CRACK CAPITALISM

We are forced back and back to the same question: why is it
that the two-fold character of labour, to which Marx attached
such importance, effectively disappeared from the discussion of
Capital and from the communist movement? Why is the category
of useful labour (or doing) effectively suppressed? This was not
because the authors in question had not read Marx carefully
enough or reflected on the text. To find an explanation we must
look to the development of class struggle itself.
2. THE THEORETICAL SUPPRESSION OF THE ANTAGONISM
BETWEEN DOING AND LABOUR IS A MOMENT OFTHE
DOMINANCE IN PRACTICE OFTHE STRUGGLE OF
ABSTRACT LABOUR.
To understand the effective suppression of the category of
concrete labour to describe an activity both subordinated and
antagonistic to abstract labour, it is necessary to distinguish
between two levels of struggle, those which we signalled already
in the previous thesis.
First, there is the conflict which we have emphasised
throughout this book, and which Marx portrayed as 'the pivot
on which a clear comprehension of Political Economy turns'
(186711 965: 41; 1867/1990: 132), that is, the conflict between
abstract labour and creative or purposeful doing. This is an irreconcilable
conflict. Conscious doing is the negation of abstract
labour, while the abstraction of labour is the subordination
of conscious doing to production for the market: on the one
hand, the potentially socially self-determined doing, on the other,
labour subject to alien determination.
This abstraction of doing into labour generates a second level
of conflict, that between labour and capital. Abstract labour is
generalised as a principle of social activity only when labour
power is converted into a commodity and there is a generalisation
of the wage relation, and therefore of exploitation. We
generally experience the loss of control over our own activity
not as a direct result of selling our products on the market, but
rather as a result of the fact that we have to sell our capacity
to labour in return for a wage and perform the labour that is
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