Accelerationism is a range ofideologies that call for the use of processes such ascapitalism andtechnological change in order to create radical social transformations.[1][2][3][4] Accelerationism was preceded by ideas from philosophers such asGilles Deleuze andFélix Guattari.[5] Inspired by these ideas, someUniversity of Warwick faculty and students formed a philosophy collective known as theCybernetic Culture Research Unit (CCRU), led byNick Land.[1] Land and the CCRU drew further upon ideas inposthumanism and 1990s cyber-culture, such ascyberpunk andjungle music, to become the driving force behind accelerationism.[6][5] After the dissolution of the CCRU, the movement was termedaccelerationism byBenjamin Noys in a critical work.[7][1] Different interpretations emerged: whereas Land'sright-wing thought promotes capitalism as the driver of modernity,deterritorialization and atechnological singularity,[8][9]left-wing thinkers such asNick Srnicek and Alex Williams utilized similar ideas to promote the repurposing of capitalist technology and infrastructure to achievesocialism.[5]
Right-wing extremists such asneo-fascists,neo-Nazis,white nationalists andwhite supremacists have used the term to refer to an acceleration of racial conflict throughassassinations,murders andterrorist attacks as a means to violently achieve awhite ethnostate.[10][11][12][13]
The history of accelerationism has been divided into three waves. First, there were the late 60s and early 70s Frenchpost-Marxists such asGilles Deleuze,Félix Guattari,Jean-François Lyotard, andJean Baudrillard, whose thought arose in the wake ofMay 68.[14][15][16] According to David R. Cole, texts produced during this period had little effect "other than as perhaps scattered art practices", with the result being that "capitalism has emerged as triumphant in the past 50 years, and the idealism of the student 1968 revolution in Paris has subsequently faded."[14] The second wave arose in the 90s with the work of Nick Land and the CCRU, with the third being the Promethean left-accelerationism of the 2010s.[14][15][16]
The termaccelerationism was first used inRoger Zelazny's 1967 novelLord of Light.[1][17] It was later popularized by professor and authorBenjamin Noys in his 2010 bookThe Persistence of the Negative to describe the trajectory of certainpost-structuralists who embraced unorthodoxMarxist and counter-Marxist overviews of capitalist growth, such asDeleuze and Guattari in their 1972 bookAnti-Oedipus, Lyotard in his 1974 bookLibidinal Economy and Baudrillard in his 1976 bookSymbolic Exchange and Death.[7][1][18] Noys later stated "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."[5]
Patrick Gamez considers the French thinkers'philosophy of desire to be a rejection oforthodox Marxism andpsychoanalysis, particularly in Deleuze and Guattari'sCapitalism and Schizophrenia. Particularly influential is Deleuze and Guattari's concept ofdesiring-production; rather than viewing human desire as a lack that is satiated by consumption, they view it as an inhuman flow of productive energy, having no proper organization or purpose. Anynormativity orfunctionalism comes from flows of desire performing work and territorializing until new flows of desire override them in the process ofdeterritorialization andreterritorialization.[19] Vincent Le notes that Deleuze and Guattari's model is based on machines; as machines are assemblages of different parts which perform different functions, humans and social bodies areassemblages of "organs" which produce desires. They find capitalism to be the most radically deterritorializing process in history, as it is based on constant deterritorialization rather than a stable code of desire. Le uses the example of sex and food; they are no longer coded only for marriage and sustenance, but rather as commodities which produce other desires. While capitalism tends toward thebody without organs, or a state without determinate functions or coded desires, it never reaches that state, as it causes reterritorialization by recoding things as commodity for sale, to be deterritorialized again.[9][20]Mark Fisher describes Deleuze and Guattari's model of capitalism as defined by the tension between destroying and re-establishing boundaries, with the inclusion of new and archaic elements seen "where food banks co-exist with iPhones."[21] Gamez describes Land's thought as influenced by the French thinkers'antihumanism, as well as their ambivalence or even celebration of capitalism's destroying of traditional hierarchies and freeing of desire.[19]
Land cited a number of philosophers who expressed anticipatory accelerationist attitudes in his 2017 essay "A Quick-and-Dirty Introduction to Accelerationism".[22][23][24] Firstly,Friedrich Nietzsche argued in a fragment inThe Will to Power that "theleveling process of European man is the great process which should not be checked: one should even accelerate it."[25][23][24][5] Taking inspiration from this notion forAnti-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:[5][26][27][28]
But which is the revolutionary path? Is there one?—To withdraw from the world market, asSamir Amin advises Third World countries to do, in a curious revival of the fascist "economic solution"? Or might it be to go in the opposite direction? To go still further, that is, in the movement of the market, ofdecoding and deterritorialization? For perhaps the flows are not yet deterritorialized enough, not decoded enough, from the viewpoint of a theory and a practice of a highly schizophrenic character. Not to withdraw from the process, but to go further, to "accelerate the process," as Nietzsche put it: in this matter, the truth is that we haven't seen anything yet.
— Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Anti-Oedipus[29]
Fisher describes Land's interpretation of this passage as explicitlyanti-Marxist.[30]
Land also citedKarl Marx, who, in his 1848 speech "On the Question of Free Trade", anticipated accelerationist principles a century before Deleuze and Guattari by describingfree trade as socially destructive and fuellingclass conflict, then effectively arguing for it:[23][24]
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.
— Karl Marx, On the Question of Free Trade[31]
Robin Mackay andArmen Avanessian note "Fragment on Machines" fromGrundrisse as Marx's "most openly accelerationist writing".[32] Noys states of Marx's influence, "it favors the Marx who celebrates the powers of capitalism, most evident inThe Communist Manifesto (cowritten withEngels), over the Marx who also stresses the difficulty of transcending and escaping capital, the Marx ofCapital", also characterizing the accelerationist view of Marx as filtered through Nietzsche.[5] Sam Sellar and Cole state that while he was dismissive of Marxists, Land studied works such asCapital andGrundrusse as "exemplary analyses of how capital works".[15]
Fisher notes the same excerpt fromAnti-Oedipus as Land, along with a section fromLibidinal Economy which he describes as "the one passage from the text that is remembered, if only in notoriety", as "immediately [giving] the flavour of the accelerationist gambit":[26]
The English unemployed did not have to become workers to survive, they – hang on tight and spit on me – enjoyed the hysterical, masochistic, whatever exhaustion it was of hanging on in the mines, in the foundries, in the factories, in hell, they enjoyed it, enjoyed the mad destruction of their organic body which was indeed imposed upon them, they enjoyed the decomposition of their personal identity, the identity that the peasant tradition had constructed for them, enjoyed the dissolutions of their families and villages, and enjoyed the new monstrous anonymity of the suburbs and the pubs in morning and evening.
— Jean-François Lyotard, Libidinal Economy
Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams additionally creditVladimir Lenin with recognizing capitalist progress as important in the subsequent functioning ofsocialism:[33][34]
Socialism is inconceivable without large-scale capitalist engineering based on the latest discoveries of modern science. It is inconceivable without planned state organisation which keeps tens of millions of people to the strictest observance of a unified standard in production and distribution. We Marxists have always spoken of this, and it is not worth while wasting two seconds talking to people who do not understand even this (anarchists and a good half of theLeft Socialist-Revolutionaries).
