Holloway - Crack Capitalism.pdf - Libcom

(not only Leninism in all its varieties but a whole spectrum that
goes way beyond that) was the theory of the struggle of labour
against capital.
It is this form of Marxism that is now in crisis, simply because
this form of struggle is in crisis. This is what we need to explore.
The crisis of the forms of class struggle pushes us to explore a
new revolutionary theory, a new Marxism: the theory not of the
struggle of labour against capital, but of the struggle of doing
against labour (and therefore against capital).
3. THE DOMINANCE OF ABSTRACT LABOUR IS THE
SELF-INCARCERATION OF THE ANTI-CAPITALIST MOVEMENT.
The movement of abstract labour against capital is the aptly
named 'labour movement'. In the labour movement, the
existence of abstract labour is typically taken for granted, so
that there reigns a unitary concept of labour. The dichotomy
between useful doing and abstract labour is ignored completely,
both in theory and in practice: the overcoming of abstract labour,
if discussed at all, is projected into the future.
From the early days of industrial capitalism, the workers
employed by capitalists have joined together to fight for better
conditions, higher wages, shorter hours, and so on. The typical
form of organisation is the trade union, a hierarchical and
generally bureaucratic form of organisation. The struggle of
abstract labour is first and foremost a struggle over employment:
a struggle for better conditions of employment, for higher wages,
for more employment, a struggle against unemployment. These
struggles are important, they affect the living conditions of
millions and millions of people throughout the world. But they
are also struggles that take for granted the reproduction of
capitalist domination, the subordination of our doing to alien
control, the continued abstraction of doing into labour.
Trade union struggle is not the only form of struggle of labour
against capital. Revolutionaries have always argued that trade
union struggle is not sufficient, that trade union struggle does
no more than defend the conditions of wage labour, whereas
it is necessary to struggle for the abolition of wage labour and
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