Accelerationism

Accelerationism, in political and social theory, a class of ideologies that call for a drastic increase in and expansion of capitalistic growth and technological development to hasten an inevitable collapse of the status quo. British theorist Nick Land, an influential accelerationist thinker, describes the thrust of acceleration in “A Quick-and-Dirty Introduction to Accelerationism” (2017), writing, “The deep problem of acceleration is transcendental. It describes an absolute horizon—and one that is closing in. Thinking takes time, and accelerationism suggests we’re running out of time to think that through, if we haven’t already.”

Accelerationism comprises a constellation of positions, including right- and left-wing perspectives, that often differ regarding the nature of Land’s “absolute horizon,” what ought to follow it, and how best to bring it about.

Origins

Many locate the seeds of accelerationist thought in the writings of the German philosopher and economist Karl Marx, who argued in The Communist Manifesto (1848; with Friedrich Engels) that the frantic intensification of capitalism would ultimately prompt its own demise via revolution. Others, including the French philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Pierre-Félix Guattari, whose work on “deterritorialization” in the early 1970s was hugely influential in accelerationist thought, also refer to Friedrich Nietzsche’s alleged call to “accelerate the process”—a phrase that is often repeated but rarely precisely cited or properly contextualized—as an accelerationist “fragment.”

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Deleuze and Guattari took up the first sustained development of these accelerationist seeds, beginning with Anti-Oedipus, the first volume of their two-volume work Capitalism and Schizophrenia (1972–80). The philosophy’s theoretical foundation was further developed in the 1990s by a group of professors in the University of Warwick’s Cybernetic Culture Research Unit, which was founded by Land and his fellow British theorist Sadie Plant.

The British philosopher Robin Mackay and the Austrian philosopher Armen Avanessian note in the introduction to #ACCELERATE: The Accelerationist Reader (2014), one of the philosophy’s few formal texts, that accelerationism was initially a pejorative term, coined by the American author Roger Zelazny in his 1967 science-fiction novel Lord of Light, but was later used in a technical sense by the British philosopher Benjamin Noys, notably in The Persistence of the Negative: A Critique of Contemporary Continental Theory (2010).

Left-wing accelerationism

Left-wing accelerationism offers an ardent critique of both capitalism and the perceived failure of capitalism’s leftist foes to envision, or devise effective strategies to bring about, a viable postcapitalist future. Left-wing accelerationism is primarily concerned with confronting what it understands as the impending cataclysms resulting from global climate change; financial crises characterized by ongoing governmental commitment to neoliberalism and the increasing privatization of public life; and economic upheavals created by increasing automation in production processes.

The British political theorist Alex Williams and the Canadian international relations and economics scholar Nick Srnicek argue in their 2013 article “#ACCELERATE MANIFESTO for an Accelerationist Politics” that the existing neoliberal economic system is not “a capitalist stage to be smashed, but a springboard to launch towards post-capitalism.” According to the authors, “an accelerationist politics seeks to preserve the gains of late capitalism while going further than its value system, governance structures, and mass pathologies will allow.” Building on Williams and Srnicek’s manifesto, Mackay and Avanessian assert that a central task for leftist accelerationists is to determine which elements of the current economic and social system “might be effective in a concrete transition to another life beyond the iniquities and impediments of capital,” advocating an understanding of the early 21st century as the beginning of a new political project instead of “the bleak terminus of history.”

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Right-wing accelerationism

Although right-wing accelerationism also includes pro-capitalist visions of unbridled technological development, since at least the late 2010s right-wing accelerationism has primarily been associated with white nationalist and Christofascist ideologies agitating for the demise of liberal democracy in favor of a white ethnostate. Right-wing accelerationists advocate violent and nonviolent actions to sow chaos and heighten political tensions with the hope of inciting a race war. Some evangelicals and supporters of Christian Identity, a new religious movement characterized by belief in white supremacy and anti-Semitism, espouse accelerationist ideas with the hope of expediting Armageddon.

Accelerationist ideas have appeared in the manifestos and other writings of several 21st-century white supremacist mass shooters—including that of the Australian white supremacist who attacked two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, in 2019—and frequently appear on far-right discussion forums. Some observers have noted that the Christchurch shooter’s manifesto has introduced rightist accelerationism to a broader audience.