— Vladimir Lenin, "Left Wing" Childishness
Accelerationism was also influenced byscience fiction (particularlycyberpunk) andelectronic dance music (particularlyjungle).[1][6][35][5]Neuromancer andits trilogy are a major influence,[36][32] withIain Hamilton Grant stating "Neuromancer got into the philosophy department, and it went viral. You'd find worn-out paperbacks all over the common room."[1] Fisher states of Land's "theory-fictions" from the 1990s, "They weren't distanced readings ofFrench theory so much ascybergothic remixes which put Deleuze and Guattari on the same plane as films such asApocalypse Now and fictions such asGibson'sNeuromancer."[35] Fisher and Mackay additionally noteTerminator,Predator, andBlade Runner as particular sci-fi works which influenced accelerationism.[6][35] Mackay also notesRussian cosmism andErewhon as influences,[6] while Noys notesDonna Haraway's work oncyborgs.[5] Sellar and Cole additionally attribute Land's ideas tocontinental philosophers such asImmanuel Kant,Arthur Schopenhauer,Martin Heidegger, andGeorges Bataille.[15]
TheCybernetic Culture Research Unit (CCRU), a philosophy collective at theUniversity of Warwick which included Land, Mackay, Fisher and Grant, further developed accelerationism in the 1990s.[1][37][6][8] 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 byManuel DeLanda out ofBraudel, and from the section of Anti-Oedipus that talks about marketization as the 'revolutionary path'."[35] The group stood in stark opposition to the University of Warwick and traditional left-wing academia,[1][35] 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...!"[6] As Land became a stronger influence on the group and left the University of Warwick, they would shift to more unorthodox andoccult ideas. Land suffered abreakdown from hisamphetamine abuse and disappeared in the early 2000s, with the CCRU vanishing along with him.[1]
The Guardian 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 describedFanged Noumena, a 2011 anthology of Land's work, as "contain[ing] some of accelerationism's most darkly fascinating passages."[1] Mackay credits the publishing ofFanged Noumena with an emergence of new accelerationist thinking.[6] In 2015, Urbanomic and Time Spiral Press publishedWritings 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.[38][39]
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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".[5] Avanessian stated "any accelerationist thought is based on the assessment thatcontradictions (of capitalism) must be countered by their own aggravation",[24] while Mackay considered a Marxist "acceleration of contradictions" to be a misconception and stated that no accelerationist authors have advocated such a thing.[6] Harrison Fluss and Landon Frim note that accelerationists make extensive use ofneologisms, either original or borrowed from continental philosophy. Such terminology can obscure their core arguments, exacerbated by the fact that it can be highly inconsistent between thinkers.[40]
Accelerationism adheres toposthumanism[19][41] andantihumanism,[19][18] with left-accelerationists such as Peter Wolfendale andReza Negarestani using the term "inhumanism".[40] Noys characterizes accelerationism as taking from posthumanism in continental philosophy, such as Nietzsche'sÜbermensch, as well as in a technological sense.[5] Fluss and Frim characterize accelerationism as adhering tonominalism in disputing stable essences of nature and humanity, as well asvoluntarism in that the will is radically free to act without natural or mental limitations.[40]
Prometheanism is a term closely associated with accelerationism,[40][42][43] particularly the left-wing variant,[14][15][19] referencing the Greek figure ofPrometheus. Fluss and Frim associate it with posthumanism and using innovation and technology to surpass the limits ofnature, characterizing it asmisanthropic in stating "for the Promethean, flesh-and-blood 'humanity' is an arbitrary limit on the unlimited powers of technology and invention."[40]Yuk Hui characterizes Prometheanism 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."[42] Patrick Gamez describes it as exalting rationality liketranshumanists, but taking the posthumanist stance of de-prioritizing humans, viewing reason as not exclusive to humanity.[43] Srnicek characterizes it as "the basic political and philosophical belief that there are no immutable givens — there is no transcendental which cannot be altered".[44]
Ray Brassier's "Prometheanism and its Critics", compiled in#Accelerate: The Accelerationist Reader, addressesJean-Pierre Dupuy'sHeideggerean critique ofhuman 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 throughrationalism 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."[45][43] 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".[24][33][34] Negarestani and Wolfendale use the concept ofinhuman rationalism (orrationalist inhumanism), advocating reason to radically transform humans into something else.[40][46]
