Holloway - Crack Capitalism.pdf - Libcom

31
We are the crisis of capitalism,
the misfitting-overflowing of our
power-to-do, the breakthrough of
another world, perhaps.
Capital is in its deepest crisis in many years. Again we ask: could
it be that this is a time of birth, and not just a time of death and
destruction? Could it be that the crisis is not just a breakdown
of capitalism but the breakthrough of another world?
Demonstrations all over the world proclaim that the capitalists
are the cause of the crisis. And yet all our argument so far tells
us that this cannot be so. We, not the capitalists, are the cause
of the crisis. Capital is a relation of subordination, it drives
towards the subordination of every aspect of our lives to the logic
of capital. If it is in crisis, it is because of our insubordination,
because we are saying 'no, no more'.
There is a dynamic built in to the capital relation. Capital
is a constant turning of the screw, a constant intensification of
the subordination of doing to abstract labour. Abstraction is
the subordination of our doing to the requirements of socially
necessary labour time, but the amount of labour time required
to produce any commodity is being reduced from day to day,
minute to minute. Each minute, the abstraction of doing into
labour demands a tighter subordination of our activity to the
rhythms of value production: if this is not achieved, the labour
performed will prove to be socially unnecessary and useless from
the point of view of capital, an inadequate subordination.
The implacable dynamic of socially necessary labour time -
the drive of 'produce faster, faster, faster, hurry, hurry, hurry'
- expresses itself in a tendency towards crisis. The constant
intensification of productivity is achieved not just with the
foreman's discipline but with the constant introduction of new
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