Holloway - Crack Capitalism.pdf - Libcom

:lssigned to us. Abstract labour, which in the first place takes
(he form of value production, now takes the form of surplus
value production (producing a surplus value which our employer
realises as profit). The initial conflict between useful labour
(doing) and abstract labour is overlaid by a conflict between
wage labour and capital, centred on exploitation. The interest
of capital is to exploit the wage labourers as much as possible:
by lengthening the working day, reducing wages, increasing
productivity and so on. The struggle of the wage labourers is
to increase wages, shorten the working day, win better working
conditions, ultimately, to abolish exploitation altogether.
Are we talking here of two different levels of class struggle or
two different conceptions of class struggle? Both.
There are really two different levels of class struggle. Capitalist
production is based both on the abstraction of doing into labour
and on the exploitation of abstract labour. Without the abstraction
of doing into labour, exploitation would not be possible. On the
other hand, it is through the process of exploitation that the
abstraction of labour is imposed and reimposed (or not, as the
case may be). The two forms of struggle are closely intertwined,
and yet distinct. The distinction is important because in the one
case we are talking of the struggle of doing against labour, and
in the other case of the struggle oflabour against capitaLS
There really are two different levels of class struggle, but these
two different levels also give rise to two different understandings
of class struggle, with far-reaching consequences for the struggle
against capitalism.6
The dominant understanding, without doubt, centres its
attention on the relation of exploitation, on the struggle of labour
against capital. In terms of reading Capital, it sees the analysis
of surplus value production as central and tends to regard the
discussion of the commodity and the two-fold nature of labour
(if it sees it at all) as a prelude to the important discussion.
This approach sees labour as the revolutionary subject and
understands la bour as the working class, defined as those who
produce surplus value or as those who sell their labour power
to capital. The term 'labour' is used as a general term without
making any distinction between abstract and useful labour. In
this perspective, primitive accumulation, the transformation of
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