doing-against-labour and the politics of listening...

What follows is an essay that was written for the Spaces of Radical Thought module on the MA in Activism and Social Change course that I am currently studying.


Using Holloways concept of doing-against-labour evaluate using specific examples how it can help understand struggles against contemporary capitalism.

Since the publication of Change The World Without Taking Power in 2002 John Holloway has emerged as one of the foremost leading critical thinkers and social movement theorists of the 21st Century. In his 2010 book Crack Capitalism he develops his analysis further displaying a lucid understanding of contemporary capitalism and struggles against it that aim to change the world without taking control of state power. Using specific examples this essay aims to illustrate Holloways concept of doing-against-labour and how it can help us understand struggles against contemporary capitalism. Holloways historical and contemporary understanding of abstract labour is considered before moving on to his defining characteristics of doing-against-labour. With reference to the Zapatistas we explore how to cultivate and connect the cracks that our doings make against capitalism so that a world where many worlds fit can be created. Hoping to illustrate by example through this authors own doing-against-labour this essay shall be printed by Footprinters Workers Co-operative in 500 copies of a Zine that shall be launched at a Zapatista Solidarity event taking place at The Clockworks social centre in Derby. The thought of this author exploring such important ideas in order for a single person in the neoliberal University of Leeds to assess so that a Masters degree can be obtained seems almost contradictory to the cause of the central concept. The poetry found in praxis however pushes against pure theory and empowers us to unpick the world of abstract labour from the bottom and to the left.

The two-fold nature of labour...

Holloways concept of Doing-Against-Labour is central to understanding contemporary struggles against capitalism. This central concept of doing-against-labour is one that in its essence originates from Marx:

The 'two-fold' nature of labour' (as he called it) was central to Marx's critique of capitalism. At the beginning of the second section of the first chapter of Volume 1 of Capital, he states quite clearly: 'This point [The two-fold nature of the labour contained in the commodities] is the pivot on which a clear comprehension of Political Economy turns'. (Marx, 1867/1965:41, 1867/1990:132) in (Holloway, 2010: 87)

Holloway informs us that the concept was so crucial and central to Marx's theory of political economy that after the first volume was published he wrote to Engels expressing that 'The best points in my book are: 1) the two-fold character of labour, according to whether it is expressed as use value or exchange value' (ibid). Despite the clear importance that Marx placed on  the 'two-fold' nature of  labour the mountains of literature that take Capital as their point of departure and the Marxist tradition in particular have bizarrely overlooked this key statement.

The two forms of activity that Marx refers to are abstract labour and in contrast conscious-life-activity. Abstract labour has an exchange value as it produces commodities that can be sold on the market for a price that is determined by the market whereas conscious-life-activity has a use value, as in, it is performed because of it's inherent value regardless of the market. Abstract labour is the work demanded from us by capitalism when we sell our labour for a wage in order to access the means of survival and conscious-life-activity is doing what we want to do because we freely choose to do so. Abstract labour is a relationship we enter into that not only produces capital but also produces our Master, as well as the Masters of others, whereas conscious-life-activity is our drive towards self-determination.

The difference between the two and this point in general is central as it places all of us and the choices we make at the centre of revolutionary theory. We choose to either strengthen capital via our labour or we weaken it via our doing. Whereas Marx uses abstract, alienated or estranged labour to indicate the labour we sell on the market Holloway tends to use the word labour and whereas Marx uses the term conscious-life-activity Holloway uses the term 'doing'. In Holloways words:

'labour, creates capital, the basis of the society that is destroying us. Another form of doing, what we call simply 'doing', pushes against the creation of capital and towards the creation of a different society. (ibid: 85) 

Key metaphors used by Holloway to help elucidate his concept of doing-against-labour is the misfit and the crack which he places at the centre and as his starting point. The misfit does not exist at the margins but is instead the protagonist in all of our lives. We start from here 'because it is this failure or refusal to fit in to an oppressive society that is the basis for hoping that we can change it' (ibid, 85). As the demands of capital force us to do things we do not want to do and not only this but order us to do them as efficiently as possible in order to maximise profits it is only natural that we crack. We misfit, we cant keep up, we need a break, we cling on to our dignity until we can take no more and then we crack. 'A crack is a perfectly ordinary creation of a space or moment in which we assert a different type of doing' (ibid:84) As ordinary rebellious humans being forced to perform roles designed for obedient robots we naturally misfit and as a result we create cracks. It is within these cracks that our doings towards self-determination occur and new worlds are born.

