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I'm a Marxist and I support accelerationism. From a Marxist framework it makes more sense than activism or other sort of "modern" ways of protesting capitalism.

I'm a Marxist and I support accelerationism. From a Marxist framework it makes more sense than activism or other sort of "modern" ways of protesting capitalism. I understand that capitalism is a necessary step for human development and there are no short cuts. Modern Marxism (mostly Marxism-Leninism) is sheer insanity especially those flavors with Third-worldism [1]. If you actually read Marx and later Marxists/sociologists and understood the basic, it's pretty easy to see that you cannot go to an underdeveloped society and bring "socialism". Socialism will naturally occur in an advanced capitalistic society, such as US, not in a third world country like Vietnam. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-Worldism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-Worldism

Miner49er 7y ago
What do you think of Climate Change and things like UBI? Acceleration makes sense on the surface, but it seems like Capitalism always adapts, with the current adaption being UBI. You have capitalists like Musk and Yang really pushing it, because it's a way to overcome the problem of automation and keep capitalism going. As Zizek put it, capitalism is "an undead vampire … it returns stronger and stronger." As for Climate Change, I suppose if we accelerate towards that we may come out on the other side without Capitalism, but there's no way to know, and it seems much of the damage done to the Earth will be irreversible. Seems like at this point accelerationism is a failed idea to me. Edit: just to add, I do think accelerationism maybe can work in electoral politics. Say for example the general's come to Biden vs Trump. In that case, an accelerationist approach is to vote for Trump, and I see an argument for that as a Hail Mary. Biden would keep the status quo and that's not enough to deal with climate change in time, Trump is more likely to break things and mess with the status quo and there would likely be more push back from the people against him then against Biden. But maybe Biden would be more responsive to any movement by the people? Idk, that's an example of where it could still be applied, but still seems questionable.
beat 7y ago
Does it really not work? It seems to have done okay in various contexts - Maoism in China and Ba'athism in the Arab world stand out to me. Maoism evolved and became very successful. Ba'athism mostly fell apart with the Arab Spring revolutions (the Syrian civil war is the last stand), but it lasted a long time and brought a lot of improvements to some really weak countries. Heck, consider Vietnam. Ho Chi Minh's revolution survived years of the most powerful nation on Earth dropping more firepower on the tiny nation than was dropped in all of WWII. They won, America left, and Vietnam is a modern communist state. Then again, I don't completely believe this... I'm kind of under the spell of Tolstoy right now, and tend to think that history just sort of happens, and we attribute the ebb and flow of it to the success or failure of individual leaders and their decisions, ignoring the broader forces. A lot of what led to success in these countries was going to happen regardless. preemptive edit: Yes, I know these were murderous dictatorships. No need to mansplain how wrong I am, guys.
- ozzyman700 7y ago
  What about history not just 'sort of happening' but instead, changes in the means of production lead social change. e.g. Industrial Revolution, Factorization of production. This is how a marxist views histories progression and I feel it is more applicable and holds up under backtesting than 'history just sort of happens' Mao was a man of the people, who led his country to greatness, no backpedaling necessary.
  - beat 7y ago
    Oh, I agree on changes to the means of production themselves (more broadly, technological changes) leading to massive changes in politics and society. But those are in the "sort of happens" category, as opposed to the Great Man theory, where social change is enacted by the decisions (good or bad) of powerful and important individuals. Read Marx, but read Tolstoy too. Tolstoy argued that we all have 20/20 hindsight, and we like to argue how well our individual ideas or pet theories explain stuff that, well, just happened. edit: I'm suddenly thinking of Bruce Sterling's novel Zeitgeist, a sort of magical-realism SF set around Y2K. When asked who would win the culture war between Islamic fundamentalism and Western secularism, the central character said "The side with the most televisions".
    - frabbit 7y ago
      See also Cliodynamics http://peterturchin.com/cliodynamics/ http://peterturchin.com/cliodynamics/

Miner49er 7y ago

What do you think of Climate Change and things like UBI? Acceleration makes sense on the surface, but it seems like Capitalism always adapts, with the current adaption being UBI. You have capitalists like Musk and Yang really pushing it, because it's a way to overcome the problem of automation and keep capitalism going. As Zizek put it, capitalism is "an undead vampire … it returns stronger and stronger." As for Climate Change, I suppose if we accelerate towards that we may come out on the other side without Capitalism, but there's no way to know, and it seems much of the damage done to the Earth will be irreversible. Seems like at this point accelerationism is a failed idea to me. Edit: just to add, I do think accelerationism maybe can work in electoral politics. Say for example the general's come to Biden vs Trump. In that case, an accelerationist approach is to vote for Trump, and I see an argument for that as a Hail Mary. Biden would keep the status quo and that's not enough to deal with climate change in time, Trump is more likely to break things and mess with the status quo and there would likely be more push back from the people against him then against Biden. But maybe Biden would be more responsive to any movement by the people? Idk, that's an example of where it could still be applied, but still seems questionable.

beat 7y ago

Does it really not work? It seems to have done okay in various contexts - Maoism in China and Ba'athism in the Arab world stand out to me. Maoism evolved and became very successful. Ba'athism mostly fell apart with the Arab Spring revolutions (the Syrian civil war is the last stand), but it lasted a long time and brought a lot of improvements to some really weak countries. Heck, consider Vietnam. Ho Chi Minh's revolution survived years of the most powerful nation on Earth dropping more firepower on the tiny nation than was dropped in all of WWII. They won, America left, and Vietnam is a modern communist state. Then again, I don't completely believe this... I'm kind of under the spell of Tolstoy right now, and tend to think that history just sort of happens, and we attribute the ebb and flow of it to the success or failure of individual leaders and their decisions, ignoring the broader forces. A lot of what led to success in these countries was going to happen regardless. preemptive edit: Yes, I know these were murderous dictatorships. No need to mansplain how wrong I am, guys.

ozzyman700 7y ago
What about history not just 'sort of happening' but instead, changes in the means of production lead social change. e.g. Industrial Revolution, Factorization of production. This is how a marxist views histories progression and I feel it is more applicable and holds up under backtesting than 'history just sort of happens' Mao was a man of the people, who led his country to greatness, no backpedaling necessary.
- beat 7y ago
  Oh, I agree on changes to the means of production themselves (more broadly, technological changes) leading to massive changes in politics and society. But those are in the "sort of happens" category, as opposed to the Great Man theory, where social change is enacted by the decisions (good or bad) of powerful and important individuals. Read Marx, but read Tolstoy too. Tolstoy argued that we all have 20/20 hindsight, and we like to argue how well our individual ideas or pet theories explain stuff that, well, just happened. edit: I'm suddenly thinking of Bruce Sterling's novel Zeitgeist, a sort of magical-realism SF set around Y2K. When asked who would win the culture war between Islamic fundamentalism and Western secularism, the central character said "The side with the most televisions".
  - frabbit 7y ago
    See also Cliodynamics http://peterturchin.com/cliodynamics/ http://peterturchin.com/cliodynamics/