CRACK CAPITALISM

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The abstraction of doing into
labour is the creation of totality.
Any society depends on some sort of interconnection between
people's activities. There must be some sort of knitting together
of what people do:
Their activities must interrelate in order to fit into a society, and must
contain at least a minimum of uniformity if the society is to function
as a whole. This coherence can be conscious or unconscious but exist it
must - otherwise society would cease to be viable and the individuals
would come to grief as a result of their multiple dependencies upon one
another. (Sohn-Rethel 1978: 5)
In pre-capitalist societies, this knitting-together is established on
the basis of the concrete characteristics of the activity. It may be
on the basis of custom, or of communal decision, or of command,
but the custom, command, or communal decision relates to a
specific activity: the slave-owner tells the slave to build a wall, the
custom in the village is that the woodcarver should make a statue
for the church each year, or whatever. The social coming-together
of activities takes place on the basis of some combination of
perceived social needs and existing social skills.
Under capitalism, all this changes. The knitting together is
not achieved by custom, command, or communal decision but
through the exchange of products. Certainly within capitalist
enterprises, coordination is by command, but in society as a
whole, the only command is the uncontrolled and unconscious
movement of money, the medium of exchange. The fact that I
bake cakes for other people is the result not of custom, command,
or communal decision, but simply the outcome of my perception
that I can sell them (exchange them for money). If I find that
I can no longer exchange them for money, I will be forced to
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