443533

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JCS12210.1177/1468795X12443533Young and SchwartzJournal of Classical Sociology

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Journal of Classical Sociology

Can prefigurative politics 12(2) 220­–239

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Holloway’s Crack Capitalism

Kevin Young and Michael Schwartz

Stony Brook University, USA

Abstract
The desire to overcome the alienated labor of capitalism manifests itself in the daily actions of
people everywhere. John Holloway argues that social movements must build upon this liberatory
impulse, challenging not only the rate of exploitation but also workers’ loss of control over the
process of production and allocation (and, by implication, the loss of control in other arenas of life).
Revolutionary change, in turn, will result from these movements creating thousands of ‘cracks’ in
the capitalist system by asserting alternative ways of living. Holloway’s argument for prefigurative
movements is ambiguous on several points, however: the role of political organizations, the role
of alternative institutions, and the appropriate approach of social movements to the state. We
propose some friendly amendments, placing greater emphasis on the need for strong political
organizations and counter-institutions, but also for selective engagement with dominant
institutions. A revolutionary strategy must combine the construction of prefigurative counter-
institutions with struggles for reform of existing structures. Yet the dangers of oligarchization
and hierarchy within movements are very real, and thus there is a need for structures that are
ruthlessly democratic and ideologies that are explicitly intersectional in their approach to fighting
different forms of oppression.

Keywords
alienation, dual power, intersectionality, labour, Marxism, prefigurative politics, the state

The obvious shortcomings of twentieth-century revolutions have posed fundamental

strategic dilemmas for progressive activists and scholars. The hallmarks of socialism-
in-practice in the USSR, China, and elsewhere have been central economic planning,
state bureaucracy, class stratification, and various forms of repression (political, ethnic,

Corresponding author:
Kevin Young, History Department, 3rd Floor, Social and Behavioral Sciences Building, Stony Brook University,
Stony Brook, NY 11794, USA
Email: kayoung@ic.sunysb.edu
Young and Schwartz 221

cultural, and so on), inspiring little enthusiasm among most leftists today. The Soviet
Union, once viewed as the primary alternative (however imperfect) to capitalism, col-
lapsed entirely. The successor states – along with other erstwhile socialist exemplars like
China and Vietnam – have integrated into the neoliberal world order. Even Cuba, while
resisting neoliberal integration, has struggled mightily just to maintain substantial anti-
capitalist gains in healthcare, nutrition, and education.
For many on the left these experiences have called into question the very idea of a
revolutionary project focused on achieving state power. So what, then, are our remaining
options for seeking fundamental transformations in human society? What constitutes
revolutionary change in the present context? And what should progressive activists be
doing and progressive scholars be advocating?
John Holloway’s answer is simple but provocative: ‘Refuse-and-create!’1 The road
to overthrowing capitalism, he argues, lies in the proliferation of small-scale rebellions
against capitalist logic. Rather than the seizure of state power and subsequent smashing
of the capitalist structure, Holloway envisions ‘a multiplicity of interstitial movements’
(p. 11) creating thousands and thousands of ‘cracks’ in that structure by refusing to
program to the system, and instead asserting alternative ways of living and interacting
that prefigure a post-capitalist way of life. Cracks can be spatial (for example, land
occupations), and/or temporal (for example, short-lived street protests, or longer-lasting
‘Occupy’ encampments), and/or resource-based (for example, a community establish-
ing control over its water supply). Holloway correctly observes that millions of people
around the world are already engaged in such liberatory actions, ranging from the
explicit and collective assertion of alternatives – including participation in coopera-
tives, worker-run enterprises, and democratic bodies of various sorts – to innumerable
daily acts of quiet resistance to capitalist logic, which can be as mundane as reading a
book in the park.
Holloway argues that the ‘unifying thread’ of all these cracks is the desire to over-
come the alienated labor of capitalism and replace it with activity that is voluntary, ful-
filling, and socially useful (p. 198). After reviewing Holloway’s foundational theoretical
argument, which offers an enriched understanding of alienated labor, we focus particular
attention on the concrete implications of his analysis for transformational organizing.
Several issues are crucial: the role of revolutionary organizers and organizations, the role
of counter-institutions, and the question of whether, and how, the struggle for reform can
be productively conducted within capitalist states and other dominant institutions.
Unfortunately, Holloway’s analysis on these issues is more-than-sometimes vague, and
the ambiguity of argument makes definitive criticism difficult. Our intention in any case
is less to criticize Holloway than to use his analysis as a springboard for discussing some
of the dilemmas facing the progressive movement today.

Marxist theory and the dual nature of labor

Holloway foregrounds Marx’s fundamental insight about the ‘dual nature of labor.’ Marxist
theorists and activists have typically focused their attention on the labor market, where
capitalists extract surplus value by paying workers for their labor power while selling the
resulting commodities at their (much higher) market values. The common understanding of
222 Journal of Classical Sociology 12(2)

alienated labor revolves around this dynamic: the workers, in selling their labor power, lose
control over the production process. But Holloway highlights a less-emphasized Marxian
insight, that there are in fact two components to this alienated labor. In addition to the loss
of control over the work process, the worker also loses control over the disposition of the
product, a process which becomes controlled by impersonal market exchanges. This sec-
ond component of alienation, designated by Holloway as ‘abstract labor,’ engulfs even
those producers who control the production process but sell their products in the capitalist
market.2 Self-employed workers are thus subject to the coercion of market forces, for they
must satisfy the substantive demands of the market for specific products with specific fea-
tures as well as maximize the monetary return on their labor in order to purchase their
means of subsistence. In this way capitalist markets deprive workers of the ability to under-
take ‘free, conscious activity,’ forcing them instead to produce commodified goods for
exchange rather than concrete use (Marx quoted, p. 89).
Though still in technical control over the work process, those subject to the disci-
pline of abstract labor are pressured to become indifferent to what goods (and the qual-
ity of goods) they are making – producing cluster bombs or poison gas if the market
commands, rather than producing life-saving medicine or cleaning up a polluted river
(which they might prefer to do). And Holloway is careful to remind us that this form of
alienation reaches well beyond the traditional petit bourgeoisie of shopkeepers and self-
employed craftspeople. It extends to high school instructors who prepare their students
for standardized tests instead of promoting the critical thinking they themselves trea-
sure; to architects who design buildings that facilitate the herding of public supplicants
instead of enabling the public use of public space; and to social service workers who
process caseloads instead of collaborating with clients to foster self-expression and
empowerment.
Holloway rightly argues that Marx’s insight into the antagonism between alienated/
abstract labor and ‘free, conscious life activity’ has been largely ignored by most subse-
quent Marxists and activists. Labor unions have overwhelmingly focused on limiting the
rate of capitalist exploitation; only in their most radical moments have they sought even
partial worker control over the work process. When successful, the focus on the work
process has reduced the alienation that flows from the commodification of labor power.
But even the revolutionary elements in historic working-class movements have not
sought to replace production for the capitalist market with production for use, choosing
instead to postpone attacking market tyranny until after the assumption of state power.
Holloway bemoans ‘the terrible hold of abstract labour over the anti-capitalist move-
ment’ (p. 150) and calls for prioritizing the quest for freedom and control. He offers the
concept of ‘doing’ as a contrast to abstract labor, designating it as voluntarily undertaken
activity that ‘we consider necessary or desirable’ (p. 84) and that is unmediated by mar-
kets. Efforts to recapture partial or full control over the work process are key elements of
a liberatory activism; without such control, the process of challenging abstract labor
cannot proceed. ‘Doing’ involves control of production by those engaged in it as well as
decision-making input regarding the disposition of the product.
The quest for control over the work process has a long and rich history. Workers
around the world – anarchists and otherwise – have struggled to retain, recapture, and
expand their control over the work process, as Holloway briefly notes (compare Clawson,
Young and Schwartz 223