Prometheanism and left-accelerationism are connected to the work ofWilfrid Sellars.[44][40][47] Sellars rejects themyth of the given, or the concept that sense perceptions can provide reliable knowledge of the world[40] or that a reliable connection between the mind and the world can be established without requiring other concepts.[47] This establishesa distinction between the manifest image of knowledge through common sense and experience versus the scientific image of knowledge through empiricalhard science.[40][47] Fluss and Frim use the example of emotions and deliberative choice (the manifest image) versus neurobiology's study of brain states and firing neurons (the scientific image).[40] Prometheanism tends towards a rejection[40] or deletion[47] of the manifest image. For Fluss and Frim, left-accelerationists assert that there is no permanent, intelligible world that can be known. Rather, the world beyond human senses is "irremediably alien", but humans pretend it is not "in order to maintain our parochial prejudices in everyday life". Thus, left-accelerationists adopt an ideology oftechnoscience and a rejection of subordinating technology and science to human concerns. This is exemplified with Brassier sarcastically demanding that a Heideggerian “explain precisely how, for example,quantum mechanics is a function of our ability to wield hammers.”[40]
Hyperstition is a term attributed to Land[27][40] and the CCRU,[5][6] 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".[40] Land defines it as "a positive feedback circuit includingculture as a component. It can be defined as the experimental (techno-)science ofself-fulfilling prophecies.Superstitions are merely false beliefs, but hyperstitions—by their very existence as ideas—function causally to bring about their own reality."[48] Accelerationism is hyperstitional in constructing a prefigurative political imaginary of the very transformation it initiates.[16] 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 theweird fiction ofH. P. Lovecraft.[5] Simon O'Sullivan notes the theory-fiction writing style, particularly of Land, Plant and Negarestani, as being an example.[49]Viewpoint Magazine usedRoko'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".[27]
The mechanism of hyperstition is understood as a form offeedback loop.[40][48] According to Ljubisha Petrushevski, Land considers capitalism to be hyperstitional in that it reproduces itself via fictional images in media which become actualized.[50] This phenomenon is viewed as a series of forces invading from the future, using capital to retroactively bring about their own existence and push humanity towards asingularity.[50][19] Noys notesTerminator and its use oftime travel paradoxes as being influential to the concept.[5] Land states "Capitalist economics is extremely sensitive to hyperstition, where confidence acts as an effective tonic, and inversely".[48] 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 offictions which aim to become true. They also note its influence on Negarestani's thought, in which inhumanism is seen as arriving from the future in order to abolish its initial condition ofhumanism.[40]
Right-wing accelerationism (or right-accelerationism) is espoused by Land,[6][40][20][8] with Fluss and Frim also notingMencius Moldbug and Justin Murphy.[40] Land attributes the increasing speed of the modern world to unregulated capitalism and its ability to exponentially grow and self-improve,[23][8] describing capitalism as "a positive feedback circuit, within whichcommercialization andindustrialization 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."[23] In an interview withVox, 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] self-escalating change was towarddecentralization."[8] 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."[6]Yuk Hui describes Land's thought as "a technologically driven anti-Statist and inhuman capitalism"[51] whileSteven Shaviro describes it as "a kind ofStockholm Syndrome with regard to Capital" in celebrating its inhuman and destructive nature.[18] Land's thought has also been characterized aslibertarian.[1][19][21]
Vincent Le considers Land's philosophy to opposeanthropocentrism, citing his early critique oftranscendental idealism 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 viewingdeath as a way to graspthe Real by surpassing human limitations. This would remain as Land's views on capitalism changed after readingDeleuze and Guattari and studyingcybernetics, 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."[9][20] Land utilizes Deleuze and Guattari's conception of capitalism as adeterritorializing process while disposing of their view that it also causes compensatoryreterritorialization.[9][20][26][18] Taking from their antihumanism, his work would critically refer to human politics as "Monopod" or the "Human Security System".[6][19] Lacking any anthropic principles which Deleuze and Guattari partly maintain, Land pursues absolute deterritorialization,[18][9] 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."[9] Gamez notes that Land also views capitalism as a form ofartificial intelligence, withFriedrich Hayek's view ofmarkets as "mechanisms for conveying information" being a precursor.[19] 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 becomebodies without organs, not even if it kills us, but preciselybecause it kills us."[20]
It might still be a few decades before artificial intelligences surpass the horizon of biological ones, but it is utterly superstitious to imagine that the human dominion of terrestrial culture is still marked out in centuries, let alone in some metaphysical perpetuity. The high road to thinking no longer passes through a deepening of human cognition, but rather through a becoming inhuman of cognition, a migration of cognition out into the emerging planetary technosentience reservoir, into "dehumanized landscapes ... emptied spaces" where human culture will be dissolved.
