Okay, questions? Can we just bring Nathan in to what he spoke to Alex? Nathan. Oh yeah, I have a question for Alex. I really like your presentation. Great. But my question is, you go through all these different sort of formalisms in a way that kind of neoliberal economics is drawn upon. I'm wondering for you, what kind of... I mean, Is economics itself an entirely subjective thing? Can you determine it entirely politically? Or would you take some side in terms of the strict formalism of classical economics or go towards this more side than epic stuff? I'd have to think on the hard about this. In fact, I was having an argument with someone today about precisely this question.
How much of positive economics do we need? I really, to be honest, don't actually have an answer I don't think all economics is evil and I don't even think that all aspects of neoclassical economics are evil in the same way that I think all aspects of neoliberalism are evil the fact that the majority of German neoliberal economists were incredibly brave against Hitler and so forth just shows that, I mean they were so I don't really have an answer for you but it's definitely something you've got to think about, the relationship between normative and positive in economics and what that means for politics. OK, Alex. Yeah, I thought it was a really, really interesting presentation, especially on the kind of the moralism
which Delanda has always in favour of meshworks. I could think that's probably more specifically apparent in the works that try and deal with economics. But I think in his work on history, he struck a more kind of ambivalent line between the sort of respective benefits of a kind of complicity between at certain stages of I think it was European historical development, hierarchical structures, and at other times more kind of mesh work situations. It's just more of an observation. What's your stance on that? I think the problem with Delander, you know, I'm a more expert on the history of neoliberalism than I'm an expert on his work,
but it just struck me as I read it, as people recommended it to me, how similar it was in many ways. I think one of my problems with Delander is that he really wants this historical, like, very strong historicism, this very strong notion that, like, things happen very contingently and so on. But then again, I mean, perhaps he deals with this, perhaps this stuff that I haven't read, but he has these two big things that are warring out between history and that seems to be an abstraction that I don't know if his historical mythology can sustain. Okay, Alberto then, Nina. This is a question for both of you, but I suppose it's a more general comment perhaps also relating to the last session, which is really about my sort of perplexity about exactly what this theoretical object,
or political object that is accelerationism might be. Because certainly in your presentation, Alexander, I take on board a lot of the... In fact, I thought you were far too generous to Delanda. But nevertheless, what strikes me about that kind of position is that in many ways it's... Delanda's position. Delanda's position. It's actually a kind of neo-organicist one. actually is not really particularly accelerationist, not particularly, you know, this is a man, after all, who thinks that species are individuals, which is kind of very peculiar. Yeah, I didn't really mention that. Claim, and, you know, and in his books on Deleuze, and, you know, there is, and in that kind of ideology of emergence, there is, it seems to me, a kind of new organism. So,
I can see the idea that there being these, let's say, potentials within a system that might be considered from outside as capitalist, but then is revealed to involve markets and anti-markets. I can see the idea that there are certain potentials, Third Italy being a very funny one, that could be refunctioned for other purposes. But that doesn't seem to involve the kind of analytical foundations of a notion of acceleration, which means that there is a process and you want it to go faster and it passes a threshold and then it's good, I mean, in some sense or another. that's you know and so I mean I was wondering in terms of your presentation Ben then like what you know where do you where do you think the differences are
I suppose between those positions that one might classify as classically acceleration is say a certain you know whether it's those moments in Leotard or or in Deleuze and Guattari or indeed in Nick Land and other takes which are you know, might be anti-Marxist, might be whatever, but aren't necessarily kind of accelerations. I mean, it's just that I don't, it seems that there has to be something about, well, you know, speed and acceleration, and it doesn't seem to be present in something like the Landis. I'm curious about, like, what the field of these positions is, but. Really quickly, with regard to the first point about organicism, like, one of the things that I kind of wanted to say that perhaps didn't get across is that, is that kind of
