Blog: Neocon etc.
The speed with which Meta went from accelerationist to conservative to neoconservative is breathtaking. https://t.co/oN150ypH7y
— Shanzhai Max Castle (@realMaxCastle) January 16, 2018
I am, according to Max Castle, a neoconservative. I disagree. But the thread offered some interesting conversation, between me, Castle and Edmund Berger. My premise here is that someone can hold, for lack of a better description, a practical, non-abstract, political position (mine is…), whilst simultaneously support abstract underlying theories such as accelerationism. I comment that the origination of Deleuze & Guattari’s “accelerate the process” (Anti-Oedipus) is from Nietzsche’s The Will to Power, and is written of in relation to the levelling of European man, hierarchy and justification (in the grand sense). Berger notes the depoliticization and anti-politicization that results from a Deleuzoguattarian deterritorialization and decoding of flows.
Berger notes that any political organization, organ being the problematic here, is ultimately going to stop the decoding of flows, and that via D&G man’s existence is in relation to techno-industrial production as opposed to political process, and such is subordinated by the process; or Land’s ‘means-end’:
“Like for Marx capital turns the capitalist into an agent of itself, and for D&G in the historical epoch of capitalism the state loses power and is transformed into a mechanism for assisting in realizing capitalist axiomatics. So there can’t be a political autonomy or a distinctive set of values, because capital rises up and becomes the driver.” – Edmund Berger.
Berger makes it clear, and such should be obvious to anyone involved within the sphere: “Saying that we can get at deterritorializing/decoding through the majoritarian political process reminds me of many horrid hours wasted in my more activisty-lefty days” – Berger
Arguments of identity & praxis aside (as they’re getting dull, fast), my point still stands that deterritorialization and the decoding of flows are and exist and whatever pace, man may interact and counter a flow any time or place, it is only that doing so via any political institution negates the entire process entirely. That is, unless one does so as an agent of acceleration, that is, a will accelerator of capitalism. Utilizing capitalism’s inherent economically emancipative functions as a means to accelerate the system out of itself. We end on a polite note, referencing Marx’s call to vote for free trade.
That said, the problem here, which should be plain as day by now, is said vote, already there is the implication of a system. This is of course where Land’s Exit comes in. My point being, cannot one utilize the escalator that is capitalism to speed up their process of heading towards the exit, as opposed to slowly using the stairs. As long as one is doing so knowingly…
Pleasant convo, Berger.
I’d love for your opinion on this in regards to our convo: Experiment.
Now, the Neoconservative thing…I read a lot of Hitchens when I was younger, some of it must still be lingering in the back of my mind…
Also, check out Neural Shroud. This was a nice little piece, I can’t help but feel that it falls under the ambiguous R/Acc abstraction of everything as a form of capital, in that not only is your avacado toast capital, but the process unto which you decided to even consider avacado is capital, a never-ending consumption/production cycle…