Abstract Labour: The web we choose to wake up and weave for our selves...

To fully appreciate the various aspects of Holloways concept of doing-against-labour and how it can help us understand struggles against contemporary capitalism it would be useful to consider how he understands the abstract labour that our doing is done against. He notes how unnatural labour and 'the abstract sociality of labour' is before reminding us that it is 'the result of a historical process, involving the monetisation of social relations and the spread of the market that at times took place without open conflict, but that was at its core a bloody and even genocidal process' (ibid:101). As people were separated from their means of survival via the process of land enclosures they are forced to depend directly or indirectly on the market for their survival with nothing to sell but their labour. The right to fish, hunt and gather wood is abolished as the poor law, workhouses and abstract labour is created. To stress abstract labours unnatural character he shares the following quote from Krisis:

“The imposition to waste the most of one's lifetime under abstract systemic orders was not always as internalised as today. Rather, it took several centuries of brute force and violence on a large scale to literally torture people into the unconditional service of the labour idol' (Krisis-Gruppe, 1994/2004: 21, s.9)

As important as it is to understand the historical process that has led to our dependence upon abstract labour and the extent to which our social relations have been forcefully commodified over time by capitalist production Holloway is quick to bring us back to the protagonists that breathe hope into his central concept. 'Capitalism exists today not because we created it two hundred years ago or a hundred years ago, but because we created it today (Holloway, 2010: 230). It's us that choose to serve, produce and consume through capitalism and by doing so we do not only lay down the bricks of our own cell but collectively we build the prison. When considering the amount of abstract human labour supplying all of our demands from day-to-day and how our activities relate to each other via the exchange of goods and services we can begin to perceive the global web in which we find ourselves stuck that each of us collectively weaves. Holloway explains Marxs concept of abstract labour and the social synthesis or cohesion that enslaves us as follows:

“We create the society that holds us entrapped. In capitalism, we do so because the way in which our activities are bound together, through exchange, imposes certain ways of behaving upon us that neither we nor anyone else controls. The way in which our activities are bound together gives us an illusion of freedom, but in fact our activities weave a web (what we have called a 'social cohesion' or a 'social synthesis') that is controlled by nobody, ruled by the necessity to produce things as efficiently as possible, in the socially necessary labour time. That is what Marx speaks of when he speaks of abstract labour' (ibid:96)

The Nokia sirens the start to a new day as Colgate & Lynx give him the edge over his male competitors. Calvin Klein, Levis & Armani help him communicate his successful status and expensive taste in a way that makes the treacherous working conditions and less than subsistence wages endured by Indonesian sweatshop labourers seem a small price to pay. Intensively farmed animal cruelty with a nice hot cup of unfairly traded Nescafe help to kick-start his day. With regard to Breakfast what did Martin Luther King have to say? Google it. The background buzz of the TV sets the bar ever higher as Beckham bends truths about wet shaves and style. Advertisements designed by psychologists subtly seduce our desires with their lies about liberty and the best way to buy it. If he's not at home, in the office or driving then you'll find him in ASDA. He parks  by the petrol pumps, fills her up and takes his card to the till oblivious to the causes of resource wars and the million Iraqis killed. “Do you take plastic?” he asks without a thought for how it's made and pays with money he hasn't earn t yet spending more than he gets paid. He arrives on time at the office, removes his jacket and takes a seat, is offered a coffee “with milk and two please” as he begrudgingly shuffles  sheets. He enters data resentfully hating his job, his boss and the life that he leads but like the millions of people he's affected that day he finds hope in the doing he dreams. As his superior patrols the cubicles silently screaming 'SELL MORE! He thinks of the 10 hours, 6 days and 40 years left to be endured. Once the bosses backs turned he scribbles down screams that dream of another way, lyrics of dignity and doing that he can no longer betray. He cracks. He bursts into a fit of joyous laughter, takes his armani tie off, walks out and never looks back. His replacement starts soon as his appointment with the job centre looms. No one noticed, tap, tap, tap. The ever increasing consumption of finite resources thus profit maximisation remains the bottom line as humanities egg timer turns for the final time. Tick. BOOM!

