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Accelerationism is a range of ideologies that call for the drastic intensification of
capitalist Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their use for the purpose of obtaining profit. This socioeconomic system has developed historically through several stages and is defined by ...
growth,
technological change Technological change (TC) or technological development is the overall process of invention, innovation and diffusion of innovations, diffusion of technology or business process, processes.From ''The New Palgrave Dictionary otechnical change by S. ...
, and other processes of social change to destabilize existing systems and create radical social transformations. It is an ideological spectrum divided into mutually contradictory
left-wing Left-wing politics describes the range of Ideology#Political ideologies, political ideologies that support and seek to achieve social equality and egalitarianism, often in opposition to social hierarchy either as a whole or of certain social ...
and
right-wing Right-wing politics is the range of political ideologies that view certain social orders and hierarchies as inevitable, natural, normal, or desirable, typically supporting this position based on natural law, economics, authority, property ...
variants, both of which support dramatic changes to capitalism and its structures, as well as the conditions for a
technological singularity The technological singularity—or simply the singularity—is a hypothetical point in time at which technological growth becomes uncontrollable and irreversible, resulting in unforeseeable consequences for human civilization. According to the ...
, a point in time at which technological growth becomes uncontrollable and irreversible. It aims to analyze and subsequently promote the social, economic, and cultural forces that constitute the process of acceleration. Accelerationism was preceded by ideas from philosophers such as
Gilles Deleuze Gilles Louis René Deleuze (18 January 1925 – 4 November 1995) was a French philosopher who, from the early 1950s until his death in 1995, wrote on philosophy, literature, film, and fine art. His most popular works were the two volumes o ...
and
Félix Guattari Pierre-Félix Guattari ( ; ; 30 March 1930 – 29 August 1992) was a French psychoanalyst, political philosopher, Semiotics, semiotician, social activist, and screenwriter. He co-founded schizoanalysis with Gilles Deleuze, and created ecosophy ...
. From these ideas, some
University of Warwick The University of Warwick ( ; abbreviated as ''Warw.'' in post-nominal letters) is a public research university on the outskirts of Coventry between the West Midlands and Warwickshire, England. The university was founded in 1965 as part of ...
staff formed a philosophy collective known as the Cybernetic Culture Research Unit (CCRU), led by
Nick Land Nick Land (born 14 March 1962) is an English philosopher best known for popularising the ideology of accelerationism. His work has been tied to the development of speculative realism, and departs from the formal conventions of academic writing ...
. Land and the CCRU drew further upon ideas in
posthumanism Posthumanism or post-humanism (meaning "after humanism" or "beyond humanism") is an idea in continental philosophy and critical theory responding to the presence of anthropocentrism in 21st-century thought. Posthumanization comprises "those pro ...
and 1990s cyber-culture, such as
cyberpunk Cyberpunk is a subgenre of science fiction in a dystopian futuristic setting said to focus on a combination of "low-life and high tech". It features futuristic technological and scientific achievements, such as artificial intelligence and cyberwa ...
and jungle music, to become the driving force behind accelerationism. After the dissolution of the CCRU, the movement was termed ''accelerationism'' by Benjamin Noys in a critical work. Different interpretations emerged: whereas Land's right-wing thought promotes capitalism as the driver of progress, technology, and knowledge, left-wing thinkers such as Mark Fisher, Nick Srnicek, and Alex Williams utilized similar ideas to promote the use of capitalist technology and infrastructure to achieve
socialism Socialism is an economic ideology, economic and political philosophy encompassing diverse Economic system, economic and social systems characterised by social ownership of the means of production, as opposed to private ownership. It describes ...
. The term has also been used in ways unrelated to capitalism and technology. One such use is by right-wing extremists such as neo-fascists, neo-Nazis, white nationalists and white supremacists to increasingly refer to an acceleration of racial conflict through
assassination Assassination is the willful killing, by a sudden, secret, or planned attack, of a personespecially if prominent or important. It may be prompted by political, ideological, religious, financial, or military motives. Assassinations are orde ...
s,
murder Murder is the unlawful killing of another human without justification (jurisprudence), justification or valid excuse (legal), excuse committed with the necessary Intention (criminal law), intention as defined by the law in a specific jurisd ...
s and terrorist attacks as a means to violently achieve a white ethnostate.


