Jeff Shantz - Speed Kills

Scanned from Anarcho-Syndicalist Review #95, Fall 2026 Whether we like it or not, capital is accelerationist. Speed-up is built right into the very engine of capitalism. Capital’s drive for accumulation, in competition with other capital for profit, means that it must always go faster, must always accelerate exploitation and value extraction. This is the drive behind the ceaseless, permanent, push for technological advance, from motors to assembly lines to robots to computers, to AI, and beyond. Speed is the means by which capital beats its competitors in extracting value. More surplus value in an ever-shorter period of time. Any worker knows the tyranny of the clock in the capitalist workplace. Marx suggests that this surplus value extraction is either absolute, the lengthening of the working say, so we work longer beyond the point that we produce the value equivalent to our wages or relative, narrowing the time it takes us to produce the equivalent of our wages. Relative surplus value is the logic of the speed up—using technology to get us producing more and faster. Both f