Co-agencement Node Dossier

Diego Giménez Vila is a PhD candidate in Philosophy at the University of Valencia, Spain. He is the creator of the YouTube channel Indagando, a space where he shares analyses, reflections, and commentary on the readings that accompany his ongoing education and research. His work is characterized by a defence of eclecticism and freedom of thought, understood as fundamental tools against dogmatism and as pathways toward an open-ended search for meaning.

• YouTube: Indagando
• E-mail: [email protected]

Author’s Note

The following text forms part of an interdisciplinary approach and methodology that I intend to develop in greater detail in my doctoral thesis research. The project lies at the intersection of several fields of research, particularly ontology, economics, cybernetics, sociology, and philosophy of technology, which serve as its central axes for developing a renewed perspective from which to reflect upon the socioeconomic system in which we find ourselves.

1. INTRODUCTION: THE LABYRINTH OF CAPITALIST IMMANENCE

The present text arises from the need to confront the structural disorientation imposed upon us by the nature of the system we inhabit. Left-wing critiques often find themselves trapped in what Nick Land calls “transcendental miserablism”, a position that ignores the adaptive and axiomatic capacity of capital, preferring instead to take refuge in revolutionary illusions that have lost their correlation with the material reality of the twenty-first century.

The aim of this analysis is to propose an economic-transcendental ontology that might serve as an antidote to both anticapitalist and postcapitalist idealism. We begin from the thesis that capitalism is not an external structure threatening us from the outside, but rather an immanent process whose crises and challenges are, in fact, mechanisms of its own updating.

Far from being a static system, capitalism functions as an abstract machine that is irreducibly identified with its own self-overcoming. In this sense, we seek to problematise the tension between Landian accelerationism — which sees capital as an internal limit that is constantly displaced — and the proposals of left accelerationism, such as those of Srnicek and Williams, which seek to redirect technological infrastructure towards a postcapitalist horizon.

Throughout the following pages, we will question the viability of programmes that promise an “after” capitalism based on the abolition of private property or centralised planning. Through a critical dialogue with authors such as Deleuze, Guattari, Land, and Hayek, it will be argued that many of these visions fall into a “voluntarist fallacy”: the belief that the desire for a better world is sufficient to alter the fundamental economic determinations that govern our reality.

Finally, this proposal distances itself from both moral apology and ethical condemnation in order to situate itself on an ontological terrain capable of overcoming the left-right dichotomy, which tends to approach the phenomenon through ideology rather than through understanding itself. To this end, we will emphasise the points of convergence that may give rise to an initiative capable of recognising the positive aspects of both the left and the right in an attempt to develop a more holistic method.

We are not seeking a “solution” to capitalism, since such a claim would reveal an ignorance of its essence, but rather to understand how its dynamic of deterritorialisation constantly redefines what we understand as social reality. Ultimately, this perspective seeks to understand the phenomenon not as an inevitable destiny, but as the historical necessity of our present.

2. ANTICAPITALISM AND POSTCAPITALISM: MIRAGES OF DESIRE

When Jameson and Žižek put forward the powerful phrase “it is easier to imagine an end to the world than an end to capitalism” (Fisher, 2018, p. 2), what is implicitly revealed is that any kind of ecological or sociopolitical catastrophe is ultimately a problem immanent to capitalism, not transcendent to it. Far from nature appearing to threaten us from an outside, it is precisely this outside that is longed for by different anticapitalist and postcapitalist positions.

The reality is that these problems are problems of capitalism, internal to its processes, produced by its dynamics and, ultimately, challenges established within its own boundaries.¹ Thus, rather than threatening material reality, they threaten capitalist reality, and for this reason the internal mechanisms of the system will deploy their various devices of action in order to resolve, through measures and transformations, what had previously been implemented but has now become obsolete.

The greatest problem with left-wing critiques in recent years is that their revolutionary nostalgia has prevented them from adapting to the changes and updates just mentioned. The new structuring of the internal axiomatic is far more powerful and adaptive than the revolutionary aspirations that generation after generation continue to revive: the “spectre of communism” recalled by Jacques Derrida.

