such human, social and
cultural-focused strategies within
Colombia or elsewhere. That this is a
result of the lack of philosophical,
innovative and confident figures such as
Mockus within the spectrum of global
political figures is possible. What is
certain is the continual focus of
law-makers on strategies based on the
belief that ‘fear of punishment’ is
indeed the primary reason for
law-compliance and (non)violent
behavioral patterns amongst citizens.
According to the Mockus’ research, this
is undoubtedly not the case.
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