The Future Comes As A Hallucination
Futurism fetishises the future, its in the name. It embraces the violent fast technological progress of the modern age, idealising industrialism, automobiles, speed, growth, youth & the new. It embraces technology and decides to hurl itself into the future to find the beauty in the new. They rebel against the soppy sickly nostalgic romanticism, In exchange a wild, furious, exhilirating, beastly speed. It was conceived as an art movement and later political movement at the dawn of the 20th century. It had multiple branches, Italian Futurists were nationalists with some admiration for the socialists, though most Left-Futurists were in Russia, whom many of were Vperedists, such as Lunacharsky & Mayakovsky. Anarcho-Futurists were shown by the kinds of Renzo Novatore & Provinciali. Italian Futurists later made the regretful decision to align themselves with fascism which ended up being a mistake, As fascism was not beautiful velocities they yearned for.
Fisher on the other hand was born in Leicester on the 11th of July 1968. He was later raised to a working class, conservative family in Loughborough. His key ideas were of Cultural Hauntology, Capitalist Realism & the unfinised project of "Acid Communism". Capitalist Realism was his analysis, Acid Communism was to be his conclusion. His Antidote. Now it is up to us to determine what he meant and continue his project. The key concept of Acid Communism is imagining new futures, new possibilities for the left, to dismantle capitalist realism and go from there, using counter-culture to invigorate some anti-capitalist force.
"A new humanity, a new seeing, a new thinking, a new loving: this is the promise of acid communism"
Mark Fisher
How does Acid Communism tie into the violent passionate fervor of futurism? Simply it is that we are futurists finding beauty in the new, as in the new futures, we must hurl ourselves toward this avant-garde expirementation,rebel against the past discredited forms of state-control & exiting the vampire castle of these outdated nightmares hanging over minds. We must prioritise action and imagine new futures through cultural experimentation and dynamic psychadelic sociocultural revolution! To destroy the libraries of capitalist realism to rekindle collective action, let us use this creative power to unite us of our differences, a solidarity. This is once again a new kind of worker, conducting a new kind of revolution. We must make sure that this revolution is in fact a slap in the face of public taste, as to avoid the recuperation into capitals grasp. We as proletariat must reject selling our labor power to the capitalists by sabotaging through refusal of work, setting up counter-economics and alternative forms of organisation. We must do this to initiate an attack on capitalist realism and the dreary bureaucracy of market Stalinism, to free ourselves from the alienating nature of commodities. Its quite clear something isn't working, the depression rates are sky-rocketing, natural balance is being decimated & people are more radicalised than ever. We are playing a dangerous game.
"We intend to sing the love of danger, the habit of energy and fearlessness."
F. T. Marinetti
We intend to revel in this creativity, to para-dream new futures & create possibilities, we intend to rebel against the old senile Stalinists wishing for a return to past of their filthy libraries & geriatric super-egos. The futurists idealise youth, so they to would hate the world of Children Of Men like Fisher does. The Futurists reveled in the cultural death of their time and were hellbent destroying the preservers of the corpses that heeded them in their quest for cultural rebirth, we as Acid communists must aspire to do the same.
We must rebel against the gravekeepers & vampire castles of the left, in exchange for experimentation of futures, optimism, para-dreams, imagining other forms of organisation. For both Fisher & The Futurists know that a culture that is merely preserved is no culture at all, let us re-ignite. Leftism has been overtaken by old nightmares, nostalgia & lingering longings for failed systems of state control.
One can imagine the modern state of the left similarly with Lenin's body, it sits in a glass box only looked at, never doing anything. It is preserved just like it was 30 years ago but he remains dead. We the left sit in our online thinktanks witnessed by the world, doing nothing, preserving dead ideas that cannot be revived.
Let the corpse of Lenin rot! Let a thousand maggots of new futures devour his waxy skin protected from the outside world! Smash the glass box! Rid the left of its filthy museums and castles!