1980; Montgomery, 1980). There have also been many intellectual challenges to the
tyranny of abstract labor. The ‘participatory economics’ model of Michael Albert and
Robin Hahnel (1991) is perhaps the most detailed of a range of proposals for alternative
economic institutions to have emerged in the past quarter-century. Their model revolves
around workers’ and consumers’ councils that would oversee economic planning, pro-
duction, and allocation; all workers would help to determine how jobs are organized and
would be remunerated based on effort and sacrifice. Other academics and activists have
elaborated a range of additional alternatives, most in the same spirit of the quest to over-
come alienating, degrading labor and capitalist commodification (for example, Devine,
2002).
Nonetheless, Holloway is correct that most Marxist writers, and more importantly
most working-class movements, have neglected the struggle for control over production
and distribution. In the postwar United States the union movement has focused almost
entirely on how to limit the time spent working while maximizing wage and benefit
levels – while also suppressing the union radicals (often Communist-led) who articulated
demands for substantial control of the work process (Buhle, 1999; Stepan-Norris and
Zeitlin, 2002). Holloway’s critique also applies to many labor unions in underdeveloped
countries, where limited industrialization and massive unemployment have often given
rise to ‘labor aristocracies’ which, like their US counterparts, have abandoned any effort
to challenge the regimented work process or market tyranny over the types and quality
of products.
And even post-revolutionary leaders as diverse as Lenin, Trotsky, Mao, and Fidel
have failed to fully confront the abstraction of labor. They have instead focused attention
on the redistribution of wealth and income while downplaying the need for workers’
control over the work process and permitting workers virtually no input in decisions
about distribution – such decisions have been controlled by the state or, in some variants,
global capitalist markets. In Holloway’s view, a revolutionary movement for a ‘self-
determining society’ (p. 208) must confront both the extraction of surplus labor by the
capitalist and the abstraction of labor itself (either by markets or by state decision-
making). Holloway thus concludes, quite accurately, that the ‘revolutions of the twenti-
eth century failed not because they were too radical but because they were not nearly
radical enough’ (p. 260).3
Directing attention to the dual nature of labor is a valuable contribution, in terms of both
understanding the past and present and guiding our efforts to make future activism more
productive. But Holloway’s treatment contains two sources of ambiguity. First, what
exactly constitutes ‘doing’ (that is, self-actuated labor), and how can one tell when it is
occurring? Second, if ‘life is the antagonism between doing and abstract labour’ (p. 190),
what role do social movements not directly rooted in the production system (including
gender, race, ethnic, and even national struggles) play in the quest for ‘doing’? In our view
each of these elements must, and can, be made more rigorous, in order to give a clearer
sense of how resistance might contribute to social transformation.
The basic definition of ‘doing’ seems clear enough in theory: it is, in Marx’s words,
the ‘free, conscious activity’ that is voluntary, stimulating, socially useful, and psycho-
logically rewarding; and which produces goods and services directly for use (by the
producers or their community) rather than commodities for exchange in an impersonal
224 Journal of Classical Sociology 12(2)

market (quoted, p. 89). Many activities would clearly fall under this category, such as
cultivating a personal or community garden, singing in a church choir, or choosing to
bake a cake for one’s friends (Holloway’s recurring example). In contrast, many activi-
ties clearly seem to constitute abstract labor: working on a Ford assembly line, flipping
burgers at McDonald’s, teaching history from government-selected textbooks, or writing
advertising copy for Coca-Cola.
But some examples seem more complex. What of counter-institutions such as the
recuperated worker-controlled factories in Argentina that continue to operate within a
capitalist market system? The new labor regime inside the plants has overcome certain
forms of alienation by eliminating the sale of labor power and giving the workers collec-
tive control over the production process. But most of the recuperated factories are still
producing goods for exchange in the surrounding capitalist market, meaning that work-
ers are still alienated from the products of their labor (Sitrin, 2006).4 They are therefore
engaging in the abstract labor that Holloway correctly identifies as the nub of the oppres-
sion they experience. The tyranny of the market implies that the workers in the recuper-
ated factories may not have much choice about what they produce, about the quality of
the product, or about who will ultimately utilize it. The tyranny of market competition
may even undermine their control of the production process, force them to externalize
the costs of manufacture, and eventually (by Holloway’s impeccable logic) lessen the
workers’ energy and moral commitment to the collective enterprise. How, then, do we
understand the recuperated factories? Can we reject them as non-liberatory because they
do not frontally challenge abstract labor? Certainly Holloway does not think so and nei-
ther do we. But in accepting them as liberatory, we also imply a gradation of liberation
in which they might fall somewhere above average.
At the other end, even within abstract labor activities such as assembly-line work
there is the constant potential for small rebellion, as Holloway indeed emphasizes. There
is a certain liberatory element in, for instance, the efforts of assembly-line workers to
slow down the pace of the conveyor belt, since it is an assertion of self-actualization and
can create a tiny realm of worker control over the production process. Another example
offered by Holloway is the individual who breaks away from the (labor market-driven)
drudgery of housework to spend two hours reading a favorite novel in the park. These
examples and a multitude of others constitute a whole world of small, but real, liberatory
actions.
Thus, instead of a dichotomy where some actions are liberatory and others not, it
makes sense to think of abstraction and liberation as endpoints on a continuum, with dif-
ferent liberatory actions falling at various points. Actions can be liberatory if they push
in the direction of self-determination and away from the tyranny of abstracted labor, but
there is wide variation among those actions. This point is not clear in Holloway’s discus-
sion, and we think it deserves emphasis.
If even tiny steps toward self-determination and away from the tyranny of abstract
labor are progressive, are there any acts of rebellion that are clearly not liberatory or even
counterproductive? The obvious contrast between the recuperated factory movement in
Argentina and the Barack Obama electoral campaign of 2008 – both of which expressed
rebellious attitudes against the status quo – can give us some sense of how to draw the
line. The factory movement in Argentina involved two intermingled liberatory projects:
Young and Schwartz 225

