/lit/ - Literature

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Accelerationism is taking seriously the idea that capitalism has a functioning that will lead to its own collapse. This is most powerfully described in Marx and Nick Land, with the term being specifically associated with Nick.

In Marx, this functioning is described as (hegelian-style) internal contradictions. So, for instance, there is
1. a systematic need to have people spend money and generate capital
2. there is also a systematic need to pay people low wages and keep them in a cycle of consumption, ie, reduce the money they have to spend.
both of these are needed to exist simultaenously to keep capitalism alive, and this is supposedly inherently unsustainable.

In Land, this is described more like a feedback loop of runaway (deleuzian) desires.
To give an example: consider someone with a extreme sexual fetish. They didn't decide using their free will, it's just that their sexual desires slowly but surely positively reinforced them to a point where they NEED to be tied up, whipped and have hot turds shoved down their throat by fur-mommy.

Likewise, our desires have been stoked by capitalism so much that we have created external machines that powerfully manage our desires and behaviour. Examples of this includes stuff like, personalized ads, algorithmic trading, statistics/data that determine gov action, social networks which tell us who is doing well, the way organizations structure themselves naturally, and so on.
Since there are countless things external to mostly everyone that determine our desires and behaviors, this will inevitably overreach itself and lead capitalism to collapse.

The final piece of accelerationism is that these contradictions or runaway external desires are i n e v i t a b l e, so the best course of action is to a c c e l e r a t e this inevitability. Which means: support the right wing (which u as a leftist think will ruin society), support hedonism and consumerism, etc etc.

Personally, I think this is largely just suicidal nihilistic prophesying, but there is certainly something to learn from this line of thought