CRACK CAPITALISM

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is both to deny that dialectical relation and to close our eyes to the antagonism of everyday experience. We can express this in other words by saying that the relation between concrete doing and abstract labour is ecstatic.lO Concrete doing is the ecstasy of abstract labour: ecstasy as ek-stasis, standing outside abstract labour while existing within it, standing outside as actual and potential otherness. I am a teacher and produce labour powers for sale on the market, but at the same time I encourage my students to think critically about society. I am a nurse in a private hospital and produce profits for my employers, but at the same time I try to help my patients through some of the most difficult moments of their lives. I work on an assembly line in a car factory and every few seconds that I have free, my fingers are busy practising the chords that I'll be playing on my guitar tonight in the band. I work on a sewing machine making jeans, but my mind is somewhere else, building a new room for myself and my children. I am a student working hard to get good grades in my exams, but I want to find a way of turning my studies against capitalism and towards the creation of a better world. In all these cases, there is a standing outside capitalist labour, a projection against and beyond my entrapment within abstract labour. There is a concrete doing that exists in-against-and-beyond, that exists in ecstatic relation to abstract labour, that already pushes beyond abstract labour, both as project and as actual practice. This ecstatic relation is a matter of everyday experience, not the invention of left-wing intellectuals, not the privileged experience of dedicated militants. It is from this standing-out-beyond (this ek-stasis) that another world will be born, or it will not be born at allY This ecstatic space is the space of dignity, the substance of the cracks.12 In what follows, we shall focus first on the meaning of abstract labour, that which weaves the social cohesion that holds us entrapped, before turning to the other side. 99
13 The abstraction of doing into labour is a historical process of transformation that created the social synthesis of capitalism: primitive accumulation. Labour did not always exist. It is not in every society that a specific activity considered to be 'labour' is set aside from the general doing of people. Certainly, some sort of activity is required to provide food and the other basic requirements of life, but this is not necessarily an activity regarded as onerous or separated in time from other activities. Thus, Marshal Sahlins, in his Stone Age Economics, writes of 'that characteristic palaeolithic rhythm of a day or two on, a day or two off - the latter passed desultorily in camp. Although food collecting is the primary productive activity ... "the majority of the people's time (four to five days per week) is spent in other pursuits, such as resting in camp or visiting other camps (Lee 1969: 74 ) '" (Sahlins 2004: 23). He also quotes a nineteenth-century observer of the indigenous people of Australia: "'In all ordinary seasons ... they can obtain in two or three hours a sufficient supply of food for the day, but their usual custom is to roam indolently from spot to spot, lazily collecting it as they wander along (Grey 1841, vol. 2: 263).'" In such a society, there is clearly no separation between labour and leisure, which means that neither exists. In pre-capitalist societies, the activities required for social reproduction did not harden into something called labour, nor did they occupy the same amount of time. In fifteenth-century France, one out of every four days of the year was an official holiday of some sort, and Ehrenreich comments that 'despite the reputation of what are commonly called "the Middle Ages" as a time of misery and fear, the period from the thirteenth to the fifteenth century can be seen - at least in comparison to the puritanical times that 100
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CRACK CAPITALISM John Holloway Inst
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Part VI The Crisis of Abstract Labo
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1 Break. We want to break. We want
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Of the people of Cochabamba who com
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emancipation, the key to becoming f
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furniture in the run-up to the next
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This book offers a simple answer: c
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step in the learning and formation
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4 The cracks begin with a No, from
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egins to open towards something els
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5 A crack is the perfectly ordinary
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take their desks and chairs out on
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has happened, for example, with the
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6 Cracks break dimensions, break di
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as the simple assumption by million
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did) create. The world that does no
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TAZ, coined by Hakim Bey (1985). Hi
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y condemning reformism, by using l
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By envisaging a different world, by
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impossible) to separate the doing o
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The council is not only something t
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practices and correspondent relatio
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p rinciple of the Zapatistas: pregu
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Page 58 and 59: 9 Cracks dash with the social synth
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Page 68 and 69: was the driving force of the strugg
Page 70 and 71: criticising state-centred rebellion
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Page 84 and 85: ecomes divided into the world of th
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Page 90 and 91: 11 The cracks are the revolt of one
Page 92 and 93: consider necessary or desirable.' T
Page 94 and 95: 12 The abstraction of doing into la
Page 96 and 97: Marx focuses on alienated labour, b
Page 98 and 99: This self-correction is very import
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Page 102 and 103: sort of protective coating that giv
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Page 108 and 109: followed - as one long outdoor part
Page 110 and 111: Yamana were killed simply because t
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Page 120 and 121: Identification or reification is an
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Page 124 and 125: Therefore, the only way in which we
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Page 130 and 131: are irrelevant for reproduction is
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Page 136 and 137: It is little wonder then that many