taking possession of the factories and then running them. Both of these broke with the
oppressive routine of factory life, and both were (and continue to be) fundamentally
prefigurative, since the process involved the workers in direct democracy, ‘doing for
themselves.’ They did not depend on the state or outside institutions to deliver benefits to
them.
The Obama campaign also involved two intermingled projects: electing the candidate
and running the executive branch of the US government. But neither of these involved
the campaign workers or voters ‘doing for themselves.’ The campaign itself was a regi-
mented top-down activity in which activists performed appointed tasks under supervi-
sion of the central organization, and the outcome was the election of Obama. The central
message of the campaign was that electing Obama was the best strategy for achieving
substantive change in society; Obama was presented as a savior who would obviate the
need for independent and sustained collective action on the part of the electorate. Once
elected, Obama quickly proceeded to demobilize his activist base until the next cam-
paign season rolled around. Neither the process nor the outcome was prefigurative, and
in fact the campaign managers intentionally sought to avoid such a possibility.
The question of what constitutes liberatory action emerges in a different form when
considering the ‘new’ social movements of the late twentieth century (Buechler, 2011:
Ch. 10; Mellucci, 1989). Holloway fully supports the feminist, antiracist, LGBT, envi-
ronmental, and indigenous movements, maintaining that ‘the unifying thread’ among
these disparate formations is the revolt against ‘the abstraction of doing into labour’ (p.
198).5 But is he saying that they are reducible to the struggle against class or labor exploi-
tation? He does not address this question directly, which is ironic considering his experi-
ence studying the Zapatistas.
Holloway implicitly elevates the class struggle (both against capital and against
abstract labor itself) above other forms of struggle, but not in the same crude way that
some Marxists do. The abstraction of labor is, historically speaking, ‘prior to other
conflicts’ (p. 223) like gender, racial, or national divisions, which were created or at
least fundamentally transformed by capitalism. One illuminating chapter shows how
the rise of capitalism was also ‘the brutal and bloody creation of a new hierarchy
between men and women’ and a new sexual normativity, linked to the need to repro-
duce the labor force and train its members in the ‘performance principle’ (pp. 119, 122
[quoting Marcuse]). Yet the question of how these other forms of oppression emerged
historically is different—and in our view much less important—than the question of
how one goes about combatting them in the present. On the latter question, Holloway
is not class-reductionist. He clearly supports struggles for ethnic, racial, gender, or
LGBT rights, and would never dismiss them as subsidiary or diversionary or reflec-
tions of ‘false consciousness.’
Thus, ‘the antagonism between doing and abstract labour’ (p. 190) that Holloway says
is the essence of human life might be flexibly interpreted as the antagonism between
doing and abstract living – that is, the conflict between having control over the decisions
that impact one’s life and being subject to the constraints that prevent ‘free, conscious
life activity.’ This antagonism extends well beyond the workplace and the market to the
social community, the home, the body, and indeed to all realms of life. In this context, we
can see a common denominator that unites all the movements that erupted around the
226 Journal of Classical Sociology 12(2)

world in 2011 (as well as the movements that erupted in 1968). Had he written the book
in 2012 instead of 2010, Holloway certainly would have emphasized the commonality
among these struggles, and declared them liberatory precisely because they moved the
needle toward a ‘self-determining society’ by engaging in ‘conscious life activity’ while
demanding or enacting changes in the larger structure.6
Nonetheless, the place of non-class identities and struggles remains under-theorized.
Rarely does Holloway directly address this question, and when he does he seems to
imply that any liberatory struggle almost by definition ‘means the refusal to accept sex-
ism, racism, ageism and all those other practices which treat people not as people but as
the embodiment of labels, definitions, classifications’ (pp. 39–40). But he seems to
ignore the fact that it is possible to struggle for ‘doing’ in one realm of life while ignoring
or even exacerbating the abstraction of labor in another realm. What of the all-too-
familiar struggle for control over the labor process that reproduces or even amplifies
gender, racial, or other hierarchies within it? The 1676 Bacon Rebellion in western
Virginia was a radical struggle for self-determination against landed elites to the east, but
it was also motivated by a profound racism toward Native Americans. In the nineteenth
and twentieth centuries, skilled craft workers throughout Europe and the United States
fought valiantly and often successfully to retain control over the work process while also
joining and sometimes initiating the persecution of non-whites, immigrants, and women.
Racism, sexism, homophobia, and nationalist exceptionalism remain prevalent in unions
today. Conversely, antiracist, feminist, and LGBT struggles have often failed to chal-
lenge the class oppression inherent in capitalism, the imperialism of the rich nations, and
other forms of oppression not deemed central to their struggles (Buhle, 1999; Foner,
1982 [1974]; hooks, 2000 [1984]; Kolhatkar and Ingalls, 2006: Moraga and Anzaldúa,
1984 [1983]; Puar, 2007; Robnett, 1997; 169–196; Scipes, 2010). This historical experi-
ence complicates the question of when action is liberatory.
Here Holloway’s argument might benefit from closer attention to the concept of inter-
sectionality, which emphasizes the mutually constitutive and mutually reinforcing nature
of distinct oppressions (Albert et al., 1986; Crenshaw, 1991). Portions of the left in Latin
America practiced something akin to this approach in the early decades of the twentieth
century, often guided by indigenous, anarchist, and flexible Marxist traditions (for exam-
ple, Becker, 2008; Hylton, 2003). In the United States, radical women-of-color move-
ments of the 1960s and 1970s were particularly important in developing a more explicit
concept of intersectionality (Combahee River Collective, 1977; Moraga and Anzaldúa,
1984 [1983]).
Holloway does not address the fact that many movements do not embrace intersec-
tionality, and nor does he say how activists can ensure that ‘the refusal to accept sexism,
racism, ageism and all those other practices’ is embedded in the movements they join.
These questions are vital, since the current weakness of the US left is partly attributable
to a lack of appreciation of the multiple and interrelated forms of oppression in society.
Greater appreciation of such realities could strengthen individual organizations and facil-
itate the growth of movement coalitions across traditional divides. The issue of intersec-
tionality is closely tied to another fundamental question that Holloway also leaves
ambiguous: how can the multitude of ‘cracks’ coalesce into the fractures that are neces-
sary for large-scale change? We return to this question below.
Young and Schwartz 227

