Are you an accelerationist, y/n?

The key political question of our time will be resolved once and for all, before your very eyes.

Gonna FP everybody who responds to bring down the poll system quicker

lol

20 years ago yes (although the term wasn't around iirc), now no. I guess I'm reluctantly in the extropian camp these days.

*taps dn*

I’m awake because it’s humid and disgusting, why are you like this?

It's the same here tbh. 32 degrees, 40 with the Humidex.

I just like making prevaricating and vague death threats to smug middle class melts, probably not the same thing

If you think about it accelerationism is a confused concept as capitalism speeds us ever faster towards extinction

no. I don't believe in any political project, the prospect of liberal democratic status quo or worsening right-wing oppression and declining living conditions in western capitalism putatively leading to a revolutionary upswell are both abhorrent to me and I want no part in either

Indeed. Jeff Bezos is accelerationism's reigning Pope.

xp

While we're at it, it's worth noting that there is also such a thing as neo-fascist accelerationism. Presumably ILXors who will be voting 'Yea' do not belong to this subset.

well capitalism is depriving all of humanity of a future, who the foot wants to accelerate that? :)

accelerationism as an unconscious instinct/gesture existed for a long time before the capital A concept. There's an obvious process where naming it leads people to deny their id

Or articulating yr id
warps it

didn't used to be, am now.

While we're at it, it's worth noting that there is also such a thing as neo-fascist accelerationism.

Accelerationism is probably the highest it's ever been on the right!

well capitalism is depriving all of humanity of a future, who the foot wants to accelerate that? :)

― calzino

people who are also deprived of a present

i'm annoyed by how often people use these concepts to stand in for people's positions they don't understand. same with "class reductionist." i guess that means i am an accelerationist and a class reductionist. i don't think i am though. relatedly, it is accelerationist imo to, for example, never do anything about climate change or poverty except talk about it as they support things that actively make those problems worse, and a lot of those people get to enjoy reputations as totally reasonable people. i guess that's what the jeff bezos refs mean. he's the REAL accelerationist! sheeple

can't we just murder them without the acceleration tho? step the fuck back mods - i'll give them a strawberry cornetto before strangling the life out of them and stabbing them up!

yes you can murder at a constant velocity =P

i guess that's what the jeff bezos refs mean. he's the REAL accelerationist! sheeple

There's usually a dialectical/eschatological component to accelerationism, i.e. things will get worse before they get better but the payoff is worth it or at the very least preferable to the status quo. What I find striking is the underlying assumption (not always shared tbf) that we can predict the logical endpoint of the systems-that-be, whereupon a new beginning will be made possible.

i'm sure gradualism will eventually do a great job of protecting trans people. i mean i don't reckon the odds are good right now that i'll particularly be alive to see it, but hey, maybe two or three people will see some benefit.

does this mean you all want to just blow things up? not in favor of that

so no

it's funny how the calmest people who just want want a nice little friendly parlour room atmosphere on here have usually got the least at stake. And don't know shit about how precarious an existence it is for many of us. Some people on here post intelligently at face value but still don't seem to understand why everyone else isn't as middle class and smug and comfortable as them and take people who have been damaged by their life experiences as problematic posters. i just call them fucking smug middle class wankers.

does this mean you all want to just blow things up? not in favor of that

so no

― Dan S

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HfMVxd6dzGs

just tell me you hate me openly, ok? please. stop telling me you care about me. stop telling me you want what's best for me. tell me you fucking hate me and that everything i get i fucking deserve and that you won't lie to the world by pretending you ever gave a shit about me when i'm gone.

I like your posts rushomancy! I just don't think I believe in accelerationism

Are we all working with the same definition of accelerationism? I thought it was a philosophy of deliberately making conditions under capitalism worse to accelerate, as it were, the inevitable communist revolution. It sounds like some think it’s just about the pace of societal change?

