What is Accelerationism?
Accelerationism is a loose family of ideas in political and social theory that calls for speeding up, rather than slowing down, the forces of capitalism and technology. Its supporters disagree sharply about where acceleration leads. Left accelerationists hope that automation and new technology can be used to move beyond capitalism. Right accelerationists, following the philosopher Nick Land, see capitalism and technology as forces that will eventually escape human control and should not be held back by democracy. The label has also been taken up by violent white nationalist groups, who use it to mean deliberately hastening the collapse of society. These meanings are very different, and most writers on the subject treat them separately.
Core beliefs
- Capitalist and technological change cannot be stopped and should be pushed further.
- Attempts to return to an earlier, slower society are unrealistic.
- Technology, including automation and artificial intelligence, will transform what it means to be human.
- Existing political institutions are too slow to manage this change.
- Radical change may come through intensifying current trends rather than opposing them.
History
The term was used in Roger Zelazny's 1967 novel Lord of Light and later given a technical sense by the philosopher Benjamin Noys in 2010. Its ideas draw on passages in Karl Marx about capitalism's revolutionary power, and on French theorists of the 1970s, including Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, who wrote of accelerating the process of capitalism, and Jean-François Lyotard. In the 1990s the Cybernetic Culture Research Unit at the University of Warwick, associated with Nick Land and Sadie Plant, developed these themes. In the 2010s a left accelerationist current appeared, including the 2013 Manifesto for an Accelerationist Politics. Land's later writing became linked to the anti-democratic Dark Enlightenment. In the 2020s a technology-focused current calling itself effective accelerationism emerged among some Silicon Valley figures.
Variants
Left accelerationism argues for full automation, shorter working time and using technology for collective goals. Right accelerationism, or unconditional acceleration, welcomes capitalism's disruptive power and is skeptical of democratic control. Effective accelerationism is a pro-technology outlook that opposes regulation of artificial intelligence. Militant or white nationalist accelerationism is a separate, violent current that seeks to provoke social collapse and race war.
Criticisms
Critics on the left argue that accelerationism confuses technological change with political progress and ignores who controls technology. Environmentalists argue that intensifying growth worsens climate change and resource depletion. Liberal and democratic critics point to the anti-democratic views of some right accelerationists and to Land's later promotion of eugenic ideas. Security researchers and governments have treated militant accelerationism as a terrorist threat, noting that it has inspired mass shootings and plots by white supremacist groups.
In practice
Philosophical accelerationism has influenced art, cultural theory and online subcultures more than governments. Left accelerationist ideas fed into debates about automation, universal basic income and the future of work. Effective accelerationism has shaped arguments against artificial intelligence regulation. Militant accelerationism has been cited by perpetrators of white supremacist terrorist attacks, including the 2019 Christchurch mosque shootings in New Zealand, and by neo-Nazi networks, and several countries have prosecuted or banned groups linked to it.