With the resurgence of a Latin American left expressed mainly by
elected governments challenging the capitalist system to one degree
or another, there has been a corresponding decline of "autonomist"
currents such as the EZLN and the more ideologically disposed
supporters and members of the piqueteros and recovered factories
movement in Argentina. It is understandably hard to get worked up
over Subcommandante Zero's latest communiqué when Hugo Chavez is
changing class relationships on the ground.
Standing in the same relationship to the autonomist currents that
Regis Debray once had with the rural guerrilla groups of the 1960s,
British professor John Holloway has been forced to take stock of the
situation in an interview conducted by Maria Sitrin, an Argentine autonomist.
Holloway is the author of "How to Change the World Without Taking
Power" that I reviewed here. It basically argues that "If the state
paradigm was the vehicle of hope for much of the century, it became
more and more the assassin of hope as the century progressed." It is
good for workers to rebel in his view but not good to rule. Whenever
I think about such arguments, I am reminded of how my mother's Irish
Setter loved to chase cars up our country road but would always
return after a few hundred feet of barking wildly. I thought to
myself at the time that she wouldn't know what to do with a car if
she actually caught one. For Holloway, the working class is in the
same situation as my mom's Irish Setter.
full: http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2007/05/16/john-holloways-complaint/
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