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CRACK CAPITALISM

Holloway - Crack Capitalism

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criticising state-centred rebellions, we should bear in mind that<br />

all rebellions are self-contradictory, that state-like practices can<br />

easily appear within anti-state movements and that there is no<br />

purity, there are no given answers.<br />

The question, finally, is not one of intentions, but of forms<br />

of organisation, that is, of the real practices of organisation.<br />

Any form of organisation that focuses on changing society on<br />

behalf of the workers (the poor, the people, whoever) will tend,<br />

whatever its declared intentions, to weave acts of rebellion back<br />

into the social synthesis of capitalism. The state is the most<br />

obvious example of such organisation.25<br />

The argument that the only way of conceiving of anti-capitalist<br />

revolution is as an interstitial process should be uncontroversial.<br />

In traditional revolutionary theory, the issue is obscured by the<br />

identification of the state with the totality of social relations.<br />

But once it is recognised that there are many states supporting<br />

one capitalist society, then it becomes clear that state-centred<br />

revolutions are also interstitial. The question is then not whether<br />

revolution should be understood as interstitial (for it must be),<br />

but what is the appropriate form of interstice. The discussion<br />

above leads us to conclude that the state is not an adequate<br />

interstitial form simply because, as a form of social relations, it<br />

is part of the social synthesis that we are rejecting: the state is<br />

part of the cohesive suction of capital. The only answer then is<br />

to think in terms of non-state interstitial forms: cracks.<br />

3. <strong>CRACK</strong>S CLASH WITH OURSELVES.<br />

We create our cracks, our spaces of dignity, and they are<br />

immediately threatened by the world outside us. But the external<br />

world is not only external: we carry it inside us.<br />

We build our self-governing community in the Lacandon<br />

Jungle, we create our social centre in Edinburgh, we go to an<br />

all-night rave in Berlin. We say 'here no, here we do not accept<br />

the rule of capital, here we shall do something else, here we<br />

create a space of dignity, horizontality, love.' But obviously it is<br />

not so simple. We cut a slice out of capitalism, but our slice is not<br />

a slice of purity. Within our non-sexist, non-racist spaces, sexist<br />

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