Critical thought against the capitalist hydra

Capital is in itself a constant aggression. It is an aggression that tells us every day “you have to shape what you do in a certain way, the only activity that has validity in this society is activity that contributes to the expansion of capitalist profit.” The aggression that is capital has a dynamic. In order to survive, capital has to subordinate our activity more intensely to the logic of profit each day: “today you have to work harder than yesterday, today you have to bow lower than yesterday.” With that, we can already see the weakness of capital. It depends on us, on our being willing or able to accept what it imposes on us. If we say “sorry, but I am going to tend my garden today,” or “today I am going to play with my children,” or “today I am going to dedicate my time to something that has meaning for me,” or simply “no, we will not bow,” then capital cannot extract the profit it requires, the rate of profit falls and capital is in crisis. In other words, we are the crisis of capital: our lack of subordination, our dignity, our humanity. We, as crisis of capital, as subjects with dignity and not as victims, we are the hope that is sought by critical thought. We are the crisis of capital and proud of it, we are proud to be the crisis of the system that is killing us. Capital gets desperate in this situation. It searches for all possible ways of imposing the subordination that it requires: authoritarianism, violence, labor reform, educational reform. It also introduces a game, a fiction: if we cannot extract the profit we need, then we shall pretend that it exists, we shall create a monetary representation for value that has not been produced, we are going to expand debt in order to survive and also try to use it to impose the discipline that is necessary. This expansion of debt is at the same time the expansion of finance capital, expression of the violent weakness of capital as a social relation.

John Holloway in Critical Thought against the Capitalist Hydra (Roarmag)