My problem with accelerationism is that IRL the acceleration isn’t necessarily directional. Bringing about the collapse doesn’t always mean you get to decide what replaces the thing that collapsed. It just creates a power vacuum that gets filled by whatever turns out to be strongest at that moment - could be communism, could be fascism, could be theocracy etc. We’ve seen it play out enough times.

boring you are right, i was in a rage from reading comments on the biden thread which i shouldn't have and i realize i conflated two possible meanings of the word into one sentence

then i used the word conflated incorrectly

Right, accelerationism isn't really the opposite of incrementalism. It's embracing what you see as the worst possible option because you think it will bring about the destruction of the current order.

jeff bezos is still an accelerationist because he's got a plan to fuck off to space as the rest of us drown

Such misunderstandings are embedded into the term itself and frankly interesting in their own right. But what I initially had in mind were theorems such as 'better Trump than Biden if we wish to speed up the coming socialist revolution', which may or may not be accompanied by a REP vote.

Basically, rock bottom is the sole tabula rasa.

I don't think there are many actual philosophical accelerationists on 'the left.'

There are a lot of people reading the room about shit getting worse in the near-future, that it will involve radical changes to the social and political structure and comforting themselves that it won't just be exterminism (lest they be called doomers).

Centrists and mild liberals are more accelerationist than any socialist I've ever known, having no actual desire to confront the future.

yeah i really dislike those arguments for the reasons man alive said. i'm not an accelerationist! xp

awww, thank you dan. that really did help.

truth be told "accelerationism" isn't really a good description for my ideology; it's not really a matter of acceleration vs. deceleration at all. it's more a belief that some problems are unfixable, some damage is irreparable. the dispute isn't about what the solution is, it's about the nature of the problem, and i feel like i get labelled "accelerationist" or, alternately, a "doomer" when i conclude that certain problems are not solvable given the constraints under which the system is operated, and that a many of the people who claim to be attempting to "solve" the problem are only doing more damage in their ham-fisted and inept attempts, garfields' doctors poking around for the bullet with unanesthetized fingers. me, i'm not charles guiteau and never will be, but i wouldn't trust those doctors to perform surgery on me or on anyone i care about.

accelerationist accusations are a lot like anti-anarchist arguments - "oh, you want to just abolish the state well who's gonna pave the roads" stuff, eliding that people who consider themselves anarchists aren't just talking about flipping a switch and abolishing the law overnight

"oh, you want to just abolish the state well who's gonna pave the roads" stuff, eliding that people who consider themselves anarchists aren't just talking about flipping a switch and abolishing the law overnight

― Donald Trump Also Sucks, Of Course (milo z)

and, this is the bit that really frustrates me, eliding as well the existence of the state of michigan

"who's going to do all these things that the state says it's doing but doesn't", thanks benito you're helping a lot

It's embracing what you see as the worst possible option because you think it will bring about the destruction of the current order.

― Mario Meatwagon (Moodles), Tuesday, August 11, 2020 9:02 PM (fourteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

If this is the definition, then no.

I mean, doesn’t accelerationism assume that it will bring about revolution and a new order? I never equated it to anarchism so “who’s gonna pave the roads” seems like a non sequitur. My issue with it is that someone almost certainly will pave the roads, and unless you’ve got a really good road paving organization ready, it will probably be someone else and someone you may like less than the current road pavers.

I doubt that people you might call accelerationists don't also have an idea formed about what that post-accelerated society looks like.

"The revolution could go bad" - I mean, you can say that about gradualist concepts as well.

Rush I feel like “radical” or “revolutionary” might be a better term for your sentiment? Accelerationism is more of a specific strain of radicalism and it has more to do with the debate over how you achieve revolution than whether it is necessary.

Accelerationism =\= the opposite of gradualism.

“I doubt that people you might call accelerationists don't also have an idea formed about what that post-accelerated society looks like.”

I’m sure they have plenty of ideas. The issue is whether they have the necessary organizational strength.