This does not necessarily mean that Karl Marx is obsolete, but rather that Marxist critique must be sifted through critically, since social reality has changed radically since Marx, and several premises that were long dogmatically regarded as true have even been shown to be false. Ideas such as the theory of exploitation — grounded in the erroneous objective theory of value of Adam Smith and David Ricardo — or the predestination of communism have done more harm than good, since even today some continue to regard them as true because of an appeal to authority rather than through a critical examination of the assumptions that sustain them.

It is in this respect that Nick Land not only develops a critique as harsh as it is incisive, but, in his position as an enfant terrible, through his disruptive capacity and ideological promiscuity, is capable of repelling both the right and the left. The discomfort generated by his thought must be viewed in light of the difficulty of earning the respect of the left in an increasingly sociopolitically polarised world.

Ultimately, Land is the left’s guilty pleasure, because anyone who is honest about the programmatic implications of his ideas must revisit those dust-covered axioms that have now lost much of their force: ideas that remain powerful as readings, but whose correlation with contemporary reality has reached the level of superstition.

For this reason, Landian accelerationism embodies a critique capable of shaking the socioeconomic creed of the left, an invitation to reconsider its foundations and a starting point for rethinking the assemblages that sustain the ideas of progressivism.

In the short text Critique of Transcendental Miserablism, Land sharpens one of the most uncomfortable critiques in relation to what has been discussed above. First, Land reminds us that anticapitalism is dead, or at least that the aspirations held by anticapitalism amount to little more than an extinct reverie, a bundle of revolutionary aspirations that today are no more than imaginary narratives seeking, once again, to take control of reality through their fixation on the possibility of producing change.

The problem is not the presumed intention of seeking a better world, but rather ignorance of the internal dynamics of the capitalist system and the rigid belief that negating the only viable alternative will necessarily prove both better in practice and more desirable in its effects. Anticapitalism, rather than an aspiration, would reveal itself as a pathology of denial resulting from the refusal to accept certain dynamics that become necessary. They are not necessary because they are definitive, but because we remain within the trajectory of capitalism.

Land writes in this regard:

Perhaps there will always be a fashionable anticapitalism, but each of its versions will sooner or later pass out of fashion, while capitalism, identifying itself ever more closely with its own self-surpassing, will always be the latest novelty. The “means” and “relations” of production have emulsified into decentralised competitive networks under numerical control, rendering palaeo-Marxist hopes of extracting a postcapitalist future from the capitalist machine plainly unimaginable. Machines have sophisticated themselves beyond the possibility of socialist utility and, in the process, have embodied the mechanics of the market within their nanoassembled interstices, evolving through quasi-Darwinian algorithms that build hypercompetition into “the infrastructure”. It is no longer merely society, but time itself, that has taken “the path of capitalism” (Land, 2019a, p. 273).

The point Land makes is that the path is becoming increasingly sedimented and the direction has already been taken. Far from leaving the rails, the train of capitalism appears ever more firmly set upon its course. We are not claiming that this will necessarily be the final direction taken in the future of the species, but it is the only one that, in the medium and long term, continues to appear when we survey the horizon of possibilities.

Anticapitalism, for its part, will virtually always persist as a system of beliefs. In the best cases, it will do so through novel and insightful perspectives. Nevertheless, it should be remembered that these always operate as a shadow, as the negation of the thesis, as capitalism’s antithesis. If A exists, non-A must exist. If capitalism exists, its negation must exist.

There is, however, a considerable leap between believing in the necessity of the negation of A — as a logical necessity — and believing that a revolutionary or synthetic outcome will occur and dethrone A. Such thinking entails failing to recognise, consciously or unconsciously, what capitalism actually consists of. We will reserve the necessary explanations for the following section.

Having said this, it becomes clear that since the emergence of accelerationism through Land, anticapitalism has struggled to present a genuinely realistic programme capable of setting us on a different path.

Nevertheless, in recent years other thinkers have developed attempts at overcoming capitalism or programmes aimed at adapting to the possibility of a postcapitalist future. So-called left accelerationism, in contrast to Landian accelerationism, which does not negate the process but rather amplifies it, has gained prominence especially through authors such as Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams, particularly through their well-known Manifesto for an Accelerationist Politics.

Unlike many previous positions, Srnicek and Williams establish a highly interesting line of debate by changing the role of the traditional left and establishing new perspectives. Unlike earlier proposals, for example, Srnicek and Williams make certain concessions to capitalism and seek to begin from some of its achievements in order to find a line of flight. They acknowledge that capitalism has achieved advances regarded as indispensable² and which might serve as an impetus towards the much-desired postcapitalist future.

