Accelerationism is too optimistic

“From the ashes, a fire shall be woken, A light from the shadows shall spring…” – J.R.R. Tolkien

Do you ever get the urge to just burn something down and start from scratch. Maybe it’s an essay you’re writing, or a painting, even some relationships can give you this urge. Sometimes this urge can be a great push for change, and gives us a chance to radically change for the better. Accelerationism takes this principle and applies it to politics. Essentially the idea is that our word/country is fraught with issues, and instead of incremental improvement (which many argue placates people) we should allow and or speed up the degradation of the system until people are forced to act. Essentially, we need to give people a reason to fight for change, and being miserable with less to lose can help make that happen.

Typically accelerationism dovetails with revolutionaries, but it doesn’t have to. Some people are accelerationist towards just certain policies, while others want “viva la revolution”. While this policy has the potential to be effective most of the time the revolution never escapes people’s bedrooms. The essential formula is to have people lead a revolt against the current system and create their own after being forced into action by people either being apathetic, or actively malicious in policy prescriptions. For example, if you are someone who wants major housing reform you might want to look at the most detrimental house ownership practices, and encourage people to engage in those practices. If you hate consumerism you might try to convince people to buy as many things as possible to amplify the underlying misery that you posit it to cause. All of these and more can be yours, simply for the cost of other people.

Understandin Accelerationism

While at first it might seem to be a relatively simple premise, there are actually many schools of thought. First we should get an idea for some of the different “flavors” of accelerationism. This is worth doing to understand a few key points about the concept in general. However keep in mind these “flavors” are of my own concoction and not “official” in any capacity.

Malicious

Malicious accelerationism is concerned with causing harm actively. This might be blocking policies that would help people, to even actively harming people en-mass. It’s not intended to be subtle, it’s intended to be subterfuge against whatever system has been deemed corrupt. Electoral forms of malicious accelerationism would concern itself with purely political action. Convincing people to vote for the worst candidates and policies for example. However there is also a violent strain to this sort of accelerationism.

Often times this strain is made up of people with good intentions (then again it’s what the road to hell is paved with). Many people will do the “utilitarian calculus”¹ on their actions, and will go out of their way to harm people who want to do things “the slow way”. One example might be someone who wants to reduce housing cost in an area, so they break in to tons of peoples houses, and destroy their property. Likewise they might deface “value enhancers” like parks, playgrounds and storefronts to try to lower the property values in an area. The peak example of the violent forms of this would be the unabomber², and his manifesto against modern industrialized society³.

Positive

Positive accelerationism is a weird phenomenon to explain. Typically this is an electoral based accelerationism where the arguments are framed positively. The focus is mostly to avoid the harm, and instead focus on the good. For example you might find someone who is a positive accelerationist trying to convince people to strike. However the way they would do it is to spend time talking about it like it’s already happened. You might find them saying something like “After the strike happens Thursdays we’ll get a call next week to work it out with management”. Typically this is just a technique for recruiting people by convincing them to do things with consequences (striking), under the assumption it can only go positively. After all, it’s only your job you can lose 😉.

Apathetic

It is not quite as popular of a view, but it still is the case that some people choose accelerationism nihilistically. Their accelerationism is apathetic, not because they think it will help spark change, but because they think change is impossible. Nothing will ever change, not in any meaningful way, so we may as well just let everything burn like it’s going to eventually anyways. Personally I think this view is pathetic and cowardly. Accelerationism for a cause can at least be given the dignity of being misguided, instead nihilistic accelerationism not only serves no ends, but often is a black hole where good minds go to die.

Nihilism in general for a long time has been the “smart” mans cop out of discussions. In the case of nihilistic accelerationism it seems to be the case that the “enlightened” who go down this path “already know how political action plays out”. This is entirely vacuous. The overwhelming majority of people who fall into this belief system have never once made any effort for change, and never will. Hiding behind pseudointellectual justifications for the true problem, which is that change is difficult. Trying to make the world a better place (particularly when you’re unhappy) is hard. It typically requires selfless and thankless work, for little to no reward (and sometimes even derision).

The most common example of this is climate change, wherein there’s endless talks of it being “too late” ⁴ ⁵. Ironically even in the cited articles there is mention of hope, but most people don’t bother to go much past the headline. If you’re looking for a bit of reprieve from climate anxiety, there are some worthwhile facts⁶ that give a good bit of hope for a brighter future if people are willing to act. Apathy is easy, it’s quite literally the default state. Movement and change is not.

Common Critiques

You have likely realized I am very skeptical of accelerationism. I’m also very terse because I personally have seen it kill movements I think are important. Besides the semi-vitriolic definitions there are plenty of arguments to be made against accelerationism broadly. A few common ones being:

The people who can afford to engage in accelerationism often aren’t the ones who are primarily harmed by the outcomes
Accelerationists are arrogant enough to assume they can do the “correct calculus” on their decisions
It presumes multiple wrongs can in fact make a right

While all the above points I think are valid, I think there is a more interesting set of critiques that can be made. Specifically these claims built up to the more broad claim that it’s bad because it’s too optimistic.