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Page 140 and 141: As abstract individuals (and only a
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Page 146 and 147: years old, a hundred years old. Thi
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the production of surplus value. Th
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22 The labour movement is the movem
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I.lbour, but he has very little to
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:lssigned to us. Abstract labour, w
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(not only Leninism in all its varie
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(not only Leninism in all its varie
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asis of the separation between the
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Illpitalism have always been in-aga
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23 Abstraction is not just a past b
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IllId the huge growth of the cities
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which are also constantly under att
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opposite, of that possible coming-t
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activity to the demands of abstract
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work is subordinated to the quantit
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imaginary guitar, the university pr
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imaginary guitar, the university pr
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told that now we are adults we must
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asis of a consciously controlled do
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I't'form, the collapse of the Sovie
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If the struggle from the point of v
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,Inc! in any case labelling runs co
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at the work of Harry Cleaver (1979,
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the extreme alienation of labour th
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long live the king! Continuity is e
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;lI1tagonism against-and-beyond abs
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26 The breakthrough of doing agains
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a common generating force that we c
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Part VII Doing Against Labour: The
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some of sociology, and we want to d
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system and its replacement by anoth
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superficially attractive, because i
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y a similarly dense weave. This is
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28 Doing is the moving of the mulie
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Latency: that is the stuff of revol
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whether that latent revolt is there
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of god by humans, does not mean tha
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could be something separate from us
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and-create. Class struggle involves
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shadowy figure lurking behind all t
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could be a dialogue between charact
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Thompson, as we have seen, shows ho
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an illusion: his existence depends,
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of a verb at least in so far as it
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3. OUR TIME OPENS UP EACH MOMENT. C
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all who watch it. And now we must l
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are broken, a flash of lightning wh
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Progress is the technology that we
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agreements on indigenous rights tha
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30 We are the forces of production:
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is the existence of our power to do
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organising, not a new -ism: doing.
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machinery. This does not make capit
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32 Stop making capita lism. How I w
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Rephrasing the question of revoluti
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There is no single correct answer,
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own responsibilities, reappropriati
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in the widespread disrespect for in
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thanks thanks, many, many thanks be
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Notes THESIS 1 1. 'Somos mujeres y
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9. For a discussion of this, see Zi
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7. See Graeber (2002): 'The result
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27. Martin K. of a neighbourhood as
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Arthur points out that, by the time
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condition to the existence of the o
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5. Appropriately, Foster begins his
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7. As in abstract labour, so 'in ..
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7. On the present force of the unre
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5. In this I differ from Virna: see
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see Mattini's La Politica como Subv
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Bibliography Adorno, Theodor.W. (19
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Chatterton, Paul (2006) Autonomy in
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prop6sito del imperialismo y las Cu
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June 18 (n.d.) 'Reflections on June
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Mayr, Otto (1989) Authority, Libert
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Shukaitis, Stevphen (2009) 'Dancing
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Author Index Adorno, Theodor W. 197
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Memos, Christos 281, 282, 295 Messi
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Dignity 17, 19, 26, 28, 35, 39, 41,
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Socialism 11, 41, 66, 83, 144, 158,
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CRACK CAPITALISM

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