these terms like organic or machinic have been used throughout history for completely contraposed political stances. So Hayek uses organicism, that's why capitalism is great. Whereas in the 19th century, the neoclassical people were saying capitalism is great because it's machinic. And with regards to Delanda, I think that he does have a kind of notion of speed when it's about information. you know it's about the reason why he thinks that market in the north of Italy works so well is that as well as being you know they had the first really good network computers and therefore information could be and you see this in sorry in England stuff about like really very very fast information slow it's really nepotism rather than computers but yeah but so I do think there is that
tendency in D'Alander as well when he starts waffling on about the internet I mean, I think there are definite accelerationists, so Lyotard, Deleuze and Guattari at that point in the 1970s, there's some in Bath, Bodley, and Pleasure of the Text, Bolgiart. But then there's a kind of backing away, which people have talked about, which I see as a political reaction to the complete failure of that programme. They realise they were outflanked by neoliberalism, so they retreat into various forms of slowing down or affirmations of total alterity. and then there's a resurgence in Nick Land's work
based on the collapse of actually existing communism the cybernetic moment this seeming release of productive forces also argues how Balakrishnan does Jameson gets sucked into this and then a weird moment to me I seem to restate this thesis in the present moment so there are actually people who state it directly and then there are kind of penumbral positions that seem to me to kind of inhabit some of those features so Russian futurists or Italian futurists around projects modernization of originary accumulation for socialism certain forms of neoliberalism what someone called amusingly now is
staturism that works staturism in its now space you know this is what I mean this was the thing the first I've been anti accelerationist for a long time as they always joke, no one listened to me, because there was no way to communicate and no one would have listened anyway. But in the emergence of Nick Land's work, I already regarded it as a Deleuzean Thatcherism, because if I had one political position, that's a horror and hatred of Thatcherism. So I thought it was a Deleuzean Thatcherism, and reading the kind of text by the New Right, especially one by Maurice Cowling, who is the kind of arch figure of evil, really. He talks about Thatcherism and his Maoist faith and the kind of proliferation of new right thinking. So I thought there's a very strong kind of congruence. And I think
there's also congruences in Latour. Latour is completely puerile model of let's not critique, let's just add to things. A way to assess whether something is good is whether it adds to the richness of the world. Something bad is something that subtracts. Stephen Fuller's actually done some quite interesting work on science studies and the way that it was part of a certain programme implemented by the government to avoid having certain left-wing perspectives within the academy. So they basically stopped funding people who want to criticise capitalism and started funding science studies because they felt it was neutral. It's an easy paper to get Stephen Fuller, the guy who loves intelligent design,
in that guy. But he's good on this. He's quite good on this. Sorry, I won't run on. Lino then. Yeah, this is a general question that picks up on something that Ben mentioned, which is really, I'm trying to work out what the role of labour or work is in the accelerationist project, because I realise there's a sort of strand of this which is, you know, if the only subject of history is capital and you can say, well, we can see this in Pochettone, we can see it in elements of accelerationism and so on, and that labour is a kind of outmoded way of thinking about human relation to everyday life and so on. Because in a way, I mean there's a sort of aesthetic element of this which is that talking about labour and work is unsexy, you don't want to talk about the limits of the working day, you don't want to talk about sleep,
and I really think there's this kind of strong element in accelerationism which is about not sleeping, You know, speed is, as you said, both figurative and a practical object. And, you know, which links it back to kind of futurist sort of disgust and distaste for the body. You know, the body that needs to sleep, the body that needs to eat pasta and, you know, all this. And I suppose this kind of, suppose, this scandalous Leotard quote about people enjoying their kind of exploitation of the workers enjoying this kind of terrible work. Is this simply a sort of part of this hyper-accentised critique of the left,
the left celebration of the working class, the left celebration of, you know, a defence of the proletariat? Or is there a more serious point about what work is or what it's become? for the Accelerationist project? What is work for an Accelerationist? Is it still a useful category? Reading the text, the kind of work that they seem to think a lot of most people do is very much immaterial labour and computer work, call centre work and this kind of thing. So I would say they want to get rid of this notion of exploitation.
