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Accelerating down a Road to Nowhere: On Inventing the Future by Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams
Author(s) -
Gildea Florence
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
the political quarterly
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.373
H-Index - 37
eISSN - 1467-923X
pISSN - 0032-3179
DOI - 10.1111/1467-923x.12850
Subject(s) - vanguard , democracy , humanity , neoliberalism (international relations) , grassroots , capitalism , sociology , argument (complex analysis) , politics , order (exchange) , political science , aesthetics , media studies , law , political economy , philosophy , history , economics , biochemistry , chemistry , archaeology , finance
In Inventing the Future , Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams implore those on the left not to fear automation but rather to harness it in order to overturn neoliberalism. However, their argument is built upon a controversial philosophy which goes unnamed in the body of the text: accelerationism, the first principles of which would overthrow the very understanding of human nature on which Western democracy has operated for centuries. Their vision also entails a way of doing politics and designing policy which radically differs from representative democracy and grassroots movements as they seek to engineer consent and to form a revolutionary vanguard—not just to overthrow capitalism, but to embark on a journey of continually re‐engineering humanity itself.