[green, speaking, looking smug]
Okay, hear me out, here’s the plan…
We go full apathy, basically we let capitalism fully spiral out into fascism. Once it’s done, people will rise up and the system will collapse under its own weight. From its ashes, with our help, a better society will rise. This is how we win.
[we now see that green is tied up in front of a bleak wall, along with a group of other people, being aimed at by a firing squad of characters in fascist uniforms]
[green, smiling] OK?
[blue, pissed] Dude…
Accelerationism isn’t just being apathetic, it’s actively making things worse. It’s voting for Trump because the DNC didn’t elect Bernie Sanders.
Lenin was much the same. He knew a revolution wouldn’t happen if things got better, so he did everything he could to make things as bad as humanly possible. When the provisional government came along, granted free speech rights and universal suffrage, Lenin was vehemently opposed to it, because you can’t have a communist revolution when stuff is going well. A stable government is not one you can overthrow.
When the provisional government came along, granted free speech rights and universal suffrage
The provisional goverment was unelected and self-appointed, arrested people for arguing in favor of refusing to fight in WWI, and after months of protests said they would allow women to vote whenever they got around to having an election but women couldn’t vote until 20 and men 18.
Lenin wasn’t opposed to the provisional government when it came along because he was in Germany and didn’t know how mad a lot of people were at the random gang of Chuck Schumers from the Tsarist government who had declared themselves in charge, ignoring the Soviets that were already forming an elected government, and spent months stalling their version of an election so they could keep the incredibly unpopular WWI going.
Lenin started opposing the provisional government after 20k awol marines with machine guns showed up at his office saying they hated it, he said ok and then spent a couple months writing a book to explain why the angry guys with guns have a point.
If he was trying to be accelerationist he would have just hyped up the marines and let them shoot everybody instead of following the path of least resistance to a stable government that could last 6 months without a coup.
A stable government is not one you can overthrow.
Governments (nations) are in their nature not stable. Governments can be overthrown at any moment. It is a question of how many are willing to participate, which is not that many.
because you can’t have a communist revolution when stuff is going well
Not Lenin’s reasoning, nor is it as a statement true. Revolutions have happened exactly at points where things were looking up, take the transitions that have happened in history where monarchies were superseded by the liberal state. It is not a cyclical trend where, oh no, we have some sort of downtrend in productivity or some other sort of crisis and then the magical revolution comes to save the day. Revolutions happen because systems are forced to adopt organisational structures that satisfy (novel) needs, not because of shittiness.
Revolutions happen because systems are forced to adopt organisational structures that satisfy (novel) needs
It’s just that somehow those novel needs are always coincidentally “people can’t afford bread”
Just as a counterexample: revolutions have been spurred on by the need to stop military conflicts and territories not advancing quickly enough relative to other countries. What you always see are demands by a section of people that evolve into movements, like that of capitalists to transform the peasant class and employ it.
Revolutions are not one-sided phenomena. They are not merely riots in the street carried out by the most impoverished. Capitalists themselves are moving beyond the demands that defined their class two hundred years ago. In the United States they are moving away from competition as a pervasive principle to very intentional centralisation. There has been a push to abandon antitrust legislation. For the individual capitalists this is needed and a logical step, but it fuels their own demise long term when it becomes a societal trend. You only need a comparatively tiny spark from below release the potential energy accrued by capital.
What you have in mind are certain narratives on the French revolution. Conversely I can ask why countries that experience famine or affordability crises don’t experience revolutions.
I think you forgot the part where the provisional government wanted to keep drafting people to feed into the pointless meat grinder of WWI, which Lenin opposed rather strongly.
It’s voting for Trump
Accelerationism is when you vote. And the more you vote, the faster things get
I voted for Biden and things did indeed get worse. Now we see that Trump was voted in and they are getting worse. Soon we will vote in a new Congress and then a new President and things will continue to get worse.
Thankfully I stopped voting after Biden, so my bad luck 🍀 has peaked.
PSA to all the “voters” out there. I no longer worry about politics because I know that things can only get worse. 😎
Thankfully I stopped voting after Biden, so my bad luck 🍀 has peaked.