Background


Influences and precursors

The term ''accelerationism'' was first used in Roger Zelazny's 1967 novel '' Lord of Light''. It was later popularized by professor and author Benjamin Noys in his 2010 book ''The Persistence of the Negative'' to describe the trajectory of certain
post-structuralists Post-structuralism is a philosophical movement that questions the objectivity or stability of the various interpretive structures that are posited by structuralism and considers them to be constituted by broader systems of Power (social and poli ...
who embraced unorthodox
Marxist Marxism is a political philosophy and method of socioeconomic analysis. It uses a dialectical and materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to analyse class relations, social conflic ...
and counter-Marxist overviews of capitalist growth, such as
Gilles Deleuze Gilles Louis René Deleuze (18 January 1925 – 4 November 1995) was a French philosopher who, from the early 1950s until his death in 1995, wrote on philosophy, literature, film, and fine art. His most popular works were the two volumes o ...
and
Félix Guattari Pierre-Félix Guattari ( ; ; 30 March 1930 – 29 August 1992) was a French psychoanalyst, political philosopher, Semiotics, semiotician, social activist, and screenwriter. He co-founded schizoanalysis with Gilles Deleuze, and created ecosophy ...
in their 1972 book ''
Anti-Oedipus ''Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia'' () is a 1972 book by French authors Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, the former a philosopher and the latter a psychoanalyst. It is the first volume of their collaborative work ''Capitalism and Sch ...
'', Jean-François Lyotard in his 1974 book '' Libidinal Economy'' and
Jean Baudrillard Jean Baudrillard (, ; ; – 6 March 2007) was a French sociology, sociologist and philosopher with an interest in cultural studies. He is best known for his analyses of media, contemporary culture, and technological communication, as well as hi ...
in his 1976 book ''Symbolic Exchange and Death''. English right-wing philosopher and writer Nick Land, commonly credited with creating and inspiring accelerationism's basic ideas and concepts, cited a number of philosophers who expressed anticipatory accelerationist attitudes in his 2017 essay "A Quick-and-Dirty Introduction to Accelerationism". Firstly,
Friedrich Nietzsche Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (15 October 1844 – 25 August 1900) was a German philosopher. He began his career as a classical philology, classical philologist, turning to philosophy early in his academic career. In 1869, aged 24, Nietzsche bec ...
argued in a fragment in '' The Will to Power'' that "the leveling process of European man is the great process which should not be checked: one should even accelerate it." Taking inspiration from this notion for ''Anti-Oedipus'', Deleuze and Guattari speculated further on an unprecedented "revolutionary path" to perpetuate capitalism's tendencies, a passage which is cited as a central inspiration for accelerationism: Land also cited
Karl Marx Karl Marx (; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, political theorist, economist, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. He is best-known for the 1848 pamphlet '' The Communist Manifesto'' (written with Friedrich Engels) ...
, who, in his 1848 speech "On the Question of Free Trade", anticipated accelerationist principles a century before Deleuze and Guattari by describing
free trade Free trade is a trade policy that does not restrict imports or exports. In government, free trade is predominantly advocated by political parties that hold Economic liberalism, economically liberal positions, while economic nationalist politica ...
as socially destructive and fuelling
class conflict In political science, the term class conflict, class struggle, or class war refers to the economic antagonism and political tension that exist among social classes because of clashing interests, competition for limited resources, and inequali ...
, then effectively arguing for it: Robin Mackay and Armen Avanessian note "Fragment on Machines" from ''
Grundrisse The ''Grundrisse der Kritik der Politischen Ökonomie'' (, ), often simply the ''Grundrisse'' (, ), is an unfinished manuscript by the German philosopher Karl Marx. The series of seven notebooks was rough-drafted by Marx, chiefly for purposes ...
'' as Marx's "most openly accelerationist writing". Noys states of Marx's influence, "it favors the Marx who celebrates the powers of capitalism, most evident in ''
The Communist Manifesto ''The Communist Manifesto'' (), originally the ''Manifesto of the Communist Party'' (), is a political pamphlet written by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, commissioned by the Communist League and originally published in London in 1848. The ...
'' (cowritten with Engels), over the Marx who also stresses the difficulty of transcending and escaping capital, the Marx of '' Capital''", also characterizing the accelerationist view of Marx as filtered through Nietzsche. On Lyotard, Deleuze, and Guattari, he states "at this point, what we can call accelerationism is dedicated to trying to ride these forces of capitalist production and direct them to destabilize capitalism itself." Mark Fisher notes the same excerpt from ''Anti-Oedipus'' as Land, along with a section from ''Libidinal Economy'' which he describes as "the one passage from the text that is remembered, if only in notoriety", as "immediately ivingthe flavour of the accelerationist gambit": Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams additionally credit
Vladimir Lenin Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov ( 187021 January 1924), better known as Vladimir Lenin, was a Russian revolutionary, politician and political theorist. He was the first head of government of Soviet Russia from 1917 until Death and state funeral of ...
with recognizing capitalist progress as important in the subsequent functioning of
socialism Socialism is an economic ideology, economic and political philosophy encompassing diverse Economic system, economic and social systems characterised by social ownership of the means of production, as opposed to private ownership. It describes ...
: Accelerationism was also influenced by
science fiction Science fiction (often shortened to sci-fi or abbreviated SF) is a genre of speculative fiction that deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts. These concepts may include information technology and robotics, biological manipulations, space ...
(particularly
cyberpunk Cyberpunk is a subgenre of science fiction in a dystopian futuristic setting said to focus on a combination of "low-life and high tech". It features futuristic technological and scientific achievements, such as artificial intelligence and cyberwa ...
) and
electronic dance music Electronic dance music (EDM), also referred to as dance music or club music, is a broad range of percussive electronic music genres originally made for nightclubs, raves, and List of electronic dance music festivals, festivals. It is generally ...
, with Fisher and Mackay noting '' Terminator'', ''
Predator Predation is a biological interaction in which one organism, the predator, kills and eats another organism, its prey. It is one of a family of common List of feeding behaviours, feeding behaviours that includes parasitism and micropredation ...
'', and '' Blade Runner'' as particular sci-fi works; and jungle music as a particular electronic music genre. Mackay and Avanessian also note the ''Neuromancer'' trilogy, with Iain Hamilton Grant stating "'' Neuromancer'' got into the philosophy department, and it went viral. You’d find worn-out paperbacks all over the common room." Fisher states of Land's "theory-fictions" from the 1990s, "They weren’t distanced readings of French theory so much as cybergothic remixes which put Deleuze and Guattari on the same plane as films such as ''
Apocalypse Now ''Apocalypse Now'' is a 1979 American psychological epic war film produced and directed by Francis Ford Coppola. The screenplay, co-written by Coppola, John Milius, and Michael Herr, is loosely inspired by the 1899 novella '' Heart of Darkn ...
'' and fictions such as Gibson’s ''Neuromancer''." Mackay also notes Russian cosmism and ''
Erewhon ''Erewhon: or, Over the Range'' () is a utopian novel by English writer Samuel Butler (novelist), Samuel Butler, first published in 1872, set in a fictional country discovered and explored by the protagonist. The book is a satire on Victorian ...
'' as influences, while Noys notes Donna Haraway's work on
cyborg A cyborg (, a portmanteau of ''cybernetics, cybernetic'' and ''organism'') is a being with both Organic matter, organic and biomechatronic body parts. The term was coined in 1960 by Manfred Clynes and Nathan S. Kline.


