CRACK CAPITALISM

The abstraction of doing into labour, then, is not just a past
process: it is present, everyday struggle, the struggle on which
the existence of capital depends.
The same point can be made in terms of constitution and
existence. Fetishism is the separation of constitution and
existence. We make a commodity and, once made, the commodity
acquires an independent existence, negates the process of its own
constitution. The shirt we buy in a shop tells us nothing of how
it was made. The separation of constitution and existence is the
establishment of a clear break between past and present, central
to the homogenisation of time. This means that to take as given
the separation of constitution and existence, or to take as given
the homogenisation of time, is to place ourselves squarely on the
grounds of fetishised thought. To take primitive accumulation
simply as a past historical event is to fall into the real, but
illusory, view of history that is produced by the same primitive
accumulation. To criticise primitive accumulation is to criticise
the temporality which it produced, to criticise the separation of
constitution and existence, the separation of past from present.
The constitution of capitalism is not a closed episode in the past:
capitalism exists through its constant reconstitution.
The same point can be made yet again - and if I make the
point repeatedly in slightly different ways, it is because this
is the pivot of the book - by saying that the forms of social
relations must be understood as form-processes. All the different
forms of social relations that we have mentioned (money, state,
capital, commodity, clock-time, woman, man, and so on) are
not just forms that are established in the transition to capitalism
but processes of forming social relations that are constantly
active, and constantly at issue. Money is not just an established
form but a process of monetisation of social relations that is
constantly repeated and constantly contested (by those who take
commodities without paying for them, for example, whether
children or shoplifters). The state is not just there, but a constant
process of statification, of channelling social conflict into certain
forms, a process constantly at issue as those in struggle seek to
maintain or develop other forms. 5 Man is not an established form
of social relations but the result of constantly repeated practices,
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