Hope in Hopeless Times

John Holloway has published widely on Marxist theory, on the Zapatista movement and on the new forms of anti-capitalist struggle. His book Change the World without Taking Power has been translated into eleven languages and has stirred an international debate, and Crack Capitalism is a renowned classic. He is currently Professor of Sociology in the Instituto de Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades of the Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla in Mexico.

Preface: Stop that train



Part I Rage-Hope-Richness





Today, any day.
Start again. Not from fear but from hope. Not from containment but from overflowing.
Better, start from antagonism, from struggle.
Start from anguish, from Janus. Start from Not Enough! Start from the hydra that we must slay.


Part II We must re-learn hope





It is time to re-learn hope.
To learn hope is to learn to think hope: a docta spes.
Hope pushes beyond identity.
Our hope starts from the scream, not from absence.
The Scream takes us in a negative direction, to overflow.
Beyond negative thought: Thinking In-Against-and-Beyond.


Part III Historicity





Hope-against is rooted in historicity.
Historicity does not mean historical materialism.
There is a Grand Narrative: the train taking us towards Destruction. It is a narrative to be broken.


Part IV The Subject





Hope is not for victims, nor for heroes.
Richness is the revolutionary subject.
Listen to the latent Richness.
Listen again: there is a deeper level of latency.
Turn it all upside down, feel sorry for the capitalists.


Part V The Object: Money





Hope is a movement of the subject against an object: a breaking against a binding.
The links in the chain of destruction are difficult to break.
The weakness of the binding lies not in the links between the forms but in their internal antagonisms.
Unbinding the binding: Revolutionising revolution.
Richness against the commodity: the world faces two ways.


Part VI Think hope, think crisis





A theory of hope requires an understanding of the weakness or crisis of its object, the hoped-against.
Crisis is inherent in capital.
From crisis to restructuring, or not: this is the salto mortale of capital.


Part VII Crisis postponed





Hope confronts the Hydra of Money.
Money rules. Money is the serial killer destroying us all.
Capital today is increasingly fictitious. Money is ill.
We are the subjects of the crisis of money.
Putting off disaster is the central principle of political economy. The abandonment of the gold standard opens the way to mob rule.
The war created the golden age of capital. Its crisis broke the link between gold and money.
The Volcker shock: the last attempt to impose sound money.
Black Monday: Debt takes off.
The breach between money and value continues to grow: a series of heart attacks.
The fragility of capital explodes in the financial crisis of 2007/2008. Heart attack number 2?
The storm is on the horizon: Fire Next Time.
The storm breaks: the Coronacrisis.
The Great Fragility deepens.


Part VIII A Book in search of a Conclusion. Hope in search of a Happy Ending





The Container cannot contain.
We are Rabble-Richness-Resistance-Rebellion.
From Rage to Dignified Rage, Rabia to Digna Rabia.
Emancipate richnesses!
Not enough.


Thanks



Notes



Bibliography



Index