I don't really think they have a figure in it, but it would be someone sitting at a computer, data entry, that would be the kind of worker they have. But anyone who's done those jobs knows how, for want of a better word, dehumanising they are and how tiring they are and how the rest of it. And how conforming they are, you're in your little box with your head and you've got certain ways you have to speak. You've got your process laid out for you of how to respond to customer complaints. You can't be a worker with any freedom to even call your own shots. If you phone a call centre, you always have to get the manager on to do anything. So if there is a work in accelerationism, it's that kind of work, cognitive catalyst,
the kind of work, effective. Yeah, I mean, I'd almost add that it would be... It's almost the idea that, I suppose, that accelerationism abjures the idea of work full stop, I suppose would be absolutely the case and that therefore the preferred mode would be a kind of abstract financial creativity which kind of presumes that capital itself generates value as opposed to any kind of sweating, toiling, sleeping eating worker I himself has a quite interesting take on this because there is a heroic proletariat in Lyotard but it's the fusion of kind of modernist aesthetics with languages of
proletariat you know it's about the body which can be reconstructed he's got that whole passage which he sort of repeats and Duchamp's Transformers later this example of factories and the intensity of auditory stimulation which required the machining of this inhuman body had not existed before and you know for him that's great because but again I think it's this question your question sort of relates back to Pete's earlier doesn't it in a way you've got a heroic of kind of modernist model of kind of the worker as the ultimate kind of modernist kind of artwork that constructs itself in you know in in in the factory versus the actual now banality of the kind of process you described i mean it's the banality of dehumanization isn't it
i mean with with with nick landers the kind of and with leotides always got this kind of exciting register but you know the kind of dehumanization would do that is true i think it's not very exciting i mean i think um yeah right i mean i mean i just sorry a bit garbled i think but you know i mean i i think um you know abstract labor which means particular forms of actual people being subject to the despotism of capital and force for labor in particular ways is the kind of crucial category of capital itself. It's contradictory coherence. So labour is evaded, I think, in accelerationism. And, you know, I mean, I have no problem in particular about being moralistic about labour
because it's shit for people. You know, I mean, I have no, you know, I mean, as far as much, you know, with this truncated dialectic where this kind of, you know, what Mark calls the stern but stealing school of labour, the compactness of the class that was supposed to be generated out of the immediate process of production, out of particular forms of organisation, if that dialectic is failed or is trincuncated or whatever you want to call it, then the result is you're just celebrating suffering. You could call it jouissance, I mean jouissance is a lot of common, for lock on is enjoyment and suffering. Sorry, no, I'm agreeing with you. I'm ranting. No, no, no, obviously. I mean, look, okay, let's say there's a left and a right theory of immaterial labour, which is what we've been talking about in a way, right? So the acceleration, you know, right theory of immaterial labour, you know, heart and every, left theory of
immaterial labour. But I mean, there's still not really a discussion of labour. I mean, you know, there's still things being made. Yeah, I mean, that's the problem I have with immaterial labour. You read all these guys and you're like, oh yeah, that's cool, we've got computers now. It's like, well actually in the third world, how about the people at Foxconn who are making your computers and are killing themselves because they hate their lives so much, to be really, really frank. I think it's about holding both together. It's holding together the alienations of immaterial labour with the alienations of those forms of factory labour with the alienations which are worse in some respects or need to be challenged, devalorization of non-work, which is what we're going to face under financial crisis. We already are. It's devalorization of millions of human beings into nothing.
Do you want to comment now? Yeah. Okay. Yeah, nine minus. My question is about if there's two different strategies that have both been seen as acceleration is here. And one that is about simply sort of accelerating the desires created by capital but beyond the point of them being captured or valorized. And an example of that is if there's a desire created for seeing the movie of Avatar instead of working hard to earn money to go and buy it and see it, you just copy it and pirate it. So, classical immediately fulfilling desires.
But maybe another strategy, which is, I think something you said, Mark, in the comments of the last session, that it's more about not just accelerating desires that's there, about unlocking the unused possibilities that's created by capital but maybe not recognized. And an example of that, also regarding the Internet, which is my domain, would be that the Internet is used to create this anonymized cryptographic-based darkness, which is sort of a kind of acceleration is, but not accelerating a desire that's there, created, but it's
sort of a possibility that Capital cannot avoid to make possible because it uses the same machining configuration as the regular internet. But it's still something that's not just accelerating a desire, but using that configuration created by Capital but going in another direction. Is these two strategies and is both accelerationist? I think your point about dark nets is quite interesting because of course if you remember the origin of the internet, like you know, developed by the military, there's mill net, which do they still have it? Likely yes. Which no one knows about and it is literally a dark net, no one knows about it, you can't find it and so forth. And then on the other side, the internet that they're allowed to develop.
