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Transcript

Kim Stanley Robinson: A Science Fiction Prophet Predicts What’s After Capitalism

The legendary author of the Mars trilogy explains why local action and existing alternatives—from Spanish cooperatives to Indian democracy—offer practical hope in an age of crisis.

Dear friends,

In times of political and climate crisis, where do we find hope for meaningful change? I recently spoke with Kim Stanley Robinson, arguably America's greatest living science fiction author, who offers a surprisingly optimistic vision grounded in local action and practical engagement.

While Robinson doesn't shy away from stark realities - including his assessment that modern capitalism has created greater inequality than feudalism - his focus on working alternatives and community-level solutions left me energized about the possibilities for positive change, even in challenging times.

Golden light,

Dr. Richard L. Miller


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The Science of Hope: Local Solutions in a Time of Global Crisis

"A billion people on this planet are more immiserated than the peasants of the Middle Ages," Kim Stanley Robinson tells me. "And then at the same time, there are people who are vastly more rich than the feudal kings and queens."

It's a jarring comparison from America's preeminent science fiction author. But Robinson isn't here to spin tales of distant futures - he's diagnosing our present reality with the precision of a systems analyst. After decades writing award-winning novels about climate change and economic transformation, he's focused on a pressing question: What comes after capitalism?

The problem, as Robinson sees it, runs deeper than most critics imagine:

Capitalism is a relationship to reality that doesn't take into account the biospheric costs and damages of our actions in the world. So, it's a false accounting system. It's a residue of the feudal system where there were kings and a few aristocrats and some squires operating the system, some soldiers enforcing the system, and then a whole bunch of poor peasants working to support their superiors in the social order. It's not very different in capitalism. It's a little more liquid. It's a little more unequal than the feudal era. Shocking though it may seem, but it's true numerically.

But Robinson isn't interested in merely critiquing the system. He's looking for working alternatives - and finding them in surprising places.

From Global Crisis to Local Solutions

In Davis, California, Robinson is part of what he calls "a little movement" - Cool Davis - one of countless local groups tackling climate change at the community level.

I'm part of a little movement here in Davis, California, a group called Cool Davis, and I think there are little groups like this all over the world. Tribes where the problem of global climate change is being taken on at the local level of what you can do with your own hands, with people you know. That's profoundly comforting to me.

Local action yields evidence. Robinson points to real-world examples that challenge our assumptions about how society must be organized. Take Mondragon in Spain:

Mondragon exists in a capitalist world and is a business. A town of interlocked businesses that are all the businesses, including the banks are owned by the townspeople. So it's a cooperative... The profits are divided equally between the owners, one third, that is to say the workers, then one third to capital improvements for the businesses that are running and then one third to charities that they choose.

Then there's the Indian state of Kerala, where intense local democracy plays out through thousands of neighborhood councils:

Kerala has an intense polyarchy, where the local councils, the panchayats are, first of all, intended to be gender balanced. And then secondly, alternate at the state level between a local communist government and the Congress party... without elections, but just with an agreed arrangement.

These aren't utopian fantasies - they're working systems hiding in plain sight. The challenge isn't imagining alternatives to capitalism, Robinson suggests. It's spreading them in a world where wealth holds enormous political power.

Science as Common Ground

A path forward emerges from an unexpected place: our universal trust in science when survival is at stake. Robinson frames it with stark simplicity:

When you're scared for your life, you go to a doctor and your doctor is a scientist. We all believe in science when we're scared for our life.

This reality cuts through ideological divisions. It also points to a deeper truth about how we might approach our planetary crisis. As Robinson explains:

If a scientist says we're burning down the planet and it will wreck everything, you can't toss that information aside and say, I don't care. You have to attend to it because the planet is our extended body. If the planet's sick, we're sick and that needs to be attended to.

When I raise concerns about literacy and political engagement in America, where roughly half the population reads at or below a fifth-grade level, Robinson pushes back against intellectual elitism:

Oral culture is older and more basic than written culture. It's word of mouth, and it's the radio, and it's smartphones... I'm going to say that no matter what one's level of literacy or education, there's a sense now in which everybody knows everything. Because people are smart, they may be poorly educated, they're still smart. The human brain and our ability to comprehend, as long as you've got language, as long as you can talk, you can think, and you can understand.

Persistence in Dark Times

For those discouraged by recent political setbacks, Robinson offers historical perspective. It comes in the form of an elegantly simple formula about the American Revolution:

Lose lose lose lose lose lose win.

How did that happen? Persistence of vision and hanging in there in the dark times.

This isn't blind optimism. Robinson acknowledges the challenges ahead with clear-eyed realism:

The next two years will be chaos and disorder, and a lot of ugly things will happen. There's no doubting it because the plan has been published in advance. But the support for it will quickly go away when the chaos ensues.

The key, he argues, lies in rejecting ideological purity in favor of practical engagement:

I want to argue against purity and righteous indignation in favor of engagement and compromise... getting done what can get done rather than getting nothing done because you hold for some kind of ideological or spiritual purity.

This means remembering what progressive democratic action has already achieved:

It's the democratic party that we have to thank for social security, for medicare, for 40 hour weeks, for the weekend. For a sense of dignity and the people who do live paycheck to paycheck and a lack of sheer remiseration... Even if the Democratic Party lost its way during the neoliberal years, it always exists as the party of the people.

Robinson's vision combines the granular focus of local action with the long view of historical change. When asked about building a better future, he reminds us that transformation happens through persistent, practical work at every level - from neighborhood councils to national policy. The path forward isn't through revolution, but through the steady work of proving better systems can work.

The Work Ahead

After decades imagining humanity's future in his novels, he's turned his focus to the granular work of changing our present. His final thoughts return to the power of local engagement:

There is a network of institutions in the United States that sometimes gets called civil society. And then there's also town government and your ability to interact with your neighbors. At that level, you can keep active.

The transformation Robinson envisions won't arrive through a single revolutionary moment. Instead, it builds through thousands of small victories, community by community, while maintaining focus on larger systemic change. In this balance between local action and global vision, he finds not just hope, but a practical path forward.

We each do what we can to change the world as an individual. Civil society includes churches and service groups and clubs and recreational groups and sports activities. These are mixed political populations where a little bit of outreach, a little bit of compromise and a little bit of persuasion can make a difference.

For a writer famous for imagining distant futures, Robinson's most radical suggestion might be this: the solutions we need already exist. They're being tested in communities around the world, waiting to be scaled up. The question isn't whether we can imagine a better system - it's whether we have the persistence to build it.


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