The dialectics of the everyday: Possibilities and pitfalls

Crack Capitalism is noteworthy for its focus on what might be called the dialectics of the
everyday – for Holloway the conflict between abstract labor and doing is ‘a constant liv-
ing antagonism’ (p. 98). Here again, Holloway makes a number of brilliant points but
also leaves several crucial questions unanswered or ambiguous.
For Holloway, the liberatory thrust is endemic to daily life. The drive toward self-
determination is apparent not just in overt rebellions but in countless individual and col-
lective activities:

[This book] is the story of the composer in London who expresses his anger and his dream of a
better society through the music he composes. It is the story of the gardener in Cholula who
creates a garden to struggle against the destruction of nature. Of the car worker in Birmingham
who goes in the evenings to his garden allotment so that he has some activity that has meaning
and pleasure for him. Of the indigenous peasants in Oventic, Chiapas, who create an autonomous
space of self-government and defend it every day against the paramilitaries who harass them.
Of the university professor in Athens who creates a seminar outside the university framework
for the promotion of critical thought. Of the book publisher in Barcelona who centres his
activity on publishing books against capitalism. Of the friends in Porto Alegre who form a
choir, just because they enjoy singing. (p. 4)

These acts are part of a constant dialectic between the logic of abstract value and the
logic of doing, with all the above united in their rejection of the former in favor of the
latter. Holloway urges leftists ‘not to draw dividing lines but to see the lines of continu-
ity’ among these acts (p. 25). Organizers must ‘develop the sensitivity to recognise the
revolts that exist everywhere’ and must realize that self-conscious progressives have no
monopoly on the liberatory impulse: ‘We are ordinary people. If we think we are special,
distinct from the masses who are happily integrated into the capitalist system, we imme-
diately exclude the possibility of radical change’ (p. 258). Resistance is pervasive, if
usually hidden (compare Scott, 1990).
The existence of a widespread liberatory impulse in human society should be
cause for great optimism among left organizers. And although Holloway’s argument
is not primarily empirical, it happens to be supported by a wealth of empirical data.
Even within the United States, where leftists often view the general population as
co-opted and apathetic, there is much reason for hope. Polls of the US public have
long indicated widespread progressive sentiment, particularly on economic issues
and international affairs, and almost unanimous desire for more input in the policy-
making process (Kull, 2010; Page with Bouton, 2006; Page and Shapiro, 1992).
Millions of people in the United States already participate in worker-owned enter-
prises, land trusts, consumer cooperatives, and other ‘experiments in equitable coop-
eration’ (Alperovitz, 2011; Hahnel, 2005). The pervasiveness of the desire for
self-determination is even reflected indirectly in the rhetoric of the demagogic politi-
cians who seek to strengthen corporate domination over people’s lives, for they must
appeal to ‘libertarian’ impulses and manipulate anti-authoritarian sentiment to attract
popular support.
228 Journal of Classical Sociology 12(2)

If resistance is endemic, then elite hegemony is much more fragile than we often
assume. Holloway formulates this idea beautifully, saying that the dominance of capital-
ism requires ‘constant reconstitution’ (p. 168), that it must be continuously ‘created’ by
the members of society (both elites and otherwise) in order to negate the tide of resis-
tance that is constantly eroding established constraints. Holloway proceeds to argue that
primitive accumulation – the separation of people from commonly held resources that
Marx considered largely complete in the nineteenth century – is actually a constant fea-
ture of the present. On this point, he adds depth to Harvey’s (2003: 137-82) argument that
global capital is constantly engaging in the expropriation of the ‘commons’7 by empha-
sizing that this expropriation process is the frontier of struggle in which ordinary people
can and do often prevail (even if only in tiny ways). Holloway concludes that ordinary
people have great potential power. Since non-elites are essential participants in capital-
ism’s constant re-creation, this participation means ‘we can stop creating it and do some-
thing else instead’ (p. 124). This argument is a welcome affirmation of the potential for
human agency.8
These points are important, if not entirely new. Though Holloway does not cite
Gramsci, he shares Gramsci’s emphasis on the need for the continual reconstitution of
hegemonic relationships and therefore on the power of ordinary people to overturn
them.9 His conception of political organizing is also Gramscian in that it entails ‘drawing
out that which is already present in repressed and contradictory form’ (p. 225). For
Gramsci, political organizing was likewise about drawing out the ‘healthy nucleus’
within the ‘contradictory consciousness’ of the worker. The organizer’s task was not to
instill consciousness but to expand upon the healthy nucleus so that it could ‘be made
more unitary and coherent’ (1971 [1932]: 333, 328). Holloway’s argument for dialogue
as opposed to monologue in the process of organizing also recalls the popular pedagogy
model of Paulo Freire (1970 [1968]) and others.
There is much value in Holloway’s argument about the ‘cracks’ created by the dialectics
of everyday life, but there are also three major ambiguities: a conflation of individual with
collective action; a lack of detail on how the cracks might ‘connect’ into a larger move-
ment; and the related problem of the obstacles faced by the emergent counter-institutions
that Holloway sees as the vehicle for consolidating the cracks into fractures. We have
already raised the latter two issues, but here we will describe what we hope is a useful if
partial resolution.
The conflation of individual with collective action reflects an under-emphasis on orga-
nization and is apparent in Holloway’s lists of examples (see above). Joining a choir or
skipping work to read in the park may be subtle challenges to the logic of capital, but are
qualitatively different from occupying a factory. Though Holloway warns against roman-
ticizing the solitary individual rebel and acknowledges a difference between individual
and collective struggle, he does so in passing and sometimes seems to be ignoring his own
warning. His distaste for authoritarianism and paternalism at times seems to slip into
antagonism against all forms of organization and particularly ‘institutions’: ‘Any institu-
tionalisation of struggle is problematic,’ he says, though he hints that organizations may
be positive as long as they are ‘open and flexible’ (p. 224). ‘There is no recipe to be
applied,’ he argues, ‘just millions of experiments’ (pp. 254–255). This attitude is common
Young and Schwartz 229

