Speed the Collapse?: Using Marx to Rethink the Politics of Accelerationism

Published online in 2013, the "Manifesto for an Accelerationist Politics" declares the need to accelerate through and beyond the hegemonic forces of neoliberal capitalism rather than resist them. By pushing current conditions to their limits, accelerationists suggest that capitalism itself will explode and a post-capitalist future can then be actualized. This paper offers a brief history of accelerationist political thought followed by a critical engagement with the MAP. I argue, using Marx, that accelerationist political strategy is problematic because it enforces a decoupling of accelerationist and critical forces, and thus offers a politically inept theory of the subject. If capitalism is to be overcome, the subject of capitalism must be overcome and a communist or post-capitalist subject must be forged through negation and class struggle.