Accelerationism

In political and social theory, accelerationism is the idea that capitalism, or particular processes that historically characterised capitalism, should be accelerated instead of overcome in order to generate radical social change. "Accelerationism" may also refer more broadly, and usually pejoratively, to support for the intensification of capitalism in the belief that this will hasten its self-destructive tendencies and ultimately lead to its collapse.[1][2]

Some contemporary accelerationist philosophy starts with the Deleuzo-Guattarian theory of deterritorialisation, aiming to identify and radicalise the social forces that promote this emancipatory process.[3]

Accelerationist theory has been divided into mutually contradictory left-wing and right-wing variants. "Left-accelerationism" attempts to press "the process of technological evolution" beyond the constrictive horizon of capitalism, for example by repurposing modern technology for socially beneficial and emancipatory ends; "right-accelerationism" supports the indefinite intensification of capitalism itself, possibly in order to bring about a technological singularity.[4][5][6] Accelerationist writers have additionally distinguished other variants, such as "unconditional accelerationism".[7]

A far-right, white nationalist adaptation of the term surfacing during the 2010s eschews the focus on capitalism of the prior variants, to instead refer to an acceleration of racial conflict resulting in a white ethnostate.[8]

Background

In his essay "A Quick-and-Dirty Introduction to Accelerationism," Nick Land cites a number of philosophers who have expressed apparently accelerationist attitudes. [7] These include Karl Marx, who writes as follows in his 1848 speech "On the Question of Free Trade":

But, in general, the protective system of our day is conservative, while the free trade system is destructive. It breaks up old nationalities and pushes the antagonism of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie to the extreme point. In a word, the free trade system hastens the social revolution. It is in this revolutionary sense alone, gentlemen, that I vote in favor of free trade.[9]

In a similar vein, Friedrich Nietzsche argued that "the leveling process of European man is the great process which should not be checked: one should even accelerate it",[10] a statement often simplified, following Deleuze and Guattari, to a command to "accelerate the process".[11]

Contemporary accelerationism

Prominent theorists include right-accelerationist Nick Land.[7] The Cybernetic Culture Research Unit (CCRU), an unofficial research unit at the University of Warwick from 1995 to 2003,[12] included Land as well as other social theorists such as Mark Fisher and Sadie Plant as members, and is considered a key progenitor in both left- and right-accelerationist thought.[13] Prominent contemporary left-accelerationists include Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams, authors of the "Manifesto for an Accelerationist Politics",[5] and the Laboria Cuboniks collective, who authored the manifesto "Xenofeminism: A Politics for Alienation".[14] For Mark Fisher, writing in 2012, "Land's withering assaults on the academic left ... remain trenchant"—though problematic—and "Marxism is nothing if it is not accelerationist".[15]

Along accelerationist lines, Paul Mason, in works such as PostCapitalism: A Guide to our Future, has tried to speculate about futures after capitalism. He declares that "[a]s with the end of feudalism 500 years ago, capitalism's replacement by postcapitalism will be accelerated by external shocks and shaped by the emergence of a new kind of human being. And it has started". He considers that the rise of collaborative production will eventually help capitalism to kill itself.

Focusing on how information technology infrastructures undermine modern political geographies, and proposing an open-ended "design brief", Benjamin H. Bratton's book The Stack: On Software and Sovereignty is associated with accelerationism. Tiziana Terranova's "Red Stack Attack!"[16] links Bratton's stack model and left accelerationism.

Other "accelerationisms"

Since the word "accelerationism" was coined in 2010 by Benjamin Noys to describe the aforementioned philosophical movement,[17] the term has suffered from considerable conceptual stretching, and has taken on several new meanings.

Žižekian accelerationism

Several commentators have used the label "accelerationist" to describe a political strategy articulated by the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek.[18][19] In a November 2016 interview with Channel 4 News, Žižek asserted that were he an American citizen, he would vote for Donald Trump as the candidate more likely to disrupt the 'status quo' of politics in that country.[20] This usage of the term "accelerationism" bears similarities to the Marxist immiseration thesis.

Far-right accelerationism

Since the late 2010s, the vanguardist faction of white nationalists and neo-Nazis has increasingly embraced a violent form of accelerationism as a way of establishing a whites-only ethnostate.[21][22][23] The origins of the far-right version of accelerationism dates back to the 1980s, when American Nazi Party-National Socialist Liberation Front (ANP/NSLF) member James Mason advocated for mass killings or assassinations of high-profile targets in the newsletter Siege. Brenton Harrison Tarrant, the perpetrator of the Christchurch mosque shootings that killed 51 people and injured 49 others, had embraced accelerationism in a section of his manifesto, titled "Destabilization and Accelerationism: tactics". It also influenced John Timothy Earnest, the man accused of causing the Escondido mosque fire at Dar-ul-Arqam Mosque in Escondido, California; and committing the Poway synagogue shooting, which resulted in one dead and three injured. Furthermore, it influenced Patrick Crusius, the man accused of committing the El Paso Walmart shooting, that killed 23 people and injured 23 others.

gollark: Vaguely relatedly I think 1984 is entering the public domain next year. Copyright lasts for an excessively long time in my opinion.
gollark: Okay, but if you're talking about real-world examples I don't see why it's remotely relevant to say that the author of a book vaguely relating to those real-world examples believed X.
gollark: But why do his *beliefs* actually matter?
gollark: No, I mean I don't see how talking about Orwell's beliefs is relevant at all.
gollark: I don't see how this is relevant to... how well the Soviet union works?