I'm weak and I can't abide the idea of seeing any extreme political disruption descending into chaos.

I guess I'm a neoliberal. I want restoration of the world order, like it was before Trump came along. We can go from there and figure out a better world

As I said above, 'who's going to pave the roads' is about how accusations of accelerationism are similar (not particularly good-faith) arguments against left-anarchists.

As I said, I don't think there are that many actual 'damn the torpedoes' accelerationists on the left, so much as people seeing a worse future and trying to work out what's going to happen. That's where the similarities come in - accuse someone of being an accelerationist and you don't have to accept that they've considered the path ahead.

vietnam seems pretty responsive to emergent threats, what's their system like

The system of banning cars, planes, air conditioning, and factory farmed meats?

xxp don't think about changing a winning formula, got it

I thought the whole point of accelerationism was that you can't do anything about acceleration, it's just an inherent condition of the social processes currently at work in the world. So that, being an accelerationist is not really someone who says "I want it to go faster! FASTER! muwaahaahaa" but someone who says, "hold on to yer butts, it seems the only way out is through..." I dunno, it's fatalistic, but it's not really the same thing as someone who wants to pour gas on the fire.

I understand there are multiple definitions of this nowadays, though, and also "decelerationists." But honestly, yes, to me it feels like we're all on the Wonka Boat Ride and I don't think there's a way to make it stop.

tbf those fucking brats had it coming

I don't accept that there are "mulitple definitions of this nowadays." There is a definition, it comes from marxism, and I've literally never heard of their being any other definition until today, especially since there are already other words for the things a couple of people ITT are calling "other definitions of accelerationism."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerationism

Being an accelerationist literally does mean "I want it to go faster."

ok then, I guess I am not an Accelerationist.

Being an accelerationist literally does mean "I want it to go faster."

― longtime caller, first time listener (man alive)

i guess i'm not an accelerationist but i might possibly be warren oates' character in "two-lane blacktop"

please, posters, take up your issues w/ accelerationism with its actual inventor

https://a57.foxnews.com/static.foxnews.com/foxnews.com/content/uploads/2020/07/931/524/Ricky-Bobby-Columbia-Pictures-1.jpg

lol thread

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

I associate "accelerationism" with the ideas that:

a) capitalism contains the seeds of its own destruction, and
b) the destruction of capitalism will ultimately be accomplished through a revolt of the workers, which will in turn
c) replace capitalism with societies based in cooperation, equality, peace and plenty, so that
d) anything which "sharpens the contradictions" of capitalism and nourishes those seeds of destruction mentioned in a) will hasten the onset of b) and c).

This is, ofc, pretty archaic Marxist dogma, but afaics it still captures the essence of accelerationist thinking.

If there is a modern version of accelerationism having no connection to Marxism, the only strain of modern thought I am aware of that might substitute for it would be the ideas that:

a) capitalism is horrifying and rapidly destroying the viability of all life of a greater complexity than mollusks or insects, so that
b) the quicker we can reduce capitalism to a smoldering ruin by any means whatsoever, the better it will be for all life on earth. QED.

that is correct

Thats definitely my reading. In the modern conception, "give the keys to the car to the bastards and stop trying to stop them crashing it, then people will finally see them for who they really are". I can see the logic to the thinking, but I don't think that how it pans out, as now they have the keys they won't crash it, they'll use it to drive around taking people out

The problem with showing people "who they really are" is that, as evidenced by the past 4 years, half the people will say "indescribable evil? that's a-okay by me as long as the people I hate go down with me"

There is a persistent fallacy that, if what you have now is demonstrably bad, then destroying it will automatically lead to something better. imo, this conclusion is based in a woeful lack of imagination.

which is why I'm not an accelerationist!

it can work if you're Lenin

There is a persistent fallacy that, if what you have now is demonstrably bad, then destroying it will automatically lead to something better. imo, this conclusion is based in a woeful lack of imagination.

