I want to write an essay about John Holloways 2022 book “hope in hopeless times”, and i want both to indulge in economy and in poetry of the beginning of The Capital and the Parts V&VI of JHs book – with an excursion into commodity forms. More intense analysis of an independent richness surmounts the essays frame, as does the third point below.

Firstly, I want to praise Holloways emphasis on reading the first sentence of Marx’ chef d’œuvre. It is very promising and I will ask how it is possible to know this sentence that well and still claim that The Capital starts with the commodity.

Holloway claims the necessity of differentiation between richness and wealth, so I will secondly need to engage the political economy in the book. That’s a one way ticket to Florida: looking up the notion of use values, wealth, goods and richnesses in The Capital can reasonably called marxology. It is as fun as an inside joke. It is frankly quite absurd. But the commodified form of wealth is a commodity, why does Holloway need a distinguished richness?

I therefor want to entertain the reader by praising Holloway’s poetry of overflowing. The richness of marxist phrases is a cup that will overflow, once a spoon of kafkaesque soy sauce is added. That sauce is my situation as a devil’s advocate; I would argue to be more practical, to do less readings of overcomplicated Capital-theories. The devil’s name is anti-intellectualism. And the kafkaesque Trial will see me accused of theorizing too much, when I argue for a simpler reading of the classical economists.

Thirdly and if there is space, I want to point out one or two examples of dangerous personifications in Holloway’s poetry. Again, I’ll play with hellfire, because poetry is no argument against a critique. Contrarily, writing rationally about a totally irrational affair would be irrational. The devil is there yet again, promoting the confusion critique and sentiment. But I will have shown in my first part that the “form of wood, for instance, is altered, by making a table out of it”(Marx)! That “Wood against Table” contains the same antagonism without appealing to the resentment against abstractions, i.e. “Life against Money”.
The lyrical examples are the chosen “subject” and “object” on the one hand. They remain at an unnecessary uncertainty. This poetic cup does not overflow, only if the Hydra steps into it. It might be spilling off the important materialist antagonism, nourish a few more heads by drinking the rest of it, and then it might become itself the overflow: yet another movement of life against money. On the other hand moreover, there is E.A. Poe’s “Pit and Pendulum”, which Holloway quotes as a metaphor for “us” being tortured in the pit. It invites psychoanalytical interpretation, not only because of its original happy end: “An outstretched arm caught my own as I fell, fainting, into the abyss. It was that of General Lasalle. The French army had entered Toledo. The Inquisition was in the hands of its enemies.” (see my last blog for some Poe interpretation)

Aux armes, citoyen-ne-s!