Let us change the world without taking power violently

Written in the form of a letter to a comrade, this text presents a political balance sheet on the work of John Holloway on radical social change. The strength of his work lies in its acute insight into the psychology of subjects resisting capitalism, the expansion of the concept of political agency to embrace myriad forms of everyday 'breaks' from capitalism's systemic grip, and the poetic prose that graces Holloway's major works, Change the World without Taking Power and Crack Capitalism. Points of critique include the difficulty and thus limited utility of the arguments that provide the foundation for these insights, the constraints posed by staying within the theoretical universe of Marxism, and the determined refusal of all forms of engagement with the state. The author argues that the forms taken by radical social change in the twenty-first century are more varied than Holloway's major works suggest, and that, in particular, nonviolent social movements such as Latin America's Pink Tide and the Arab Spring help us imagine multiple paths to radical social change today.