Left Accelerationism
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Premise: The current state of things is headed towards collapse
But the idea is to "go (accelerate) ahead of the collapse and go to places unseen"
I think I had a slight misunderstanding before
You can understand the specifics from my tweets about "Accelerationism"
From "Capitalism" in the Anthropocene (Chapter 5: Escaping into Accelerationism)
As a premise, this book has a consistent argument that "humanity cannot survive under the current capitalist system"
"It is one of the ideologies that opposes it, called 'Accelerationism'."
However, it still has a critical view of Accelerationism
There is a movement to achieve Communism by further accelerating economic growth. This is "Left Accelerationism" (leftaccelerationism), which has gained support in Europe and the United States. Accelerationism pursues sustainable growth. It claims that in communism, which lies beyond the technological innovation of Capitalism, completely sustainable economic growth is possible. To raise cattle, a vast area of land is required, but what do we do? We can substitute it with lab-grown meat produced in factories. And what about diseases that afflict people? They can be solved through genetic engineering.
Is it a story about how expanding surplus to reproduction is not actually productive? nolimitakira.icon
However, optimistic predictions like those of Bastani are typical of the productivism that late Marx rejected. This is now called "ecomodernism". Ecomodernism is the idea of managing the earth thoroughly using technologies such as nuclear power and NET (see Chapter 2, Climate Keynesianism for new technologies that remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere). The goal is to manage nature for human survival rather than to coexist with nature by recognizing its limits. The Breakthrough Institute, mentioned in Chapter 2, promotes this ecomodernism. For example, French philosopher Bruno Latour defends ecomodernism, saying that we cannot abandon the "monster" of technology created by humanity. "This is something made by humans...!"
Accelerationism has repeatedly criticized the left since the collapse of the Cold War. The target has been environmental conservation movements such as organic farming, slow food, local production and consumption, and vegetarianism. Accelerationism criticizes these movements because they are inherently limited to local small-scale movements and therefore powerless against global capitalism.]
According to Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams, who also take an accelerationist stance, this kind of local resistance is called "folk politics". They would say that degrowth is also a typical example of "folk politics".