
Accelerationism - lamby
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerationism
======
daenz
Accelerationism is just nihilism masquerading as a social good. It gives you a
false moral authority to say "fuck it" and try to break things, because, after
all, humans will fix everything "the right way" after it's all broken, so
you're really doing everyone a favor.

------
chobeat
Keep in mind that "accelerationism" has been used in many different ways
throughout history. Currently the most widespread usage is the Landian one but
this wikipedia page is very superficial in describing it.

And yes, from the original work of Nick Land many different political
movements and categories are born, starting from the same analysis and the
same philosophical toolbox but arriving at very different conclusion. L/acc,
R/acc, U/acc, NRX and so on have almost nothing in common to the neophyte and
framing them as sides of a single movement is quite pointless and confusing.

As a xenoaccelerationist active in some L/acc circles, feel free to ask me
questions or pointers for good readings.

~~~
chao-
My first ask would be just some help cutting through the jargon. I can guess
from the wikipedia article, and general political context, that the "L/" and
"R/" stands for "Left" and "Right", not "Liberal", "Reform", "Restrained", or
similar.

But then what is "U/"? Utopian? Utilitarian? Unrestrained? Similar with "NRX",
which I cannot even begin to guess at.

~~~
emmelaich
From the linked Nick Land article, NRx seems to be neoreactionary.

Seems many movements fall in love with their own jargon and spend time
attempting to distinguish themselves from other movements but only end up
sounding even more obfuscatory.

~~~
dropit_sphere
Obfuscation serves as a surprisingly effective spam filter though....

------
qsymmachus
Most "accelerationists" these days are right-accelerationists, because it
turns out it only seems like a good idea if you don't actually care about
human suffering.

~~~
valgor
That is very true. I know and follow many Communists and Socialist, and none
of them support Accelerationism in any form.

~~~
gnulinux
I'm a Marxist and I support accelerationism. From a Marxist framework it makes
more sense than activism or other sort of "modern" ways of protesting
capitalism. I understand that capitalism is a necessary step for human
development and there are no short cuts. Modern Marxism (mostly Marxism-
Leninism) is sheer insanity especially those flavors with Third-worldism [1].
If you actually read Marx and later Marxists/sociologists and understood the
basic, it's pretty easy to see that you cannot go to an underdeveloped society
and bring "socialism". Socialism will naturally occur in an advanced
capitalistic society, such as US, not in a third world country like Vietnam.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-
Worldism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-Worldism)

~~~
beat
Does it really not work? It seems to have done okay in various contexts -
Maoism in China and Ba'athism in the Arab world stand out to me. Maoism
evolved and became very successful. Ba'athism mostly fell apart with the Arab
Spring revolutions (the Syrian civil war is the last stand), but it lasted a
long time and brought a lot of improvements to some really weak countries.

Heck, consider Vietnam. Ho Chi Minh's revolution survived years of the most
powerful nation on Earth dropping more firepower on the tiny nation than was
dropped in all of WWII. They won, America left, and Vietnam is a modern
communist state.

Then again, I don't completely believe this... I'm kind of under the spell of
Tolstoy right now, and tend to think that history just sort of happens, and we
attribute the ebb and flow of it to the success or failure of individual
leaders and their decisions, ignoring the broader forces. A lot of what led to
success in these countries was going to happen regardless.

preemptive edit: Yes, I know these were murderous dictatorships. No need to
mansplain how wrong I am, guys.

~~~
ozzyman700
What about history not just 'sort of happening' but instead, changes in the
means of production lead social change. e.g. Industrial Revolution,
Factorization of production.

This is how a marxist views histories progression and I feel it is more
applicable and holds up under backtesting than 'history just sort of happens'

Mao was a man of the people, who led his country to greatness, no backpedaling
necessary.

~~~
beat
Oh, I agree on changes to the means of production themselves (more broadly,
technological changes) leading to massive changes in politics and society. But
those are in the "sort of happens" category, as opposed to the Great Man
theory, where social change is enacted by the decisions (good or bad) of
powerful and important individuals.

