Holloway - Crack Capitalism.pdf - Libcom

We create a society that systematically conceals the fact that we
create it. We create a society that moves according to a dynamic
logic that neither we nor anyone controls. We create a society
that is based on our exploitation. Each of these statements is
a source of despair, a source of hope. We shall take them one
by one.
First, we create a society that systematically conceals the
fact that we create it. This we have seen already: we create
a fetishised, reified world, a world of things. We, as subjects,
create a world that turns us into objects. And backwards: this
world in which we are treated as objects is the product of our
subjective creation.
Secondly, we create a society that moves according to a dynamic
logic that neither we nor anyone controls. The reified world
that we create does not move according to anyone's volition. It
follows its own logic. To the extent that social relations are really
transformed into relations between things, it follows its own laws
of development. The totality we create is a law-bound totality.
This is what makes the study of economics possible, and indeed
any other discipline that tries to understand the laws of social
development. The social totality has a certain structure, a certain
logic, a certain dynamic, summed up in Marx's exclamation:
'Accumulate! Accumulate! That is Moses and the prophets!'
(Marx, 186711965: 595; 1867/1990: 742). In order to exist,
capital must accumulate, must expand itself. The capital that we
create is self-creating, self-expanding value. Capital, although
it is created by humans, acquires a force independent of any
human volition. It is not controlled by capitalists: capitalists
are capitalists only to the extent that they succeed in obeying
the logic of capital. Capital (the object of our creation) is an
'automatic subject' (as Marx called it),6 the Subject of capitalist
society. It is the story of Frankenstein, the story of the sorcerer's
apprentice. By constituting capitalism, we create a system that
we do not control, a system with its own laws of development.
We create capitalism and thrust ourselves into a terrifying world.
We enclose ourselves in an 'enchanted, perverted, topsy-turvy
world' (Marx 1894/1971: 830), ruled by death.
The totality constituted by abstract labour is a totality without
meaning. There is a linking of activities, but the activities
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