CRACK CAPITALISM

asis of a consciously controlled doing. On both sides, the flight
from labour means crisis of capital, for it is abstract labour
rhat produces value, the substance of capitalist profit, and it
is abstract labour that provides the social cohesion that holds
capitalism together. But there are two ways out of the crisis:
the capitalist solution (intensification and expulsion of labour)
digs the hole deeper and prepares the way for an even more
profound crisis the next time around, while the anti-capitalist
solution splits doing from abstract labour and opens directly and
immediately the perspective of a very different world.
3. THE CRISIS OF CAPITAL IS THE SPLITTI NG OPEN
OF THE UNITARY CHARACTER OF LABOUR:
THIS IS THE CRISIS IN WHICH WE ARE LIVING.
The high point of abstract labour was the high point of the
labour movement. The period after the Second World War was
characterised by rapid accumulation of capital made possible
by the massive defeat of the working class by fascism and
war, which permitted in turn the widespread introduction of
new methods of production. This is the period often referred
to as Fordism, characterised by massive factories and highly
automated production techniques in which the workers become,
more than ever, simple appendages of the machine, positions in
the assembly line. Under Fordism, the abstraction of doing is
pushed to its limit: labour is drained of all meaning. In return,
the workers receive relatively high wages, supported by full
employment policies and the development of the welfare state, at
least in the richer countries, which in turn fuel consumption and
the reproduction of the whole system of capitalist production.
This is the golden age of the trade unions, of the apparent
reduction of the antagonism between labour and capital to
annual rounds of wage negotiations, and of close relations
between trade unions and states. This is the golden age of the
labour movement and of all that we have seen associated with
abstract labour (positivist thought, male-dominated dimorphous
sexuality, the unquestioned subordination of nature to progress,
the understanding of change in terms of a totality identified with
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