I mean, you joke. But folks really do seem to believe there’s a karmic curse on people who “vote wrong”. That’s the entire theory of Leopards Eating Faces, anyway.
That’s just cause & effect.
Are things going to keep getting worse? Probably.
Do you need to vote if that’s the case? Not really, but it’s an external locus of control. You feel you have power because you got to choose who made things worse.
This isn’t even the stupidest point of accelerationism. That’s the assumption that your personal utopia will emerge from the ashes, instead of something much worse.
The simple fact of the matter is that there is no path to “perfect” which doesn’t track through an infinite amount of “better” first.
Reminds me of this meme:
Or this one:
I don’t think utopias are a bad idea in general, but if they somehow are only reachable by collapsing most of the current system before any groundwork can even be attempted… a form that can be developed in parallel and take over at some point makes much more sense.
Think about the transition and hopefully it doesn’t require nuclear war.
Obviously, we shouldn’t need to detail “villains bad” in media, but with so many of them having “from the ashes” plans, I’d like to see more heroes deconstructing their approach like this.
Yeah the take plays against their point and into the hands of fascists. A common retort from “capitalists” goes “well why doesn’t your economic system compete on the free market? If it’s so good it will rise to the top.” You believing your ideology will defacto rise from a blank slate after society collapses lends credence to that argument. (Which is flawed in so many ways)
people will rise up
The line in the sand as to what’s acceptable has been redrawn so many times, if the people haven’t risen up by now, they never will. You’re stuck with the rancid orange colostomy bag until he either pops his clogs, or chooses to leave.
Nope. Fascism is there to stay for the next decade regardless of what happens to Trump.
Oh, no. People will rise up eventually. It’s just a shame that most people turn out to be olympic athletes in mental gymnastics and delay the realization to the next generation(s).
Okay, but capitalism dystopia is not going to look like that. In real capitalism, that wall will be covered in advertisements and motivation posters.
No need to market to you when they simply extract your labour and rent and you buy the swill that is cheapest to you.
Advertisers will never go obsolete. They are too good at advertising themselves.
Marketing is more than just selling products, it is a form of social manipulation and conditioning in the constant bombardment of information. It keeps the people not only buying your products but conditioning them to think that they need your products in the first place.
Literally Ernst Thälmann. He said to let the Nazis take power, and then the whole world will see how incompetent they are, and then his communist party will surely rise up! But there are no prizes for guessing what happened to him in the end!
Wrong guy. Thallman gave a speech in Hamburg in May 1932 about the launch of the Antifa organization criticizing anybody thinking they can benefit from Hitler taking power and warning you can’t play with fascism. Then a book in the 1970s picked out where he’s quoting the idea he’s against and only quoted the quote trying to manufacture this convenient ironic twist where actually communists deserved to die in death camps.
The head of the SPD social democratic party paramilitary wing Reichsbanner gave a speech in February 1933 (right after Hitler took power, right before the Reichstag fire) and did actually say “after Hitler our turn” arguing it was good to let Hitler expand the military because the SPD would get a cool new army when they won the next election.
The candidate the social democrats wanted won and he’s the guy who appointed Hitler chancellor! There was a three way race between “literally Hitler,” “guy who will put Hitler into a position of power” and “not Hitler” (Thälmann) and somehow libs are still mad that “not Hitler” was on the ballot.
The social democrats were the ones with the brilliant plan of punching left in favor of a “center”-right coalition, and they actually won and got what they wanted and wound up in the camps as a direct result of it!
No prizes for guessing what happens when you trust the bourgeois parties to be an ally against fascism.
Who the fuck is downvoting this?
deleted by creator
Capitalists: take notes on what the Nazis did wrong and tiptoe around it
choked on a bone in a pie eating contest, which was weird because it was an apple pie?
After WW2 65 million people were dead and 50% of the boys and men in Germany were dead. Everyone loses with fascism
oh goodie. question that has absolutely no bearing on reality whatsoever: so in Austria and Germany there had to have been people who, before WW2, were crippled. I know war leaves people crippled but i’m curious as to the fate of those who were crippled before the war. No reason whatsoever ignore the cane and wheelchair and cabinet full of glue.
aw who am i kidding they’re gonna turn me into glue
Bad News Aktion T4 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aktion_T4
Governments that raise up against a totalitarian regime in anger rarely end up in a peaceful and prosperous place if they succeed, see France, Lybia, Rome, the Soviet Union/Russian Empire, China every time, Japan (under the shogunate), Egypt (Arab spring), Sudan, Somalia, Assyria (7th century BCE between 612 and 609 BCE), and so many more.
