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what's the quote from?i looked it up meeself, it's The Man Who Was Thursday
Sometimes I think accelerationism is a fantasy for people who would have a chance to survive it. Like it reminds me of when people ask “What time in history would you like to visit if you could?” and everyone who isn’t a cishet white dude knows they would be screwed no matter what they picked. Its burning today’s acceptable targets as a sacrifice for your own gain.
I remember someone I worked with asking me and another guy if we'd want to live in the old west, I immediately looked over to the black guy as he said "Nah man... I'm pretty sure I still would have been a slave."
Things are accelerating if we want them to or not. Multipolar capital is becoming a direct threat to American geopolitical hegemony and our entire domestic capital infrastructure is set up around that domination.
And it will always be harder on the poor, but thinking that cost of living crisises and material struggle aren't part of the radicalization process is not Marxist in theory. You can believe whatever you want though, this ain't a party. However, where the breaks will be are at the periphery of capital accumulation, as they have historically been. Depending on the state of industrial capital in the future here, the Midwest is far more likely to become radicalized in one way or another than the coasts, even if they have the larger organizations.
That being said, I've had to talk a couple self-proclaimed MLM and anarchist off the fucking off to the 'third-world' cliff, because not everyone is as lucky as Brace Belden. So, what is to be done? Well, keep your friends and family close and make sure you have what you need to survive what you can. Organize what you can but keep up your op-sec cause it's dangerous out there. The sad part is that even if war breaks out, you will still have to go to work, just ask the Ukrainians.
Make no mistake for my argument, our goal is not to accelerate, it is to survive the acceleration. It will be the third worlds job (where they have the military power), to actually properly build socialism. If socialism does survive (in the west), it will survive in the Midwest, just as if barbarism begins, it will begin in the Midwest, but barbarism is much more likely.
Collapse is not a good or bad thing, it just is a thing that is happening. That being said, while I do think it is 'bad' thing, I more think it is a 'funny' thing because it is entirely preventable by the powers that be with just abit of economic planning, but we are wholely structurally unable to address it because of how removed the ruling class is from actual labor. We have privatized our economy and specialized our tasks so much that ruling class doesn't even have to actually do anything anymore, nor even have the empathy to understand that anythng is wrong.
or should we grab the haft and pull ourselves down to face the inevitable on something resembling our own terms?
Of all the problems with accelerationism, maybe the biggest is thinking we would be able to jump off the cliff "on something resembling our own terms."
Right now, the left (at least in the U.S.) is not large enough or organized enough to take advantage of an upheaval of society. We don't have our own terms because "we" doesn't really exist at scale. There's at least an argument for pushing the issue when you're strong enough to possibly win, but we have a lot more work to do before we get to that point.
Also I think this definition of Acceleration just came from Zizek saying he would vote for trump to shake things up.
Normal left acceleration seems to be mostly about thinking the technological or social changes under capitalism have been good and should continue at faster rate after capitalism. The Accelerate Manifesto’s action points are basically make left think tanks, reform media to be under more popular control, and organize the working class.
Right wingers use the term to just mean doing terrorism.
So I don’t know what pulling yourself down onto the shaft means. Voting R instead of D?
The collapse of the United States would bring about an almost immediate end to American foreign interventions and interference, which are, as we speak, doing incalculable damage and ending lives in the global south. Not to mention an end to American foreign policy trying to stir up WWIII, and American economic and social imperialism.
This is like asking "what about the German worker?!" in a discussion about how best to destroy Nazi Germany.
On the one hand, it is bad that vulnerable people will suffer in the collapse. On the other hand, for fucks sake think about all the suffering that is being caused by America continuing to exist in its current form.
I don't see anyone saying anyone should be thrown under the bus here. the word is used too loosely to denote a particular tactic or ideology. its detractors (usually) understand it as the nonsensical belief that a descent into fascism will somehow overflow the buffer of history and drop us into full communism. this belief is often ascribed to anyone who tries to give an honest accounting, based on the political and economic developments since the collapse of world communism, of what the future does hold for us and our dreams, and tries to reason about What Is To Be Done.
I doubt anyone wants to throw any other leftists under the bus, but I think OP's argument is that this is how accelerationism would play out.
Accelerationist thought, at least in my case, is a product of massive frustration. We live in a society that seems unable to do anything but slowly decline, no matter what. That resists progress and positive change at all costs. I'm not saying positive change or revolution is impossible, but fuck if it doesn't very much feel like it a lot of the time. The logical consequence of that feeling is wanting to shorten the length of the current awfulness by as much as possible by forcing things to collapse in on themselves, and let some kind of change happen, just hopefully a good one.
I'm not saying it's a good argument or position, I agree changing things in a positive direction is a much better option, but I think it's hard to outright refute the legitimacy of its existence when we live in a world of such hopelessness.
Because in current society, change and 'building power' feel like hopeless goals. In a society that collapses in on itself, the outcomes are very unpredictable, they may or may not get worse, but the potential for change and building a hopeful future exists. I don't think it's wildly unreasonable to think we have no hope in the world as it is now, but an unknown, different one could (but certainly, might not) have more room for positive change.
Even if collapse is worse in all possible outcomes, it's still impossible to tell whether some outcomes might have more potential for positive change. e.g. a horrible slavery feudalist society might have more suffering, but it might, from that point, be easier to build a revolution to go a better path because a lot more treats are missing.
And I admire the optimism, but it's a mindset I struggle to share. If making meaningful change is absolutely impossible, then I ain't gonna waste my time and effort.
I think too many people, including some here, have underestimated Biden. We need to call into question to what extend is Biden playing up his senility in order to get people to lower their guard.
For the life of me I cannot understand this post. Best I can tell you saw a bad take on Hexbear dot net, but instead of just responding to your comrade and educating them, you clutched your pearls and effort-posted as if that take was some sort of site-wide problem?
This is Hexbear. You are going to read bad takes. Just explain to your comrade why they're wrong and keep it moving.
everyone who isn’t a cishet white dude knows they would be screwed no matter what they picked.
That's not quite true, and falls into the same "recent history what all of history looks like" fallacy as reactionaries, who think about the early-mid 20th century as a norm that everything always "used to be like".
Certainly, there has been lots of oppression along gender and ethnic lines all across human history, but the category of homosexuality as we think of it didn't really come into being until the 1800s, racial hierarchy did not exist until the Columbian Exchange gave it a reason to, and peoples on every continent had various ways that they valued people of all genders (granted, this was more likely among hunter-gatherers than fully settled or state societies).
It's still true that modern-day hierarchies are going nowhere and this would make collapse particularly dangerous for anyone of a marginalized identity. And accelerationism is still a completely irresponsible position for many other reasons as well.
The crises are going to happen and we need to prepare for them. Adaptability is going to be a strength, and diversity is a multiplier for this.