to many progressive activists and intellectuals, and stems from an entirely healthy aver-
sion to the authoritarianism and bureaucracy that has so often characterized labor unions,
political parties, and revolutionary regimes. The dangers of oligarchization of leadership
and co-optation are inherent in formal protest organizations (Piven and Cloward, 1979;
Schwartz, 1976; Schwartz et al., 1981).
But some activists take that aversion too far and equate organization itself with ille-
gitimate hierarchy. Doing so is a fatal mistake. It is only through organization (and even
institutions) that the multitude of cracks can coalesce into an intersectional movement
that does not work at cross-purposes and is strong enough to generate tectonic fractures
in the system.
If the ‘millions of experiments’ are to survive, they must connect and eventually
expand and scale upward. Countless liberatory activities have begun full of hope and
energy, only to fizzle out after a few days, months, or (sometimes) years, their organiz-
ers demobilized and demoralized or in some cases incarcerated or even killed. Holloway
does recognize this problem, but his answer is again underdeveloped. He indicates that
the smaller acts must coalesce into a multifaceted and coordinated movement, but pro-
vides little concrete advice about what one might do to connect the cracks beyond sim-
ply being sensitive to their commonality. His vision of ‘contagion, emulation and
resonance’ (p. 78) has some basis in reality – activists certainly do draw inspiration and
lessons from their counterparts elsewhere, as the Arab Spring and global revolts of 2011
have shown – but he offers little to indicate how these connections can be harnessed to
large-scale and coordinated actions capable of altering capitalist trajectories. Here we
think Holloway’s inattention to organization is particularly telling. Instead of attacking
the critical questions about how to create and sustain large-scale collective action with-
out succumbing to oligarchization, he sprinkles the text with warnings against institu-
tionalization. At rare moments, he suggests that institutions can be liberatory and
perhaps crucial to the survival and expansion of the cracks. One example is a passing
remark that ‘the schools, the clinics, the cooperatives, the Juntas de Buen Gobierno’ are
central to the Zapatista project (p. 239). These things certainly qualify as institutions,
with the Juntas serving to govern and connect multiple communities, but Holloway
never accepts his own invitation to analyze how and when such institutions can be suc-
cessfully constructed, how they can become connected into a larger network of libera-
tory institutions, and under what circumstances activists can hope to engage in pressing
beyond local cracks to larger fractures. And perhaps most important in this context are
the sorts of organizational forms that might help to enact intersectionality and thus
overcome the strong tendency for acts of rebellion to be liberatory for one group and
oppressive to another.
Holloway’s hints about liberatory organizational forms seem reminiscent of Trotsky’s
idea of dual power, the situation of ‘double sovereignty’ that develops prior to the actual
overthrow of the state by an insurgent class (Trotsky, 1932: 206–215). Alternative insti-
tutional structures like the Zapatista Juntas or worker-owned enterprises may be the
present-day parallels of the soviets in Russia in 1905 and between the February and
October revolutions in 1917.10 Trotsky’s great insight was that dual power exists when
ordinary people stop obeying the dictates of the state and start acting collectively
through bodies like the soviets—as Holloway would put it, they stop re-creating the
230 Journal of Classical Sociology 12(2)

existing power structure through their compliance ‘and do something else instead’ (p.
124). But in Holloway’s vision, these counter-institutional areas of dual power can exist
in every arena of society – from factories to community gardens to a single classroom
or one individual on a park bench. Though Holloway is thus more expansive, he shares
with Trotsky the idea that these alternative power bases emerge while the capitalist
system is intact and constitute the vehicle by which the existing structure is eroded
away.
We think this vision is a worthy one, but Holloway shies away from any direct discus-
sion of how these islands of dual power can grow together and overcome their contradic-
tory tendencies. He does not adequately address the many difficulties faced by emergent
counter-institutions and is mute on the strategies for surmounting them. Chapter 9 briefly
confronts some of the obstacles: for instance, the recuperated factories’ problem of find-
ing suppliers, clients, and creditors, state efforts to co-opt and repress radical move-
ments, and the continuation of hierarchy and oppression within movements themselves.
One solution, Holloway suggests, ‘is to construct links of mutual assistance between the
different cracks,’ and he offers the interesting example of the Zanón ceramics factory
(now known as FaSinPat) in Argentina, which buys raw materials from Mapuche indig-
enous cooperatives in Chile (p. 69). The Zapatistas, of course, have survived largely
because of their ability to maintain the sympathy and material solidarity of outsiders. But
lacking in the analysis is a systematic exploration of how and when it is possible ‘to
construct links of mutual assistance between the different cracks’ and how this process
can overcome the contradictions created by racism, sexism, and the other non-class divi-
sions in global society.

Liberatory struggle, reform, and the state

Holloway is best known for his argument that revolutionaries can, and must, ‘change the
world without taking power’ (2005 [2002]), which distinguishes him from twentieth-
century Marxists, who focused on the seizure of the state. He argues that the construction
of a new system can and must take priority over the destruction of the current one. For
him ‘the only way to think about revolution is in terms of the creation, expansion and
multiplication of cracks in capitalist domination’ that prefigure the new society they wish
to see (p. 51). ‘It can only be done from below’ (p. 206).
The argument is appealing, for several reasons. First, as Holloway argues, engage-
ment with dominant institutions can warp the character of a movement: ‘To gain influ-
ence within the state or to capture what appears to be control over the state, the
organisation must adopt those forms of behaving and thinking which are characteristic
of the state’ (p. 59). In working through the state, even a radical movement with a strong
liberatory thrust can come to mirror the authoritarian operation of the state and foster
ties of dependency that inhibit autonomy and empowerment. Second, capturing state
power does little to transform the fundamental structure of society; the state is ‘a false,
illusory totality’ (p. 206). The new revolutionary regime must inevitably confront
numerous roadblocks, both foreign and domestic (and internal to itself), that limit its
ability to transform society. A hierarchical structure cannot ‘create a self-determining
society’ (p. 208). And, third, there are historical examples of systemic transformations
Young and Schwartz 231