Read Marx, but read Tolstoy too. Tolstoy argued that we all have 20/20
hindsight, and we like to argue how well our individual ideas or pet theories
explain stuff that, well, just happened.

edit: I'm suddenly thinking of Bruce Sterling's novel _Zeitgeist_ , a sort of
magical-realism SF set around Y2K. When asked who would win the culture war
between Islamic fundamentalism and Western secularism, the central character
said "The side with the most televisions".

~~~
frabbit
See also Cliodynamics
[http://peterturchin.com/cliodynamics/](http://peterturchin.com/cliodynamics/)

------
armitron
Here is a -great- introduction straight from the source (Nick Land):
[https://jacobitemag.com/2017/05/25/a-quick-and-dirty-
introdu...](https://jacobitemag.com/2017/05/25/a-quick-and-dirty-introduction-
to-accelerationism/)

The Wikipedia entry is informative and concise but the grand scope and (some
would say) madness of Land's vision only begins to emerge when one immerses
oneself in Land's writings, starting from "Meltdown" [1]. One doesn't need to
be versed in Philosophy, Qabalah, Mysticism, Lovecraft and several different
branches of the Occult - although it certainly helps - to grasp what Land is
talking about. Just having read and understood Neuromancer is enough. For a
more conventional, historical, perspective see [2] and [3].

If you're wondering "is there any value in this" consider the timing. Land may
have been a burned-out drug-fueled academic, but some would say he revitalized
Philosophy with his willingness to go outside the norm and commune with what
lies beyond the human. Reaching the apex in the mid 90s, well before the
impact of the Internet was obvious to the mainstream, people laughed at him
then, but it turns out, he saw it all coming.

“The definite probability that the allotment of time to decision-making is
undergoing systematic compression remains a neglected consideration, even
among those paying explicit and exceptional attention to the increasing
rapidity of change.”

[1] [https://genius.com/Nick-land-meltdown-annotated](https://genius.com/Nick-
land-meltdown-annotated)

[2]
[https://energyflashbysimonreynolds.blogspot.com/2009/11/rene...](https://energyflashbysimonreynolds.blogspot.com/2009/11/renegade-
academia-cybernetic-culture.html)

[3] [http://divus.cc/london/en/article/nick-land-ein-
experiment-i...](http://divus.cc/london/en/article/nick-land-ein-experiment-
im-inhumanismus)

~~~
BlueTemplar
Thanks a lot for these sources. I was really puzzled as to why Alt-Righters
would claim following a Marxist ideology, but them having diverged with
(Left-)Accelerationists as far back as 1968' Deleuze & Guattari makes it way
clearer...

Also, now I understand what Charles Stross (and dot-commers) were likely
"smoking" when he wrote Accelerando in the late 90's... (and maybe his claim
of "being the first qualified cyberpunk author just when cyberpunk died" might
have been a bit premature ?)

------
dropit_sphere
I'm a scary far-right NRX guy, and the accelerationist idea has obviously been
raised in the circles I frequent.

But it generally leaves me cold. This keeps coming to mind:

"Wo unto the world because of offences! For offenses must come, but wo to him
by whom the offence cometh!"

You have to be _pretty damn sure_ you can build a better new world before you
burn down the old one.

Would-be revolutionists would do better to focus their energies on things
that:

\- even the "evil other side" could never convince themselves to call a war
crime

\- are resilient to and helpful after whatever collapse is foreseen

\- will have some benefit if the collapse does _not_ occur

\- don't make things worse.

It is, in fact, possible to find these things.

The worst-case scenario is that there's a collapse and it brings neither a
worker's paradise nor the return of kings, but pointless gang wars. You can
build that worker's paradise, or aristocratic character, _before_ the
collapse, and if you're right that the system is unsustainable, you'll "start"
the collapse in a much better position. Sure, there are likely entrenched
obstacles in your way, but making an omelette does not justify killing a few
people.

Get to know your neighbors!

~~~
armitron
You and almost everybody else in this thread are missing the core of the idea,
which stems from Land, and tries to hammer in the fact that humanity has no
agency. Rather than being a philosophy of our continued evolution - things we
do - , it speaks about our imminent transformation/extinction - things being
done to us -.

Under that light, accelerationism is nothing else but our collective
acceptance we're as powerless against the technocapital positive feedback loop
as against the movement of tectonic plates. It's this separation from and
casting out of the "human security system", that allows one to look at the
phenomenon with objectivity, and it's this separation that most critics and
readers that look at accelerationism from the prism of conventional human-
centered philosophy are missing.

~~~
dropit_sphere
I don't think I have missed the point. I think you're more versed in Land's
thinking than I am, but I _have_ been reading his blog for years, and I've had
a good deal of mental anguish over the humanity-has-no-agency problem.