The real solution btw is just a better consensus mechanism in our electoral process in the form of STAR Voting.
It is quite literally that simple.
The lack of choice (as explained in Duverger’s Law) is what kills our politics and helps the media portray all political battles as us vs them and not “What shade out of a million shades of gray should this policy be?”.tl;dr - STAR Voting is quite literally a panacea for nearly all the extreme ills that plague our politics - even a large portion of “voting doesn’t matter so I won’t” apathy…because to vote “strategically” under STAR Voting is to just vote honestly and every vote matters. No revolution required - just a better electoral process. I’m happy to answer any questions.
Someone do a version of the comic with this guy’s comment as the text of the first panel, please.
Hah! Well I took the comic to mean that the accelerationist gets exactly what he wanted and pays for it in the end when things go to hell.
Thing is if we implemented what I’m talking about (which is literally just a law about how we vote…we already have legislation that does this…we just amend it) there would be no upheaval.
The electorate would vote more honestly.
Campaigns would become more positive.
News media would become more policy focused.
There would be no firing squad - just a return to normal policy-focused (not party-focused) politics.
It would actually be quite boring.First time?
Sure, but only if you naively believe that electoralism is an acceptable system. Many, many anarchists would vehemently disagree with you though.
Accelerationism is really dumb which is why it’s such a popular strawman.
Does someone have a different opinion? Well, it could be that different people have different ideas about how the world works as well as different priorities. But that’s all complicated and nuanced and forces you to contend with different perspectives. Instead, just assume that everyone has your perspective because it’s just inherently obvious to everyone, but some people are intentionally trying to make things worse because they’re stupid and evil.
Virtually no one is an actual accelerationist.
well this is going to make you happy. i just read this comic and was coming here to post it :3
It does, thanks, that’s pretty cool ! 🥰
Once it’s done?
Facissm doesn’t end on its own. It needs to get pushed out.
This but socialism
There’s also climate accelerationism, which is least logically sound. If humans wipe themselves out, then the problem will be solved.
Potentially at the expense of all non-microbial life.
I don’t think that’s on the cards. Non-microbial life has survived 70% of the planet’s forests going up in flames as a consequence of a massive asteroid impact, and the ensuing years or possibly decade+ of planet-wide ash and dust clouds blocking out the sun. And that was just the latest mass extinction event.
You’re giving humanity far too much credit by assuming we’d be capable of anything comparable right now.
If we keep burning oil fields and melting the Arctic which releases massive methane emissions, then we could be pretty fucked. Maybe not all non-microbial life, but we could be headed toward lizard world again.
True, but that is part of the natural order. At the end of the day, humans are just another parasitic and unchecked species that is probably going to learn about their own environmental limits the hard way.
The problem is capitalism. Don’t make it about humans as a species when there are countless counter examples we can learn from
The problem is capitalism.
The Soviets were shit on environmentalism for a long time. We didn’t see a serious environmental movement in China until the early 2000s. We’ve never really seen one in the USSR, prior to its collapse.
The alternative to Capitalism is not necessarily whatever the fuck the Soviets’ idea of Communism was.
“Capitalism caused all these ecological problems”
“Okay what about the same problems occurring outside of a capitalist framework”
“Those don’t count”
Shrug
You’ve got to move beyond the ideological and address the material. Ecological harm isn’t predicated on privatized profit.
“I’m sick, my covid test is positive. I’m staying at home.”
“Actually, noro virus has similar symptoms. The problem isn’t covid.”
Shrug
True. That’s not what I had in mind when I talked about alternatives.
It’s not about humans as a species. Capitalism is definitely a driving factor, but this is far from the first time a species has developed maladaptive tendencies that led to ecological destabilization. I am not saying it’s good, but it is not a uniquely human phenomenon by any means.
