{"resolved":true,"match_type":"uuid","source_type":"original_book","book_id":"22405f8c-4831-4be7-9f62-07a7c0012c4f","title":"Malign Velocities Accelerationism and Capitalism","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9781782793007","requested_by":"printed_page","book":{"source_type":"original_book","book_id":"22405f8c-4831-4be7-9f62-07a7c0012c4f","id":"22405f8c-4831-4be7-9f62-07a7c0012c4f","uuid":"22405f8c-4831-4be7-9f62-07a7c0012c4f","title":"Malign Velocities Accelerationism and Capitalism","normalized_title":"malignvelocitiesaccelerationismandcapitalism","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9781782793007","isbns":["9781782793007"],"parsed":true,"ai_readable":true,"document_type":"book","page_count":91,"navigation_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/22405f8c-4831-4be7-9f62-07a7c0012c4f","title_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/title/Malign%20Velocities%20Accelerationism%20and%20Capitalism","fixed_page_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/22405f8c-4831-4be7-9f62-07a7c0012c4f/page/{printed_page}","path_api_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/book/22405f8c-4831-4be7-9f62-07a7c0012c4f/page/{printed_page}","read_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/22405f8c-4831-4be7-9f62-07a7c0012c4f","page_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/22405f8c-4831-4be7-9f62-07a7c0012c4f/page","search_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/22405f8c-4831-4be7-9f62-07a7c0012c4f/search"},"page":{"printed_page":2,"pdf_page":25,"physical_index":25,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"19362c22afaac1ca1588abfc92c3c179658b803cd4c1635e8e3f534276047e1e"},"chapter":"WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING ABOUT","content":"Leaps! Leaps! Leaps!: Communist Accelerationism\n\nThe Revolution has cut time in half.\n\nTrotsky, Literature and Revolution (1924)\n\nRobin Blackburn reports a story told to him when he worked for the Cuban Ministry of Soviet Trade in the 1960s. At an economic conference convened by the then-President Osvaldo Dorticós there was a discussion of a particular plan for a sector of the economy. One adviser argued that the aim must be to produce the maximum output for the minimum effort and expense. Dorticós emphatically disagreed: ‘This is not the revolutionary way,’ he insisted, ‘instead we aim to achieve the maximum of output with the maximum forces (fuerzas).’1 I want to explore this attitude as key to what I will call ‘communist accelerationism’. We have seen that accelerationism is usually a strategy that tries to ride the infinitely self-expanding value of capital. Communist accelerationism, of the kind practiced by what Chris Arthur calls ‘no-longer-existing socialism’,2 did something rather different. It tried to find a find a new and superior mode of production – one that could take the ‘best’ of capitalism, but reorganize it to go beyond the limits of a system driven by profit. In doing so it appealed, as we will see, to this ‘cavalry-charge method’, precisely to breakthrough to the future and, in doing so, to put human labor in charge.\n\nMy focus will be on the Russian Revolution, and the utopian dreams released as a result of that event. It’s a commonplace that the revolution unleashed a new imagination of time and the place of the worker. Susan Buck-Morss remarks that: ‘Machine culture, Soviet style, had its origins as the expression of a lack, so that even its brutality could be seen to possess a utopian quality.’3 In particular, as the later story from the later Cuban revolution illustrates, the factor of human labor was seen as key to accelerating beyond capital by bringing production under rational control.\n\nOf course, this is a story of failure, violence, and brutality. The extreme suffering caused by these attempts to develop and control production is evident, especially for the peasantry. While in no way wishing to minimize or condone this, we should note that ‘capital comes dripping from head to foot, from every pore, with blood and dirt’.4 The fact that capital’s processes of control and reproduction are often more ‘indirect’ obscures this historical violence from view, as does the fact that the victors write history. It was the desire to interrupt and develop a different form of production that drove the communist experiments.\n\n2","previous_page":1,"next_page":3}