28 | VARIANT 41 | SPRING 2011 In, against and beyond labour Gordon Asher, Leigh French, Neil Gray in an exchange with John Holloway This exchange with John Holloway follows on from our engagement with his most recent work, Crack Capitalism (2010) 1 . Holloway’s work has become well known in and beyond activist circles since Change the World Without Taking Power (2002) 2 was published and widely read. This intentional popularisation has, arguably, tended to obscure Holloway’s previous work while drawing strength from it. We want to acknowledge here his part in what we consider to be some of the more constructive theoretical debates within and around Marxism in the last thirty years. First with the Conference of Socialist Economists, and the London Edinburgh Weekend Return Group, an associated working group that produced In and Against the State 3 which discussed the critical role of socialists who are opposed to the state but operate within it and against it. Holloway was also a key fgure in the ‘open’ Marxist school which deployed a sophisticated critique of fetishism to challenge, among other things, the ‘closed’ analysis of overly-deterministic readings of capital and society they saw associated with structuralist and regulationist approaches within Marxism 4 . While Holloway’s recent work draws strongly on his interests in the Zapitistas and other movements and struggles in the Global South, where he is presently based 5 , it should also be noted that he was, for some time, based in Edinburgh and wrote regularly for Common Sense: Journal of the Edinburgh Conference of Socialist Economists 6 , between 1987 and 1999. The journal broadly presented a forum for the development of ‘open’ and autonomous Marxist critical theory with contributors including such key fgures as Werner Bonefeld, Richard Gunn, Mariarosa Dalla Costa, Sergio Bologna, Antonio Negri, Ed Emery and George Caffentzis among many signifcant others. The recent republication online of these texts is noteworthy not only for its use value for the development of critical autonomous and ‘open’ Marxist theory, but for the fact that it has taken until now for the journal to be republished. The ideas presented in Common Sense deserve a wide readership, particularly at a time when left liberalism in the UK, as Holloway challenges below, seems determined to “lock us frmly into capital and close down all alternatives” through regressive campaigns such as ‘Right to Work’ or the recent ‘March for the Alternative’. We would like to thank John Holloway for this opportunity for dialogue and for the speed and grace with which he responded to these questions – themselves the result of a rushed exchange between three over-worked, under-paid cultural producers. While we share an affnity of politics this is not consensual or homogenous; the questions below were posed in a constructive, dialogical manner, not intended as a clarifcation of a ‘correct’ position, rather as a contribution to an open discussion we feel is both necessary and overdue. Variant: How does the notion of ‘cracks’ take us beyond other metaphors such as Henri Lefebvre’s ‘moments’ which he suggested were those instances where feeting sensations at moments of radical rupture (e.g. the Commune of 1871, May ’68) were revelatory of the total possibilities in everyday life? The Situationists later argued that Lefebvre’s conception of ‘moments’ was superseded by their tactic of creating ‘situations’ 7 . For Debord for instance, the ‘moment’ was limited both by passivity and by temporality, whereas the ‘constructed situation’ was defned both as interventionist and spatio-temporal: “A moment of life concretely and deliberately constructed by the collective organisation of a unitary ambience and game of events” 8 . How does the concept of ‘cracks’ fare in relation to these concepts, and can it be seen in the same lineage? John Holloway: I think the different notions push in the same direction, but I wasn’t thinking of those authors in particular when I started talking about cracks. For me it is important that the cracks are not just moments of radical rupture such as ‘68 and not just conscious interventions, but also and above all rooted in everyday experience. Radical rupture is inherent in everyday existence. At one point in the book I explain this in terms of the distinction between doing or concrete labour as both the constant basis of and subversion of abstract or alienated labour, on the one hand, and the autonomist notion of self-valorisation on the other, which I think points to exceptional situations. We are ordinary people, we are all in some way anti-capitalist revolutionaries, and if we don’t start from the powerful presence of communism in everyday life, then the project of communism cannot go very far. V: Your notions of the ‘scream’ and of the ‘crack’ are centred on the necessity to resist, “to stop making capitalism” (and the relations on which it depends) and to think and act differently. However, I worry that these metaphors over- emphasise resistance (negation), and non- prioritised anti-capitalist ‘doing’ (a fattening of our non-/anti-capitalist activity). Do we not also need visions, strategies and orientation that speak to the beyond – the alternative worlds we believe are possible, necessary and under construction? How do we connect and prioritise our ‘doing’? in order to build not only alternative relations, but also institutions, organisations and movements? JH: Yes, certainly we need alternative visions