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Ennui wrote (edited )

My biggest takeaway from accelerationism is that not one person has a consistent understanding of what it is. There’s a divide in understanding between accelerationism as the purposeful worsening of conditions for the lower class/the speeding up of capitalism and accelerationism as taken to mean the overtaking of capitalism by accelerating leftist politics and/or the particular forces within capitalism that lead to its disintegration.

I believe that the second conception is closer to the truth, especially when you disassociate it from traditional Marxist-Leninist accelerationism. It fits very well with the insurrectionist and market anarchist traditions, seeking to identify weak points in oppressive systems and attack them. It’s insurrectionary because of the emphasis on strategy, and it’s often market anarchist or even agorist because many accelerationists are interested in speeding up the well documented crises of capitalism.

I don’t think it’s at odds with lifestylism because the distinction is bullshit. Even your friend recognizes the need for positive agency in social movements. I also don’t think it has to be at odds with green anarchism, [start edit] but there definitely needs to be a synthesis of market anarchist and the nihilist, anti-civ, green anarchist traditions before accelerationism can be relevant to your average Raddle user.

Hey, maybe I should write something like that.

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ruin wrote (edited )

I’m not a fan, but used to be in my teenage years when I associated with more ancom and ML circles.

Accelerationism was a big part of the Marxist revolutionary approach in Latin America. Guerilla Warfare talks all about it and the Sandinistas used it to great effect. Their whole idea originally was based on building support from the masses by worsening their living conditions. It worked well in third world rural communities. It’s also a good way to start a civil war or just create some chaos to open space.

My issue with it is that it is basically just a vanguard approach to build/trigger a mass movement and destabilize the current state power structure. Typically proponents would then say the revolution can be realized and “anarchism.” It’s really only an option for ancoms and other tendencies that believe in a utopian communism that resembles modern society.

Any tendency looking to build what could be called political power or have a big revolution I tend to view as more leftist than anarchist in its progressivism, in name and underlying philosophy. Not saying these people aren’t anarchists, but I’m not interested personally in an anarchy where people are still cogs in a system of production and consumption no matter how fair the distribution.

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celebratedrecluse OP wrote

That is true, I think accelerationism has some statist interpretations. Can an anarchist, nihilist acceleration take speed though? What might difference that have?

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existential1 wrote

My main critique of accelerationism is that it is inherently vanguardish and, like many other theories/ideologies/identities, tends to ignore that people who are opposed to the tenets of it not only exist, but have a right to their opinions. A lot of anarchist thought tends to deal with this aforementioned reality with different strands of nihilism, but accelerationism looks nihilism in the face and attempts to force (through action) a future that isn't guaranteed to come anyway. There's an expectation of a coming moment not unlike how people have been waiting for "The Revolution" for 150 years.

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celebratedrecluse OP wrote

I agree, there is a certain mysticism in "the singularity" discourse which has become a little bourgeois religion among the technical professional classes. Accelerationism, in that context, is just a milleniarian capitalist faith.

I'm curious to hear more about your view of the inherent vanguardism, or tendencies toward that, in accelerationist thought. I think I know some of what you may mean, but this part of your comment caught my eye.

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existential1 wrote

Well it seems to me that accelerationism has in its core the idea that one must act to bring about certain things faster. I guess there's also possibly a philosophical accelerationism that acknowledgedes factors are making that happen without participating, but it seems this isnt the takeaway one is supposed to have with it.

So it almost necessarily creates vanguard groups who find like-minded people and try to create the change they want to see. Either lone wolf vanguards or vanguard groups.

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celebratedrecluse OP wrote

With that definition, would that not make any political group, accelerationist? including most forms of anarchy?

at least, With the possible exception of people who are are ideologically disengaged from any sort of goal setting including individual goal setting (some forms of nihilism? perhaps spiritual traditions i am personally unfamiliar with the details of?)

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existential1 wrote (edited )

Yes. I think insurrectionist anarchists in particular would have a lot of overlap. The main difference between all the groups is the question of acceleration towards what?

I don't have a value judgement of any of these things, but that is how I see them.

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celebratedrecluse OP wrote

multipolar synthetic accelerationism, the idea that accelerating contradictions will produce social conflict which produces desirable goals, or is desirable in and of itself.

where is my noble prize?

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kin wrote

I saw Nick Land and didn't like a bit.

Before acceleratism been framed as a coherent theory, I heard "accelerationism" as a catchphrase to any political tendencies (or strategies) to seek the disruption of the status quo, exhausting capitalism to point of no-return

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celebratedrecluse OP wrote

exhausting capitalism to point of no-return

doesn't that mean, past the point of profitable extraction?

Is that possible? Moreover, how does it fare comparatively to a more gradualist approach? Are there ways of qualifying and/or quantifying that, which we can agree?

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kin wrote

past the point of profitable extraction

Could be, I am not sure if this analysis still works now, I am very convinced about the post-capitalism argument. Profit stopped making sense a while now, Bezos and Musk are driven by other agenda and the economy is shifting.

If a gradualist approach would work? I doubt, moreover how we can differentiate a gradual accelerationism and the normal speed of capitalist decay? I think you are right, how can we determine the parameters of such ideas? I am very sceptic and reluctant imyself in finding any interest to read acc theory

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celebratedrecluse OP wrote

Profit stopped making sense a while now, Bezos and Musk are driven by other agenda and the economy is shifting.

What is the goal, besides profit?

Control? Profit is the most resilient way to control people, CMV

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d4rk wrote

Accelerationism is inherently this idea of the inevitable collapse of Capital by it's own Contradictions. So we're mostly a do nothing crowd, shit will hit the fan soon.

However the accelerationist tendencies(that are from the Right) want to keep the Accelerating process because it is advanced and that the process will gain people good. I'd like to criticize this angle because there's this belief that Capitalist Accelerationism will bring either the Apocalypse or the end of a Civilization, as what naturally happens, or the Technological Singularity seeing as there is no need for Socialism as the Leftward path can simply do it itself within the current shitstorm system.

The NRX already proposes how to deal oneself in a Post-Apocalyptic world with Moldbug's Patchwork and many other things. I however think that there can be an Accelerating feature within Capitalism.

Within Nick Land's podcast interview in Hermetix he said that the Left(Tankie) direction was always to be the end of history, instead of the becoming-end nature found in Capital which is Cybernetically controlled towards it's own goals and towards the full stop of human civilization towards a technological drift. I disagree.

Socialism would rather abolish these forms and it was related to in the Gentle Introductions by Moldbug which makes him in relative conflict with Land.

Whereas Land assumes that Socialism inherently does not have an Accelerating Capacity, Moldbug attack's Socialism's Accelerating Capacity as moral degradation. Which is the first conflict I've seen so far on the Right.

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Basil wrote

Accelerationism like, the idea that if capitalism is progressed enough then it will either foster left wing ideas or collapse in on itself? I don't buy it. These days, the state would protect the corporations in such a way that I think it would simply lead to a strengthening of capitalism, and though that would in turn lead to more left wing ideas, it would also make it more difficult to dispose of when the revolution does eventually come.

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celebratedrecluse OP wrote

I agree, unless attacks are accelerated the system will eat us before it "eats itself"

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