In defence of 'accelerationism'

I want to consider the term 'accelerationism', which in recent discussions has become a bone of contention among those exploring the ideas and questions posed by those operating - for now, at least - under or in association with this moniker. Most notably, authors of the Manifesto for an Accelerationist Politics - Williams and Srnicek - have said in public conversations that they have become increasingly dubious of the term and its efficacy. In particular, this hesitancy appears to stem from the sudden proliferation of both 'accelerationist' thought and curious critics probing the idea of 'acceleration'.

I want to make two propositions. Firstly, that the question 'what is being accelerated?' is the wrong question with which to respond to the problems accelerationism is trying to explicate, explore and transcend. Secondly, that in order to avoid both the dead ends this line of questioning forces us down, as well as the (frankly lazy) tendency by many to lump in the 'neo-reactionary' ideas posed by Land, proponents of accelerationism need to be assertive in positing their perspective as a fundamentally philosophical approach towards a more concrete politics, i.e. contemporary Marxism.

Williams, Srnicek and Avanessian have argued that through neoliberalism the future has been 'forgotten'; it is inherently unable to generate the sort of future we desire. The normative project has a clear temporal dimension: we must stake our claim in the present in order that new futures can emerge, defeating the eternal present offered by neoliberalism and contemporary capitalism more broadly. This is not to construct or imagine an ideal future - indeed Srnicek and Williams have always rightly been cautious of over-prescribing post-capitalist society - but rather to acknowledge that through neoliberalism we may appear to be running forwards even though the wheel is fixed firmly to the side of the cage. This is the extent of the 'progress' available to us within the current paradigm. The project of accelerationism then, is not to speed up the wheel so quickly it brings the cage falling down - this is far closer to the Landian project, which the Manifesto identifies as confusing acceleration with 'speed'. Rather, the project is to force a paradigmatic shift from within the present circumstance in which we live, in order to create the possibility for new futures beyond the neoliberal paradigm and capitalist epoch. The question then, should not so much be 'what is being accelerated?' as 'in our present condition, what is keeping us static?'

Accelerationism is therefore less concerned with identifying a particular moment, agent, event or phenomenon and pushing it to its furthest bounds in order to create something new, but instead concerned with placing demands upon the present circumstances which force a destructive and catalytic moment in which the cracks of the present can reveal new possibilities which point beyond capitalism. The movement necessary to transcend capitalism is almost ineffable, and indeed requires multiple strategies across the assemblage of terrains upon which capitalism relies. Accelerationism is the philosophical approach which encourages to make tools and weapons of all the means at our disposal, to regain and weaponise the project of modernity against the status quo from all angles.

However, just as anarchism is properly a set of ethics which struggle to find either meaning or project without being attached to a politics such as communism, the anti-capitalist, pro-modernity philosophical project propounded by accelerationism flounders unless it is used to inform a concrete politics. Not only does this move give direction and purpose to the accelerationist project, but it creates palpable distance between the positions being advocated by - for example - Srnicek and Williams on the one hand, and Land on the other. While Land clearly shares certain tenets of accelerationism in some sense, particularly around the possibilities for the use of technology and abstraction in social organisation, the fact that his later 'neo-reactionary' far-right positions become unwittingly absorbed into the accelerationist school by many onlookers does a disservice to emerging thought in that school and is arguably a hindrance to the broad political project personally advocated by the bulk of its thinkers.

Within the political thought (and personal convictions) of those invested in the expanding accelerationist school is a clear indebtedness to late Marxist ideas, particularly in relation to the Grundrisse's 'Fragment on Machines', and the autonomist Marxist/post-operaismo tradition, particularly in terms of the necessity of a movement with demands. It therefore seems both appropriate and efficacious to move away from developing mere 'accelerationism' and towards an accelerationist Marxist politics.