The Cybernetic Culture Research Unit

The Cybernetic Culture Research Unit (CCRU), a philosophy collective at the
University of Warwick The University of Warwick ( ; abbreviated as ''Warw.'' in post-nominal letters) is a public research university on the outskirts of Coventry between the West Midlands and Warwickshire, England. The university was founded in 1965 as part of ...
which included Land, Mackay, Fisher, and Grant, was one of the most significant parts of the movement. Fisher described the CCRU's accelerationism as “a kind of exuberant anti-politics, a ‘technihilo' celebration of the irrelevance of human agency, partly inspired by the pro-markets, anti-capitalism line developed by Manuel DeLanda out of Braudel, and from the section of Anti-Oedipus that talks about marketization as the 'revolutionary path'." Other significant members include Sadie Plant and Ray Brassier. The group stood in stark opposition to the University of Warwick and traditional left-wing academia, with Mackay stating "I don’t think Land has ever pretended to be left-wing! He’s a serious philosopher and an intelligent thinker, but one who has always loved to bait the left by presenting the ‘worst’ possible scenario with great delight...!" As Land became a stronger influence on the group and left the University of Warwick, they would shift to more unorthodox and
occult The occult () is a category of esoteric or supernatural beliefs and practices which generally fall outside the scope of organized religion and science, encompassing phenomena involving a 'hidden' or 'secret' agency, such as magic and mysti ...
ideas. Land suffered a breakdown from his amphetamine abuse and disappeared in the early 2000s, with the CCRU vanishing along with him.


Works

''
The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'' and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister paper, ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardi ...
'' has referred to ''#Accelerate: The Accelerationist Reader,'' a 2014 anthology edited by Robin Mackay and Armen Avanessian, as "the only proper guide to the movement in existence." They also described '' Fanged Noumena,'' a 2011 anthology of Land's work, as “contain ngsome of accelerationism's most darkly fascinating passages." Mackay credits the publishing of ''Fanged Noumena'' with an emergence of new accelerationist thinking. In 2015, Urbanomic and Time Spiral Press published ''Writings 1997-2003'' as a complete collection of known texts published under the CCRU name, besides those that have been irrecoverably lost or attributed to a specific member. However, some works under the CCRU name are not included, such as those in ''#Accelerate: The Accelerationist Reader''.


Concepts

Accelerationism consists of various and often contradictory ideas, with Noys stating "part of the difficulty of understanding accelerationism is grasping these shifting meanings and the stakes of particular interventions". Avanessian stated "any accelerationist thought is based on the assessment that contradictions (of capitalism) must be countered by their own aggravation", while Mackay considered a Marxist "acceleration of contradictions" to be a misconception and stated that no accelerationist authors have advocated such a thing. Harrison Fluss and Landon Frim note that accelerationists make extensive use of
neologism In linguistics, a neologism (; also known as a coinage) is any newly formed word, term, or phrase that has achieved popular or institutional recognition and is becoming accepted into mainstream language. Most definitively, a word can be considered ...
s, either original or borrowed from
continental philosophy Continental philosophy is a group of philosophies prominent in 20th-century continental Europe that derive from a broadly Kantianism, Kantian tradition.Continental philosophers usually identify such conditions with the transcendental subject or ...
. Such terminology can obscure their core arguments, exacerbated by the fact that it can be highly inconsistent between thinkers.


Posthumanism

Noys characterizes accelerationism as engaging with
posthumanism Posthumanism or post-humanism (meaning "after humanism" or "beyond humanism") is an idea in continental philosophy and critical theory responding to the presence of anthropocentrism in 21st-century thought. Posthumanization comprises "those pro ...
, stating "the impulse is to use or repurpose technology to transcend or escape what the science-fiction writer William Gibson calls the 'meat'–the human body." He also notes Nietzche's
Übermensch The ( , ; 'Overman' or 'Superman') is a concept in the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche. In his 1883 book, '' Thus Spoke Zarathustra'' (), Nietzsche has his character Zarathustra posit the as a goal for humanity to set for itself. The repre ...
as a posthumanist influence. Fluss and Frim state that it tends towards antihumanism, with left-accelerationists such as Peter Wolfendale and
Reza Negarestani Reza Negarestani (born 1977) is an Iranian philosopher and writer, known for "pioneering the genre of 'theory-fiction' with his book" ''Cyclonopedia'' which was published in 2008. It was listed in Artforum as one of the best books of 2009. Negar ...
using the term "inhumanism".


