Accelerationism

Accelerationism is a range of ideologies that call for the drastic intensification of capitalist growth, technological change, 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 and right-wing variants, both of which support dramatic changes to capitalism and its structures, as well as the conditions for a technological singularity, 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 and Félix Guattari. From these ideas, some University of Warwick staff formed a philosophy collective known as the Cybernetic Culture Research Unit (CCRU), led by Nick Land. Land and the CCRU drew further upon ideas in posthumanism and 1990s cyber-culture, such as cyberpunk 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.

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 assassinations, murders 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 who embraced unorthodox Marxist and counter-Marxist overviews of capitalist growth, such as Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari in their 1972 book ''Anti-Oedipus'', Jean-François Lyotard in his 1974 book '' Libidinal Economy'' and Jean Baudrillard 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 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, who, in his 1848 speech "On the Question of Free Trade", anticipated accelerationist principles a century before Deleuze and Guattari by describing free trade as socially destructive and fuelling class conflict, then effectively arguing for it:

Robin Mackay and Armen Avanessian note "Fragment on Machines" from ''Grundrisse'' 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'' (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 with recognizing capitalist progress as important in the subsequent functioning of socialism:

Accelerationism was also influenced by science fiction (particularly cyberpunk) and electronic dance music, with Fisher and Mackay noting '' Terminator'', ''Predator'', 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'' and fictions such as Gibson’s ''Neuromancer''." Mackay also notes Russian cosmism and ''Erewhon'' as influences, while Noys notes Donna Haraway's work on cyborg

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