References
  1. Shaviro, Steven (2010). Post Cinematic Affect. Ropley: O Books. p. 136.
  2. Adams, Jason (2013). Occupy Time: Technoculture, Immediacy, and Resistance After Occupy Wall Street. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. p. 96.
  3. Wolfendale, Peter (2014). "So, Accelerationism, what's all that about?". Dialectical Insurgency. Archived from the original on 14 December 2014. Retrieved 5 February 2015.
  4. Jiménez de Cisneros, Roc (5 November 2014). "The Accelerationist Vertigo (II): Interview with Robin Mackay". Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona. Archived from the original on 9 November 2014. Retrieved 5 February 2015.
  5. Williams, Alex; Srnicek, Nick (14 May 2013). "#ACCELERATE MANIFESTO for an Accelerationist Politics". Critical Legal Thinking. Archived from the original on 6 February 2015. Retrieved 5 February 2015.
  6. Land, Nick (13 February 2014). "#Accelerate". Urban Future (2.1). Archived from the original on 29 September 2015. Retrieved 5 February 2015.
  7. "A Quick-and-Dirty Introduction to Accelerationism". Jacobite Magazine. Archived from the original on 2018-01-13. Retrieved 2018-02-20.
  8. https://www.adl.org/blog/white-supremacists-embrace-accelerationism
  9. Marx, Karl, On the question of free trade Archived 2015-05-27 at the Wayback Machine, Speech to the Democratic Association of Brussels, 9 January 1848.
  10. Quoted in Strong, Tracy (1988). Friedrich Nietzsche and the Politics of Transfiguration. Berkeley: University of California Press. p. 211. Original in The Will to Power §898.
  11. Deleuze, Gilles; Guattari, Félix (2004). Anti-Oedipus. London: Continuum. p. 260.
  12. "CCRU". V2_Institute for the Unstable Media. Archived from the original on 2015-12-22. Retrieved 2015-10-09.
  13. Schwarz, Jonas Andersson (2013). Online File Sharing: Innovations in Media Consumption. New York: Routledge. pp. 20–21.
  14. "After Accelerationism: The Xenofeminist manifesto". &&& Journal. Archived from the original on 2015-10-17. Retrieved 2015-10-09.
  15. Mark Fisher (2014). "Terminator vs Avatar". In Robin Mackay; Armen Avanessian (eds.). #Accelerate: The Accelerationist Reader. Urbanomic. pp. 335–46: 340, 342.
  16. "Red Stack Attack! Algorithms, Capital and the Automation of the Common" (in Italian). EuroNomade. Archived from the original on 2017-02-11. Retrieved 2017-02-09.
  17. "What is accelerationism?". New Statesman. August 5, 2020. Retrieved August 12, 2020.
  18. "Melenchon and Žižek; Accelerationism and Edgelordism – Infinite Coincidence". infinite-coincidence.com. May 5, 2017. Retrieved August 12, 2020.
  19. "What's wrong with accelerationism – Reflections on Technology, Media & Culture". richardcoyne.com. May 14, 2017. Retrieved August 12, 2020.
  20. "Slavoj Žižek would vote for Trump – žižek.uk". zizek.uk. November 3, 2016. Retrieved August 12, 2020.
  21. Stuart Wexler (May 31, 2020). "White Supremacist Provocateurs Are Tipping America's Protests Into a Race War". Haaretz.
  22. Mia Bloom (May 30, 2020). "Far-Right Infiltrators and Agitators in George Floyd Protests: Indicators of White Supremacists". Reiss Center on Law and Security at New York University School of Law. Just Security.
  23. "Far-Right Extremists Are Hoping to Turn the George Floyd Protests Into a New Civil War – VICE". vice.com. Archived from the original on May 30, 2020. Retrieved May 30, 2020.

Further reading

Books
  • Land, Nick (2011). Brassier, Ray; Mackay, Robin (eds.). Fanged Noumena. Urbanomic. ISBN 9780955308789.
  • Mackay, Robin, ed. (2014). #ACCELERATE: The Accelerationist Reader. Urbanomic. ISBN 9780957529557.
  • Noys, Benjamin (2013). Malign Velocities: Accelerationism and Capitalism. Zero Books. ISBN 9781782793007.
  • Srnicek, Nick; Williams, Alex (2015). Inventing the Future. Postcapitalism and a World without Work. Verso Books. ISBN 9781784780982
  • Ma, Mike, (2019) Harassment Architecture, (A scattered look at). Murray Media ISBN 1795641495

Articles
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