Holloway - Crack Capitalism.pdf - Libcom

I.lbour, but he has very little to say about useful labour: 'This
concept [useful labour] is not one which produces particular
difficulty, for the simple reason that what it describes is labour in
its natural form. The same, however, cannot be said of the other
t 'rl11 of the distinction [abstract labour)' (1979: 18). Similarly,
Michael Heinrich in his clear and influential exposition of
Marx's critique of political economy, draws attention to the
importance for Marx of the two-fold nature of labour (2005:
'1·5), but he does so in a section devoted to abstract labour that
pays little attention to the other side of the two-fold, concrete
or useful labour.
We leave some of the more recent discussions aside for
consideration in the context of the crisis of abstract labour,
but, even taking these into account, it remains true that almost
without exception, the Marxist tradition, contrary to Marx's
clear statement in the opening pages of Capital, treats labour
as a unitary category. Where the two-fold nature of labour is
mentioned, it is assumed that the relation between the two
aspects of labour is non-antagonistic and unproblematic.3
In the mainstream tradition of orthodox Marxism, this
unproblematised 'labour' then comes to be seen as a positive
force, the source of hope. The struggle against capital is seen as
the struggle of labour against capital. Labour is treated not only
as a unitary but also as a trans-historical category. Labour, in this
view, is seen 'as an activity mediating humans and nature that
transforms matter in a goal-directed manner and is a condition
of social life. Labour, so understood, is posited as the source
of wealth in all societies and as that which constitutes what is
truly universal and truly social' (Postone, 2003: 5)4 The problem
with capitalism, then, is not that labour exists, but that labour is
shackled, not allowed to reach its full development. The purpose
of the revolution is to free labour from its chains.
It might be thought that this is merely a question of words,
that the intention of the mainstream tradition is to argue that the
revolution will emancipate useful labour from its abstraction.
However, since the two-fold nature of labour is overlooked in
that tradition, that distinction cannot be made. And it certainly
has not been made in practice: the 'communist' revolutions did
nothing to transform labour.
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