[Aside] And worse I may be yet: the worst is not
So long as we can say 'This is the worst.'

it can work if you're Lenin

― longtime caller, first time listener (man alive)

lenin only got in power because of the failure of the kerensky government, it wasn't that he had any particular abilities of his own, it's just that kerensky, after attaining power due to widespread discontent with the czar's lethally incompetent rule, immediately declared that it was imperative to continue implementing the policies that had caused the czar's removal in the first place. the situation we're in right now is COMPLETELY DIFFERENT!

it's true, we lack even a lenin-level mind on our side

it's true, we lack even a lenin-level mind on our side

― unpaid intern at the darvo institute (Simon H.)

oh, i'd say there are a few of "lenin-level" minds on the left, insofar as tankies exist.

There is a persistent fallacy that, if what you have now is demonstrably bad, then destroying it will automatically lead to something better. imo, this conclusion is based in a woeful lack of imagination.

― the unappreciated charisma of cows (Aimless)

oh boy now aimless you got me thinkin', you shouldn't do that

i'm not going to argue with anything you're saying, because i try really hard not to do that. i don't think arguing accomplishes anything. what i am going to do is tell my story again.

social gender transition is something that's really difficult to do gradually. this is unfortunate because gender isn't really an off/on switch. the changes i've gone through have been much slower, much less readily apparent, than one would think. this is one reason we take so many damn selfies - we look the same from day to day, but over a period of months the drastic and dramatic nature of the change becomes clear.

knowing that in order to transition i would have to make this dramatic change, well, it kept me from transitioning for a long time. i knew that doing it would be extremely risky. by transitioning, i put myself at risk for losing my friends, my family, my wife, my career.

which is to say that i am familiar with taking a drastic, radical action that has a high probability of highly personally damaging results.

my experience when i took that step was to find that i had drastically underestimated how much i was suffering. forty years of attempting to conform to cisgender social norms fucked me up. fucked me up really, really bad. attempting to comply with those norms nearly killed me, not once, but many times. over and over and over again. and when it wasn't killing me, it made my life miserable. it made my life hell.

cis people look at me and they say... they say over and over again that i'm "brave", that they couldn't do the thing i did, that they couldn't imagine putting themselves through that. and honestly? the main reason i did it was because i eventually came to realize that what i was going through pretending to be a "cis man" was a HELL of a lot worse.

i'm glad that's not killing me anymore. you know what's killing me now? capitalist democracy. it is, in fact, killing a lot of us. and people who don't recognize that, well, i can relate to that, because for many years i refused to acknowledge how trying to conform to cisgender social norms was killing me. god, i know how it would play out if i travelled back in time 15 years and told myself i was trans. younger me would argue with me, pretty much the same way the defenders of capitalist democracy argue with me now.

and that's why i'm not going to argue with you now.

My ancestors were literally property in a capitalist system. After they gained their freedom, they were explicitly excluded from socialist programs meant to give relief and opportunity to the citizens of this country and the Communist organizers who helped unionize the working class explicitly excluded and demonized them to encourage workers of strictly-European descent. So, while I have problems with virtually every economic system mankind has created, the biggest issue I have with them is that they all have been implemented by people, who are baseline terrible, and there is little to no proof that swapping out the economic system without fundamentally changing human nature will be a net gain for the people who need a net gain.

I don't say this because I think the current economic model is peachy-keen and unassailable. I say it because it's not the only problem that needs addressing and if you address one without the other, the historical result implies that everyone who can check an obvious minority box on any axis and also can't hide said minority status or claim a limited "you're one of the good ones" spot with the majority is fucked.

100% otm

xps - I am happy that by taking a drastic, radical action that had a high probability of highly personally damaging results you have reduced your personal suffering.