Prometheanism

Prometheanism is a term closely associated with accelerationism, referencing the Greek figure of
Prometheus In Greek mythology, Prometheus (; , , possibly meaning "forethought")Smith"Prometheus". is a Titans, Titan. He is best known for defying the Olympian gods by taking theft of fire, fire from them and giving it to humanity in the form of technol ...
. Fluss and Frim associate it with posthumanism and using innovation and technology to surpass the limits of
nature Nature is an inherent character or constitution, particularly of the Ecosphere (planetary), ecosphere or the universe as a whole. In this general sense nature refers to the Scientific law, laws, elements and phenomenon, phenomena of the physic ...
, characterizing it as misanthropic in stating "for the Promethean, flesh-and-blood 'humanity' is an arbitrary limit on the unlimited powers of technology and invention." They also characterize accelerationism as adhering to
nominalism In metaphysics, nominalism is the view that universals and abstract objects do not actually exist other than being merely names or labels. There are two main versions of nominalism. One denies the existence of universals—that which can be inst ...
(in disputing stable essences of nature and humanity) and voluntarism. Yuk Hui characterizes it as "decoupling the social critique of capitalism from denigrating technology and asserting the power of technology to free us from constraints and contradictions or from modernity." Patrick Gamez describes it as exalting rationality like transhumanists, but taking the posthumanist stance of de-prioritizing humans, viewing reason as not exclusive to humanity. Ray Brassier's "Prometheanism and its Critics", compiled in ''#Accelerate: The Accelerationist Reader'', addresses Jean-Pierre Dupuy's Heideggerean critique of human enhancement and transhumanism. Critiquing the man-made vs. natural distinction as arbitrary and theological, Brassier expresses openness to the possibility of re-engineering human nature and the world through
rationalism In philosophy, rationalism is the Epistemology, epistemological view that "regards reason as the chief source and test of knowledge" or "the position that reason has precedence over other ways of acquiring knowledge", often in contrast to ot ...
instead of accepting them as they are, stating "Prometheanism is simply the claim that there is no reason to assume a predetermined limit to what we can achieve or to the ways in which we can transform ourselves and our world." Srnicek and Williams used the term in stating "we declare that only a Promethean politics of maximal mastery over society and its environment is capable of either dealing with global problems or achieving victory over capital”. Negarestani and Wolfendale use the concept of "inhuman rationalism" (or "rationalist inhumanism"), advocating reason to radically transform humans into something else.


Hyperstition

Hyperstition is a term attributed to Land and the CCRU, characterized by Fluss and Frim as the view "that our chosen beliefs about the future (however fanciful) can retroactively form and shape our present realities". ''Viewpoint Magazine'' used Roko's Basilisk as an example, stating "Roko’s Basilisk isn't just a self-fulfilling prophecy. Rather than influencing events toward a particular result, the result is generated by its own prediction". Noys stated "the CCRU tried to create images of this realized integrated human-technology world that would resonate in the present and so hasten the achievement of that world. Such images were found in cyberpunk science-fiction, in electronic dance music, and in the weird fiction of
H. P. Lovecraft Howard Phillips Lovecraft (, ; August 20, 1890 – March 15, 1937) was an American writer of Weird fiction, weird, Science fiction, science, fantasy, and horror fiction. He is best known for his creation of the Cthulhu Mythos. Born in Provi ...
. The mechanism of hyperstition is understood as a form of
feedback loop Feedback occurs when outputs of a system are routed back as inputs as part of a chain of cause and effect that forms a circuit or loop. The system can then be said to ''feed back'' into itself. The notion of cause-and-effect has to be handle ...
. According to Ljubisha Petrushevski, Land considers capitalism to be hyperstitional in that it reproduces itself via fictional images in media which become actualized. This phenomenon is viewed as a series of forces from the future which use capital to retroactively bring about their own existence, pushing humanity towards the singularity. Fluss and Frim state that the left-wing perspective rejects pre-emptive knowledge of what a humane or advanced civilization may look like, instead viewing future progress as wholly open and a matter of free choice. Progress is then viewed as hyperstitional in that it consists of "fictions" which aim to become true.