occurring via the spread of cracks, as opposed to the ‘ten days that shook the world’
style of revolution (pp. 10–11); here Holloway cites the transition from feudalism to
capitalism.
Holloway is not as far from classical Marxism as he suggests in proposing incremen-
talism as an alternative to the ‘ten days that shook the world’ model. Certainly the
Chinese and Vietnamese revolutions were incrementalist, eschewing working within the
existing state and instead establishing liberated areas governed by revolutionary prac-
tices and then expanding them over years and even decades of struggle. Holloway might
criticize their practice, but he must acknowledge the overlap of their theory with his own
vision.11 Moreover, virtually all of the classical activist-theorists, including Marx, Lenin,
and Luxemburg, argued against the usefulness of turning the capitalist state into an
instrument of liberation. In The State and Revolution Lenin offered an argument almost
identical to Holloway’s, that the capitalist state is structured to serve the ruling class and
cannot be turned into an instrument of working-class liberation.12 Certainly the history of
corporate capitalism in the United States, including the ever-intensifying corporate con-
trol over politics in recent decades, supports such a view (Ferguson, 1995).
But as with other aspects of his analysis, Holloway seems to take what we feel is an
insightful argument just a bit too far. Like Holloway, Marx, Lenin, and Luxemburg all
argued that pre-revolutionary struggles for reforms were absolutely essential to building
toward the ultimate overthrow of the system (Lenin, 1965 [1920]; Luxemburg, 1925
[1906]; Marx, 1963 [1852];). On this basic point we see little disagreement between
Holloway and the classical Marxist activist-theorists. Disagreement becomes apparent,
however, on the question of whether movements should engage in direct struggle with
the state.
Holloway sometimes seems to suggest that the movement should act as though the
state does not exist, creating prefigurative and counter-insitutional structures that do not
interact with the government. The classical theorists disagree with this view. As Marx
suggested in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (1963 [1852]), capitalist
states are not simply executive committees of the ruling class but sites of contestation
whose degree of subservience to ruling-class interests is variable and subject to change
based on outside pressures (compare Poulantzas, 1978). Lenin (1965 [1920]) empha-
sized that the revolutionary must be willing to engage with reactionary institutions as a
way of advancing the revolutionary struggle. And Rosa Luxemburg (1925 [1906]) argued
that political demands were necessary and appropriate even at peak moments of
working-class initiative. We are not sure whether Holloway would disagree with these
propositions, since he does not offer a sustained analysis of the relationship of the strug-
gle to the state. But we feel that the classical theorists are correct in arguing that the
judicious engagement of the state is an essential part of the movement’s toolkit.
Radical activists around the world have often practiced this philosophy with success.
In the 1930s the US Communist Party played a vital role in building the labor movement
that won major concessions like the right to organize and substantial social welfare pro-
visions, combining on-the-ground actions like sit-down and rent strikes (which fit com-
fortably into Holloway’s template) with demands for altered state policy such as
recognition of unions and rent control (Stepan-Norris and Zeitlin, 2002). The US Civil
Rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s combined direct liberatory actions with a
232 Journal of Classical Sociology 12(2)

clever manipulation of state forces, pitting segregationist southern governments against

the federal judiciary and executive (Robnett, 1997). Peasant movements in Mexico,
Bolivia, Ecuador, Colombia, and other Latin American countries have compelled the
state to enact land reforms by combining a range of legal and extralegal tactics (Becker,
2008: 128–131; Gotkowitz, 2007; Zamosc, 1986).
Furthermore, Holloway does not adequately address the incontrovertible reality that
many revolutionary regimes have greatly ameliorated human suffering, even if they have
deemphasized or suppressed the quest for a ‘self-determining society.’ The Cuban
Revolution has made strides against poverty, malnutrition, infant mortality, and other
forms of suffering that put wealthier countries to shame. The 1979 revolution in
Nicaragua, and elected left regimes in countries like Chile (1970–1973) and Venezuela
(1999–present), have also brought impressive social gains, at least for a time. Holloway
seems a little too quick to dismiss these reforms, even if he does warn against ‘condemn-
ing reformism’ (p. 35) and acknowledges in passing that the Cuban Revolution brought
some valuable changes.
The need to work through the existing state system is perhaps nowhere clearer than on
the issues of climate change and nuclear proliferation, both of which could result in cata-
strophic human suffering long before there is any realistic chance of erecting the alterna-
tive institutions capable of addressing them. Holloway acknowledges the urgency of
these two issues but arrives at a contradictory and problematic solution:

The imminence of catastrophe seems to push us towards a positive conception of totality, some
idea that we need a world state. Certainly, some form of global coordination would be desirable
in a post-capitalist society, but the forms of global coordination that presently exist are so
bound up with capital and the pursuit of profit that they offer little hope of a solution. It is
becoming more and more clear that any solution to the problem of climate change can come
only from a radical change in the way that we live, and that change cannot come from a state
or some sort of world body, but only from the rejection of abstract labour, from our own
assumption of responsibility for the way we live. (p. 210, emphasis added)

Clearly international governance bodies like the United Nations have generally failed to
ensure global peace, justice, and environmental sustainability; the UN, for one, has typi-
cally either been captive to the wealthy and powerful in the rich nations or been too weak
to enforce regulatory or punitive rulings against those interests. Nowhere has this pattern
been more evident than in the record of the Conference of Parties to the UN Framework
Convention on Climate Change, which in seventeen meetings has failed to produce an
enforceable global deal on emissions reductions that would stave off devastating climate
change.13 But when scientists are giving the world just a few short decades to avert
potentially catastrophic climate change, is it really sufficient to exhort individuals to
assume ‘responsibility for the way we live’ and hope that alternative institutions will
somehow replace corporations before it is too late? The realistic progressive has little
choice but to continue targeting states and international institutions given the dire
urgency of global warming. We desperately need to reduce net carbon emissions, and
right now only states have the power to sign treaties, enforce emissions reductions, and
redirect national investment. We must target states, international bodies, and polluters
Young and Schwartz 233