In the authors’ words:

Accelerationists want to unleash latent productive forces. In this project, the material platform of neoliberalism does not need to be destroyed; it needs to be repurposed towards common ends. The existing infrastructure is not a capitalist stage to be smashed, but a springboard from which to launch towards postcapitalism (Srnicek and Williams, 2017, pp. 40–41).

In this way, the accelerationism promoted by Srnicek and Williams attempts to move beyond mere anticapitalist negation. In their search for a non-capitalist future, they accept the necessity of capitalism but attempt to regard it as a period from which useful elements may be extracted and subsequently discarded when this becomes possible.

Accelerationist aspirations locate redemption in technology: technology will become the means through which the problems associated with the capitalist system may one day be resolved and through which capitalism itself might ultimately be transcended.

Another noteworthy aspect is that Srnicek and Williams defend economic calculation³ and criticise authoritarian centralisation, two characteristics that distinguish their project from the socialist programmes of the past. In this respect they write:

We need to posit a collectively controlled legitimate vertical authority alongside distributed and horizontal forms of sociality, in order to avoid becoming slaves either to a tyrannical totalitarian centralism or to a capricious emergent order beyond our control. The command of The Plan must be married to the improvised order of The Network (Srnicek and Williams, 2017, p. 44).

As we can see, the accelerationist project of Srnicek and Williams reveals itself not only as innovative but also as critical of various previous models and projects. The authors argue that “sectarianism is the death sentence of the left as much as centralization is, and in this sense we continue to welcome experimentation with different tactics (even those we disagree with)” (Srnicek and Williams, 2017, p. 44).

Ultimately, the search for an escape valve from capitalism means that their concessions to capitalism become the means of achieving the postcapitalist objective. Yet the accelerationism of Srnicek and Williams, despite being a fresh and interesting programme, encounters certain irresolvable problems. Some of them have been pointed out by Franco “Bifo” Berardi:

The accelerationist hypothesis is founded on two central points: the first is the assumption that accelerating cycles of production makes capitalism unstable; the second is the claim that the potentialities contained within the capitalist form are necessarily destined to unfold. The experience of our time contradicts the first assumption: capitalism persists because it does not require rational government, only automatic governance, and also because it has no desiring body, since it is an abstract system of automatisms. (…) The second assumption entirely underestimates the obstacles and limitations that hinder and distort the process of subjectivation. The immanence of the liberating form — the immanence of communism, if one prefers, or the immanence of the autonomous deployment of the general intellect — implies the possibility of such a deployment, but not its necessity (Berardi, 2017, pp. 74–75).

Berardi’s points are correct: capitalism has historically demonstrated a seemingly limitless power to capture and reconfigure itself. Any modification within its system, far from becoming an amputation, becomes a mutation: a transformation of what no longer works and a deployment into new forms.

Likewise, the potential deployment of the forms contained within capitalism does not imply the necessity of their deployment. We will take the critique further than Berardi: the deployment of capitalism’s forms and potentialities are effects of capitalism itself, insofar as capitalism is itself the producer and intensifier of those effects.

It is difficult to think of capitalism necessarily removing itself from the equation when it is the motor of the transformative processes that have produced the very effects being sought — even when these effects are pursued through capitalism only for capitalism itself subsequently to be negated.

The problem with the postcapitalist vision is that it ultimately carries anticapitalist aspirations within itself and sublimates postcapitalist desire into a possible future in which capitalism will no longer be necessary. The slogan of postcapitalism might therefore be: “We cannot do it today, but one day we will.”

We do not wish to be misunderstood. We believe that, very probably, there will one day be an “after” capitalism. Necessarily, if a radical transformation of the system occurs for reasons currently unknown, the prefix post- will become realised. Nevertheless, the mirage involved in imagining such a scenario completely neglects current problems and the objectives that define feasible social reality. Today, postcapitalism is futurology.

To refuse to assume capitalist realism necessarily implies its antithesis: assuming an anti/post-capitalist idealism.

On the other hand, we must consider that a minimum basic income, as Srnicek and Williams reasonably defend, will become a necessary reality in a world in which human labour is replaced by robotic labour. This scenario is not merely plausible; if we examine technological trends, it will become an inevitable reality.

