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Accelerationism 8/9 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerationism reference science, encyclopedia 2026-05-05T14:56:05.593251+00:00 kb-cron

Aaron Bastani's Fully Automated Luxury Communism has also been noted as left-accelerationist, with Noys characterizing it as taking up the "call for utopian proposals" in Srnicek and Williams' Manifesto. Michael E. Gardiner notes Fully Automated Luxury Communism, PostCapitalism: A Guide to Our Future and The People's Republic of Walmart as united with left-accelerationism in the belief in detaching cybernetics from capitalism and using it towards liberatory goals. Alex Williams referred to Brassier and Negarestani as "the twin thinkers of epistemic accelerationism" in seeking to maximize rational capacity and enable the possibilities of reason. Sam Sellar and David R. Cole characterize their work, along with Wolfendale's, as seeking the acceleration of rationalist modernity and technological development, distinct from capitalism. In particular, Brassier's Prometheanism accelerates normative rationalism as the basis for human transformation. They note Mackay and Avanessian's explanation of Negarestani:Acceleration takes place when and in so far as the human repeatedly affirms its commitment to being impersonally piloted, not by capital, but by a [rational] program which demands that it cede control to collective revision, and which draws it towards an inhuman future that will prove to have 'always' been the meaning of the human.Trafford and Wolfendale find the philosophical underpinnings of left-accelerationism in the work of Brassier, Negarestani, and Benedict Singleton, with Srnicek and Williams exploring its more immediate political consequences. Fluss and Frim characterize Brassier works such as Nihil Unbound and Liquidate Man Once and for All; as well as Negarestani's The Labour of the Inhuman, Cyclonopedia and Intelligence and Spirit; as providing a philosophical basis for left-accelerationism. Capitalism is viewed as promising progress while in fact exerting control and only providing inconsequential progress in the form of commodities to purchase. This requires biopower and a conservative view of the human, with inhumanism being viewed as a revolutionary force which promotes the constant upgrading and redefining of humanity. However, Fluss and Frim criticize this for discarding individual human welfare in favor of a larger system of constant technological revision, mirroring Land and making room for human subjugation rather than revolution; they state "It requires no special prescience to see that the 'liquidation of the human' is a prelude to the 'liquidation of human beings.'" Noys posits a tension between left-accelerationism's liberatory tones and the reactionary and elitist tones of its influences such as Nietzsche, stating "the risk of a technocratic elitism becomes evident, as well as the risk we will lose the agency we have gained by aiming to join with the chaotic flux of material and technological forces."

==== Xenofeminism ==== Feminist collective Laboria Cuboniks advocated for the use of technology for gender abolition in "Xenofeminism: A Politics for Alienation", which has been characterized as a form of left-accelerationism. Noys states "The relationship to accelerationism is not direct or discussed in detail, but certainly similar points of reference are shared in a rupture with naturalism and an integration of technology as a site of liberation". Fluss and Frim state "Xenofeminists seek to undermine what they perceive as the basis for essentialism itself: Nature." They note that xenofeminists criticize the sex-gender distinction as still taking biological sex to be natural and immutable, instead rejecting the givenness of biological sex as well. Trafford and Wolfendale attribute Xenofeminism's influences to technofeminism and cyberfeminism in the work of Shulamith Firestone, Sadie Plant, and VNS Matrix.

=== Effective accelerationism === Effective accelerationism (abbreviated to e/acc) takes influence from effective altruism, a movement to maximize good by calculating what actions provide the greatest overall/global good and prioritizing those rather than focusing on personal interest/proximity. Proponents advocate for unrestricted technological progress "at all costs", believing that artificial general intelligence will solve universal human problems like poverty, war and climate change, while deceleration and stagnation of technology is a greater risk than any posed by AI. This contrasts with effective altruism (referred to as longtermism to distinguish from e/acc), which tends to consider uncontrolled AI to be the greater existential risk and advocates for government regulation and careful alignment.