The extract from the protagonists diary aims to illustrate how difficult it is to destroy the web we're pressured to weave by neoliberalism as we are enslaved by others, enslave others and enslave ourselves. The pressure to make ever more profit in the socially necessary labour time is constantly  increased until we can subordinate our doing to abstract labour no more. Holloway describes capital as 'the constant turning of the screw, a constant intensification of the subordination of doing to abstract labour' (Holloway, 2010:250) by which he refers to capitalisms aim to accelerate profit maximisation continuously by any means necessary.

Contemporary Capitalism: Increasingly screwed...

This has become glaringly evident over the last 30 years with the rise of neoliberal global free trade and all it entails, the deregulation of the corporation, the commodification of the commons, the hollowing out of the  state and the concentration of power into a small handful of multinational corporations and international financial institutions such as the WTO, the IMF and the World Bank. The emergence of contemporary struggles against capitalism have been as a result of this tightening of the screw. From the Zapatistas declaring war on the Mexican state in 1994 in response to the NAFTA agreement that threatened to steal their land and endanger their continued survival to Coca Cola ordering the murder of Colombian trade unionists, the privatisation of Bolivian water supplies, Structural Adjustment Programmes in underdeveloped countries that condemn millions to poverty, starvation and death, an economy based on infinite growth on a planet with finite resources that is destroying ecosystems and therefore the foundations on which all life depends, governments bailing out bankers with tax payers money, the recent spate of austerity measures that are dismantling welfare states in advanced countries and making the poorest pay for a crisis that the rich created. As ordinary rebellious people we misfit and naturally we create cracks, which as Holloway observes is our 'revolutionary hope, the potential breakthrough of another world, another doing, another way of relating' (ibid:251). As misfits:

'We raise our heads and say 'yes it is true, we do not fit. And do you know something? We do not want to fit. We do not want to fit in to this world of destruction. And do you know something else? Your crisis is your incapacity to contain our power-to-do, your crisis is the breakthrough of our creative-productive force. Our misfitting is our overflowing, the overflowing of our creativity, our magnificent being-able-to. So get thee gone to the dustbin of history, capital, and let us get on with making the world anew' (ibid: 251)

The global social synthesis based on our abstract labour is being undone by our doings. As misfits our drive towards self-determination from within capitalism struggles against capitals drive to maximise profit and our unique different doings eventually spill out of the cracks we create and beyond capitalism allowing us to catch rare and wonderful glimpses of a new world of our making. It is Holloways concept of 'doing-against-labour' that helps us understand struggles against contemporary capitalism as we aim to collectively unpick the social synthesis of abstract labour, from the bottom and to the left.

Doing-against-labour: Creating new worlds now...

Rather than seeing the revolutionary struggle as labour-against-capital Holloways central concept of doing-against-labour reminds us that 'the creation of labour and the creation of capital are the same process, and the struggle against capital is the struggle against that which produces it, the struggle against labour' (ibid:104). Demanding the Right to Work is demanding the right to be exploited by Capitalism. The struggle of doing therefore is 'the struggle of the working class against it's own existence as working class' (ibid, 156) a struggle to dismantle the cage not just increase it's size, a fight to own the whole bakery not just beg for a bigger slice:

“We make capitalism by creating and re-creating the social relations of capitalism: we must stop doing so, we must do something else, live different social relations. Revolution is simply that: to stop making capitalism and do something else instead. The struggle is  not a struggle for survival (that is the genuine struggle of abstract labour) but a struggle to live” (ibid, 236)

