system change

If a factory is torn down but the rationality which produced it is left standing, then that rationality will simply produce another factory. If a revolution destroys a government, but the systematic patterns of thought that produced that government are left intact, then those patterns will repeat themselves.

– Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

If we think of systemic change as a combination of reformist (symbiotic), alternative-building (interstitial) and revolutionary (ruptural) logics, we can picture it as a process of ‘transition’ which, against the connotations that the concept has accrued within the Marxist tradition, is non-linear, uneven and conflictual instead of continuous, homogeneous and managed from above.

– Neither Vertical Nor Horizontal