Changing the world without taking power

Abstract

John Holloway's book is an admirable essay, full of suggestive ideas and truly radical – in the sense original term: “getting to the root of the problems”. Whatever its gaps and imperfections, it shows, in an exemplary way, the subversive and critical power of negativity. Its goal is ambitious and current: “to refine and sharpen the Marxist critique of capitalism”. The fundamental philosophical chapters deal with fetishism and fetishization. They are creatively based on Marx, Lukács and Adorno. Holloway defines fetishism as the separation of doing and doing and the breaking of the collective flow of doing. This is a fertile point of view, but Holloway apparently identifies all forms of objectivity with fetishism. For example, he complains that in capitalism “the constituted object acquires a durable identity.”