through a variety of means – civil disobedience, boycotts, legislative struggle, the moni-
toring of carbon-offset trading, and so on — at the same time that we construct alterna-
tives for the future (Hahnel, 2011: 157–242).
Modern states are indeed corrupt, and fundamentally so, but until we have adequate
alternative institutions in place we can ill afford to forsake all interaction with them.
Unqualified antistatism ignores real possibilities for improving people’s lives through
engagement with states and other dominant institutions, and at its worst can end up
empowering the private corporations and financial institutions that are even less account-
able than government. Moreover, states are not monolithic, but rather are constituted
from a mélange of mutually contradictory institutions encompassing multiple levels of
government. The United States is extreme in the extent to which corporations control
politics, but not all levels of government are equally dominated by corporate money. A
thousand protesters targeting the president will probably have no effect, but a thousand
protesters targeting the local school board or city council might well move the needle at
least a little in a liberatory direction. While the US movement for universal healthcare
has had little success at the federal level, a grassroots struggle in the state of Vermont has
recently won a state-level universal healthcare bill.14 Many movements have succeeded
in part by exploiting the conflicts between differing components of government, as the
US Civil Rights movement did in the 1960s (Robnett, 1997), and as various anti-colonial
and indigenous movements in Latin America have been doing for centuries (Serulnikov,
2003; Stern, 1993 [1982]). At times the state apparatus might even be harnessed to spon-
sor prefigurative institutions, as seems to be suggested by the Venezuelan communal
councils and the adoption of participatory budgeting schemes by city and regional gov-
ernments in countries like Brazil, India, and Spain (Baiocchi, 2005; Ellner, 2009).
Too often the left assumes that a choice must be made between working for reforms
and working for revolution. Holloway’s commitment to building the future society
within the interstices of the current system is a powerful rebuttal to this false dichotomy,
since each liberatory act improves the lives of its practitioners. But the construction of
these liberated areas cannot proceed without the state and other outside forces attempting
to derail, co-opt, or destroy them. Just as guerrillas must constantly defend their liberated
territory, all activists engaging in prefigurative liberatory struggles must be able to
defend their gains from elite backlash. A defense strategy must involve an attempt to
alter the behavior and policies of the institutions that constitute the state and its capitalist
environment.
On this point, Holloway’s partial vision is similar to Robin Hahnel’s (2005) argument
that we must find ways of ‘fighting for reforms without becoming reformist.’ A general
strategy for doing so is to ‘combine reform work with experiments in equitable coopera-
tion.’ This strategy is not two separate tracks, but one unified struggle. Reforms like
wage increases or anti-discrimination policies can greatly improve people’s everyday
lives, and no revolutionary struggle can gain momentum without them; conversely,
reforms unaccompanied by revolutionary agitation are more vulnerable to rollback by
elites, and only revolutionary change can ensure their long-term durability. Reforming
dominant institutions themselves is also necessary to protect liberatory experiments. The
collectives that establish liberated areas – whether they be fully counter-institutional
formations like the Zapatista Juntas, or tiny realms of liberation like the community
234 Journal of Classical Sociology 12(2)

assemblies in Argentina – must possess the tools needed to defend themselves against the
attacks of the dominant institutions around them and, in the process, change the function-
ing of these institutions. From this necessity emerges yet another guideline: building an
organization that is powerful enough to win these reforms from the state can only suc-
ceed if the internal structure is itself prefigurative of the liberatory goals of the move-
ment. That is, the reform struggle must be conducted in a way that intentionally promotes
the prefigurative relationships, revolutionary consciousness, and self-actuating power
that Holloway argues are fundamental to meaningful social change.
Holloway is right to emphasize the danger that state-centered protest will corrupt the
protesting group. The fact that so many popular organizations have developed authoritar-
ian tendencies and been co-opted into reformism in the process of engaging with domi-
nant institutions attests to this possibility. But there are some ways to mitigate the threat.
Belinda Robnett (1997) argues that the success of the 1960s US Civil Rights movement
was largely due to the movement’s organizational structure, which included both the
formal leadership of the big national organizations (with dangerous tendencies toward
oligarchy and co-optation) and an often-ignored ‘bridge leadership’ tier closer to the
community level. This latter category was composed of southern blacks (most often
women) embedded in black communities in the South and committed to the radical
democracy that was historically associated with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating
Commitee. Bridge leaders formed the essential links between these communities and big
organizations like the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and were responsible
for articulating much of the movement’s grass-roots radicalism. Formal leaders like
Martin Luther King, Jr, on the other hand, were restrained by the need to maintain con-
ciliatory relationships with the white power structure. Robnett’s theoretical conclusion is
that ‘[b]oth types of leadership are required, and neither the bridge leadership nor the
formal leadership is more important than the other. Rather, the two operated in a dialecti-
cal relationship marked by symbiosis and conflict’ (1997: 21). The outcome of this dia-
lectic was the movement’s remarkable ability to extract concessions from dominant
institutions while sustaining (and for years, expanding) liberatory practices at the ground
level. This template cannot be mechanically applied in other circumstances, but we feel
it demonstrates that the route to successful liberation requires building complex organi-
zations that unite prefigurative liberatory movements into formations capable of engag-
ing dominant institutions, particularly the state.

Conclusion: Some (unoriginal) guidelines for

revolutionary organizing
Holloway’s book is a solid starting point for understanding how to build the ‘self-determining
society’ that Holloway and most of us want. Our reading of his book has led us to focus on
three questions that we feel are central to this concern: the role of political organizers and
organizations, the role of alternative institutions, and the posture of the movement toward the
state and other dominant institutions.
Political organizations have a crucial role to play in deepening, sustaining, and con-
necting the cracks that Holloway describes. The first and most important task of such
organizations is, as Holloway says, to ‘draw out that which is already present in repressed
Young and Schwartz 235

