Holloway - Crack Capitalism.pdf - Libcom

told that now we are adults we must earn our living by labour.
i\ bstract labour imposes itself through the invisibilisation of
doing. Labour rules by being unitary, by presenting itself as
labour-without-alternative, so that even to speak of the dual
character of labour or the antagonism between doing and labour
suggests a touch of madness.2 And yet it is at the centre of our
preoccupations, all the time.
2. THE TENSION BETWEEN DOING AND LABOUR
IS INHERENTLY AND CRUCIALLY UNSTABLE.
The abstraction of doing into labour is, as we have seen,
inseparable from the drive to produce commodities in the
socially necessary labour time. What determines the saleability
of commodities on the market is the amount of time that is
necessary to produce them. Through competition, there is a
constant drive to reduce the time necessary to produce the
commodity: if I (as a capitalist) can produce my commodities
faster than my competitor, then I will make more profit. If I
cannot keep up with my competitors in the time required to
produce my commodities, I will soon be driven out of business.
The activity that produced value a hundred years ago, or even
twenty or ten years ago, is quite likely to be useless for capital
now, simply because the meaning of abstract labour has moved
on. I am driven therefore constantly to reduce the labour
time required to produce my commodities by intensifying the
labour process and also by expelling labour and replacing it by
machinery. The abstraction of doing into labour is a constant
turning of the screw, a constant destabilisation of the tense
relation between doing and labour.
The constant turning of the screw of socially necessary labour
time intensifies social misfitting. As capital demands more and
more, it becomes more and more difficult to fit in to its demands.
The intensified misfitting expresses itself in a double flight from
labour. From the perspective of capital, the constant drive to
reduce necessary labour time leads to the expulsion of labour
from the labour process and its replacement by machinery. This
leads to what Marx calls the 'rising organic composition of
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