Depressed optimism

The claim that accelerationism is optimistic seems to stand in stark contrast to everything I’ve said so far. Now you know why I think this is interesting to write about. I think there are 3 primary ways that accelerationism is actually dangerously optimistic:

It assumes that there won’t just be rubble when the smoke clears
It assumes that in an age of violence the people that will rise to power will be the ones you want being moral arbiters
It assumes that people can’t just be infinitely placated

Let’s explore all of these individually.

That’s a nice pile of ashes you got there

Many accelerationist actions (especially revolutionary ones) will always have high collateral damage. One of the assertions that underpins a lot of accelerationism is that there’s a threshold for which the people you oppose will back down. The IRA banked on that with the British government ⁷, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were intended as deterrents ⁸ ⁹ ¹⁰, and in these situations, the people got what they wanted, but this isn’t always the case. In order for the principle of harm leading to a better good, there is an implicit assumption that the people in power have something else they care about. In the two previous cases it’s a reverence for human life, and the safety of the countries, but what happens when this isn’t the case.

As he was losing WW2 Hitler sped up the death camps as he went out of power ¹¹. This was because his interests were purely ideological. It didn’t matter what happened to him or his forces, he wanted people dead. Martyrs will die before they concede, and many cultures would give up their children for the sake of tradition. In a world where we’re assuming there is always a stopping point accelerationists are far to optimistic that people in charge will back down. Would you want to play chicken with the Khmer Rouge¹² ¹³? How about someone from Jonestown¹⁴?

The preconception that people will act in ways you expect is a dangerous one. Particularly in political action where politicians tend towards psychopathy¹⁵. What happens when your “bad actions for the greater good”, end up with just a worse situation all around? or when people “lean-in” to despots because they seem outwardly better than working with you¹⁶? Or what happens when violence just begets more violence¹⁷ ¹⁸?

The sometimes good-bad Samaritan

Accelerationism will often have figureheads. People who stand valiantly at the precipice of real change, and who stand up when necessary. If someone is willing to do what they think is right, then they can’t be too bad, can they?

During the soviet revolution there were many sacrifices made on the Communists side to try to bring forth the revolution. The problem is that you can’t easily delineate between those who are interested in earnest improvement of peoples lives, and despots who just want power. Lenin while he was dying bemoaned the idea of Stalin as a leader ¹⁹. He warned about many of the things that would later come to fruition, assassinations ²⁰, greed, long story short Stalin was not good. Though many people would argue the cause he fought for was good. There are still plenty today who justify the deaths of the soviet people in the name of the “greater good” ²¹.

Even if we were to look back on Lenin himself, many of his actions were atrocious ²², and were all done in the name of “a better world”. Even those who may have seemed “good” at the start can become jaded over time. So I would argue in this case accelerationism is overly optimistic about the moral convictions one can maintain. Likewise given my previous point about political psychopathy ¹⁵ the likelihood of a virtuous leader is much less than a despot in disguise.

Netflix and chill me to oblivion

“A gramme is better than a damn,” said Lenina mechanically from behind her hands. “I wish I had my soma!” ”

Aldous Huxley, Brave new world²³

Brave new World was one of the most concerning books I’ve ever read. This is primarily because it is one of the more realistic accountings of a dystopia I could imagine. The characters take in copious amounts of drugs and sex as is mandated by the government. This is in order to placate the masses, and to keep people from the recognition of the flaws of their society:

…the World State’s motto, COMMUNITY, IDENTITY, STABILITY.

Aldous Huxley, Brave new world ²⁴

The key word being “stability”. In the society keeping this stable is paramount. A society of drug abusing sex addicts are much less likely to be openly hostile, and there are tons of incentives to not change something. Keeping people in a stupor is what’s important for the “greater good”, and as such it’s the stable thing to do (related). Many people assume that in situations of injustice they would be the ones to stand up. Believing themselves to be in the small minority of people who are bulwarks to the horrors of the world. Just in pure statistics it’s unlikely. Instead it’s much more likely that there are dozens of times a day you are actively taken advantage of, and probably don’t even consider it. Walking past injustice without a second thought.

Activism is often considered “whiny”, and people often wonder why others can’t see the issues right in front of their face. Therefore accelerationists would posit it needs to be amplified to make it obvious. But if you’re trying to get someone’s attention, by being more obnoxious, most people will just adapt around it. The Hedonic Treadmill ²⁵ is the idea that people can adapt to happiness. They will return to some baseline level, even after encountering significant improvements to their life. Therefore again I would say that accelerationism is optimistic because of it’s assumption that people cannot be infinitely placated.

Conclusion

Convincing people to fight for change is hard. It’s usually not glamorous, a lot of people will hate you for trying, and people opposed to you will hate you. This does not mean that you should give up, and/or be spiteful. There is a lot of political power people leave on the table, and even relatively small groups of people can make a massive impact in their local areas.

Mutual aid²⁶, city/district council meetings, reaching out to your representatives. Many people talk about these things, but ask yourself if you’ve ever actually done them. Not talked about them, or had others complain about it, but actually tried yourself. While it’s true a lot of change needs to happen systemically the reality is that enough individuals in a group can form a system. Taking that hard earned vitriol for problems, that animas for change, and drowning it in spiteful self-wallowing to briefly feel better is not the path forward.