Denis Chistyakov notes "Meltdown", a CCRU work and one of the writings compiled inFanged Noumena, as vividly expressing accelerationism.[24] Here, Land envisioned a "technocapital singularity" inChina, resulting in revolutions in artificial intelligence,human enhancement,biotechnology andnanotechnology. This upends the previous status quo, and the formerfirst world countries struggle to maintain control and stop the singularity, verging oncollapse. He described newanti-authoritarian movements performing a bottom-up takeover of institutions through means likebiological warfare enhanced withDNA computing. He claimed that capitalism's tendency towards optimization of itself and technology, in service ofconsumerism, will lead to the enhancement and eventuallyreplacement 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]Terra into a seething K-pulp (which unlikegrey goo synthesizesmicrobial intelligence as it proliferates)." He also criticized traditional philosophy as tending towardsdespotism, instead praising Deleuzoguattarianschizoanalysis as "already engaging with nonlinear nano-engineering runaway in 1972."[53][28] 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.[9][20] Gamez considers Land to have an "obsession" with artificial intelligence and intelligence in general; as human intelligence can only be enhanced so far, hyperintelligence and the freeing of desire must be realized with human extinction. He notes Land'sLovecraft reference of "think face tentacles" as highlighting Land's interest in transformation to the point of becoming inhuman and "unintelligible."[19]
Land has continually praisedChina's economic policy as being accelerationist, moving toShanghai and working as a journalist writing material that has been characterized as pro-government propaganda.[1][8] He has also spoken highly ofDeng Xiaoping andSingapore'sLee Kuan Yew,[8] calling Lee an "autocratic enabler of freedom."[54] 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."[55] Land's interest in China for technological progress, stemming from his CCRU days, has been considered an early form ofsinofuturism.[56][41]
Noys is a staunch critic of Land, initially calling Land's position "DeleuzianThatcherism".[27] He accuses it of offering false solutions to technological and economic problems, considering those solutions "always promised and always just out of reach."[1][57] He also criticized Land's interest in submitting to capitalism's destructiveness, stating "Capitalism, for the accelerationist, bears down on us as accelerative liquid monstrosity, capable of absorbing us and, for Land, we must welcome this."[27][57]Slavoj Žižek considers Land to be "far too optimistic", critiquing his view asdeterministic in considering the singularity to be the pre-ordained goal of history. Contrasting it withFreud'sdeath 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.[58]
Land's involvement in theneoreactionary movement has contributed to his views on accelerationism. InThe Dark Enlightenment, he advocates for a form of capitalistmonarchism, with states controlled by aCEO. He viewsdemocratic andegalitarian policies as only slowing down acceleration and the technocapital singularity, stating "Beside thespeed machine, or industrial capitalism, there is an ever more perfectly weighted decelerator [...] comically, the fabrication of this braking mechanism is proclaimed asprogress. It is the Great Work of the Left."[8][27] Le states "If Land is attracted toMoldbug'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."[20] Geoff Schullenburger attributes this change to the bursting of thedotcom bubble and the rise ofWeb 2.0; Land blamed the lack of technological revolution on theprogressivism of the new internet and the companies that ran it.[36] Zack Beauchamp credits Land's life in China and his admiration for Deng and Lee.[8] Gamez notes that Land maintains his criticism of the "Monopod" of human politics in the neoreactionary concept of the Cathedral, additionally retaining his interest in intelligence. He also notes that Land is "simply catching up toMurray Rothbard,Hans-Hermann Hoppe,Peter Brimelow, and assorted other radicallyright-wing libertarians andanarcho-capitalists, committed to 'cracking up' the democratic nation-state in favor of an 'ethno-economy.'"[19] As of 2017, "Land argues now that neoreaction [...] is something that accelerationists should support", though many have distanced themselves from him in response to his views on race.[1]
