CRACK CAPITALISM

commodities on the market. It may perhaps be possible to change
the nature of the commodities produced, to produce things that
are more obviously socially beneficial, but this will depend on
the skills of the workers and the equipment at their disposal,
and any alternative products will, in any case, normally require
to be sold as commodities on the market.
The action of value may be very subtle and gradual. Fighting
it is much more difficult than throwing stones at the police.
Many radical groups have seen producing cooperatively for the
market as an alternative to working for a capitalist company, or
accepting funds from the state. It is an alternative, but at what
point does the market impose itself to create the same sort of
pressures as exist in any capitalist enterprise? Is there any escape?
It is not just the market in general, but also the labour market
in particular that seems to have us firmly entrapped. Similar
pressures face any individuals or groups who say no to capitalist
employment and decide to dedicate themselves to an activity
which they consider meaningful. If we do not sell our labour
power, how do we survive? In some countries, it may be possible
to do so by taking advantage of state systems of social assistance,
but this is not the case in most countries and means, in the best
of cases, acceptance of a life of poverty and surveillance. Many
of the inhabitants of the more visible cracks, at least in the cities,
survive on some combination of casual employment, state benefits
and parental subsidies, but all of these undoubtedly impose limits
on our capacity to develop our power to do things differently.
There are ways in which some of these problems can be dealt
with. The most obvious is to look for funding of some sort,
either from the state or some sort of non-state foundation.
Many radical groups in Latin America receive some support
from foundations connected with the Catholic or other churches,
for example. It is clear that any such support carries risks, in
the sense that it will probably, directly or indirectly, impose
limitations on the activities of the recipient groups, or create
certain social relations within the groups (between those with
the skills necessary for fund-raising and others, for example).35
A more traditional, perhaps superficially more radical, way of
financing anti-capitalist activities is through bank robberies and
kidnapping, yet, although such money generally comes free of
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