Making things worse in the short term in the hope of bringing about a utopian society in the long term through social tension and misery… that sounds like a pretty evil philosophy to me. Ordinary people (non-communists) don’t care about some theoretical utopia, they want improvements to their quality of life now.

Am I missing something?

  • BlackLotus
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    4 years ago

    This feels like a binary interpretation of accelerationism, as if either every choice you make must support accelerationism or every choice you make must oppose it.

    There are instances, like in the US 2016 election, where arguments could have been made in support of accelerationism; however, the same person who might have advocated for accelerationism in that context, might oppose it in some other context, on a basis such as: both of the major party presidential candidate options appear virtually identical, but when voting for senators or members of the house of representatives, it could be argued that there is more harm reduction opportunity. A pure accelerationist might vote far right in all cases under the assumption that it will help accelerate capitalism’s collapse.

    I imagine most ‘accelerationists’ would have a nuanced take on these options rather than have an all or nothing approach.

    I won’t vote for Trump in 2020, but I think Trump is the better candidate for the long term, because libs won’t go back to brunch if he wins again (or refuses to step down) like they will if Biden gets elected. If libs go back to brunch, I believe that their (admittedly slow) radicalization will very quickly stop. This could be considered an accelerationist take.

    Edit: Sorry for the US centric take, it’s just one of the more obvious examples I can think of, and I know the politics there much better than the politics elsewhere.