Holloway - Crack Capitalism.pdf - Libcom

that creates and increases wealth' (1867/1990: 989-990). The
capitalist may be a very nice person and kind to his children,
but if he does not dedicate himself to the function of capital,
to maximising his profits (ultimately maximising surplus value
through the exploitation of labour), then he will go out of
business and cease to be a capitalist. Similarly with the worker:
if he does not labour and obey the orders of his employer, he
will soon lose his job and cease to be a labourer. Whatever our
personal inclinations, we are forced to adopt a role, a persona,
to don a 'character mask'4.
It is not just the worker and the capitalist who are forced to
assume certain roles. The abstraction of labour, as we have seen,
is a separation of activities from their context, the rupture of the
social flow of doing, so that each activity acquires a particular
identity, and each performer tends to assume the corresponding
character mask: as teacher, student, bureaucrat, social worker,
security guard, whatever.5
These roles have real force. They are not just a matter of
personal choice but are imposed upon us by the structure of social
relations. The teacher who does not measure the performance of
her students will soon confront problems. Likewise the security
guard who does not raise the alarm when something is stolen
or the state official who does not participate in the process of
exclusion inherent in the state. The compulsions arising from
the structure of social relations are then often assumed by us
as a personal choice: we want to be a successful capitalist, an
efficient bureaucrat, and so on. We identify with our role, we
assume it as an identity, we blend in to the mask that we have
put on our face. What are you? I am a university professor, a
student, a social worker.
These personifications limit us. In so far as I am a university
teacher, I do certain things and not others. Our identity is limited
and also classifiable. Within my limits as a university teacher, I
fall within a certain class, the class of university teachers. The
world of personification is an ordered world, a world that can be
classified, a world in which people perform their social functions,
a world that can be understood in functionalist terms. A world
in which revolution has no place.
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