CRACK CAPITALISM John Holloway Instituto de Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades Benemerita Universidad Aut6noma de Puebla First published 2010 by Pluto Press 34S Archway Road, London N6 SAA and 17S Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010 www.plutobooks.com Distributed in the United States of America exclusively by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of St. Martin's Press LLC, 17S Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010 Copyright © John Holloway 2010 The right of John Holloway to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 9780 74S3 30099 Hardback ISBN 9780 74S3 300 82 Paperback Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data applied for This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental standards of the country of origin. 10 9 8 7 6 S 4 3 2 1 Designed and produced for Pluto Press by Chase Publishing Services Ltd, 33 Livonia Road, Sidmouth, EX10 9JB, England Typeset from disk by Stanford DTP Services, Northampton, England Printed and bound in the European Union by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham and Eastbourne Contents Part I Break 1 Break. We want to break. We want to creat :l different world. Now. Nothing more comm n, nothing more obvious. Nothing more simple. Nothing more difficult. .l 2 Our method is the method of the crack. H 3 It is time to learn the new language of a new struggle. I () Part II Cracks: The Anti-Politics of Dignity 4 The cracks begin with a No, from which there grows a dignity, a negation-and-creation. ] 7 5 A crack is the perfectly ordinary creation of a space or moment in which we assert a different type of doing. 21 6 Cracks break dimensions, break dimensionality. 27 7 Cracks are explorations in an anti-politics of dignity. 38 Part III Cracks on the Edge of Impossibility 8 Dignity is our weapon against a world of destruction. 4 9 Cracks clash with the social synthesis of capitalj I • I 10 Cracks exist on the edge of impossibility, but th y do exist. Moving they exist: dignity is a fleet-foot -" dance. 71 v Part IV The Dual Character of Labour I I 'I 'he 'I'�1 -k are th� revolt of one form of doing against another: the revolt of doing against labour. 83 'I'll' abstraction of doing into labour is the weaving of capitalism. 87 I J 'I 'he a bstraction of doing into labour is a historical proce s of transformation that created the social sy nthesis of capitalism: primitive accumulation. 100 Part V Abstract Labour: The Great Enclosure 14 Abstract labour encloses both our bodies and our minds. 109 The abstraction of doing into labour is a process of personification, the creation of character masks, the formation of the working class. 114 16 The abstraction of doing into labour is the creation of the male labourer and the dimorphisation of sexuality. 119 17 The abstraction of doing into labour is the constitution of nature as object. 125 I H The abstraction of doing into labour is the externalisation of our power-to-do and the creation of the citizen, politics and the state. 130 Il) The abstraction of doing into labour is the homogenisation of time. 135 .W The abstraction of doing into labour is the crea tion of totality. 141 ) I Abstract labour rules: the abstraction of doing into labour is the creation of a cohesive I�\w-bound totality su tained by the exploitation of labour. 145 ) l The labour movement is the movement of :lhsrr<lC(' labour. 151 vi Part VI The Crisis of Abstract Labour 23 Abstraction is not just a past but also a pre nt process. 165 24 Concrete doing overflows from abstract lab ur: it exists in-against-and-beyond abstract lab ur. 172 25 Doing is the crisis of abstract labour. 178 26 The breakthrough of doing against labour throws us into a new world of struggle. 197 Part VII Doing Against Labour: The Melodies of Interstitial Revolution 27 Doing dissolves totality, synthesis, value. 203 28 Doing is the moving of the mulier abscondita against character masks. We are the mulier abscondita. 2 12 29 Doing dissolves the homogenisation of time. 227 Part VIII A Time of Birth? 30 We are the forces of production: our power is the power of doing. 245 31 We are the crisis of capitalism, the misfitting- overflowing of our power-to-do, the brea kthrough of another world, perhaps. 250 32 Stop making capitalism. 253 33 262 thanks 263 Notes 265 Bibliography 287 Author Index 299 Subject Index 302 vii Part I Break 1 Break. We want to break. We want to create a different world. Now. Nothing more common, nothing more obvious. Nothing more simple. Nothing more difficult. Break. We want to break. We want to break the worl I a it is. A world of injustice, of war, of violence, of discriminati on, of Gaza and Guantanamo. A world of billionaires and a billion people who live and die in hunger. A world in which humanity is annihilating itself, massacring non-human forms of life, destroying the conditions of its own existence. A world ruled by money, ruled by capital. A world of frustration, of wasted potential. We want to create a different world. We protest, of course we protest. We protest against the war, we protest against th growing use of torture in the world, we protest against th turning of all life into a commodity to be bought and sold, we protest against the inhuman treatment of migrants, we protest against the destruction of the world in the interests of profit. We protest and we do more. We do and we must. If we only protest, we allow the powerful to set the agenda. If all we do is oppose what they are trying to do, then we simply follow in their footsteps. Breaking means that we do more than that, that we seize the initiative, that we set the agenda. We negate, but out of our negation grows a creation, an other-doing, an activity that is not determined by money, an activity that is not shaped by the rules of power. Often the alternative doing grows out of necessity: the functioning of the capitalist market does not allow us to survive and we need to find other ways to live, forms of solidarity and cooperation. Often too it comes from choice: we refuse to submit our lives to the rule of money, we 3 dcdicH' ourselves to what we consider necessary or desirable. I·:ilh 'I' W:ly, we live the world we want to create. Now. There is an urgency in all this. Enough! j¥a basta! W ha ve had enough of living in, and creating, a world of 'xploitation, violence and starvation. And now there is a new IIrgency, the urgency of time itself. It has become clear that W humans are destroying the natural conditions of our own 'xi tence, and it seems unlikely that a society in which the d termining force is the pursuit of profit can reverse this trend . rhe temporal dimensions of radical and revolutionary thought have changed. We place a skull on our desks, like the monks of old, not to glorify death, but to focus on the impending danger and intensify the struggle for life. It no longer makes sense to speak of patience as a revolutionary virtue or to talk of the 'future revolution'. What future? We need revolution now, here and now. So absurd, so necessary. So obvious. Nothing more common, nothing more obvious. There is nothing special about being an anti-capitalist revolutionary. This is the story of many, many people, of millions, perhaps billions. It is the story of the composer in London who expresses his a nger and his dream of a better society through the music he composes. It is the story of the gardener in Cholula who creates a garden to struggle against the destruction of nature. Of the car worker in Birmingham who goes in the evenings to his garden allotment so that he has some activity that has meaning a nd pleasure for him. Of the indigenous peasants in Oventic, ,h iapas, who create an autonomous space of self-government and defend it every day against the paramilitaries who harass th 'In. Of the university professor in Athens who creates a S 'l11inar outside the university framework for the promotion of ritical thought. Of the book publisher in Barcelona who . 'ntres his activity on publishing books against capitalism. Of th ' friends in Porto Alegre who form a choir, just because they ('njoy , inging. Of the teachers in Puebla who confront police oppr ssion to fightfor a different type of school, a different type of l'du ·ation. Of the theatre director in Vienna who decides she will LIS' her skills to open a different world to those who see II\'I' pln ys. f the call centre worker in Sydney who fills all his vnv 1111 mom 'nts thinking of how to fight for a better society. 4 Of the people of Cochabamba who com tog ,til 'I' II ld II, iii a battle against the government and the army so I II 'I W III I should not be privatised but subject to theil' own '1)IIIltii.