However, there is a genuine argumentative leap in the belief that the possible extinction of human labour must necessarily entail the end of capitalism. We cannot presume that a scenario involving the end of human labour would also entail the end of capitalism, because doing so would mean presupposing the end of capital and private property as well.

These two foundational axioms of capitalism would lose their third leg: wage labour, that is, labour performed by humans. Yet far from the first two legs collapsing, automation and the amplification of capital gains would increase production to levels never previously seen.

A priori, there is nothing to indicate that private property and capital will disappear through the automation of labour. The challenges will instead concern how wealth is distributed and how economic inequalities are confronted, while both private property and the cycle of capital investment would continue to exist.

A postcapitalism without private property is being tacitly assumed, as becomes apparent when the “redirection” of infrastructures towards collective purposes is suggested. The principal problem is that, just as occurred in previous socialist experiments, eliminating private property would render social organisation bureaucratic, authoritarian, inefficient, and lacking in innovation.

Moreover, Srnicek and Williams contradict themselves when they advocate economic calculation and decentralisation, since both of these social technologies are the result of private property and capitalism. By eliminating private property, we eliminate the spontaneous possibility of determining prices according to supply and demand and, as a consequence, also eliminate the possibility of decentralisation.

We cannot organise ourselves in a decentralised manner without a price system capable of regulating changes in demand and the scarcity of desired products. This would lead us, once again, to a scenario in which a central authority would control how much, how, what, and where everything should exist, as well as what individuals should do at every moment.

In relation to this problem, Friedrich Hayek writes:

Planning, in the specific sense in which the term is used in contemporary controversy, necessarily means central planning: the direction of the whole economic system according to one unified plan. Competition, on the other hand, means decentralised planning by many separate persons. (…) Which of these systems is likely to be more efficient depends mainly on which of them can be expected to make fuller use of existing knowledge. This, in turn, depends on whether we are more likely to succeed in placing at the disposal of a single central authority all the knowledge that ought to be used but is initially dispersed among many different individuals, or in conveying to individuals the additional knowledge they need in order to enable them to fit their plans with those of others (Hayek, 2022, p. 96).

The fundamental economic problem, which is related to the problem of economic calculation, is that in a complex society knowledge is completely dispersed among the minds of individuals. Their aspirations, desires, projects, tastes, ideas… all this knowledge is distributed among individuals, and no one knows better than they themselves what they desire and what they know.

Unless there were an Orwellian Big Brother capable, through some future technology, of knowing at every moment which decision each of us ought to make, we cannot allocate resources, forecast supply in relation to demand, and predict people’s preferences without producing systemic inefficiencies.

Nor do we believe that a State capable of controlling every millimetre of our actions and thoughts thanks to — or because of — technology would be desirable.

The postcapitalist project is impossible to imagine unless it is understood as the symptom of a process of creative self-destruction produced by a *hyper-*advanced stage of capitalism. Until then, every postcapitalist reverie remains a reformulation or restructuring of a veiled anticapitalism confronted with the impotence generated by the trajectory of history.

We must emphasise that postcapitalism, if and when it arrives, will always emerge through a mutation of capitalism’s own structures and therefore as a torn and immanent evolution produced by its own rearticulation, as though it were a final update.

To those who might believe that our words contain a supposed naturalistic fallacy by assigning capitalism a necessity of permanence, we must emphasise that we are defending nothing of the kind. The fact that capitalism is a certain way does not mean that it ought to be that way. On the contrary, it will transform.

And to anyone who argues that because capitalism is, it does not follow that capitalism ought to be, we also say: that is correct. Capitalism is not and will not be the end of history so long as change exists, and we cannot establish a priori that the motor of historical change must always be provided by this system.

What we can establish, however, is what we might call the voluntarist fallacy:

“That something could be otherwise implies that it must therefore be capable of becoming whatever we decide it should be.”

In other words, we cannot modify reality at will simply because we possess a postcapitalist desire. We will be able to modify reality according to the determinations that we can assume throughout the contingencies and necessities that surround us, and according to the desires and incentives that determine us.

For this reason, taking capitalist realism to its fullest expression means assuming it not as destiny, but as a historical necessity at the present stage in which we find ourselves as a species.

3. AN ONTOLOGICAL-ECONOMIC APPROACH TO ANALYSING CAPITALIST REALISM

At this point, we have outlined the problem we seek to address. Nevertheless, we have not yet examined the core of the question in depth, since so far we have concentrated on criticising the supposed “solutions” that surround our historical context.

