Toward a Humanist Accelerationism

The 2024 election of Trump was a lot of things.

It was proof that Americans were very willing to stomach abjectly fascist politics if it meant that the average household income could increase somewhat. It was proof that we were willing to fall for the anti-interventionist lie twice from the same person. It was proof that a convicted felon could reach office, that #MeToo did a lot of good but didn't remove the stain of rape apologia from our politics.

It was also proof that the DNC had completely failed to build a leftism, or even a left-of-center-ism, that Americans could get behind.

I'm not going to place the election of Trump purely at the feet of Kamala. I don't think that's fair. I will say, though, that the fact that Kamala was the pick, the fact that a center-right institutional candidate was the best that the DNC had to offer after 4 years of Trump and 4 more years of Biden, is telling. The fact that the Bernie movement taught the DNC nothing about the younger generation's disdain for institutional DNC politicians, the fact that them losing the election to Trump the first time after they chose the penultimate institutional candidate, is incredibly telling.

The truth is, while the remnants of the DNC bleeds out in the corner still ranting about Mamdani's win in New York, we need to come together and start thinking about, and organizing, what the New Left is going to look like.

The Need for a New Left

I don't think "we need to reinvent the left in the US" is a fringe policy point to anybody except for McKinsey consultants and the Clinton's.

Frustration, bordering on outright rage, toward the institutional democrats in the DNC has boiled over. AOC was an early precursor, but Mamdani is the bullhorn. Mamdani ran against two Republicans (let's be honest, in any other world, Cuomo is a Republican) with 0 support from the DNC, without abandoning "controversial" issues like the genocide in Israel and the ability for trans people to exist. And he won.

He won on a platform (progressive-including-trans people, anti-war including opposition to the genocide in Palestine, anti-Zionist but anti-anti-semitism, YIMBY on housing, tax the billionaires and be wary of the NYPD) that the Democrats have ignored or have insisted is untennable. He did so in an incredibly complex city, one that serves as the backbone for US culture, politics, history and economy.

He proved that a New Left is possible. Now let's talk about what I believe it can look like.

Humanist Accelerationism (h/acc)

e/acc and the surrounding libertarian project of "accelerate tech at all costs" was a failure.

I think there are plenty of reasons for this. One of them is that there was not really an actual philosophy behind it, it was not much more than a hashtag that right-libertarians could add to their twitter bio to signal to others that they're part of some vague in-group.

What happens to a movement that does not have an actual organizing philosophy, outside of 'tech gud' and 'accelerate, anon' is that it can be hijacked by bad actors, it turns into just 'a vibe' and it fails to really tell people outside of various sub-groups what it's about. The idea of "we accelerate toward robots and space travel and AGI, ???, then humanity improves across the board" is a failed and silly idea. Improving humanity doesn't just... happen as GDP improves. People love to pont at the graphs of increased economic output and literacy and poverty rates, but the reality is that they're glossing over decades of very intentional policymaking.

My proposal, then, is to make humanism an explicit part of technological accelerationism.

Humanist accelerationism (h/acc) prioritizes the actual improvement of both humanity's material conditions and our spiritual and mental conditions. This can be achieved via technological improvements and acceleration. But it can also be achieved by intelligent, humanist applications of politics and economics. The point is that we're not going to be able to improve the material conditions of the majority of the human race by simply glossing over the policies required to do that and hoping that a simple increase in productive output will make it happen. We're not going to improve the dignity of the average person by ignoring their degrading living conditions, increasing investment into degenerate technology that enables gambling and dopamine addiction, and just hoping that the Line Going Up will fix it.

Looking around at tech culture for long enough, you realize it's broken. Right wing social approaches meant to demonize and alienate trans people, women, people of color and immigrants has hollowed out a lot of tech cultures. It's turned what is ostensibly a "meritocratic" culture and sub-group into one that prioritizes race, nationality, gender and sexuality before you even get to prove your merit. Aside from the obvious negativity of bigotry in social movements, this has lead to an anti-meritocratic culture, ruled by people who, quite frankly, have fairly little skill to speak out outside of virtue/vice signaling behind an anonymous profile picture. The right-libertarian ethos of tech has lead to increased disenfranchisement as people look around at the way that wealth has flowed upward with very little return to the average worker. The workers themselves are on round 300 of mass layoffs as bad business decisions are masked by "increased automation and AI" as the reason why they or their friends are being forced into joblessness. We all look upward at venture capitalists who are more interested in making a buck off of gambling platforms and slop-peddaling dopamine injectors than actual innovation, and we see the results in our society as innovation stagnates and hype-laden promises are left unfulfilled.

The hollowness of these cultures all center around the same thing: the de-prioritization of humanity in favor of a "fuck you, got mine" mentality. Trans people, black people, women, etc. are "others" and we cannot abide by that in our culture, because we may have to come to grips with some realities about our biases and philosophies. We prioritize profit above all else, pretending like it will trickle down in some meaningful way, because focusing on the inequality all around us might make us realize some uncomfortable realities about the way our politics, society and culture is organized. Effective altruism was a very convenient lie: I will give back to my fellow man when I decide I'm wealthy enough to do it. I will give back to my fellow man when I myself have enough comfort. The Gates-ism "I will give back to the world when I am already dead." This is all hollow. It's anti-humanist. It's why there's so much rot in tech now, and we've let it go for far too long.