The Problem
Late-stage capitalism operates through deterritorialization—stripping things from their relational contexts and converting them into abstract exchange value. Communities become markets. Homes become rental yields. Forests become carbon credits. Relationships become transactions.
This logic inevitably consumes its own foundation. It extracts from the very systems that sustain it, creating fatal contradictions that no amount of reform can resolve.
Why Reform Fails
Every attempt to humanize extraction gets metabolized by the system itself:
- Carbon markets become permits for continued extraction
- ESG investing becomes marketing theater
- Impact bonds become new financialization vectors
- Sustainability initiatives become greenwashing
The system has emergent properties that overwhelm individual reform efforts. It optimizes for accumulation regardless of stated intentions.
"You cannot reform a system whose core logic is extraction. You can only redirect its energy toward something else while building alternatives that don't depend on it."
The Accelerationist Wager
Rather than prolonging suffering through reformism, re/acc accepts that system breakdown is inevitable and seeks to hasten transition toward life-affirming alternatives while building the infrastructure to receive what emerges.
This isn't nihilism or accelerationism toward chaos. It's strategic withdrawal from extractive systems coupled with deliberate construction of regenerative ones.
Forking, Not Tearing Down
We opt out while re-embedding the tools of capital—currency and computation—to rebuild our own systems through network effects.
Cosmolocal Pattern
Knowledge flows globally through open protocols. Implementation stays locally rooted in specific places and relationships.
Self-Amplifying Loops
Each participant makes it easier for others to join. The system accelerates itself through positive feedback.
Regeneration over Sustainability
We don't sustain dying systems. We build new ones that create more life, more relationship, more capacity.
Technology as Liberation
We position AI and blockchain not as ends but as tools for democratization:
AI: Vibe Coding
Communities can now build bespoke software matching their values without corporate intermediaries. AI enables rapid prototyping of governance experiments, economic tools, and coordination mechanisms that would previously require expensive development teams.
Blockchain: Technological Sovereignty
Programmable economics that encode regenerative values directly into exchange infrastructure. Privacy, auditability, and community ownership become properties of the system itself—not permissions granted by corporations.
Concrete Infrastructure
Re/acc isn't just philosophy. It's building:
- Local currencies creating closed loops that resist extraction
- Community land trusts permanently decommodifying assets
- Worker cooperatives keeping surplus with creators
- DAOs enabling cooperative governance at scale
- Bioregional financing rooting investment in specific ecosystems
- Knowledge commons sharing learnings across network
The Larger Trajectory
"The machine cannot create what it consumes—only hollow it out. Meanwhile, life creates more life. Relationship generates more relationship."
The work ahead: compost what extraction leaves behind and tend to what's emerging through patient bioregional organizing, third spaces, resilience infrastructure, and open civic innovation.
This represents neither naive techno-optimism nor defeatist collapse acceptance. It's strategic withdrawal from extractive systems coupled with deliberate building of alternatives that compound through their own network effects.
Read the Full Manifesto
The complete original essay explores these ideas in depth.