At this stage, our political orientation may appear ambiguous. To dispel any doubt: yes, it is. This is because our primary interest in undertaking this analysis is neither to position ourselves within one wing of the political spectrum nor to search for a solution to capitalism. Indeed, doing so would contradict the theses we have been developing, since it would once again reveal an ignorance of the nature of capitalism.

Nor do we intend to present a political or moral programme concerning capitalism. Our approach seeks to be empirical and transcendental. We believe that capitalism, in the multiplicity and diversity of approaches through which it can be understood, suffers from not being sufficiently examined from an ontological perspective. Whether because of political or economic interests, capitalism is frequently approached either through ruthless criticism or through economic apology. We do not wish to participate in either.

The fact that political consequences may be deduced from our approach does not mean that our analysis itself seeks to be political or moral. We leave that to each individual, who may do as they wish with our proposal and with the ideas we put forward.

What truly moves us to understand capitalism is the unavoidable fascination produced by its functioning.⁴ An abstract machine of automatisms that works disturbingly well,⁵ a process that seems to extend beyond our control while simultaneously depending upon our individual dynamics in order to reproduce itself day after day.

In reality, the urgency of our proposal arises from two fronts:

1. The myopia of left-wing perspectives concerning the economic dimension of capitalism and their tendency towards an uncritical critique of the system’s scope and functioning.⁶

2. The economic reductionism, or the absence of interest among liberal perspectives — that is, perspectives belonging to the economic right — regarding ontology in relation to capitalism.⁷

In other words, we regard the seemingly impossible marriage between left and right as possible, provided that both learn to respect one another. Certain concessions must be made if capitalism is to be understood beyond their respective biases.

On the one hand, the left must understand that capitalism is, above all, an economic system, even though its deployment affects other regimes. This is important because many critics of capitalism remain anchored in Marxian economics as a means of justifying their repugnance towards capitalism.

Any proposal that seeks to understand capitalism must reconsider its aversion to economics and cease to regard it as something merely chrematistic, because economics in reality entails far more than “money for money’s sake”.

On the other hand, the economic right, absorbed by its lack of interest in social movements or driven by the systemic inertia of never looking beyond the interpretation of economic reality, forgets and neglects the fact that capitalism is not merely the management and allocation of scarce resources.

Capitalism, and economics itself, involve human beings and their actions at every moment. To ignore or neglect the ontological dimension concerning capitalism’s mode of being and acting is therefore to eliminate the meaning of everything that exceeds and implicates economic theory.

In reality, economics is uncritically assumed to close in upon itself and end there, when the fundamental ontological problem of capitalism is precisely that where economics ends, ontology begins, and vice versa.

Steven Shaviro expresses something similar:

Politics, ethics, epistemology, and even ontology are all subject to “determination in the last instance” by the forces and relations of production. Or, more precisely, insofar as ontology is not entirely determined in this way, it is because ontology is itself fundamentally aesthetic (Shaviro, 2017, p. 167).

Qualifying Shaviro’s position, ontology is not subject to the forces and relations of production; rather, the forces and relations of production are subject to ontology. Ontology precedes economics, and economics is originally ontological.

In this way, we believe that in order to understand our social reality successfully and comprehensively, it must be approached through the ontological-economic prism appropriate to it. Our proposal therefore assumes ontology as the basis for understanding capitalism, rather than political ideology or moralism as the analytical presupposition through which we approach such a complex phenomenon.

One of the quotations and reflections most relevant to the way we believe capitalism should be analysed is precisely the idea that it should not be understood as “Capitalism” in the singular and abstract sense.

In the words of Deleuze and Guattari, “universal capitalism in itself does not exist; capitalism stands at the crossroads of all kinds of formations and is always, by nature, neocapitalism” (Deleuze and Guattari, 2020, p. 30).

By definition, capitalism is always neocapitalism: it is always being modified and updated. Change belongs to it, and its mode of being is realised through constant change. It is a purely dynamic system, not a static one.

Every version of capitalism entails a different way of coordinating the assemblages that sustain it. There are as many potential capitalisms as there are possible modes of being and feasible expressions. This is why capitalism adapts to every culture in which it is applied: it is a framework that depends only upon the activation of certain axioms in order to function.

