CRACK CAPITALISM

emergence and growth of the fight against labour as the essence
of the fight against capital.
In this almost-final thesis of the book, we single out some
of the emerging elements of the new poetry of struggle, as
suggestions, as provocations.
Stop making capitalism: This is the pivot of our somersault,
its centre of levity. The doing that we pitch against labour is the
struggle to open each moment, to assert our own determination
against all pre-determination, against all obj ective laws of
development. We are presented with a pre-existing capitalism
that dictates that we must act in certain ways, and to this we
reply 'no, there is no pre-existing capitalism, there is only the
capitalism that we make today, or do not make'. And we choose
not to make it. Our struggle is to open every moment and fill
it with an activity that does not contribute to the reproduction
of capital. Stop making capitalism and do something else,
something sensible, something beautiful and enjoyable. Stop
creating the system that is destroying us. We only live once:
why use our time to destroy our own existence? Surely we can
do something better with our lives.
Revolution is not about destroying capitalism, but about
refusing to create it. To pose revolution as the destruction of
capitalism is to reproduce the abstraction of time that is so
central to the reproduction of capitalism: it is self-defeating.
To think of destroying capitalism is to erect a great monster
in front of us, so terrifying that we either give up in despair
or else conclude that the only way in which we can slay the
monster is by constructing a great party with heroic leaders
who sacrifice themselves (and everyone around them) for the
sake of the revolution. We defeat ourselves again, this time by
constructing a great fable of heroism and leadership and sacrifice
and discipline and authority and patience, a fable peopled by
saints - Lenin, Trotsky, Rosa, Mao, Che, Marcos, whoever you
like - we reproduce that which we want to destroy. To pose
revolution as the destruction of capitalism is to distance it from
ourselves, to put it off into the future. The question of revolution
is not in the future. It is here and now: how do we stop producing
the system by which we are destroying humanity?
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