Left-wing accelerationism (or left-accelerationism) is espoused by figures such asNick Srnicek, Alex Williams,[5][1][59][40]Ray Brassier,Reza Negarestani and Peter Wolfendale.[40][14][15] Fluss and Frim characterize it as seeking "to accelerate past capitalism by democratizing productive technologies".[40] Left-accelerationism draws upon the work of Mark Fisher, particularly hishauntology. Noys characterizes him as seeking to grasp unrealized cultural possibilities of the past to construct a better future against a stagnantneoliberal culture,[5] while Gamez considers his hauntology to be a critique of Land in finding capitalism to be unable to deliver a promised future, leaving only unrealized imaginaries.[19] Fisher, writing on his blogk-punk, had become increasingly disillusioned with capitalism as an accelerationist,[1] citing working in the public sector inBlairite Britain, being a teacher andtrade union activist, and an encounter with Žižek, whom he considered to be using similar concepts to the CCRU but from a leftist perspective.[35] At the same time, he became frustrated with traditional left wing politics, believing they were ignoring technology that they could exploit.[1]
Noys notes Fisher's essay "Terminator vs Avatar" as an example of his "cultural accelerationism".[5] Here, Fisher claimed that while Marxists criticizedLibidinal 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 ofpetit 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 noreterritorialization, resulting in not foreseeing that capitalism provides "a simulation of innovation and newness that cloaks inertia and stasis." CitingFredric Jameson's interpretation ofThe Communist Manifesto as "see[ing] capitalism as the most productive moment of history and the most destructive at the same time", he argued for accelerationism (in terms of the 1970's French thinkers) as an anti-capitalist strategy, criticizing the left's moral critique of capitalism and their "tendencies towardsCanutism" as only helping thenarrative that capitalism is the only viable system.[26][5] In another article on accelerationism, Fisher stated "the revolutionary path is the one that allies with deterritorialising forces of modernisation against the reactionary energies of reterritorialisation."[21]
We believe the most important division in today’s left is between those that hold to a folk politics of localism, direct action, and relentless horizontalism, and those that outline what must become called an accelerationist politics at ease with a modernity of abstraction, complexity, globality, and technology. The former remains content with establishing small and temporary spaces of non-capitalist social relations, eschewing the real problems entailed in facing foes which are intrinsically non-local, abstract, and rooted deep in our everyday infrastructure. The failure of such politics has been built-in from the very beginning. By contrast, an accelerationist politics seeks to preserve the gains of late capitalism while going further than its value system, governance structures, and mass pathologies will allow.
Srnicek befriended Fisher, sharing similar views, and the2008 financial crisis, along with dissatisfaction with the left's "ineffectual" response of theOccupy protests, led to Srnicek co-writing "#Accelerate: Manifesto for an Accelerationist Politics" with Williams in 2013.[1][34] 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 onlocalism anddirect action and cannot adapt to make meaningful change. They advocated using existing capitalist infrastructure as "a springboard to launch towardspost-capitalism", taking advantage of capitalist technological and scientific advances to experiment with things like economic modeling in the style ofProject 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."[33][34] They expanded further inInventing the Future, which, while dropping the term "accelerationism", pushed forautomation, reduction and distribution of working hours,universal basic income and diminishment of work ethic.[1][60][5][61]
Steven Shaviro compared Srnicek and Williams' proposal to Jameson's argument thatWalmart's use of technology for product distribution may be used for communism. Shaviro also argued that left-accelerationism must be an aesthetic program before a political one, as failing to explore the possibilities of technology via fiction could result in the exacerbation of existing capitalist relations rather than Srnicek and Williams' desired repurposing of technology for socialist ends.[18] Fisher praised the manifesto, characterizing the "folk politics" that Srinicek and Williams criticized asneo-anarchist and lacking previous left-wing ambition.[21]Tiziana Terranova's "Red Stack Attack!", compiled in#Accelerate: The Accelerationist Reader, references the manifesto in analyzingBenjamin H. Bratton's model ofthe stack, proposing the "Red Stack" as "a new nomos for the post-capitalist common."[62][63] Land rebuked their ideas in a 2017 interview withThe Guardian, stating "the notion that self-propelling technology is separable from capitalism is a deep theoretical error."[1]
Aaron Bastani'sFully Automated Luxury Communism has also been noted as left-accelerationist,[64][65][66] with Noys characterizing it as taking up the "call for utopian proposals" in Srnicek and Williams' Manifesto.[5] Michael E. Gardiner notesFully Automated Luxury Communism,PostCapitalism: A Guide to Our Future andThe People's Republic of Walmart as united in the left-accelerationist belief in detachingcybernetics from capitalism and using it towards liberatory goals.[59]
