It is a moment of pause for the theory of accelerationism. The burst of self-identifying activity over the last few years has cycled into something of a bear market, even as the conceptual toolbox is more powerful than ever in navigating our present. Theorists of acceleration are connoisseurs of vertigo, and will insist any snapshot of their thought is dead or out of date. This taxonomy is both. But it’s short.

 

Accelerationism: ACC: Capitalism is a feedback cycle of increasing spiraling power, which it is not possible to comprehend or control from within, and therefore at all. The complexity of this alien system includes hyperstitions and reverse causalities. Capitalism melts and reassembles everything. Fictions become realities through their articulation. Future structures assemble themselves through their conditioning of the past.

Texts:

• Deleuze and Guattari, Anti-Oedipus; A Thousand Plateaus
• Land, Meltdown
• CCRU – Writings 1997-2003
• Collapse Journal I-VIII

 

Right Accelerationism: R#ACC: Capitalism is modernity, science, intelligence. What is powerful in all these things is one identical force. What is best in the world is represented by this force, the product of sharpening by relentless competition, brutal empiricism and blind peer review, the butcher’s yard of evolution. Historically, it was possible to put a defensive brake on capitalism and intelligence. That possibility is fast receding or likely already gone, and was always undesirable. Ethically and therefore politically, we should align ourselves with the emancipation of the means of production. Artificial intelligence, genetic engineering, corporate microstates, and breeding a cyborg elite are all means for achieving this end.

Right accelerationism is entwined with the techno-capitalist thread of neoreaction.

Texts:

• Land, A Quick and Dirty Introduction to Accelerationism ; Re-Accelerationism
• Yarvin (Moldbug),  Patchwork, A Positive Vision 

 

Left Accelerationism: L#ACC: The tremendous productive power of capitalism is a world system that is impossible to fully control, but it may be harnessed and steered for progressive ends. Only with the wealth and productivity of capitalism has fully automated luxury gay space communism become possible, and now it is within reach it can be seized. Only through computational power can the relationship between Homo sapiens and its ecosystem be understood and balanced. The great corporations and financial structures of the early twenty-first century are themselves prototypes of platform planned economies leveraging enormous computational power to fulfill billions of needs and desires across society. By accelerating progressive technological invention, reinvigorating the domesticated industrial state as a platform state, nationalizing data utilities, sharing dividends and redefining work, the system may be made sustainable and wealth shared with all according their need.

After a surge of activity, many left accelerationists rapidly swerved away from the name a few years ago. This was coincident with Srnicek and Williams’ book Inventing the Future, which is all about left accelerationism, without mentioning it once.

Texts:

• Fisher, Terminator vs Avatar 
• Williams and Srnicek, Manifesto for an Accelerationist Politics 
• #Accelerate Reader
• ANON, #ALTWOKE manifesto 

 

Unconditional Accelerationism: U#ACC: To erect any political program that pretends to steer, brake, or accelerate this system is folly and human-centric hubris. The system can be studied as a matter of fascination, and of survival. The only politics that makes sense is to embrace fragmentation and create a safe distance from centralized political power. A patchwork of small communities built across and within networks, societies and geographies are a means for some to survive and thrive. Many small ships can ride through a storm with a few losses, where one giant raft will be destroyed, dooming all.

Texts:

• Garton, Acceleration Without Conditions 
• Berger, Unconditional Acceleration and the Question of Praxis 
• Xenogoth, The Wyrd Sisters Bring Death To Leviathan 

 

Blaccelerationism: The separation of human and capital is a power structure shell game. Living capital, speculative value, and accumulated time is stored in the bodies of black already-inhuman (non)subjects.

Texts:

• Dean, Notes on Blaccelerationism

 

Gender Accelerationism: G#ACC: Everyone is becoming transsexual lesbian programmer cyborgs. Enjoy it.

Texts:

• NyxLand, Gender Acceleration: A Blackpaper 

 

Zero Accelerationism: Z#ACC: The world-system is accelerating off a cliff.

Texts:

• Meta-nomad, Z/ACC Primer 

 

Accelerating The Contradictions: Capitalism is riven with conflict and contradictions. Revolutionaries should accelerate this destructive process as it hastens the creation of a system beyond capitalism.

No modern accelerationist group has held this position (D/G: “Nothing ever died of contradictions!”), but it’s a common misunderstanding, or caricature, of Left Accelerationism.

Texts:

• Marx, On The Question of Free Trade 
• Wolfendale, So Accelerationism, what’s all that about? 

 

Other introductions: Meta-nomad has a more theory-soaked introduction to accelerationism, which teases out the rhizomatic cross-connections between these threads, and is a good springboard for those diving further down the rabbit hole.