Accelerationism and Political Violence

It was only a few years ago that I went on This is Revolution podcast to argue that accelerationism — at least in its left-wing form — was dead. In retrospect, however, that may be because the entire premise of accelerationist thought was already fundamentally compromised. But it seems that accelerationism doesn’t want to die, even if its left-wing expression has sputtered out. Hegel’s owl takes flight at dusk, only to return by dawn to the very same perch.

As I write, we sit on the precipice of an AI bubble, talk of a potential catastrophic market crash, we see major layoffs at Amazon, and the ruling class seems to think that within just a few years doctors will be replaced by AI. Where exactly are we at with accelerationism today? I’m happy to announce that I am planning a live podcast discussion on accelerationism with my friends at Pure Panic bookshop in the DC area. Please RSVP to join me accelerationism.eventbrite.com.

My contention is as follows: left-accelerationism has disappeared from the debate over accelerationism and in may ways this has led to the entire movement becoming effectively anti-political. The “Effective accelerationism” movement—the “E/acc” you see on X handles—are a case in point of this anti-political, clearly astro-turfed orientation to accelerationism. It may be that accelerationism has arrived at the true place that its founder Nick Land has always wanted it to be, what he at one time called “unconditional accelerationism” which is neither right nor left but pushed to the point of terminal institutional paralysis.

In fact, for all of my disdain for the neoreactionary philosopher Nick Land, I think that he is correct in this regard. Accelerationism is an anti-politics. It effectively operates on a double-bind logic: either embrace capital and its imperatives of unregulated accumulation or fall into despair, either speed up or slow down. Indeed, this frenetic, schizo and manic quality to the discourse around accelerationism has characterized it ever since its origins with Deleuze and Guattari’s Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia.

The premise behind accelerationism, as Benjamin Noys points out in his excellent study Malign Velocities, tends to assess the predominant psychic disorders of capitalism: psychopathy, narcissistic personality disorder, schizophrenia, depression, hysteria, anxiety, etc. by intensifying them in order to transcend their limit. Michel Clouscard makes the important point that we must distinguish this naive idea of schizophrenia as Deleuze and Guattari ...