Alex Williams referred to Brassier and Negarestani as "the twin thinkers ofepistemic accelerationism" in seeking to maximize rational capacity and enable the possibilities of reason.[67] Sam Sellar and David R. Cole characterize their work, along with Wolfendale's, as seeking the acceleration ofrationalist modernity and technological development, distinct from capitalism. In particular, Brassier's Prometheanism acceleratesnormative rationalism as the basis for human transformation. They note Mackay and Avanessian's explanation of Negarestani:[15]
Acceleration takes place when and in so far as the human repeatedly affirms its commitment to being impersonally piloted, not by capital, but by a [rational] program which demands that it cede control to collective revision, and which draws it towards an inhuman future that will prove to have 'always' been the meaning of the human.[32]
Fluss and Frim characterize Brassier works such asNihil Unbound andLiquidate Man Once and for All; as well as Negarestani'sThe Labour of the Inhuman,Cyclonopedia andIntelligence and Spirit; as providing a philosophical basis for left-accelerationism. Capitalism is viewed as promising progress while in fact exerting control and only providing inconsequential progress in the form of commodities to purchase. This requires biopower and a conservative view of the human, with inhumanism being viewed as a revolutionary force which promotes the constant upgrading and redefining of humanity. However, Fluss and Frim criticize this for discarding individual human welfare in favor of a larger system of constant technological revision, mirroring Land and making room for human subjugation rather than revolution; they state "It requires no special prescience to see that the 'liquidation of the human' is a prelude to the 'liquidation of human beings.'"[40] Noys posits a tension between left-accelerationism's liberatory tones and thereactionary andelitist tones of its influences such asNietzsche, stating "the risk of atechnocratic 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."[5]
Feminist collective Laboria Cuboniks advocated for the use of technology forgender abolition in "Xenofeminism: A Politics for Alienation", which has been characterized as a form of left-accelerationism.[68][59][40][5] Noys states "The relationship to accelerationism is not direct or discussed in detail, but certainly similar points of reference are shared in a rupture withnaturalism and an integration of technology as a site of liberation".[5] Fluss and Frim state "Xenofeminists seek to undermine what they perceive as the basis foressentialism itself: Nature." They note that xenofeminists criticize thesex-gender distinction as still taking biological sex to be natural and immutable, instead rejecting the givenness of biological sex as well.[40]
Effective accelerationism (abbreviated to e/acc) takes influence fromeffective 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 thatartificial general intelligence will solve universal human problems like poverty, war and climate change, while deceleration and stagnation of technology is agreater risk than anyposed by AI. This contrasts with effective altruism (referred to aslongtermism to distinguish from e/acc), which tends to consider uncontrolled AI to be the greater existential risk and advocates for government regulation and carefulalignment.[69][70]
In a critique, Italian MarxistFranco Berardi considered acceleration "the essential feature of capitalist growth" and characterized accelerationism as "point[ing] out 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.[71]
InThe Question Concerning Technology in China,Yuk Hui critiqued accelerationism, particularlyRay Brassier's "Prometheanism and its Critics", 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'sPrometheanism tries to promote Prometheus as a universal technological figure despite other cultures having different myths and relations to technology.[42] Further critiquingWesternization,globalization and the loss of non-Western technological thought, he has also referred to Deng Xiaoping as "the world's greatest accelerationist" due to hiseconomic reforms, considering them an acceleration of the modernization process which started in the aftermath of theOpium Wars and intensified with theCultural Revolution.[55]
Aria Dean articulated a position of "Blacceleration" as a "necessary alternative to right and left accelerationism". Synthesizingracial capitalism with accelerationism, she argued that accelerationism is intrinsically tied to theblack experience through capitalism's relationship toslavery, particularly the treatment of slaves as both inhuman capital and human, which is not accounted for in other accelerationist analyses of capitalism. This challenges the accelerationist distinction made between human and capital, in turn challenging their rejection of humanism in favor of an inhumansubject since black people have historically been treated as such a subject; she states "to speak of transversing or travestying humanism in favor of inhuman capital without recognizing the way in which the black is nothing other than the historical inevitability of this transgression—and has been for some time—circularly reinforces thewhite humanism these thinkers seeks [sic] to disavow."[72] Fluss and Frim state that it emphasizes "the historical exclusion of black people from white humanist discourses, and the historical process whereby capitalism has engendered the 'black nonsubject.'"[40]