I get it, capitalism is an alien AI and we're just the hardware, and if not
capitalism substitute in something like sexual selection instead. And our
coordination problems are such that we cut any tall reeds that try to stand
against this. Moloch! Nightmare in Moloch! So, OK, "humanity" has no agency.

But I think individuals do. At the very least, they can not make things
_worse._ They can become the kind of people who, if dropped into a perfect
society, wouldn't drag it down. And then they can (a harder task, in
computation as well as effort!) become the kind that soften the blows of the
elder gods, even while paying them proper respect.

I tend to hold with Nyan, as quoted in _Meditations on Moloch_
([http://web.archive.org/web/20140801022058/http://slatestarco...](http://web.archive.org/web/20140801022058/http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-
on-moloch/)):

 _And then there’s us. Man has his own telos, when he is allowed the security
to act and the clarity to reason out the consequences of his actions. When
unafflicted by coordination problems and unthreatened by superior forces, able
to act as a gardener rather than just another subject of the law of the
jungle, he tends to build and guide a wonderful world for himself. He tends to
favor good things and avoid bad, to create secure civilizations with polished
sidewalks, beautiful art, happy families, and glorious adventures...The
project of civilization being for man to graduate from the metaphorical
savage, subject to the law of the jungle, to the civilized gardener who, while
theoretically still subject to the law of the jungle, is so dominant as to
limit the usefulness of that model._

~~~
armitron
Individuals may or may not have agency, but it doesn't amount to much. Climate
change is but the tiniest and most benign of the forces Land is evoking. We're
dealing with an emergent runaway overseer: globe-spanning positive feedback in
all its doom and glory. Look at the multiplicity of hairless apes around you
and subsequently the apes-in-charge of this shrewdness. Do we stand a chance?
It is a joke even to joke.

~~~
dropit_sphere
You're not wrong, but I place a lot of hope in "[not] much." One thing
individuals can do is act so that groups _do_ have agency.

But I know what you're seeing. I wish I could shake your hand. Best wishes.

I upvoted you.

------
rezmason
This is like when Keanu Reeves accelerates the train in order to derail it at
the end of Speed.

Though I'm bearish on applying movie logic to social change.

------
ericmcer
This theory always brings to mind when I worked at a grocery store. I had just
gone vegetarian for environmental reasons and a lady came to the cash register
with ~20 or so of the 1lb ground beef packets. I asked her what they were for
and she said “my dog”. Even at my peak I would eat maybe 2-3lbs or ground beef
a week, her dog eats 20X that.

This was maybe 8 years ago, global warming was well known, the horrors of the
meat industry were well known. My main gripe with this theory is that it acts
like we have a choice about whatever fate our nature is driving us towards.

~~~
jraines
a prominent adherent to the theory recently noted (paraphrasing): Acceleration
has little need for -ism and even less for -ists

------
khawkins
I think this article has a distinct bias and isn't considering how most people
discuss the issue today.

I think that colloquially this word is used both by the left and the right to
suggest the political tactic based on the sensibility that the political
system is near collapse and attempts to "repair" the system from within are
futile. Accelerationists are frustrated with the current system's perceived
corruption, injustice, and immovability, thinking that acting in good faith
will never attain the progress they aim for. They suggest that it is more
valuable to push society and the political system to the point of collapse in
attempts to incite a revolution, expecting that rebuilding the system from
scratch, or at least in a society in chaos, will allow them to achieve their
political goals in the new order.

Accelerationism seems to be the motive for a bunch of terrorism. For example,
the Christchurch shooter cited as part of his motives wanting to spur debates
on gun control, especially in the US, recognizing that these debates are
increasingly dividing the country and pushing the country towards a civil war.
Dylan Roof wanted to incite a race war. A lot of Islamic terror is trying to
incite a pan-Islamic revolution. Antifa riots, destroys property, and often
directly engages with police and right-wing groups in an attempt to weaken the
"capitalist" social order.

~~~
davinic
You had me until Antifa riots. Source?

~~~
dropit_sphere
Is Antifa accelerationist? I think if you asked them they'd say they were
"confronting rising threats," not spurring them on. Am I mistaken?

~~~
Miner49er
no you're right. Antifa is not accelerationist.