Principally, and in general terms, if private property, capital, labour, and institutions capable of sustaining certain guarantees within legality are present, then the necessary conditions of a capitalist society have been fulfilled. Nevertheless, capitalism is not limited to these alone.

Constant modifications, expansions, and reformulations of propositions and axioms necessarily enable multiple variations that renew and expand its characteristics, while also integrating additional particularities within a global capitalist framework that connects them all.

Capitalism must be understood through its pure immanence. Unlike other systems, it operates through an immanence that captures all the flows circulating within it. Never before has there existed a system so totalising in its capacity to organise, create, and distribute flows.

Its tentacles are capable of reaching the most unsuspected regions of the planet, spreading through every human culture like an oil slick. Globalisation is an interrelation of capitalist flows, a stage in which capitalism’s advance across the surface of the earth has expanded beyond national boundaries to such an extent that it replicates and restructures itself in other countries, weaving a single supranational market.

At bottom, the immanence of capitalism emerges from the immanence of the market. Through technology, cybernetic flows and transportation flows provide access to and interconnect buyers and sellers on an exponential scale never previously witnessed.

Corporations become foreign traditions that are naturalised as local ones for citizens, while cultural homogenisation unfolds as an effect of capitalist immanence through the transmission of industries and the consumption of non-native goods.

If Deleuze and Guattari, as well as Land, were visionary in their analyses of capitalism, it is because they understood it as a machinic process, as a substrate that grows and, through its exuberance, is capable of transforming reality to previously unimaginable degrees.

The point of ontological analysis lies in examining the internal processes of this machinery, the dynamic gears that make it move beyond the concrete entities with which it deals.

As Deleuze and Guattari observed, capitalism is primarily a system governed through decoded flows, movements of deterritorialisation and reterritorialisation and, consequently, through the production of a surplus value of flow within the unlimited reproduction of flows that are indeterminate a priori.

It does not matter which flow it has created or destroyed; what matters ultimately is not which flow, but how it does so, and in what way it reinvents its dynamics by establishing new circuits and restructurings of its axiomatic.

Earlier we referred to four fundamental axioms — private property, capital, labour, and institutional minima — but these axioms are not the same thing as the axiomatic.

The axiomatic refers instead to the systemic capacity to create new algorithms of operation that, regardless of the particular orders sustaining them, are capable of expanding new vectors while preserving the hard core of capitalism and, at the same time, radically renewing the system through the creation and destruction of processes, or through the deterritorialisation and territorialisation of new forms.

Deleuze and Guattari ironically remark:

How flexible the axiomatic of capitalism is, always ready to widen its own limits in order to add another axiom to a previously saturated system! You want an axiom for wage earners, the working class, and the trade unions? Very well; henceforth profit will flow alongside wages, side by side, ebb and flow. An axiom will even be found for the language of dolphins (Deleuze and Guattari, 2010, pp. 383–384).

The fundamental question concerning the internal processes of capitalism therefore lies in the three aspects already mentioned: immanence, the capacity for decoding and deterritorialisation — together with their corresponding recodings and reterritorialisations — and the axiomatic.

Contrary to what might initially appear to be the case, the essential power of capitalism is not defined by the power of money, nor by technological power, nor by the political power captured by the State through its own apparatus.

In reality, the power of capitalism as a system lies in its flexibility.

This resembles the question Heidegger raises in The Question Concerning Technology.⁸ If we reflect upon capitalism instrumentally, capitalism reveals itself as a system for the creation of wealth without parallel. If we reflect upon its essence, however, we discover that through its processes its machinery also enables a capacity for unconcealment without parallel.

Heidegger argues that the essence of technology lies in unconcealment, insofar as unconcealment properly entails bringing-forth.⁹ In relation to capitalism, systemic flexibility is what makes absolute production possible: technoscientific, economic, social, political, and cultural production.

This does not mean that capitalism itself produces all of these things, but rather that it enables the establishment of deterritorialising tools that disinhibit the formation of rigid structures, so that everything is potentially subject to revision.

Everything except capitalism itself, evidently, because capitalism operates as a metanormative framework. The playing field has been established; the rules are capable of being modified intertemporally, while the game periodically changes in both form and content.

In my view, if Mark Fisher’s concept of “capitalist realism” has established itself to date as the best way of understanding the reality of capitalism, it is because its approach entails a raw and ontological conclusion.