Variants


Right-wing accelerationism

Right-wing accelerationism (or right-accelerationism) is espoused by Land, with Fluss and Frim also noting Mencius Moldbug and Justin Murphy. Land attributes the increasing speed of the modern world to unregulated capitalism and its ability to exponentially grow and self-improve, describing capitalism as "a positive feedback circuit, within which
commercialization Commercialisation or commercialization is the process of introducing a new product or production method into commerce—making it available on the market. The term often connotes especially entry into the mass market (as opposed to entry into e ...
and
industrialization Industrialisation (British English, UK) American and British English spelling differences, or industrialization (American English, US) is the period of social and economic change that transforms a human group from an agrarian society into an i ...
mutually excite each other in a runaway process." He argues that the best way to deal with capitalism is to participate more to foster even greater exponential growth and self-improvement, accelerating technological progress along with it. Land also argues that such acceleration is intrinsic to capitalism but impossible for non-capitalist systems, stating that "capital revolutionizes itself more thoroughly than any extrinsic 'revolution' possibly could." In an interview with '' Vox'', he stated "Our question was what ‘the process’ wants (i.e. spontaneously promotes) and what resistances it provokes", also noting that “the assumption” behind accelerationism was that “the general direction of techno-capitalist">Technocapitalism.html" ;"title="nowiki/>Technocapitalism">techno-capitalistself-escalating change was toward decentralization.” Mackay summarized Land's position as "since capitalism tends to dissolve hereditary social forms and restrictions [...], it is seen as the engine of exploration into the unknown. So to be ‘on the side of intelligence’ is to totally abandon all caution with respect to the disintegrative processes of capital and whatever reprocessing of the human and of the planet they might involve." Yuk Hui describes Land's thought as "a technologically driven anti- Statist and inhuman capitalism". Vincent Le considers Land's philosophy to oppose
anthropocentrism Anthropocentrism ( ) is the belief that human beings are the central or most important entity on the planet. The term can be used interchangeably with humanocentrism, and some refer to the concept as human supremacy or human exceptionalism. From a ...
, citing his early critique of
transcendental idealism Transcendental idealism is a philosophical system founded by German philosopher Immanuel Kant in the 18th century. Kant's epistemological program is found throughout his '' Critique of Pure Reason'' (1781). By ''transcendental'' (a term that des ...
and capitalism in "Kant, Capital, and the Prohibition of Incest". According to Le, Land opposes philosophies which deny a reality beyond humans' conceptual experience, instead viewing
death Death is the end of life; the irreversible cessation of all biological functions that sustain a living organism. Death eventually and inevitably occurs in all organisms. The remains of a former organism normally begin to decompose sh ...
as a way to grasp
the Real In continental philosophy, the Real refers to reality in its unmediated form. In Lacanian psychoanalysis, it is an "impossible" category because of its inconceivability and opposition to expression. In depth psychology The Real is the ...
by surpassing human limitations. This would remain as Land's views on capitalism changed after reading Deleuze and Guattari and studying
cybernetics Cybernetics is the transdisciplinary study of circular causal processes such as feedback and recursion, where the effects of a system's actions (its outputs) return as inputs to that system, influencing subsequent action. It is concerned with ...
, with Le stating "Although the mature Land abandons his left-wing critique of capitalism, he will never shake his contempt for anthropocentrism, and his remedy that philosophers can only access the true at the edge of our humanity. Le and Fisher also note that Land utilizes Deleuze and Guattari's conception of capitalism as a deterritorializing process while disposing of their view that it also causes compensatory reterritorialization. Lacking Deleuze and Guattari's anthropic principles, Land pursues absolute deterritorialization, viewing capitalism as the Real consisting of accelerating deterritorialization, with the mechanism of accelerating technological progress. He states "reality is immanent to the machinic unconscious." Le states "since Land sees humanity’s annihilation as a solution to accessing the real rather than as a problem as it is for Deleuze and Guattari, he affirms that we should actively strive to become
bodies without organs BWO was a Swedish electropop group, formed in 2003. Prior to early 2006 they used the name Bodies Without Organs. In Sweden they have enjoyed considerable commercial success throughout their career, so far notching up 15 Top 40 singles, inclu ...
, not even if it kills us, but precisely ''because'' it kills us." Denis Chistyakov notes “Meltdown”, a CCRU work and one of the writings compiled in ''Fanged Noumena'', as vividly expressing accelerationism. Here, Land envisioned a technocapital singularity in
China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after ...
, resulting in revolutions in
artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is the capability of computer, computational systems to perform tasks typically associated with human intelligence, such as learning, reasoning, problem-solving, perception, and decision-making. It is a field of re ...
, human enhancement,
biotechnology Biotechnology is a multidisciplinary field that involves the integration of natural sciences and Engineering Science, engineering sciences in order to achieve the application of organisms and parts thereof for products and services. Specialists ...
, and nanotechnology. This upends the previous status quo, and the former First World, first world countries struggle to maintain control and stop the singularity, verging on Societal collapse, collapse. He described new Anti-authoritarianism, anti-authoritarian movements performing a bottom-up takeover of institutions through means like biological warfare enhanced with DNA computing. He claimed that capitalism's tendency towards optimization of itself and technology, in service of consumerism, will lead to the enhancement and eventually Posthumanism#Technological posthumanism, replacement of humanity with technology, asserting that "nothing human makes it out of the near-future." Eventually, the self-development of technology will culminate in the "melting [of] Earth, Terra into a seething K-pulp (which unlike Gray goo, grey goo synthesizes microbial intelligence as it proliferates)." He also criticized traditional philosophy as tending towards despotism, instead praising Deleuze and Guattari, Deleuzoguattarian schizoanalysis as "already engaging with nonlinear nano-engineering runaway in 1972." Le states that Land embraces human extinction in the singularity, as the resulting hyperintelligent AI will come to fully comprehend and embody the Real of the body without organs, free of human distortions of reality. Land has continually praised Socialism with Chinese characteristics, China's economic policy as being accelerationist, moving to Shanghai and working as a journalist writing material that has been characterized as pro-government propaganda. He has also spoken highly of Deng Xiaoping and Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew, calling Lee an "autocratic enabler of freedom." Hui stated "Land’s celebration of Asian cities such as Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Singapore is simply a detached observation of these places that projects onto them a common will to sacrifice politics for productivity."


