A Critique of Nick Land and Accelerationism

Nick Land is a English philosopher who has, in the past year, gained quite a bit of traction on the internet. He is a literal embodiment of the horseshoe theory; he has taken pessimistic, Schopenhauerian Marxism to its most extreme and ended up as a proponent of NRx. However, this conclusion is quite unfounded in evidence and oftentimes contradictory. While Land has many valid points on the impossibility of a true revolution, his solution to such is wrong, and often antithetical to what I view as a much better path.

Land is disillusioned to the point of disillusionment. He has abandoned a system commonly seen as utopian for one even more ignorant of current conditions. NRx is a society that is nearly impossible to achieve in the present day unless a major ideological shift is completed in both establishment politics and the general populous. While communism needs a similar change, the possibility of it, while still slim to the chance of near non-existence, is a good bit higher; communism can essentially be seen as a term of progression beyond a capitalist society. NRx can be seen, in simplest terms, as a regression from capitalism to something similar to (but not entirely) feudalistic capitalism.

Land is also, intentionally or unintentionally, advocating for ecocide. As he advocates for the most extreme acceleration of capitalism possible, he also advocates for what would ultimately destroy the environment. I see this as his goal, something just short of a pessimism so strong it’s omnicidal, however, even as someone very heavily influenced by pessimists such as Schopenhauer and Benatar I see this “solution” as undesirable and impossible. The goal of us pessimists should not be to kill off the human race and the Earth in a blaze of glory. Rather, we should advocate for a slow yet peaceful extinction of the human race through natural measures and the complete preservation of our planet.

This is not to say that Land does not have many vital points about the impossibility of revolution. I fully agree with his assertion that a communist utopia will never be created in any of our lifetimes, if ever. However, he is simply taking this in the wrong direction. He is being a hypocrite in his solution.

Land deserves academic attention for his ideas and his work with the Cybernetic Culture Research Unit, his interpretations of philosophers like Deleuze and Lyotard, and many of his leftist works. But besides this his work has largely and totally been an unsatisfactory failure. Accelerationism, while predicting our modern future and gaining popularity as of late, is losing its validity slowly but surely, and Land can be easily linked as the main cause of this. Accelerationism should be at the very least reworked, and at the worst disregarded. It is simply an unfounded ideology based off of pessimistic utopianism.