To resist capitalism and instead do something we choose is to create a crack in the rigidity of the status quo. We subvert spaces with new ways of relating to each other that resist perpetuating the norm of things as they are and instead chip away at the boundaries of what is and isn't 'the done thing'. We don't do the done thing, we do something else, something we choose something that breaks through the frozen ocean of global capitalism allowing us to access the source and root of what it means to live. Even if it's just a sip, a taste, a glimpse of possible other worlds found in the cracks we create with our doing before they are recuperated, removed, destroyed, co opted, frozen over by the cold world we seek to thaw and shatter, we do them anyway. We do them because we want to be free and our doings are expressions of our self-determination, they are ends in themselves as well as means to a new world that we create in the here and now. What I want to do may well be different to what you want to do and what we want to do may well be different to what they want to do and we are all united by the fact that we want to do what we want and that by doing what we want we are all chipping away at the world of abstract labour.

We tell our boss to 'fuck off and show some respect' before trading the 50 hour week shitty job for 16 hours doing something we love. We swap rising fuel prices and a rapidly changing climate for more exercise and fulfilment in the form of a cycle. We give our TV away and organise benefit gigs. We smile at our neighbours and play with their kids. We pull food out of skips and we grow veg where we can. We recycle old clothes and rock poetry slams. We buy Zapatista coffee and ethical bathroom bits and bobs from friends in a workers co-operative who play hard at their jobs. We make stencils and stickers so we can subvert corporate signs as we question their answers so we can reclaim our minds. We make collective decisions and by asking we walk, we resist with our rhythms and by doing we talk. We cling tightly with both hands on what it means to live. Replacing money and labour with cooperation and gift. From within our doing pushes against. We tear down their fences and climb over their gates. We swarm through and spill over and start singing new songs. Create the new in the shell of the old with our doings-against-and-beyond. Maybe? What do you do?

This unpicking of the social synthesis of abstract labour by doing from below would not however be the creation of a 'new totality but a shifting constellation or confederation of particularities. Not a communism but a communising' (ibid:210), a coming and going of freely associating individuals co-operating to 'construct through the cracks a different socialisation, a socialisation, more loosely woven than the social synthesis of capitalism and based on the full recognition of the particularities of our individual and collective activities and of their thrust towards self-determination' (ibid, 248). From the particular we prefigure the world we want with our diverse different doings as we refuse to create capitalism and instead build something new.

Our individual outward thrusts of doing towards self-determination 'is not complete self-determination because there are so many things that we do not control, so many ways in which our doing depends on the doing of others in a way that we do not determine' (ibid: 203) As we refuse capitalism and attempt to create autonomous spaces that allow our diverse doings towards self-determination to flourish we send cracks reaching out across the frozen ocean of global capitalism. The more cracks that reach out and meet up to cooperate, penetrating the ice and thus allowing the fluid movement of  existence to emerge the weaker the icy social synthesis of abstract labour becomes. The more and more that we cooperate with others to create alternatives beyond capitalism the greater our capacity to fulfil our social self-determination becomes.

Cracking Capitalism: Leading by listening without answers...

How can we connect the cracks so that we can finally shatter global capitalism once and for all? No one knows and it is in this principle that potentially exists our greatest hope. Holloway knows he doesn't know and that to pretend he did would be antithetical to the revolutionary project. He knows that not knowing is 'both a principle of knowledge and a principle of organisation that aims at the participation of all in the process of organising our individual and collective doing' (ibid:256). To know would be to prescribe, to dictate, to impose and to lead. To know would be to preach, to be the expert, the politician, and the vanguard. To know is to create a hierarchical politics of monologue where some voices are heard and others silenced. In order for the cracks to connect we must realise that we do not know.

“The revolutionary process is a collective coming-to-eruption of stifled volcanoes. The language and thought of revolution cannot be a prose which sees volcanoes as mountains: it is necessarily a poetry which understands mountains as volcanoes, an imagination which reaches out towards unseen passions, unseen capacities, unseen knowledge's and powers-to-do, unseen dignities. This is a dialogical politics rather than the monological talking-politics of the traditional revolutionary movement” (ibid: 225)

To not know is to listen, to question, to learn and empower. To not know is to love, to respect, to bare witness to the reality of others unique understandings, experiences and perspectives and by doing so allowing them to find out who they are and thus flourishing beyond as we collectively facilitate the continuous process of our becoming.