and practices, but the problem is not so much to create them as to recognise them and build upon them. They are there already. They are movements not just beyond, but against-and-beyond. Their drive comes from a scream, a negation, a refusal and I think it is important to emphasise this simply as a means of resisting the forces that constantly pull us back into conformity. Over all our projects we should raise a fag saying “Capitalism is a catastrophe for humanity” and we should keep it constantly in view. You ask “How do we connect our doing in order to build not only alternative relations, but also institutions, organisations and movements?” An important question diffcult to answer. I think of this in terms of the confuence of the cracks, of these spaces or moments of refusal-and-creation. How do we bring the cracks together or, better, is there any way in which we can stimulate them to come together? I don’t think it helps to think in terms of institutions or organisations – organisation yes, but not organisations. Simply on practical grounds – I don’t think that they work, I don’t think that the rebellions of life come together through institutions. Institution-building is often a waste of time or worse. Think of the World Social Forum, one of the great institutions to emerge from the alter-globalisation movement – I’m not against it at all, but that’s not the way that a real confuence of rebellions will take place. Better to think of resonances rather than institutions. V: I also worry that these metaphors over-focus on capitalism, to the exclusion of the other integrated oppressions that we face (based on gender, sexuality, disability, ethnicity and other aspects of our identities, contexts and relations). Do we need to expand the metaphor, or perhaps more accurately its scope, and consider ‘cracks’ not just in capitalism but in all the integrated systems of oppression, repression and exploitation which we oppose and wish to move beyond? How do we envision and explore the tensions, connecting our struggles and movements in doing so in a complementary holistic manner? JH: By capitalism I understand the way in which our activities interrelate with one another. This is the focus because it is our activities (our doings) and their interrelation that create all the oppressions and this is what we can change. If you want to attribute what you call the “other integrated oppressions” to something other than the way in which we act-and-interrelate, then I don’t understand how we could change them. How do we struggle to change the dynamic of how we act-and- interrelate? In a million different ways. V: How do cracks cope with the inevitable range of disciplinary government and corporate reactions – hard to soft power – from co-option and recuperation to oppression and to outright repression and force? For instance, you use the example of a mother skiving off work to spend time with her child as a moment of a ‘crack’ in capital. Yet in a low-wage economy this would negatively impact on the money she can bring into the house to pay for food, electricity, etc. This is why she works. Moreover with contractual obligations increasingly absent in the UK workforce, the threat of the sack now hangs over many workers. While it is easy to appreciate the resistance and negation of capital behind absenteeism and sabotage, etc, we shouldn’t neglect the coercive power of capital in continuing to make us work – as seen in recent reports which show the many billion pounds UK business ‘earns’ from unpaid workers who feel obliged to stay on after work hours. 9 How do you address this issue? And beyond issues of recuperation and co-option, how do we deal with outright resistance and repression – with attempts to close/shut/destroy the ‘cracks’, including through violence, if that is seen as necessary by state/capital? JH: Look around. Free Hetherington 10 , for example. A lovely crack – how does it deal with disciplinary reactions? The answer, in other words, is best seen by looking around and seeing how all these misftting activities, these cracks, dignities, deal with the problems of repression and co-option, and you’ll fnd a wide variety of responses. Logically, of course, these cracks should not exist, but they do, and when they are suppressed, they reappear in the same place or somewhere else. The danger on the left very often is that we anticipate our own defeat and do capital’s work for it. Having said that, I don’t think it’s enough to sing the praises of the cracks. A big section of the book is devoted to discussing precisely the diffculties you point out. I don’t think there is any simple answer, but I do think that there is a fundamental change taking place in the way that we are thinking about the possibilities and meaning of revolution. This change I present in terms of the crisis of abstract labour, or the revolt of doing against labour. V: Why ‘cracks’ as a metaphor? The metaphor seems to suggest something solid which needs to be cracked, yet your previous work – drawing on Marx’s conceptual use of fetishisation – has consistently shown that ‘things’ themselves are really only social relations between people which are fetishised in the form of things (commodities) 11 . You’ve used this position to critique the state-form, political economy, and structuralist and regulationist accounts of capital that tend to consolidate it by fxing and describing it an ‘object’ of study (as with ‘post-fordism’ for instance) 12 . But doesn’t the use of cracks as