The realism involved does not arise because reality is constituted by objective and immutable facts, but because reality adapts to capitalism’s mutable transformations.

Ultimately, it is capitalism that directs the Real through its mediation with an environment that is always fluctuating.

4. CONCLUSION: TOWARDS A REALIST UNDERSTANDING OF CONSTANT CHANGE

Following the analysis developed above, it becomes clear that capitalism cannot be understood as a monolithic or static entity, but rather as a process of immanent mutation that feeds upon its own contradictions.

Our examination of accelerationist positions and our critique of postcapitalist idealism lead us to a fundamental conclusion: any attempt to overcome the system that does not proceed through a profound understanding of its economic ontology is condemned to become either an imaginary narrative or a pathology of denial.

Postcapitalism, as presented in many contemporary programmes, often reveals itself as a promise that neglects genuine technical and economic problems, such as economic calculation and the social function of private property.

As has been argued, the end of human labour through automation does not necessarily imply the end of capital. On the contrary, the disappearance of wage labour could coexist with an amplification of production and private property to levels never previously seen.

At this point, Hayek’s warning becomes particularly relevant: eliminating market mechanisms and the price system in favour of a central authority does not lead to liberation, but rather to systemic inefficiency and authoritarianism. The true “line of flight”, therefore, is not to be found in the destruction of capitalist infrastructure, but in understanding how this infrastructure has already encoded time and human desire.

The proposal of an economic-transcendental ontology allows us to move beyond the sterile binary between a “left” that ignores economic science and a “right” that ignores the ontological depth of social being.

We have seen that capitalism is, in essence, a metanormative framework that enables absolute production and the constant revision of every structure except its axiomatic. Its capacity to expand and capture flows makes it the most totalising system in history and, at the same time, the most liquid and mobile.

In conclusion, capitalist realism should not be accepted as an article of faith, but rather as the starting point for an honest and rigorous critique. If our species is to evolve beyond its present stage, this will not come through an act of negation, but through the system’s own capacity to convulse towards a further mutation.

The challenge for future thought is not to imagine the end of the world, but to become capable of analysing the internal processes of this machinery without allowing ourselves to be blinded by idealism. We must recognise that, beyond our desires and beyond the horizon of possibilities, the path along which we currently move — and which propels those possibilities — is capitalism.

Laboratory Note

At Crítica Acelerada, we read Diego Giménez Vila’s approach as an invitation to shift the question of overcoming capitalism towards another question: what kind of process is that which we seek to overcome? The essay locates one possible answer in capitalism’s capacity to modify its own limits, recode its crises, and produce new configurations without necessarily abandoning the axiomatic that enables its reproduction. This perspective enters directly into dialogue with several of the problems that concern the Laboratory, particularly acceleration and the trajectory of capitalism.

At the same time, his proposal leaves open a number of tensions that we consider especially interesting:

How far can this adaptive capacity really extend?

How can historical contingency be thought without transforming capitalism’s present persistence into a future necessity?

What relationship exists between its concrete economic conditions and the ontology proposed by the essay?

Within the framework of Diego’s doctoral research, this essay is published in Crítica Acelerada as part of a research project in progress, in which the hypothesis remains open to expansion, reformulation, tension, and subsequent development. As a co-agencement node of CA, this line of inquiry may branch out into future contributions as his research progresses.

5. BIBLIOGRAPHY

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• Deleuze, Gilles (2023). Derrames II: Aparatos de estado y axiomática capitalista. Buenos Aires: Editorial Cactus.

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• Fisher, Mark (2018). Realismo capitalista: ¿No hay alternativa?. Buenos Aires: Editorial Caja Negra.

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• Shaviro, Steven (2017). Estética aceleracionista: Ineficiencia necesaria en tiempos de subsunción real. In Armen Avanessian and Mauro Reis (eds.), Aceleracionismo: Estrategias para una transición hacia el postcapitalismo (pp. 167–180). Buenos Aires: Editorial Caja Negra.

• Srnicek, Nick and Williams, Alex (2017). Manifiesto por una Política Aceleracionista. In Armen Avanessian and Mauro Reis (eds.), Aceleracionismo: Estrategias para una transición hacia el postcapitalismo (pp. 33–48). Buenos Aires: Editorial Caja Negra.

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