Fromacceleration +-ism. Usage as “support for accelerating capitalism” attributed to Benjamin Noys, 2010s.[1][2]
- IPA(key): /əkˌsɛl.əˈɹeɪ.ʃə.nɪ.zm̩/,/ækˌsɛl.əˈɹeɪ.ʃə.nɪ.zm̩/,/ɪkˌsɛl.əˈɹeɪ.ʃə.nɪ.zm̩/
accelerationism (countable anduncountable,pluralaccelerationisms)
- The idea that either the prevailing system ofcapitalism, or certaintechnosocialprocesses that historically characterised it, should be expanded andaccelerated in order to generateradical socialchange.
2013, Jonas Andersson Schwarz,Online File Sharing: Innovations in Media Consumption, Routledge,→ISBN,page20:Land (2011) has brought forward the notion ofaccelerationism: Rather than halting the onslaught of capital (such as by defending a welfare state or defending the right to work),accelerationism is a philosophical and political strategy that strives to exacerbate its processes to bring forth its inner contradictions and thereby hasten its destruction,[…]
2014, Robin Mackay, Armen Avanessian, “Introduction”, in#Accelerate: The Accelerationist Reader:The newaccelerationisms instead concentrate primarily on constructing a conceptual space in which we can once again askwhat to do with the tendencies and machines identified by the analysis[…]
2017 May 11, Andy Beckett, “Accelerationism: how a fringe philosophy predicted the future we live in”, inThe Guardian[1], archived fromthe original on2 March 2025:Meanwhile, over the same half century, almost entirely unnoticed by the media or mainstream academia,accelerationism has gradually solidified from a fictional device into an actual intellectual movement: a new way of thinking about the contemporary world and its potential.
- (economics) The theory that excessively lowunemployment acceleratesinflation.
1975,Arthur Melvin Okun, “Inflation: Its Mechanics and Welfare Costs”, inBrookings Papers on Economic Activity, volume 6, number 2:Accelerationism was the most fundamental transformation of the Phillips approach into an expectational format. It hypothesized that inflation will become increasingly rapid in any maintained situation in which unemployment lies below some critical, or “natural,” rate.
1998,James K. Galbraith, “Comments”, inInflation, Unemployment, and Monetary Policy, page66:For the period through 1984, there is weak support foraccelerationism, though the linear fit is mainly due to the disinflationary impact of high unemployment, which no one disputes, not the inflationary effects of prosperity.
theory that capitalism or some of its processes should be accelerated
- ^Andy Beckett (11 May 2017), “Accelerationism: how a fringe philosophy predicted the future we live in”, inThe Guardian: “The label has only been in regular use since 2010, when it was borrowed from Zelazny’s novel by Benjamin Noys, a strong critic of the movement.”
- ^Benjamin Noys (2013), “Preface”, inMalign Velocities: Accelerationism and Capitalism, Zero Books,→ISBN:
It was the resurgence of these ideas in the ’00s, including the republication of Land's essays, that made me return to these questions and offer a more precise critical description by using the term ‘accelerationism’. It turns out that the term occurs in Roger Zelazny's sci-fi novelLord of Light (1967), which I'd read.
accelerationism on Wikipedia.Wikipedia