this post was submitted on 12 Aug 2025
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As an anarchist who is opposed to accelerationionism, it's frustrating how many people see it as an ideology that wants the state to immediately collapse.
I've had multiple arguments with liberals who say I'm not a real anarchist because I want pragmatic short-term progressive solutions like Medicare for all.
So yeah, I'm not wanting to condemn people to death for my ideology. Got me! (Not you, PugJesus)
History teaches us that collapse and revolution rarely goes well for anyone.
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I like to point people to Desert by Anonymous. It talks about how the plan should really be waiting for the State to recede as collapse progresses, and finding the spaces left behind where theres room for mutual aid based organization.
I like that. It turns your attention to what's in front of you, rather than waiting for the mythical Revolution we'll likely never see.
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/anonymous-desert
Ever hear about love? I checked and turns out its for everyone, can you believe it?
💜💜💜
I always like to (admittedly, pedantically) point out that if anarchism is defined purely etymologically, all it means is "without hierarchy".
My personal interpretation is that it doesn't necessarily imply a lack of a state, democratic or representative government, or jurisprudence of established law; it only implies a lack of arbitrary and tiered authority or power.
Anarchists are incredibly caricatured in the popular mind. Curious though, how would you describe your pragmatic short-term progressive anarchism? Reformist Anarchism? Incrementalist?
I don't know of a name for it, but it's fairly common in anarchistic thought as far as I can tell.
Mutual aid is really the bedrock principle in anarchism, so setting up structures for it where we can is important even if they are imperfect.
I’d much rather build systems that provide for people so we can all watch the old world crumble from a comfy chair with plenty of snacks.
Who am I kidding, I don’t want a society; people are too troublesome.
I'm of two minds about it. On the one hand I am tired of the unnecessary suffering that is common in the richest country in the history of the Earth. A step in the right direction is better than nothing.
Or is it? Every time we increase the social safety net, our righteous anger subsides. We stop boycotting, protesting, striking, organizing, etc, because faith in the system is restored. And then we delay the necessary work of dismantling this system that is based on greed and exploitation. Inevitably, the oligarchs bide their time and then strip away rights and economic opportunity as soon as we stop paying attention.
"Things getting worse will make people swap to MY side!" has a terrible track record.
Sure, but this doesn't address the problem I'm noting above. We fought hard for worker's rights, so they granted them and then dismantled/neutered the unions. Public outcry forced the fracture of Standard Oil and now the monopolies are worse than ever. It's one step forward and two steps back.
Because you have to keep taking steps forward. The fight against greed and corruption will never end, the other side is going to keep swinging forever. We don't get to rest on past achievements, we constantly have to defend them and push for more.
And the thing is, if you can't rally the people to vote for incremental change, revolution is a non-starter.
I agree with everything in the first paragraph. However, every time we fight against the oligarchs they learn better strategies to divide and conquer us. We are a much more isolated people than we were 50 or 100 years ago. Individualism and consumerism are ubiquitous while our sense of community is virtually non-existent. So people feel powerless to confront fascism because no one can do it alone. This isolation is arguably by design.
Time will tell. But there are historical examples, in other countries, of the corruption and hypocrisy being flaunted so blatantly that the people rise up and demand sweeping systemic changes.
In the U.S., we have forgotten our collective power. Our peaceful protests are ignored and even destruction of property is consider taboo. We haven't seen wide-spread violent dissent since the Civil Rights / Anti-Vietnam movements. Conditions were ripe then, but the government deployed a combination of modest concessions and state enacted violence: carrot and stick. The way this Trump term is going, they might not give us the carrot next time.
It's never been a better time to make it virtually existent. Look at us, here, now, puzzling out the best course of action. The information Age is the perfect opportunity to build robust social networks that transcend borders. But until we can cooperate and coordinate here in the most casual and forgiving circumstances, how are we going to coordinate collective power any other way?
Accelerationism is a dangerous game of chicken with lots of collateral damage. I do not desire a pathway that rolls the dice on totalitarianism, even if you succeed countless of people will be chewed up by the acceleration. It's the ideology of the privileged, who are betting they won't be one of the ones chewed up.
We do still have the ballot box, we just have to use it in a coordinated way. We also have our workplace, which we can take steps to unionize and socialize. We should be arming ourselves, this administration actually changed my mind on the second amendment.
Is it not the ideology of the privileged to maintain the status quo? Every second it is allowed to exist people are dying from easily preventable causes. You play chicken with their lives as you gamble on the chance to make 1 million small changes vs 1 big change.
That doesn't seem to be what is happening. It is the richest, most powerful people who are fanning the flames of accelerationism in the form of owning or funding radical/divisive/violent propaganda like is seen on Fox News (and worse), or online on X or Facebook (and worse). Besides the divisive rhetoric intended to make people crave violence against their slightly different skin colored neighbor, climate change denialism could also be argued to be accelerationist as well.
They all assume their power will let them come out on top -which has been mostly true historically. The World Wars both made a lot of rich people very rich, as did both the formation AND the collapse of the Soviet Union. Plenty of small-scale examples too of despots making people very rich.
I didn't say anything about maintaining the status quo, my statements were about Accelerationism. How many seconds is it going to take to coordinate the revolution? How many small changes can be made in the time it takes to reverse a century of anti-left propaganda, inspire a population to abandon the system they currently rely on, and coordinate the action necessary to replace it? More than a million, I'd say.
Bookchin gang unite.