Politics at a Distance from the State: Radical and African Perspectives

For decades, most anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist movements identified
radical change with capturing state power. The collapse of statist
projects from the 1970s fostered both neo-liberalism and a global crisis
of left and working-class politics. But it also opened space for
rediscovering democratic, society-centered and anti-capitalist modes of
bottom-up change, operating at a distance from the state. This resurgent
alternative has influenced the Zapatistas in Mexico, Rojava in Syria,
Occupy, and independent unions and struggles worldwide around austerity,
land, and the city. Its lineages include anarchism, syndicalism,
autonomist Marxism, philosophers like Alain Badiou, and popular praxis.

This
pathbreaking volume helps recover this once sidelined politics, with a
focus on South Africa and Zimbabwe. It includes a dossier of texts from
a century of anarchists, syndicalists, radical unionists, and
anti-apartheid activists in South Africa. Originating in an African
summit of scholars, social movements, and anti-apartheid veterans, this
book also features a preface from John Holloway.

Lucien van der Walt is professor of Industrial and Economic Sociology at Rhodes University, South Africa. A prize-winning scholar, he is involved in labour education and has published and spoken widely. His main areas of research are anarchism and syndicalism, labour and left studies and history, and the political economy of neo-liberalism.

Kirk Helliker is a research professor in the Department of Sociology at Rhodes University in South Africa, as well as founder and director of the Unit of Zimbabwean Studies in the department. His main research interests are land reform, civil society and political transformation with particular reference to Zimbabwe. His books include the edited volumes The Political Economy of Livelihoods in Contemporary Zimbabwe and Everyday Crisis: Living in Contemporary Zimbabwe, and the authored Fast Track Land Occupations in Zimbabwe in the Context of the Zvimurenga, all in collaboration with Sandra Bhatasara and Manase Kudzai Chiweshe.

John Holloway is a professor of sociology at the Instituto de Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades in the Benemérita Universidad Autùnoma de Puebla, Mexico. He has published widely on Marxist theory, on the Zapatista movement and on the new forms of anticapitalist struggle. His book Change the World Without Taking Power has been translated into eleven languages and has stirred an international debate. His book Crack Capitalism (Pluto, 2010) takes the argument further, suggesting that the only way in which we can think of revolution today is as the creation, expansion, multiplication, and confluence of cracks in capitalist domination.