Draft:Accelerationism

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Accelerationism is, in simple terms, the belief social change must be accelerated, particularly within a capitalist society. Depending on who you are talking to, it is either yet another dense obscure term within the leftist lexicon or a far-right survivalist rhetorical trope.

Actual accelerationism

Left accelerationism

Left accelerationism began with Mark Fisher. While some might dispute whether Fisher himself could be considered accelerationist or not (some argue that he was more of an influence on the ideology than a subscriber to it), he was the figure of left accelerationism. Fisher writes:

“”For precisely these reasons, accelerationism can function as an anti-capitalist strategy – not the only anti-capitalist strategy (other anti-capitalist strategies are available, as it were) but a strategy that must be part of any political program that calls itself Marxist. The fact that capitalism tends towards stagflation, that growth is in many respects illusory, is all the more reason that accelerationism can function in a way that Alex Williams characterises as "terroristic." What we are not talking about here is the kind of intensification of exploitation that a kneejerk socialist humanism might imagine when the spectre of accelerationism is invoked. As Lyotard suggests, the left subsiding into a moral critique of capitalism is a hopeless betrayal of the anti-identitarian futurism that Marxism must stand for if it is to mean anything at all. What we need, as Fredric Jameson — the author of "Wal-Mart as Utopia" — argues, is not a new move beyond good and evil, and this, Jameson says, is to be found in none other than the Communist Manifesto. "The Manifesto," Jameson writes, "proposes to see capitalism as the most productive moment of history and the most destructive at the same time, and issues the imperative to think Good and Evil simultaneously, and as inseparable and inextricable dimensions of the same present of time. This is then a more productive way of transcending Good and Evil than the cynicism and lawlessness which so many readers attribute to the Nietzschean program.” (Valences of the Dialectic, 551) Capitalism has abandoned the future because it can't deliver it. Nevertheless, the contemporary left's tendencies towards Canutism, its rhetoric of resistance and obstruction, collude with capital's anti/meta-narrative that it is the only story left standing. Time to leave behind the logics of failed revolts, and to think ahead again.

—Mark Fisher

After Fisher's untimely death, most left accelerationist movements declined and deconstructed back into traditional Leninist politics. However, there remain many left accelerationist figures such as Nick Srnicek, Alex Williams, arguably Laboria Cuboniks.

Buzzfeed's founder Jonah Peretti is also considered at times to be a left accelerationist icon, due to his essay "Capitalism and Schizophrenia" (titled after the postmodernist essay by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari of the same name) in which he discusses Deleuze, Guattari, and Frederic Jameson, arguing for a 'schizophrenia' that can transcend capitalism; he sees 'schizophrenia' as not just the process of, but also the limit of capitalism.

Right accelerationism

Right accelerationists want, in short, a patriarchal conservative, arguably fascist rather than conservative, state that does hyper-eugenics to increase IQ, because they see capital as the AI. It's bad for obvious reasons and is fundamentally self-contradictory; capital, per Deleuze and Marx, constantly deterritorializes and reterritorializes territories. As such, conservative values will be deterritorialized and reterritorialized, and would be washed away.^{[needs explanation]}

Unconditional accelerationism

Unconditional accelerationism's main point is that of "antipraxis." Building on Nick Land's analysis, unconditional accelerationism claims that there is no action that can lead to acceleration or deacceleration, and that "To the question ‘What is to be done?’, then, she can legitimately answer only, 'Do what thou wilt'". This however does not mean "do nothing", it rather means that "the unconditional accelerationist, more than anyone else, is free at heart to pursue what she thinks is good and right and interesting—but with the ironical realisation that the primary ends that are served are not her own." As such, unconditional accelerationism is not necessarily political or principled, unlike the cyber-socialism of left accelerationism and the neoreaction of right accelerationism.

Gender accelerationism

Gender accelerationism began with Nyx Land's Blackpaper which resembles the feminism seen in some of Sadie Plant's work Nyx posits (similar to Monique Wittig^{[citation needed]}) that lesbians and transbians (transgender lesbian women) are an Outside that remains un-reterritorialized by the phallic. There are some rather problematic things however such as the implications of Nyx's hostility towards masculinity (which encompasses not only cishet masculinity but also trans-masculine individuals) and her emphasis on IQ.

Pseudo-accelerationism

Pseudo-accelerationism is the idea that if you accelerate class conflict by supporting the intensification of neoliberal capitalism and oppressing the working class as much as possible, then they'll have no choice but to revolt against the bourgeoisie for you. This is a vulgar misrepresentation and oversimplification of left accelerationism, based on Deleuze and Guattari's concept of deterritorialization.

Why it doesn't work

Pseudo-accelerationism relies on the belief that, if conditions got worse, the state ideology apparatus would fail to repress the fundamental horror of capitalism. In reality, the state apparatus of capitalism is not so easily defeated, for as Žižek points out, capitalism has been in a crisis from the very beginning but has managed to overcome all of them. Instead what typically happens as the result of this "vulgar accelerationism" is, in reality, a deacceleration, which comes from a far-right regime suppressing technological innovation and so on in order to hold onto its power. Interestingly, Žižek himself is at times portrayed as an accelerationist in this vulgar manner. However, this is not true — Žižek's support for Trump, for example, does not come from a wish for "acceleration" but rather to create a "civil war" within the Democratic party, through which the left would replace the dominant neoliberal center-right.

See also

• Postmodernism
• Anarchism
• Baruch Spinoza