and contradictory form.’ This conception differs from many visions of the organizer’s
role: rather than instilling consciousness, organizers and the organizations they inhabit
should provide the tools for critical inquiry into one’s social surroundings and a forum
for discussions about alternatives to present systems of oppression. In Paulo Freire’s
words, ‘The revolutionary’s role is to liberate, and be liberated, with the people – not to
win them over’ (1970 [1968]: 84). Organizations must be the vehicle for converting
individual and small group activities into much more powerful collective action, which
is also central to Freire’s pedagogy. Organizations must also connect different liberatory
struggles materially, politically, and psychologically, fostering the growth of mutual
assistance networks as well as a consciousness of common struggle. We believe that the
intersectional consciousness and practice essential to revolutionary change can only be
achieved through self-conscious organization.15
Despite their strong tendencies toward oligarchy, organizations are not inherently sti-
fling. The trick is to have structures in place that ensure democracy, accountability, and
fluidity within organizations and an approach that values diversity within solidarity.
Diversity, in both the demographic and strategic sense, tends to strengthen movements
provided that the proper structures are in place to prevent internal stratification.
Movements that have greater demographic diversity and appreciate the interrelated
nature of different oppressions tend to be more powerful. Likewise, a diversity of orga-
nizations and strategies can be an asset, keeping opponents off balance and complicating
the tasks of repression and co-optation (McAdam, 1982: 153–156).
Institutions are also necessary as soon as the cracks begin to coalesce into durable
formations; they will be vital to ensuring accountability, equity, and efficiency in distrib-
uting resources, even when the distribution system is not tyrannized by markets. The
trick to avoiding devolution of the process into the trading of abstract labor is relentless
democracy. The historical experiences of the Paris Commune, the Spanish anarchists, the
Zapatistas, worker-run factories in Argentina, indigenous communities around the world,
and diverse other liberatory experiments offer a rough guide of what those institutions
might look like. Economic and social planning should be participatory and involve work-
ers’, consumers’, and community councils. Individuals should have input in the degree
to which they are affected by particular decisions. Representation should be revolving
and any delegates subject to immediate recall (Albert and Hahnel, 1991, 1992; Lavaca
Collective, 2007 [2004]; Sitrin, 2006). These are just loose guidelines, and liberatory
movements will not all adopt the same forms. But there must be a self-conscious effort
to construct these sorts of structures at the earliest moment in the process of coalescing
liberatory actions. Experimenting with alternative institutions in the present can empower
participants, prove that another way of living is possible, and become the most powerful
tool for extending the cracks into fractures.
As we construct these alternatives, we must simultaneously work for reforms in domi-
nant institutions, both to achieve tangible improvements in living conditions and to pro-
tect incipient liberatory formations from attacks by the state and other elite interests.
Survival requires pressing for needed reforms in the functioning of dominant institu-
tions, both to stop repression and to reduce the continued encroachment of abstract labor
and its associated tyrannies. Our antipathy toward states, markets, and other illegitimate
institutions must be accompanied by a constant reassessment of what strategies and
236 Journal of Classical Sociology 12(2)

tactics are likely to be most effective in improving people’s lives (both in the material
sense and in the sense of expanding their areas of self-actuation) in the here and now.16
Holloway’s vision of liberation through the construction of ‘cracks’ is compelling
and, we think, practicable. But it must involve self-conscious commitment to large-scale
collective action that is capable of moving the national and global needle in a liberatory
direction, a process that requires large organizations and institutions capable of confront-
ing and reforming established institutions.

Notes
  1. Holloway (2010: 50, 261). All page references are from Holloway (2010) unless otherwise
noted.
  2. For Marx’s treatment of alienation, see his Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844
(1959 [1844]) and Capital (1967 [1867]).
  3. We could add a number of other reasons for these failures, such as economic underdevelop-
ment, the resistance of reactionary domestic sectors, and hostility from the United States and
other foreign entities, but Holloway’s point is still valid.
  4. Sitrin (2006) emphasizes that many of the recuperated factories seek exchange networks with
other worker-controlled enterprises, thus eliminating the market from these transactions. This
process, if fully realized, would fulfill Holloway’s requirement for eliminating abstract labor.
However, few of the enterprises have made these exchanges their primary modality, and the
vast majority remain fully or mostly embedded in capitalist markets (Sitrin, in press).
  5. Of course, struggles against non-class forms of oppression are not new, though it has become
fashionable to think of them that way. For one revisionist critique, see Becker (2008).
  6. Holloway would (we think) argue that moving the needle toward ‘free, conscious, life activ-
ity’ is always an attack on abstract labor, even if the struggle does not take place in a context
of paid labor or production. Even household jobs, in his rendering, are structured by the labor
market; racial discrimination robs the target of self-actualization; and environmental injustice
forces its victims to program to the narrow confines of their circumstances. Effective rebel-
lion against any of these sources of oppression can therefore be liberatory.
 7. Harvey uses the term ‘accumulation by dispossession’ to designate this process under
neoliberalism.
  8. Conversely, an overemphasis on human agency can lead to blaming human beings for their
own oppression, but Holloway does not go this far.
  9. This point has also been developed by sociologists who identify the positional power of indi-
viduals and groups whose work is critical to the functioning of large institutions, and point
to the propensity of those with this structural leverage to recognize and apply it in collective
protest (Perrone, 1984; Schwartz, 1976; Silver, 2003).
10. Other such institutions abound in the history of revolutionary protest: the Paris Commune, the
people’s assemblies in Argentina, village structures during the Vietnamese revolution, and so
on.
11. Holloway offers an important extension of this model, arguing that activists should construct
temporal and ‘activity- or resource-based’ areas of liberation (p. 29) in addition to geographi-
cal ones as established in China and Vietnam.
12. In Lenin’s view (1993 [1917]), the capitalist state had to be destroyed and replaced by a
proletarian state. Holloway is unclear about the need to destroy the capitalist state; he some-
times appears to argue that it can be ignored. He might argue that no new state would be
needed, except perhaps for some sort of world governance body to deal with certain global
issues.
Young and Schwartz 237

13. Actually it has produced a significant global deal: the Kyoto Protocol signed in 1997, and set
to expire at the end of 2012, was approved by virtually every country except the United States.
It was a decent if greatly insufficient step toward reducing emissions (Hahnel, 2011: 157–242).
But the US government’s ability to ignore the treaty with impunity and sabotage potential suc-
cessor treaties renders the UNFCCC weak and underscores the body’s inadequacy.
14. The bill has passed, but insurance companies and other corporate interests are now working
diligently to prevent Vermont from obtaining the state waiver necessary to implement it and
to water down the final version, aspects of which remain to be hammered out (see Potter,
2012).
15. The ‘Occupy’ movements that burst onto the scene in late 2011 have extraordinary potential
for bridging diverse struggles and promoting this intersectional consolidation.
16. In the case of climate change, a blanket rejection of all carbon trading may satisfy our anti-
capitalist impulse but is probably counterproductive to the urgent goal of reducing net carbon
emissions. Working to improve the existing Kyoto Protocol framework of carbon-emissions
caps and offset-credit trading (‘cap and trade’), rather than rejecting it completely, is prob-
ably a more realistic option than trying to trash the Kyoto framework and replace it with an
international carbon tax (Hahnel, 2011: 175–214).

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Author biographies
Kevin Young is a doctoral candidate in Latin American history at Stony Brook University.
His dissertation analyzes economic nationalism, urban social movements, and US inter-
vention in mid-twentieth-century Bolivia. Most of his recent writing is available at http://
kyoung1984.wordpress.com.
Michael Schwartz is Professor and Chair of Sociology at Stony Brook University. His
scholarship focuses on social movements, political processes, and economic dynamics. His
most recent book, War without End: The Iraq War in Context (Haymarket, 2008), analyzed
the impact of the ten-year US occupation of Iraq on political, economic, and social pro-
cesses in Iraqi society, and on the changing dynamics of the indigenous resistance.