------
rgrieselhuber
Roger Zelazny's Lord of Light was a fascinating novel about accelerationist
ideas.

~~~
PhasmaFelis
"Accelerationism" in _Lord of Light_ meant making technology, especially life-
extension technology, available to the masses instead of restricting it to the
elites (who had used Sufficiently Advanced Technology to gain superpowers and
set themselves up as Hindu gods, controlling the masses by restricting
reincarnation to those who toed the line). It had little to do with the
philosophy of the same name described here.

~~~
rgrieselhuber
Depends on your viewpoint.

------
zed88
Some say that the founder of Buzzfeed Jonah Peretti is an accelerationist.

Peretti's academic writings offer one clue.

In brief, the paper argues that, going forward, capitalism will need to be
constantly producing identities for people to adopt at an ever-increasing
rate. And now Peretti's at the helm of a firm that's doing exactly that.

Coincidence?

[http://www.datawranglers.com/negations/issues/96w/96w_perett...](http://www.datawranglers.com/negations/issues/96w/96w_peretti.html)

------
laughingbovine
Wow... what did I just stumble into?

------
charliesharding
Accelerationism does not necessarily have to be specific to capitalism. There
are those on the right who see the rise of identity politics and socialist
thought; to them, the idea of accelerationism is to let socialism spread so
that it too can be exposed as flawed.

Accelerationism can apply to any ideology taken to an extreme.

------
cat199
don't mean to be 'dumb' here, but how is 'left accelerationism' not some
flavor of socialism and 'right accelerationism' not some flavor of facism,
other than using different words and sounding more 'current'

~~~
AnimalMuppet
They're not just socialism and fascism (or something else right-wing), they're
_revolutionary_ socialism and fascism. The intent is to destroy the existing
system and replace it with their vision of what would be "better".

The difference is in technique. Old-school revolutionaries tried to destroy
the current system by fighting it. Accelerationists try to destroy the system
by trying to make it more what it is.

If you think of the system (current US democracy plus capitalism, say) in the
center of a frame, a leftist would view it as being too far to the right, and
a rightist would view it as being too far to the left. An old-school leftist
would try to shove the whole country to the left. A left accelerationist would
try to shove it to the right, thinking that the further right it gets, the
closer it is to destroying itself.

Of course, their perspective is a bit off. The left (or right) accelerationist
sees the current system as already being pretty far right (or left), not
center. They therefore mis-estimate how much further they would have to move
it to bring about destruction. If they fail to move it that far, all they've
done is strengthen the side they're trying to fight.

~~~
stOneskull
Why isn't usury put front and center?

~~~
AnimalMuppet
Because nobody thinks that usury is _the_ problem - the one most worthy of
being front and center.

Why do you ask? Why do you think this is a relevant reply to my post?

~~~
stOneskull
i wanted to ask everyone. looking for any mention. and yeah it should be. it's
been the biggest evil in the world.

------
hnghost
World's most boring ideology.

------
octosphere
Infinite growth in terms of capitalism is not sustainable into the future and
as decades go on it will only do more harm than good. I see this weird
behavior in our world where growth is equated with progress when infact in a
late-capitalism world, growth is actually the opposite of progress.

------
kerkeslager
Anyone working on AI or robotics is supporting accelerationism, whether they
are ideologically for it or not. The singularity will remove the need for
white collar labor, and while there is not such a clear turning point for
robotics, robotics will eventually replace the need for blue collar labor.
When human labor has no value, then only products have value, and the world is
divided into those who have the products and those who do not, with no chance
for mobility between the two. Class mobility, or the assumption that labor can
turn one from a have not to a have, is the only thing that makes capitalism
palatable, so I can't imagine that the complete removal of that possibility
will go unnoticed.

------
nickthemagicman
Sometimes the only way for people to learn a lesson is to suffer .

As capitalism accelerates, inequality grows, poverty spreads, and
pain/suffering become more widespread, people's eyes will open to con's as
well as the pro's of capitalism.

Instead of walking by the homeless person and saying 'sucks to be them' people
actually experience it.

I think alot of people view capitalism as the reason America is so great
instead of being the surviving superpower from WW2 and coasting on that for
half a century.

Capitalism was pretty oppressive in the early 1900s. We'll see what happens on
the future.

So overall accelerrationism is more than just nihilism, it's instructive.
Unfortunately, with suffering on a generational timeframe.

It's also, how government has progressed historically via people suffering.
Now we're shifting from governmental tyrrany to economic tyrrany. The next few
decades will be extremely interesting.