True, just look at what they are finding out about ancient South American society in the Amazon. Apparently, at one point humans nearly wiped out most of the Amazon rainforest to have gigantic, almost New York sized metropolitan cities.
The problem is about greed and corruption. Communism doesn’t fix that.
The problem is about greed and corruption.
And a culture that reinforces it.
Communism doesn’t fix that.
If you are talking about Bolshevism, I agree.
Even parasites are important to the environment. Also, if you wanna be dragged down to hell, don’t pull us with you.
Not every species is perfectly adapted to the environment forever. Multiple mass extinctions due to ecological destabilization have proven that.
humans are just another parasitic and unchecked species that is probably going to learn about their own environmental limits the hard way.
Humans are the exception precisely because they can see the axe falling and move out of the way.
Outside of the fossil fuel dominated US/Saudi sphere, we’ve seen an enormous collaborated effort to curb greenhouse gases. Not everyone is ignoring the risks and consequences.
What we have the capitalist West is a conscious choice between short term profit and long term survival.
Yes, some have taken steps to move away from fossil fuels, but not all, and most scientists agree it is too late without negative emissions. I agree that it is largely driven by capitalism, and that in and of itself is a root cause of many problems with our species and should be done away with, but if it takes the entire world falling apart to make the realities undeniably apparent, then so be it. I’m not saying I want it to happen, just that that may be the only thing that can make the conditions for real lasting change.
most scientists agree it is too late
I mean, “too late” for what is always the question. Folks keep insisting The Apocalypse is next month. And then it doesn’t come, and we get a wave of “I guess nothing actually ever happens” during a new record heat wave.
if it takes the entire world falling apart to make the realities undeniably apparent, then so be it
The world is a big place. It’s not clear what “falling apart” is even supposed to look like.
I’m seeing people predicting a 4% drop in population because of a particularly harsh El Nino this year. I’ve been hearing about a looming economic crash that’s at least ten years overdue.
At the scope of a human life, all of this is still very gradual change. You’re going to be living in the middle of it and not realize how much has changed because you never knew subzero weather in St. Louis or glaciers in Montana were normal.
The talk is of some kind of sharp sudden drop, and not the further churn of a 30,000 year old global extinction event.
When did I say anything about it being rapid or sudden change? Climate change is slow, and the effects are felt over decades. I am fully aware of this, and just because the effects are akin to boiling a frog, it does not mean that the ultimate effects will not be devastating.
I’m fine with the logic of a species going extinct because they destroyed their own ecosystem, but intentionally accelerating that process is what I can only describe as evil. It’s doing massive harm for no benefit. It won’t save the planet’s current inhabitants from further damage; the real motivation is genocide against humans.
There’s pretty much no evidence we will wipe ourselves “out” through climate change.
Really really fuck ourselves over? Sure. But it’s not going to kill literally everyone.
We have to figure out how to live together with the planet one way or another, and one day.
That’s even more of a case for it then. If the truth about climate destabilization is undeniable and happening in front of our eyes, maybe we will finally do something about it. Humans seem to not really give a shit about things until it directly affects their daily lives.
There’s also climate accelerationism
Trump has done more to curb emissions with the closing of Hormuz than the last five presidents combined.
Yea, sure, by instigating the bombing of oil fields and refineries, instantly burning hundreds of millions of barrels of oil into the atmosphere. Definitely reducing emissions…
Also, petrochemicals are a requirement for any sort of transition to alternatives. Humanity has been binging for nearly two centuries on free energy through hard oil dependence.
If we don’t tirate off of that the shock will (functionally) kill us. The thought that halting that consumption will solve everything is like an extreme alcoholic thinking quitting cold turkey will work.
Only if you consider that the world revolves around humans.
That’s iike living in a house that is falling apart and saying if I just let it fall apart completely then I won’t need to fix the house
That’s a pretty over simplistic analogy. We didn’t build the ecosystem, and we are not going to be rebuilding anything if it collapses. Whatever is left will survive and adapt, and maybe some species smarter than us will evolve in a few hundred million years that will actually learn how to properly live in their environment without destroying it. Or if some humans do survive, they will be able to rebuild society based on an understanding of ecological limits.
And then we’ll just rebuild!
…on top of the pile of debris that was a home…and lacking assets.