My observation was not intended as a 'defense of capitalist democracy' or an argument directly in its favor, but rather was intended to make the point that historically speaking, simply creating a power vacuum rarely results in that vacuum being filled by a better system. The destruction of capitalist democracy is not a positive goal that will automatically result in less suffering or less evil. Suffering and evil may be the result of any political or economic system. The goal should not purely be the destruction of capitalist democracy, but the institution of a society and social norms that reduce suffering and injustice.

lenin only got in power because of the failure of the kerensky government, it wasn't that he had any particular abilities of his own, it's just that kerensky, after attaining power due to widespread discontent with the czar's lethally incompetent rule, immediately declared that it was imperative to continue implementing the policies that had caused the czar's removal in the first place. the situation we're in right now is COMPLETELY DIFFERENT!

― Kate (rushomancy), Monday, 17 August 2020 bookmarkflaglink

To take the opportunity and create a worker's state took political and organising ability.

I don't say this because I think the current economic model is peachy-keen and unassailable. I say it because it's not the only problem that needs addressing and if you address one without the other, the historical result implies that everyone who can check an obvious minority box on any axis and also can't hide said minority status or claim a limited "you're one of the good ones" spot with the majority is fucked.

― shout-out to his family (DJP)

i agree with you entirely.

I associate "accelerationism" with the ideas that:

a) capitalism contains the seeds of its own destruction, and
b) the destruction of capitalism will ultimately be accomplished through a revolt of the workers, which will in turn
c) replace capitalism with societies based in cooperation, equality, peace and plenty, so that
d) anything which "sharpens the contradictions" of capitalism and nourishes those seeds of destruction mentioned in a) will hasten the onset of b) and c).

This is, ofc, pretty archaic Marxist dogma, but afaics it still captures the essence of accelerationist thinking.

― the unappreciated charisma of cows (Aimless), Monday, 17 August 2020 bookmarkflaglink

Do we have a history of "accelerationism" because this whole thing just sounds like a resigned reading of a) to me + the failures of b) and c) throughout the 20th century.

While led to d) shitposting about it on the internet.

*which

xyzzzz are u familiar with anarcho-primitivism and the work of John Zerzan? cuz that is def one of the roots of this reading, speaking from direct personal experience of the last 30 yrs w/r/t various anarcho magazines etc.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

plenty of primitivist stuff is not accelarationist mind. "Desert" and Camatte (although Camatte is a Bordigist gone wild rather than an anarchist)

yes fair! and worth noting. I am particularly partial to Chellis Glendinning's book "My Name Is Chellis And I'm In Recovery From Western Civilization".

shout-outs to my fellow arguable accelerationists (i voted yes but the real answer is "i have no idea")

that's fair, what gives me pause on the Yes axis is the fact that a lot of people with less privilege than me will suffer, but you've convincingly argued the counterpoint and yeah really I have no idea but in my heart I say No.

"just do the next right thing" as they say in recovery

Thanks sleeve. I haven't though I might fuck about with this later.

https://libcom.org/tags/john-zerzan

he's in the netflix series about ted kaczynski

opposite of an accelerationist = somebody staring blankly at a brake lever which has come off in their hands

isn’t that just liberal capitalism these days

xp “primitivism” is a real mixed bag & the bad stuff is truly awful but it can be good at identifying issues that are poorly or not at all addressed elsewhere. camatte & perlman are def worth some critical reading, maybe zerzan too who I don’t really know. kaczynski is terrible even limited to his writing, despite some who should know better claiming otherwise

where does transhumanism fit into all of this

that's fair, what gives me pause on the Yes axis is the fact that a lot of people with less privilege than me will suffer, but you've convincingly argued the counterpoint and yeah really I have no idea but in my heart I say No.

