(#)boron, atilio - the state illusion

7/28/2019 (#)Boron, Atilio - The State Illusion

1/5

Holloway Forum 35

defined form, then we are falling intothe th ing-ness tha t dest roys thecont rad ic to ry d imens ion whoseexis tence Hol loway notes wi thincapitalist social relations, and whichallows us to think about change andrupture with the present. Following thisrationale, we can say that, as is any form,the state is and is-not.

Tearing away that which is-not ,taking possession of it, snatching it inthe popular interest, should be part ofthe struggle: it cannot be left outside.Because far from avoiding, as Hollowaysays, being .trapped by the logic ofpower, to turn our back on this struggleis to glorify it as an immovable thing-ness.

Holloway on power and the 'statei l lusion'Atilio A. B oronAccording to Holloway, 'the nucleus ofthe novelty of Zapatismo is the projectof changing the world without takingpower' (Holloway, 2001a: 174). In apenet ra t ing l i te rary metaphor , theZapatistas proclaimed that 'it is notnecessary to conquer the world. It isenough to create it anew!' Hollowayargues that the innovation of Zapatismoallows the left to overcome the 'stateillusion', a doctrinal relic linked to astate-centred conception of revolutionin which the latter was assimilated to 'theconquest of state power and thetransformation of society by the state'(ibid: 174). For Holloway, the classicMarxist controversy that contrastedreform with revolution hides, despiteapparent differences, a fundamentalagreement regarding the state-centredcharacter of the revolutionary process.From there, he asserts that 'the biggestcontribution of the Zapatistas has beenthe breaking of the l ink betweenrevolution and control of the state '(ibid: 174). His reasoning not only hasan undeniable meri t of i ts own

practical transcendencebut it alsoillustrates a range of concerns andtheoretical approaches common to agood part of the al ternat ive andprogressive thinking of the twenty-firstcentury. In a previous work, this authorhad dealt extensively with the subject(Holloway, 1997). 'The revolt ofdignity'he said on that occasion'cannot aspire to take the power of the state'given that 'the rejection of state poweris simply an extension of the idea ofdigni ty ' . And he comple ted hisargument in the following way:

The revolt of dignity can only aspireto abol i sh th e . s ta te , or mo reimmediately, to develop alternativeforms of social organisation andstrengthen the (anti) power of thean t i -s ta te . . .. Th e prob lem ofrevolutionary politics, then, is notthe taking of power, but thedevelopment of ways of politicalarticulation that would oblige thosewho retain state office to obey thepeople. (Holloway, 1997: 24, mytranslation)

Let us brieffy examine the variouspossible objec t ions to Hol loway 's


2/5

36 Capital & Class #85

exposition: that it is capitalist societyitself that has increasingly adopted state-centred features.If, in classic Marxism, the relevanceof the state as a social institution appearsto be highlighted, this is for two goodreasons. On the one hand, it is becauseMarxism as a social theory reproducesat the level of thought the events,processes and structures that exist inreality. It would be a major blunder ifthe evident 'statification' of capitalismwere to pass unnoticed by Marxisttheorists . On the other hand, i t isbecause as a theory Marxism cannotand should notremain immune to theinfluence exerted over the exploitedmasses by the predominant form oforganisation of the oppressors. Th is wasperceived with unique clarity not onlyby such outs tanding theor is t s andsocialist leaders as Lenin and Gramsci,but also by intellectuals who are alien toMarxism, such as the Germansociologist Georg Simmel. If capitalismincreasingly stresses the state's role inthe perpetuation of its conditions ofdominat ion, i t would not seemreasonable for its opponents to ignorethat feature in order to con centrate theireffortsboth in theor y as well as inpractical strugglesin other areas.

How to ignore the unabashed'statification' of capitalist societies sincethe early 1930s? Th is ph eno m eno nbrought to the fore the importance ofan essential feature of the capitalist state:its role as a focus where the powers -econo mic, political, and ideological - ofthe dominant classes were concen-trated; i ts role as the organiser ofcap i t a l i s t domina t ion and , s imul -taneously, as the principal 'disorganiser'

coun tries, remaining at the mercy of theplutocracies that control the 'markets';even in these cases it has continued tofaithfully fulfil the aforementioned tasks.An insu rgen t , ant i -capi ta l i s t forcecannot afford to ignore or underesti-mate such an essential aspect.The governments of the industrial-ised democracies foster a doctrinairecrusade against the state, while inpractice never ceasing to strengthen andassign new tasks and functions to it.Actually, the 'state illusion' would seemto be nested in those conceptions,which, despite evidence to the contrary,fail to distinguish between anti-staterhetoric and the 'statifying' practices ofthe capi ta l i s t governments . Or toperceive the ever-increasing strategicnature that the state has assumed inorder to guarantee the continuity ofcapitalist domination.The shortcomings of Holloway's

diagnosis become even more clamorouswhen he endorses an idea dear toneoliberal thinking, and to postmo-dernism in general, by affirming 'thatstates are not the centres of power thatthey were assumed to be in the state-centred theories of Luxemburg andBe rnste in' (ibid: 174). Th is reasoningculminates by proclaiming the allegeddisappearance of national capital, andits replacement by a global capitalcompletely detached from a national-state base, and operating from thesuppor t tha t the g lobal i sa t ion ofeconomic operations offers to it.(i)Several authors have shown the errorscontained in this interpretation, and thedamage it can cause to the anti-capitalistforces that may adhere to thispersp ective. T he belief that the m ainplayers on the global economic scene