Dark enlightenment

Land's involvement in the neoreactionary movement has contributed to his views on accelerationism. In ''The Dark Enlightenment'', he advocates for a form of capitalist monarchism, with states controlled by a CEO. He views Democracy, democratic and Egalitarianism, egalitarian policies as only slowing down acceleration and the technocapital singularity, stating "Beside the ''speed machine'', or industrial capitalism, there is an ever more perfectly weighted decelerator [...] comically, the fabrication of this braking mechanism is proclaimed as ''progress''. It is the Great Work of the Left.” Le states "If Land is attracted to Moldbug’s political system, it is because a neocameralist state would be free to pursue long-term technological innovation without the democratic politician’s need to appease short-sighted public opinion to be re-elected every few years." Land has advocated for accelerationists to support the neoreactionary movement, though many have distanced themselves from him in response to his views on race.


Left-wing accelerationism

Left-wing accelerationism (or left-accelerationism) is espoused by figures such as Fisher, Nick Srnicek, Alex Williams, Ray Brassier,
Reza Negarestani Reza Negarestani (born 1977) is an Iranian philosopher and writer, known for "pioneering the genre of 'theory-fiction' with his book" ''Cyclonopedia'' which was published in 2008. It was listed in Artforum as one of the best books of 2009. Negar ...
, and Peter Wolfendale. Fisher, writing on his blog ''k-punk'', had become increasingly disillusioned with capitalism as an accelerationist, citing working in the public sector in Blairism, Blairite Britain, being a teacher and trade union activist, and an encounter with Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek, whom he considered to be using similar concepts to the CCRU but from a leftist perspective. At the same time, he became frustrated with traditional left wing politics, believing they were ignoring technology that they could exploit. Noys characterizes Fisher's position as "a cultural accelerationism", connecting it with his work on hauntology and noting his essay "Terminator vs Avatar" as an example. Here, Fisher claimed that while Marxists criticized ''Libidinal Economy'' for asserting that workers enjoyed the upending of primitive social orders, nobody truly wants to return to those. Therefore, rather than reverting to pre-capitalism, society must move through and beyond capitalism. Fisher praised Land's attacks on the academic left, describing the academic left as "careerist sandbaggers" and "a ruthless protection of Petite bourgeoisie, petit bourgeois interests dressed up as politics." He also critiqued Land's interpretation of Deleuze and Guattari, stating that while superior in many ways, "his deviation from their understanding of capitalism is fatal" in assuming no reterritorialization, resulting in not foreseeing that capitalism provides "a simulation of innovation and newness that cloaks inertia and stasis." Citing Fredric Jameson's interpretation of ''
The Communist Manifesto ''The Communist Manifesto'' (), originally the ''Manifesto of the Communist Party'' (), is a political pamphlet written by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, commissioned by the Communist League and originally published in London in 1848. The ...
'' as "see ngcapitalism as the most productive moment of history and the most destructive at the same time", he argued for accelerationism as an anti-capitalist strategy, criticizing the left's moral critique of capitalism and their "tendencies towards Canutism" as only helping the Capitalist realism#Mark Fisher, narrative that capitalism is the only viable system. Srnicek befriended Fisher, sharing similar views, and the 2008 financial crisis, along with dissatisfaction with the left's "ineffectual" response of Occupy movement, the Occupy protests, led to Srnicek co-writing "#Accelerate: Manifesto for an Accelerationist Politics" with Williams in 2013. They posited that capitalism was the most advanced economic system of its time, but has since stagnated and is now constraining technology, with neoliberalism only worsening its crises. At the same time, they considered the modern left to be "unable to devise a new political ideological vision" as they are too focused on localism and direct action and cannot adapt to make meaningful change. They advocated using existing capitalist infrastructure as "a springboard to launch towards post-capitalism", taking advantage of capitalist technological and scientific advances to experiment with things like economic modeling in the style of Project Cybersyn. They also advocated for "collectively controlled legitimate vertical authority in addition to distributed horizontal forms of sociality" and attaining resources and funding for political infrastructure, contrasting standard leftist political action which they deem ineffective. Moving past the constraints of capitalism would result in a resumption of technological progress, not only creating a more rational society but also "recovering the dreams which transfixed many from the middle of the Nineteenth Century until the dawn of the neoliberal era, of the quest of Homo Sapiens towards expansion beyond the limitations of the earth and our immediate bodily forms." They expanded further in ''Inventing the Future: Postcapitalism and a World Without Work, Inventing the Future'', which, while dropping the term "accelerationism", pushed for automation, reduction and distribution of working hours, universal basic income, and diminishment of work ethic. Land rebuked its ideas in a 2017 interview with ''The Guardian'', stating "the notion that self-propelling technology is separable from capitalism is a deep theoretical error." Noys characterizes Aaron Bastani's ''Fully Automated Luxury Communism'' as taking up the Manifesto's "call for utopian proposals". Michael E. Gardiner notes ''Fully Automated Luxury Communism,'' ''PostCapitalism: A Guide to Our Future'', and ''The People's Republic of Walmart'' as united in the left-accelerationist belief in detaching
cybernetics Cybernetics is the transdisciplinary study of circular causal processes such as feedback and recursion, where the effects of a system's actions (its outputs) return as inputs to that system, influencing subsequent action. It is concerned with ...
from capitalism and using it towards liberatory goals.


