Holloway - Crack Capitalism.pdf - Libcom

condition to the existence of the other; they mutually call each other
into existence.'
THESIS 14
1. Postone is right in speaking of the trans-historical category of labour as
'the fundamental core of the fetish in capitalism' (1996: 170).
2. On reification and identification in general, see the discussion in Holloway
(2002/2005).
THESIS 15
1. On the story of Jemmy Button, see Lopez (2006).
2. See Federici (2004: 136): 'the expropriated peasants did not peacefully
agree to work for a wage. More often they became beggars, vagabonds
or criminals. A long process would be required to produce a disciplined
work-force.' See also the detailed history of discipline in Foucault
(1975/1977).
3. See Marx (186711965: 84-5; 186711990: 178-9) on the way in which
the exchange of commodities generates a juridical relation between two
individual commodity owners: 'The persons exist for one another merely
as representatives of, and, therefore as owners of, commodities. In the
course of our investigation we shall find, in general, that the characters who
appear on the economic stage are but the personifications of the economic
relations that exist between them.'
4. On the connection between the historical rise of the idea of 'playing a role'
and the spread of depression, see Ehrenreich (2007), especially Ch. 7, 'An
Epidemic of Melancholy'. The product of abstract labour is indeed, as
she suggests, the 'anxious self', the 'tormented soul'. The term 'character
mask' appears in the German edition of Capital, but in the English editions
it is generally translated simply as 'character': see, for example, Marx
1867/1985: 100; 186711965: 85; 1867/1990: 179. For a recent debate on
me significance of the character mask, see Schandl (2006), Lohoff (2008).
5. The fragmentation of the flow of social doing into a multitude of abstract
labours has enormous consequences for all of us. We are the products of
this fragmentation. Our subjectivity is transformed from a participation in
the flow of doing into an individual protagon ism. Our social subjectivity is
suppressed and we are converted into the Subjects beloved of Hollywood:
individual subjects that have an identity, a name, a gender.
6. Developed in What is to be Done?: Lenin (1902/1968).
7. This identification of the working class is elaborated in notions of
working-class culture and a glorification of a certain image of the 'worker'.
The identitarian concept of the working class is taken a step further in the
figures of the professional revolutionary, the militant and the hero, all key
concepts in the revolutionary organisation of the last century.
8. On the dangers of a new vanguardism, see for example, Zadnikar (2009).
One argument sometimes used to justify the violent tactics of the so-called
'Black Block' in large marches is that it does not matter what the general
public thinks because they are so integrated into the structures of capitalism
that they cannot possibly be the source of radical change. See Holloway
and Sergi (2007).
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