STOP MAKING CAPITALISM

By John Holloway

[This address at the World Social Forum in Porto Allegre, February 2005 is translated from the German on the World Wide Web, http://www.rosalux.de/cms/index.php?id-6665.]




We have different political perspectives. We have different ideals about political practice and organization and perhaps of the kind of society to be created. What do we have in common? Our NO against the existing society is our common passion. This is not slight or insignificant. Our NO is a rage, a raving anger, and a deep conviction uniting us: NO to neoliberalism, NO to imperialism, NO to war and NO to destruction of humanity. Our NO must be the starting point for alliances.

This is a very urgent NO. We are lemmings hastening off a cliff. Humanity is on a way that leads directly to its own self-destruction. The self-annihilation of humanity becomes more likely every day: through war, through destruction of the environment or through the misery, poverty, sickness and violence produced by neoliberalism. The only possibility that is left is to say NO and refuse: “NO, we will not take this path to our self-destruction”, simply NO, not “we should be slower or more careful or drive on the left side instead of the right.”

NO is also the secret of our strength. Those who rule always depend on those who are ruled. Capitalists could not make any profit without their workers. Generals could not wage any war without their soldiers. Presidents and premiers could not rule without their subjects. When the servant says NO to the master, the servant is not a servant and the master is not a master any more. Both begin to become persons. When soldiers say NO to their generals, soldiers are not soldiers and generals are not generals any more. When workers say NO to their capitalist bosses, workers are not workers and capitalists are not capitalists any more. All these people who would boss us around and tell us what we should do could realize they are dependent on us, not the other way around. We are stronger than we think. First of all, let us say NO: strike, mutiny, boycott, disobedience and refusal. The NO is what is common to us. The NO is urgent; the NO is the source of our strength.

We make capitalism. If capitalism exists today, it is because we create it today, not because it was created in the eighteenth or nineteenth century. If we do not create it tomorrow, it will not exist tomorrow. We tend very often to make others responsible – the imperialists, the Americans, Bush, and the capitalists. But when we make them responsible, we present ourselves in the role of the victim. If we are victims, we cannot change things and must ask someone to do it for us. Still they are not the ones who make capitalism; we are the ones who make it. If we have the strength to create I, we also have the strength to stop making it. We can only feel our strength when we are conscious of our responsibility.

The question of revolution is not: “How do we destroy capitalism?” but “How do we stop making capitalism?” This does not solve the problems but empowers us for another form of reflection on changing the world.

First of all, the time frame is changed. The question does not turn around building revolution in the future (the creation of alliances) but acting here and now to break capitalism and stop creating it.

Secondly, our attention is concentrated on refusal. Not losing time is important now. We must refuse and do everything so this refusal becomes effective. Our whole history is a history of refusals – a history of strikes, mutinies, boycotts and the refusal to pay debts and distancing ourselves from those who try to boss us around. These refusals were often (but not always) simply used as means for negotiating acceptance of better conditions – for example, strikes for higher wages. In the last years, there were a whole series of actions to lodge vetoes against neoliberal developments, often successfully and often in a very large framework (for example, Bolivia in October 2003). How can we make these refusals more effective? How can we refuse and prevent the destruction of humanity, not to negotiate better conditions?

Thirdly, we do not live in a world where there is one great refusal. Rather there are millions of refusals, millions of people who say or cry NO everyday, who say NO; we will not let capital determine our life. We will organize our life in a way we consider necessary or desirable. Sometimes those refusals are so small that even those who participate do not see them as refusals. They are frequently collective projects that seek an alternative way forward and sometimes are as vast as the Lakondian jungle, the Argentinean rebellion three years ago or the revolts in Bolivia. These refusals could be viewed as cracks or tears in the system of capitalist rule. Capitalism is a system of rule, not first of all an economic system. Through money, capitalists rule us and tell us what we have to do. Refusing to obey means breaking the rule of capital. Thus the question for us is how we multiply and extend these tears in the fabric of rule.

Expressed differently, the revolution necessarily starts from the gaps: the expansion of the tears or cracks in the structure of capitalist rule. Each of these cracks is a place of refusal and also a place of creation, a place where we develop our own creative power and our own desire for self-determination. The negatives contain many positives, many different positives pressing experimentally in different directions. The positives are anticipations, not conceptual forms with pivotal points.

He utopian star of a different society exists for all of us but our ways of seeing this star and trying to reach it are different. These explorations are harmed when we attempt to channel them in one direction. Discussing and criticizing are vital. However the world we want to create is a world containing many different worlds. In speaking about alliances and cooperation, we should concentrate on the negative, on our refusal, on the practical orientation on how we can end the destruction: the Bush administration, the war, and environmental destruction, in a word the present creation of capitalism. Stop making capitalism. Create another world, a world of many worlds.