Xenofeminism

Feminism, Feminist collective Laboria Cuboniks advocated for the use of technology for Gender abolitionism, gender abolition in "Xenofeminism: A Politics for Alienation", which has been characterized as a form of left-accelerationism. Noys states "The relationship to accelerationism is not direct or discussed in detail, but certainly similar points of reference are shared in a rupture with Naturalism (philosophy), naturalism and an integration of technology as a site of liberation". Fluss and Frim state "Xenofeminists seek to undermine what they perceive as the basis for Gender essentialism, essentialism itself: Nature."


Effective accelerationism

Effective accelerationism (abbreviated to e/acc) takes influence from effective altruism, a movement to maximize good by calculating what actions provide the greatest overall/global good and prioritizing those rather than focusing on personal interest/proximity. Proponents advocate for unrestricted technological progress "at all costs", believing that artificial general intelligence will solve universal human problems like poverty, war, and climate change, while deceleration and stagnation of technology is a Global catastrophic risk, greater risk than any Existential risk from artificial intelligence, posed by AI. This contrasts with effective altruism (referred to as ''longtermism'' to distinguish from e/acc), which tends to consider uncontrolled AI to be the greater existential risk and advocates for government regulation and careful AI alignment, alignment.


Other views

In a critique, Italian Marxist Franco Berardi considered acceleration “the essential feature of capitalist growth” and characterized accelerationism as "point ngout the contradictory implications of the process of intensification, emphasizing in particular the instability that acceleration brings into the capitalist system." However, he also stated “my answer to the question of whether acceleration marks a final collapse of power is quite simply: no. Because the power of capital is not based on stability.” He posited that the “accelerationist hypothesis” is based on two assumptions: that accelerating production cycles make capitalism unstable, and that potentialities within capitalism will necessarily deploy themselves. He criticized the first by stating “capitalism is resilient because it does not need rational government, only automatic governance”; and the second by arguing that while the possibility exists, it is not guaranteed to happen as it can still be slowed or stopped. Benjamin Noys is a staunch critic of accelerationism, initially calling it "Deleuzian Thatcherism". He accuses it of offering false solutions to technological and economic problems, considering those solutions “always promised and always just out of reach." He has also said "Capitalism, for the accelerationist, bears down on us as accelerative liquid monstrosity, capable of absorbing us and, for Land, we must welcome this." Noys is also critical of left accelerationism, positing a tension between its liberatory tones and the reactionary and Elitism, elitist tones of its influences, stating "the risk of a technocratic elitism becomes evident, as well as the risk we will lose the agency we have gained by aiming to join with the chaotic flux of material and technological forces." In ''The Question Concerning Technology in China'', Yuk Hui critiqued accelerationism, particularly Ray Brassier’s “Prometheanism and its Critics” from ''#Accelerate: The Accelerationist Reader'', stating “if such a response to technology and capitalism is applied globally, [...] it risks perpetuating a more subtle form of colonialism.” He argues that accelerationism's "Prometheanism" tries to promote
Prometheus In Greek mythology, Prometheus (; , , possibly meaning "forethought")Smith"Prometheus". is a Titans, Titan. He is best known for defying the Olympian gods by taking theft of fire, fire from them and giving it to humanity in the form of technol ...
as a universal technological figure despite other cultures having different myths and relations to technology. Further critiquing Westernization, globalization, and the loss of non-Western technological thought, he has also referred to Deng Xiaoping as "the world's greatest accelerationist" due to his Reform and opening up, economic reforms, considering them an acceleration of the modernization process which started in the aftermath of the Opium Wars and intensified with the Cultural Revolution. In "A Politics of Intensity: Some Aspects of Acceleration in Simondon and Deleuze", Yuk Hui and Louis Morelle analyzed Deleuze and Simondon from an accelerationist perspective. Slavoj Žižek considers accelerationism to be “far too optimistic”, critiquing it as retroactively Determinism, deterministic and contrasting it with Freud, Freud's death drive and its lack of a final conclusion. He argues that accelerationism considers just one conclusion of the world's tendencies and fails to find other “coordinates" of the world order. Benjamin H. Bratton's book ''The Stack: On Software and Sovereignty'' has been described as concerning accelerationist ideas, focusing on how information technology infrastructures undermine modern political geographies and proposing an open-ended "design brief". Tiziana Terranova's "Red Stack Attack!" links Bratton's stack model and left-wing accelerationism. Aria Dean, proposing an alternative to both right and left accelerationism, synthesized racial capitalism with accelerationism in "Notes on Blacceleration", arguing that the binary between humans and capital is already blurred by the scars of the Atlantic slave trade. Fluss and Frim state that it emphasizes "the historical exclusion of black people from White people, white Humanism, humanist discourses, and the historical process whereby capitalism has engendered the 'black nonsubject.'"