3/5

Holloway Forum 37

'national base' is nothing more than aneoliberal legend disproved every singleday. How can the supposedly 'post-nat ional ' character of large g lobalcorporations be reconciled with the factthat less than 2 per cent of executiveboard members of the American andEu r o p ean meg a - co r p o r a t i o n s a r eforeign, and the fact that more than 85per cent of al l their technologicaldevelopments originate from withintheir own 'national' borders? In spite ofthe global scope of their operations,which is not in question, Boeing andExxon are American f i rms, just asVolkswagen and Siemens are German,and Toyota and Sony Japanese. When agovernment threatens their interests, orwhen an allegedly 'disloyal' competitorquestions their market domination, it isneither the UN Secretary General nor theSecurity Council that intervenes in theaffair, but ra ther the ambassadors of theUnited States, Germany or Japan, whotry to correct the course and protect'their' businesses. In the same line ofreasoning, Ellen Meiksins Wood wrotenot too long ago that 'behind everytransna t ional corporat ion there is anational base that depends on its localstate to sustain its viability, and on otherstates to give it access to other marketsand o ther labour forces ' . Theconclusion of Holloway's analysis is that'the central point of globalization is thefact that competition is not onlynoteven principallybetween individualfirms, but between national economies.And as a consequence the nation-statehas acquired new funct ions as aninstrument of competition' (2000: 116).That is why national states continue tobe key p layers in contemporarycapitalism.

illusion'. In multiple writings, Gramsciargued that the establishment of the'intellectual and moral' hegemony is acondition of the conquest of politicalpower, and of any possibility of thesuccessful implementation of a radicalproject (1971: 56-59).T h u s , ' i n t e l l ec tua l and mora l 'leadership and political domination aretwo inseparable sides of the one-and-only revolutionary coin: without thefirst , social insurgence falls in thequicksands of the logic of apparatuses,armed or otherwise; and without 'powervocation', the political struggle decaysinto an ethereal, postmodern culturalcontroversy.

It seems to us that in Holloway's workthe second par t of the Gramscianprogrammethe section dealing withpower, state control and dominationvanishes into thin air. A new world isnot constructed, as Zapatismo wants,unless the correlat ion of forces isradically modified, and very powerfulenemies are defeated. And the state isprecisely the p lace where thecorrelation of forces is condensed. It isnot the only place, but it is by far themost important one. It is the only onefrom which, for exam ple, the victors cantransform their interests into laws, andcreate a norm ative and insti tutionalframework that guarantees the stabilityof their conquests. A 'triumph' on theplane of civil society is extremelyimportant but lacks imperative effectsor does anyone doubt the clear victorythat the Zapatistas reaped with theMarch of Dignity? Nevertheless, shortlythereaf ter the Mexican Congressenacted outrageous legislat ion thatdated back to the worst mom ents of thecrisis, and that was antithetical to the


4/5

38 Capital & Class #85

From the above it can be inferredthat the idea of the 'power illusion',which includes the above and preachesthe necessi ty of abandoning theconquest of polit ical power, can nolonger be acceptable. 'It is not a projectto make us powerfulsays Holloway'but rather to dissolve the relations ofpower' (2001a: 174).

We will concede by hypothesis thatHolloway may be right, but we shouldalso admit the legitimacy of the followingquestions: how can those crystallisedpower relations that, for example inChiapas, have condemned the nativepeople to more than five hundred yearsof oppression and exploi ta t ion bedissolved?Is it reasonable to presume that thebeneficiaries of an incurably inhumaneand unfair systemthe latifundistas(owners of large estates) , theparam ilitaries, the local political bosses,

etc.will humbly and peacefully accepttheir defeat in civil society and thebreakage of their power structures,w ithout offering a bloody resistance?How are those 'alternative forms' ofsocial organisation and 'the anti-stateanti-power' going to be constructed?Will it be possible for the revolutionrequi red in order to found thesealternative forms to 'advance just byasking'?

Holloway has argued that progressiveforces cannot 'first adopt capitalistmethods (struggle for power) to latergo in the opposite direction (dissolvepower)' (2001b).It seems to me that the struggle forpower, especially if we place it in themost concrete terrain of politics, andnot in that of philosophical abstractions,

moment of the relation of capital'. W hatdoes this mean? T ha t there was nopolitics before the birth of capital? Don' twe run the risk of culminating thatreasoning by affirming tha t all tha t existsis nothing other than a reflection of theall-embracing power of capital? In thatcase, wouldn't this lead us to a kind of' l e f t -Fukuyamani sm ' , excep t tha tinstead of celebrating the definitivetriumph over capital, we are supposedto sing funeral marches for thecontesting forces locked up forever inits supremacy?

ReferencesGramsci, A. (1971) Selections from thePrison Notebooks ( I n t e r na t i ona lPublishers) New York.Holloway, J. (1997) 'La revuelta de ladignidad', in Chiapas, no. 5 (Instituto

de Invest igac iones E conom icas)Mexico.Holloway, J. (2001a) 'El Zapatismo y lasciencias sociales en Am erica La tina ',in OSAL, no. 4, June (CLACSO)Buenos Aires.Holloway, J. (2001b) 'La asimetria de lalucha de clases. Una respuesta aAtilio Boron', in OSAL, no. 4, June(CLACSO) Buenos Aires.M eiksins W ood, E. (2000) 'Trab ajo,clase y estado en el capitalismoglobal ' , in OSAL, no. i , June(CLACSO) Buenos Aires.


5/5

(#)boron, atilio - the state illusion

Documents