So I would slightly disagree with you that, you know, that the darknets are bringing out something intrinsic in the internet. I would actually say the origins of the internet, there's already that thing. In fact, you know, the whole idea was it would be secretive communication and cryptography and so forth to, you know, tell people to fire nuclear weapons. You know, and if the nuclear weapons hit, to be able to, you know, send messages in order to fire the ones back. You know, that's why the internet was invented. That's why TCP, IP and net packet switching and so forth was developed. But I think that kind of thing, I agree, I think that's something in what we've been talking about today. Okay, Rob. Just an observation. I think you slightly misrepresent Harvey's argument in that neoliberalism book.
I mean, he argues essentially that it's a class project of capture of wealth, not that it's a limited network of individuals. And elsewhere, he specifically argues against the idea that ideas are a determinant of economic change. So he just doesn't know. It's only a minor thing. Can I just ask about this? I mean, I was trying to think what accelerationism would look like in an everyday setting kind of thing. Because it seems to be an extremely interesting idea to think about as a possible... So if you're looking for possible... One of the things that Zizek's been writing about recently, which people find really annoying and they can't get a handle on, is he says, sometimes you do this, sometimes you do the opposite.
You know, sometimes at a moment of great crisis or confusion, you do nothing. And this is that simple-minded man, Simon Critchley, for example, finds very, very difficult to deal with. it's like, why are you saying we do nothing, we do nothing? And in fact what he's saying is sometimes you do nothing, and then sometimes you do something, and sometimes you slow it up, and sometimes you speed it down. Now that obviously, that kind of idea of a kind of multiplicitous, random-seeming assembly of different practices of populace or whatever is very difficult to give an ism name to or something like this. I don't know what you would call it, but one could. But, you know, looking at it just as a kind of what accelerationism might look like,
it seems to me a highly interesting idea about what could you speed up and then things start to go wrong. And I started, I mean, you know, you could think of, I mean, you could, if you imagine the worker, for example, the worker who decided to do double work and then started to challenge their manager about why they didn't have enough work and then started to question the competence of the manager for not being able to keep up with their unstinting desire to work all the time. And there's a certain kind of perverse kind of Christianity, a kind of hyper-compliance, which could, in a certain almost comical, but could become seriously disruptive. And that's what seems to me to be the interest of this idea, this idea that actually this is one among many possibilities where in a given situation, big or small, it could work.
But that was sanctivism, you know, and that was disruptive to the actual workers. I think, you know, I mean, that kind of speeding up on the line, and I don't think only in Soviet Russia, at least, from what I understand from friends of people who worked in those environments, is, you know, that is violently resisted by the workers, which I see as a more traditional left-wing strategy, which is perhaps one that is about refusing the forms of value production. I think refusing their casting in those forms by resisting them. But there's been plenty, sorry, just one more point, there's been plenty along the lines you suggest. There were people in the 80s who were into Baudrillard saying, you know, kind of multiply your credit card debt to as much as you can.
That works out well. It always works out well if you can declare yourself bankrupt. I don't know. I think, I mean, two things. I disagree with you on the Harvey point, because in a way, like Harvey, when I talk about these things, I talk about neoliberalism, Harvey's my kind of like kick guy, because he's such a common, he's such a well-known account. People think they kind of have an understanding of what neoliberalism is, so it's partly kind of a polemical move, and I'm not going to bore you by going into why I think it's different and maybe we can talk about that. With regard to acceleration, I want to just basically agree with what Ben says. I read a few days ago on Wikipedia that there was this strategy which wasn't slowing down or speeding up, which was just basically following the rules of the factory to the absolute letter. So you would do all the processes, instead of
just cutting corners or doing stuff just slightly unsafe, you would follow all the health and safety precautions to the absolute letter. And obviously this created incredible slowness and you never got any actual work there. But in a way that's a form of accelerationism. It's accelerating the conditions that are already there, like this health and safety thing that the right always bang on about. But accelerating it to the point where it actually breaks the whole machine down in some way. But I would agree with Ben, who would want to work extra, extra, extra, extra hard? Who are you going to find who's already in a position where they're exploited who wants to do even more work in the vague possibility might overthrow the factory in some way unless you did it on maths and that might be a different situation okay just so we get a break before the last session can we i know that people
do want to ask questions about i do think we do need a break and uh we so could we um can we we need a reasonable break so 10 past five i was saying yeah and that we've got the room till Thanks, I like it.