Holloway, La Boétie, Hegel

Abstract

The article presents a comradely critique of John Holloway’s Crack Capitalism, one which endorses Holloway’s notion of grassroots revolution but which raises questions about his discussion’s conceptual basis. In particular, Holloway’s reliance on Étienne de La Boétie’s Discourse on Voluntary Servitude is found wanting, whereas strands of thought concerning ‘contradiction’ in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit are held to provide a more adequate foundation. Hegel, it is argued, not merely accounts for the possibility and necessity of revolutionary transformation; his account of the French Revolution in relation to the theme of ‘recognition’ indicates how revolution may be understood in a ground-up or grassroots sense.