"just do the next right thing" as they say in recovery

― sleeve

i think what a lot of my conflict with liberals boils down to is the unequal distribution of moral weight

it's just fucked up that if i don't vote for biden and he loses i will _personally_ be blamed for it, macro outcomes aren't entirely reducible to individual moral decisions

moral judgement seems to implicitly be limited to those circumstances wherein it can be enforced, and well

the term "scapegoating" really comes to mind. over and over again, when i look at american history, i see the left scapegoated for failures of the center.

certainly i got skin in the game here. as a rich white leftist i'm nearly the ideal goat for centrists. it's really exhausting.

Does "accelerationism" also apply to Evangelicals who are hastening the end of the world so they can get Raptured/fulfill the prophecy?

same kinda thing yeah

the reason centrists apply more moral pressure to the left is that they hate and fear it more than they hate the right

the reason centrists apply more moral pressure to the left is that they hate and fear it more than they hate the right

The reverse is often also true.

not sure which reverse you mean but from a left perspective centrists are just part of the right tbf

the reason centrists apply more moral pressure to the left is that they hate and fear it more than they hate the right

The reverse is often also true.

― but also fuck you (unperson)

it's certainly true in my case. there is, very strongly, this element of betrayal in my dealings with the center, or at very least of _disappointment_.

2016 was a very difficult, traumatic year for me. surviving it was really hard. i had to make some hard choices, do some hard things. i was raised with liberal values, raised in the liberal tradition, raised with the belief of universality, the idea that we could, in fact, "all get along". the events of 2016 shattered the belief. over the course of the year i saw increasingly terrifying behavior, not necessarily just on the part of trump, but even worse, on the part of his supporters. i saw "principled republicans" who said they would never support such a crude and vulgar man vote for him in november because he was the "lesser evil".

i had to do a lot of work to survive that, had to make some pretty significant changes in my life to live through it. not all of my friends were able to live through that year, and those losses still hurt me deeply. but in the end, you know, it was scary, but i could do it. i could cut myself off from the "common sense republicans" i knew, because any compromise we had was more for their sake than mine. all i got out of it was maintaining the myth that, at the end of the day, we all wanted the same things, and it was a comforting myth but i put way more into it than i got out of it.

2020 is, so far, a very difficult, traumatic year for me. surviving it is really hard. i'm having to make some hard choices, do some hard things. the hardest thing for me, about trump supporters, was realizing, understanding, that there was nothing, literally nothing, they would not excuse, nothing that would keep them from fulfilling their supposed "moral obligation" to vote for the "lesser evil". trump didn't just win because of overt bigots and racist. trump won an election rigged in his favor on the backs of throngs of Decent People who weren't racist But.

joe biden wants to win the votes of those same people. you know what? i believe in a lot of cases, he will.

this is really challenging for me. what's challenging, mostly, is realizing that all of this talk about "compromise" is, well, about as close to a universal myth as one can get in politics, challenging how twisted and abusive and fucked up all of this language of moral obligation is, and how centrists just accept it without question. those are the Rules. that's the Game.

and it's not a game to me. my friends are dead and i can't say for sure how long it i can hold out before i join them. i reach out for help and i get lectures about my moral responsibility, about my moral obligations. these aren't the people i thought i knew, i thought i could trust. their minds have been warped, just like trump supporters' minds have been warped, in terrifying ways, and all the time they keep telling me that i'm the one who's warped, that i'm the one who's the problem.

i don't know that they're even telling _me_ this, necessarily. mostly they sound like they're trying to convince themselves. mostly i get the impression that they're hurt and damaged just as badly as i am, just as badly as trump voters are. and just like trump voters, they try to make things through bullying and abuse, bullying and abuse that they'll insist to their deaths was self-defense.

maybe i'm talking about myself. i know i try not to defend myself. i know i try not to tell anybody they're wrong, or tell anybody i'm good, or tell anybody i'm logical or right or any of that stuff. i try to allow myself to be wrong at any time, but i don't know. i come off aggressive a lot of the time. i'm really upset, i'm really scared, and i don't know what else to do.

things have gen been getting worse since i was 12; it doesnt seem to be helping anything