Holloway - Crack Capitalism.pdf - Libcom

an I not just state ownership, can be seen as so many cracks in
th domination of capital, so many no-go areas where the writ
of capital does not run, gashes in the weave of domination. Or
r'Hher: if capital is a movement of enclosing, the commons are
a disjointed common-ing, a moving in the opposite direction, a
refusing of enclosure, at least in particular areas.
A third dimension for thinking about cracks is that of time.
This is a crucial dimension of struggle. For those of us who
live in the cities, it is often very difficult to think of cracks in
spatial terms, at least in the short term. To declare our city or
our locality an autonomous zone is for many of us a far-off
dream. In many city spaces, there does not exist the sense of
community that would make that realistic in the short term.
Certainly there are plenty of spatial cracks in the cities: social
centres, squats, community gardens, publicly enjoyed spaces,
but often our communities are formed on a temporal basis.4 We
come together and share a project of some sort, in an event, a
meeting, a series of meetings; or we go down into the streets in
a moment of celebration or anger. Later, perhaps, we disperse
and go our different ways, but while we are together, our project,
celebration or rage may create an otherness, a different way of
doing or relating. The argentinazo of 19120 December 2001 in
the cities of Argentina was not just a spatial crack, it was also a
temporal crack, a moment of rage and celebration when people
descended to the streets with their pots and pans to declare
that they had had enough, that all the politicians should go
(jque se vayan todos!) and that there must be a radical change.s
A social energy was released, different ways of relating were
created. This was a temporal crack in the patterns of domination.
The same could be said of any other uprising or explosion of
popular discontent - the great world event that we usually refer
to as '1968', for example. Often such explosions are seen as
fa ilures because they do not lead to permanent change, but this
is wrong: they have a validity of their own, independent of
I h ei r long-term consequences. Like a flash of lightning, they
illul11ilHte a different world, a world created perhaps for a few
short hours, but the impression which remains on our brain
illlt! in Ou r senses is that of an image of the world we can (and
30