Holloway - Crack Capitalism.pdf - Libcom

of social relations. Seizing the initiative means moving beyond
confrontation: we determine our action according to our own
needs. Let capital and the state run after us, let it try to co-opt
or repress us. The question of how we defend and expand our
crack without losing the initiative or being drawn into an alien
terrain is a very difficult one. State violence is often a way of
seizing back the initiative, forcing us to stop our revolt and
campaign for the release of the prisoners.9
The argument here is not a completely pacifist argument:, then,
for we do have to think of how we defend ourselves against
state violence. I write not long after the terrible repression by
the Mexican state in Oaxaca, and the question is unavoidable.
If we wish to think of breaking capitalist social relations, then
we have to think of the question of self-defence. In many cases,
there may be no danger of direct state repression, at least in
present circumstances, but the tendency in the world is for
violent repression to become a more and more common response
to any sort of challenge to the existing system of domination.
Self-defence is, however, not the same as armed defence, and
certainly not the same as the 'violent overthrow' of capitalism.
Although there may be a strong argument for some form of
armed organisation in some cases, it is probably a mistake to
think of arms as being the key to self-defence. Certainly the
fact that the Zapatistas are armed and organised as an army
has been a significant element in deterring large-scale military
repression of the uprising in Chiapas,lo but probably the most
effective form of defence has been the strength of the resonance
of their movement in Mexico and throughout the world. For any
movement, it is probably the quality of the movement itself, that
is, the quality of the transformation of everyday life through the
movement, that is the strongest form of self-defence, and this
runs directly counter to armed organisation and violence. As
Raoul Vaneigem puts it, 'every time that a revolution has failed
to consider as its first objective the task of enriching the daily
life of everyone, it has given arms to the repression.'ll
State violence imposes certain social relations upon us and
does so the more effectively the more we mimic its action by
responding with violence. Violence is just one aspect of the
way in which the state constantly draws us back into the social
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