Other uses of the term

Since "accelerationism" was coined in 2010, the term has taken on several new meanings. Several commentators have used the label ''accelerationist'' to describe a controversial political strategy articulated by Slavoj Žižek. An often-cited example of this is Žižek's assertion in a November 2016 interview with Channel 4 News that, were he an American citizen, he would vote for U.S. president Donald Trump, despite his dislike of Trump, as the candidate more likely to disrupt the political ''status quo'' in that country. Richard Coyne characterized his strategy as seeking to "shock the country and revive the left." The term has also been used to advocate for making capitalism as destructive as possible in order to cause a revolution against it. Chinese dissidents have referred to Xi Jinping as Accelerator-in-Chief (referencing state media calling Deng Xiaoping "Architect-in-Chief of Reform and Opening"), believing that Xi's authoritarianism is hastening the demise of the Chinese Communist Party and that, because it is beyond saving, they should allow it to destroy itself in order to create a better future.


In relation to far-right terrorism

Since the late 2010s, international networks of neo-fascists, neo-Nazis, White nationalists, and White supremacists have increasingly used the term "accelerationism" to refer to right-wing extremist goals, and have been known to refer to an "acceleration" of racial conflict through violent means such as assassinations, murders, terrorist attacks and eventual societal collapse to achieve the building of a White ethnostate. The ''New York Times'' held far-right accelerationism as detrimental to public safety. The inspiration for this distinct variation is occasionally cited as American Nazi Party and National Socialist Liberation Front member James Mason (neo-Nazi), James Mason's newsletter ''Siege (Mason book), Siege'', where he argued for sabotage, mass killings, and assassinations of high-profile targets to destabilize and destroy the current society, seen as a system upholding a Jewish conspiracy theories, Jewish and Multiculturalism, multicultural New World Order (conspiracy theory), New World Order. His works were republished and popularized by the Iron March Web forum, forum and Atomwaffen Division, right-wing extremist organizations strongly connected to various terrorist attacks, murders, and assaults. Far-right accelerationists have also been known to attack critical infrastructure, particularly the Electrical grid, power grid, attempting to cause a collapse of the system or 5G misinformation#Health impact, believing that 5G was causing COVID-19. Some have encouraged the Disinformation, promotion of 5G conspiracy theories as easier than convincing potential recruits that Holocaust denial, the Holocaust never happened. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), which tracks hate groups and files class action lawsuits against discriminatory organizations and entities, "on the case of white supremacists, the accelerationist set sees modern society as irredeemable and believe it should be pushed to collapse so a fascist society built on ethnonationalism can take its place. What defines white supremacist accelerationists is their belief that violence is the only way to pursue their political goals." Brenton Harrison Tarrant, the perpetrator of the 15 March 2019 Christchurch mosque shootings that killed 51 people and injured 49 others, strongly encouraged right-wing accelerationism in a section of his manifesto titled ''Destabilization and Accelerationism: Tactics''. Tarrant's manifesto influenced John Timothy Earnest, the perpetrator of both the 24 March 2019 Escondido mosque fire at Dar-ul-Arqam Mosque in Escondido, California, and the 27 April 2019 Poway synagogue shooting which resulted in one dead and three injured. Patrick Crusius, the perpetrator of the 3 August 2019 2019 El Paso shooting, El Paso Walmart shooting that killed 23 people and injured 23 others was influenced by Tarrant as well. Tarrant and Earnest, in turn, influenced Juraj Krajčík, the perpetrator of the 2022 Bratislava shooting that left dead two patrons of a gay bar. ''Vox'' pointed to Land's shift towards neoreactionarism, along with the neoreactionary movement crossing paths with the alt-right as another fringe right wing internet movement, as the likely connection point between far-right racial accelerationism and the term for Land's otherwise unrelated technocapitalist ideas. They cited a 2018 Southern Poverty Law Center investigation which found users on the neo-Nazi blog The Right Stuff (blog), The Right Stuff who cited neoreactionarism as an influence. Land himself became interested in the Atomwaffen-affiliated Theistic Satanism, theistic Satanist organization Order of Nine Angles (ONA) which adheres to the ideology of Neo-Nazi terrorist accelerationism, describing the ONA's works as "highly-recommended" in a blog post. Since the 2010s, the political ideology and religious worldview of the Order of Nine Angles, founded by the Far-right politics in the United Kingdom, British neo-Nazi leader David Myatt in 1974, have increasingly influenced militant neo-fascist and neo-Nazi Insurgency, insurgent groups associated with right-wing extremist and White supremacist international networks, most notably the Iron March forum.


See also

* Accelerating change, Accelerating Change * Christian Identity#Revolutionary violence, Christian Identity - Revolutionary violence * Ecofascism#Association with violence, Ecofascism - Association with violence * Ethnic conflict * Futures studies * * * * * *


References

{{Wikiquote Accelerationism, 2010s neologisms Anti-capitalism Far-left politics Ideologies of capitalism Marxism Neo-Nazism Reactionary Revolution terminology Singularitarianism Socialism Social theories Social change Transhumanism Philosophy of technology Technological change Existential risk from artificial general intelligence Right-wing politics