Sinceaccelerationism was coined in 2010, the term has taken on several new meanings. The term has been used to advocate for making capitalism as destructive as possible in order to cause a revolution against it.[73][27][2] Fisher considered this a misunderstanding of left-accelerationism, with such misunderstandings being the reason Srnicek and Williams dropped the term forInventing The Future.[21]
Several commentators have also used the labelaccelerationist to describe a controversial political strategy articulated by Slavoj Žižek.[74] An often-cited example of this is Žižek's assertion in a November 2016 interview withChannel 4 News that, were he an American citizen, he would vote for U.S. presidentDonald Trump, despite his dislike of Trump, as the candidate more likely to disrupt the politicalstatus quo in that country.[75]Richard Coyne characterized his strategy as seeking to "shock the country and revive the left."[76]
Chinese dissidents have referred to Chinese leaderXi Jinping as "Accelerator-in-Chief" (referencing state media calling Deng Xiaoping "Architect-in-Chief of Reform and Opening"), believing that Xi'sauthoritarianism is hastening the demise of theChinese Communist Party and that, because it is beyond saving, they should allow it to destroy itself in order to create a better future.[77]
Since the late 2010s, international networks of neo-fascists, neo-Nazis, white nationalists and white supremacists have increasingly used the termaccelerationism to refer to right-wing extremist goals, namely an "acceleration" of racial conflict through violent means such as assassinations, murders, terrorist attacks and eventual societal collapse to achieve the building of awhite ethnostate.[11][12][13]The New York Times held far-right accelerationism as detrimental to public safety.[78] The inspiration for this distinct variation is occasionally cited asAmerican Nazi Party andNational Socialist Liberation Front memberJames Mason's newsletterSiege, where he argued forsabotage,mass killings and assassinations of high-profile targets to destabilize and destroy the current society, seen as a system upholding aJewish andmulticulturalNew World Order.[11] His works were republished and popularized by theIron Marchforum andAtomwaffen Division, right-wing extremist organizations strongly connected to various terrorist attacks, murders andassaults.[11][79][80][81] Far-right accelerationists have also been known to attackcritical infrastructure, particularly thepower grid, attempting to cause a collapse of the system orbelieving that 5G was causing COVID-19. Some have encouraged thepromotion of 5G conspiracy theories as easier than convincing potential recruits thatthe Holocaust never happened.[82][83] According to theSouthern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), which tracks hate groups and filesclass 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."[81]
Brenton Harrison Tarrant, the perpetrator of the 15 March 2019Christchurch mosque shootings that killed 51 people and injured 49 others, strongly encouraged right-wing accelerationism in a section of his manifesto titledDestabilization and Accelerationism: Tactics. Tarrant's manifesto influencedJohn Timothy Earnest, the perpetrator of both the 24 March 2019Escondido mosque fire at Dar-ul-Arqam Mosque inEscondido, California, and the 27 April 2019Poway synagogue shooting which resulted in one dead and three injured.[8]Patrick Crusius, the perpetrator of the 3 August 2019El Paso Walmart shooting that killed 23 people and injured 23 others was influenced by Tarrant as well.[8] Tarrant and Earnest, in turn, influenced Juraj Krajčík, the perpetrator of the2022 Bratislava shooting that left dead two patrons of a gay bar.[84][11][8]
Zack Beauchamp pointed to Land's shift towards neoreactionarism, along with the neoreactionary movement crossing paths with thealt-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 blogThe Right Stuff who cited neoreactionarism as an influence.[8] Land himself became interested in theAtomwaffen-affiliatedtheistic Satanist organizationOrder 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.[85] Since the 2010s, the political ideology and religious worldview of the Order of Nine Angles, supposedly founded by theBritish neo-Nazi leaderDavid Myatt in 1974,[11] have increasingly influencedmilitant neo-fascist and neo-Naziinsurgent groups associated with right-wing extremist and white supremacist international networks,[11] most notably the Iron March forum.[11]