Zapatismo and the connecting of the cracks...

  “Marcos is gay in San Francisco, black in South Africa, an Asian in Europe, a Chicano in San Tsidro, an anarchist in Spain, a Palestinian in Israel, a Mayan Indian in the streets of San Cristobal, a Jew in Germany, a Gypsy in Poland, a Mohawk in Quebec, a pacifist in Bosnia, a single woman on the Metro at 10 P.M., a peasant without land, a gang member in the slums, an unemployed worker, an unhappy student and, of course, a Zapatista in the mountains.” (Subcommandante Marcos quoted in Klein, 2005:211)

Nowhere has this poetic politics of listening been exemplified more profoundly than by the Zapatistas who have managed to effectively reach out to 'others' in a way which has touched and inspired millions globally. Claiming that “We are you” whilst declaring their intention to build a world in which many worlds fit, a world where there is One No and Many Yeses whilst humbly presenting Zapatismo as their means, a politics where 'by asking we walk' they then embarked upon doing just that. From the First National Democratic Convention in 1994, the First Intercontinental Encounter in April of 1996, the First Intercontinental Encounter for Humanity and Against Neoliberalism, also known as the “Intergalactic,” in July of 1996, 'all attended by thousands of people flooding into Zapatista territory to meet not only Zapatistas, but each other. Any surface investigation of these encounters will show that they were absolutely crucial to the formation of the alter globalisation movement and the subsequent events that were to take place in Seattle, Prague, and Genoa' (El Kilombo Intergalactico, 2007:12) Commenting on the 'Other' Campaign of 2006 where Zapatista representatives visited every state of the Mexican Republic to  listen to the people they met Subcommandante Marcos explains that the basic proposition of a dialogue:

“is to recognise the existence of the other, to respect them, to say, s/he is other, and I am going to relate to the other, discarding beforehand, not even thinking that s/he has to be like me, or that I will make him/her my way. Like we always say 'The thing is he wants to do it his way'.” (Subcommandante Marcos interview, 2006:33)

To perceive our unique diversity as the thing which unites us and our desire to be who we are without having to fit in, our common struggle, the Zapatistas have managed to resonate with and connect seemingly unrelated struggles all over the world. The aim 'isn't about constructing a world rebellion. That already exists. It's about constructing the space where this rebellion encounters itself, shows itself, begins to know itself' (ibid: 40). Holloway points to this stating that 'the issue is not to bring revolutionary consciousness to the masses, but to develop the sensitivity to recognise the revolts that exist everywhere, and to find ways of touching them, resonating with them, drawing them out, ways of participating in the thawing and confluence of that which is frozen (Holloway, 2010: 258) To join up the cracks of our different doings we must encounter others as equals that are inherently different, listen to each other, share with each other, create with each other, look to touch, inspire,  encourage, create and take action with each other in a way that creates a network of autonomous cracks that are so vibrant that the social cohesion of abstract labour shatters once and for all, revealing all that is beyond, always moving, changing, fluid and free.

Off to the printers...

The defining characteristics of Holloways concept of doing-against-labour resonate with many contemporary struggles against capitalism, from the Reclaim the Streets anti-road protests of the mid-90s, the anti-WTO protest on November 30th 1999, to the Argentinian Factory Occupations as a result of the 2001 economic collapse, the annual Climate Camps from 2006, the occupation of Fortnum & Masons in response to public spending cuts and of course, all around us in our daily lives where people are doing-against-labour. What Holloways concept describes is an open prefigurative politics that pushes outwards from the particular towards self-determination and collective autonomy via consensus-decision making and a respect for diversity that exists within, struggles against and aims to go beyond capital and the totality of abstract labour that is killing us. The Zapatistas encapsulate Holloways theory and have undoubtedly informed and influenced the content of his  thought as it pushes from within-against-and-beyond capital. For those still looking for answers:

“There is no single correct answer to the desperate (and time-honoured) question of what is to be done. Perhaps the best answer that can be given is: 'Think for yourself and yourselves, use your imagination, follow your inclinations and do whatever you consider necessary or enjoyable, always with the motto of against-and-beyond capital' (ibid)


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