Redneck Gone Green with William I. Robinson

Added: 2026-05-22

[00:00:21]Howdy folks. Welcome to Redneck Gone Green. I'm your host, David Cobb. I am the redneck. You bet. I've gone green and I'm trying to get you to do it, too.

[00:00:32]And as a reminder, as we do on this program every week, when we say go green, we ain't talking about near environmentalism.

[00:00:40]We invite you to go deeper, to imagine deep ecology, the interconnectedness of all living things. And whether you come at that from a hard science perspective or you come at that from a deeply eco-feminist spiritual perspective or like me you say those are both perfectly valid ways of understanding the world.

[00:01:03]I'm here to tell you we doing it wrong.

[00:01:06]Which is to say we are plundering mother earth faster than she can replenish herself. And what's even more grotesque, we are creating a racist, sexist class order with the plunder. And we are our window to do something about it is closing. But this program is never about the ain't it awful? But we bring you voices of people who have a program and a plan to do something about it. And with that, I want to bring our good friend, co-host Shane Knight into the conversation. Shane, brother, how you doing?

[00:01:44]>> Hey, it's good to see you, David. It's been a while.

[00:01:49]>> It has been a minute, brother. Look, I've been traveling, right? Right now, I'm coming at you from Atlanta, Georgia.

[00:01:56]Uh, I haven't seen Ruthie in far too long, but I've been on the road because I'm actually traveling trying to inspire other people to engage in the People's Network for land and liberation fivepoint program, decommodify land, build worker own cooperatives, do art and culture, do political education, build community production centers using digital fabrication. And what's exciting to me, Shane, is more and more people are not just intrigued by it, but they're pushing us to say, "Well, what does it look like in my community?" I think we're offering people a lifeboat as they see that a catastrophic flood is coming.

[00:02:37]>> I think that's a great thing. And the fact that people are looking for it really gives me a little bit of hope.

[00:02:41]Makes me feel a little bit better. But I've been I've been all right. I know you you've been busy. I've been busy.

[00:02:46]Uh, the world's been busy getting a little bit rowdier and more messed up every day.

[00:02:53]>> Well, well, look at here, man. Like our next guest. I'm really excited about our guest. I want to first lift up uh my dear friend and longtime colleague and collaborator, Professor Ben Mansky at George Mason University. Uh he put me on to William Robinson and specifically the book uh that William wrote that I think is phenomenal. I' I've had a chance to read it. It's called Epocal Crisis: The Exhaustion of Global Capitalism. William Robinson. Let's bring him into this conversation because we've only got him for 30 minutes. Shane, and I want to give our audience every moment they can with him. William Robinson, welcome to Redneck on Green.

[00:03:33]>> Thank you. Thank you so much, David and Shane. Great to be on the program.

[00:03:37]>> So, look at here. I want to start with uh like I've an invitation to you because William uh I took I I did my homework and what I've realized is you spent decades studying the global capitalist system you've studied the the structures of trans transnational power but I want to ask you what inspired or motivated you to make that kind of study because it's not what the normal person studies >> right yeah well I left there's a of course there's the biographical element here. I left the United States when I was 18 years old. I was gone for 20 years and um most of those 20 years I spent in Central America. This would be in the 1980s and and the 1990s with the Central American uh revolutions. I was a participant in the Sandinista Revolution in Nicaragua. That revolution was defeated. Um I stayed there for the rest of the the 20th century. But I started asking myself the big questions that this revolution had generated so much hope and inspiration worldwide. Uh how did it get defeated? Why did this this collapse? And so that led me to ask bigger questions. What's going on at the level of this whole global system that we live in that made it impossible to have this genuine revolution in Nicaragua? And so I started saying well I need to study the the global economy um and global society but I also need to see how global economy and society uh began up this process of very dramatic transformation starting in the late 20th century coinciding with that Nicaraguan revolution and making it unviable uh that revolution. So that led me to the study of of global capitalism. And I should also add that I am a socialist, a democratic socialist. Um uh and so of course I started out critiquing critiquing capitalism and took it to the global level.

[00:05:24]>> Well, and and thank you for that. And I'm going to take that uh moment to go a little bit deeper because in epo crisis, you argue that this is not the normal cyclical downturn of the capitalist economy. you're making the case and I think frankly very persuasively that this is a true rupture that this is quote epaco. So I'm going to invite you to to make the case for readers who may not or listeners who may not have read the book yet and frankly hopefully entice them to read the book. What convinced you that this is an epole crisis and not just one more example of crisis capitalism reinventing itself?

[00:06:07]>> Yes, exactly. Well, there's several things. The the first is that the whole history of capitalism over the last five plus centuries has been waves of crisis followed by waves of expansion. And so, capitalism by its very nature, it has to expand outward. And also by its very nature, it will always fall into crisis.

[00:06:24]Capitalist system can't avoid crisis.

[00:06:26]So, each crisis each and and and then of course the cyclical crises are every 10 years or so, recessions, the business cycle. But we're in the midst of a much bigger crisis to take place about once every half a century uh called structural crisis. There was one giant one in the 1970s. Before that, of course, the great depression of the 1930s. With the global financial collapse of 2008, we entered into a new structural crisis. And we can study this whole 500year period of these giant structural crises which involve then waves of expansion and then the system restabilizes itself. But now that new wave of expansion, it's not possible.

[00:07:00]the whole globe has now been uh eaten up. I mean, this is a multi-dimensional crisis. I want to say first, it's a political crisis of of state legitimacy, of capitalist hedgeimony, and a rising geopolitical conflict. It's also a deep social crisis. We don't have time to go into the finer detail, but billions of people can no longer survive in the global global capital system. Uh about two billion people right now are what I call surplus humanity. They've been expelled. Uh they don't provide a market for for transnational capital. They don't generate surplus value for capitalist profits. They're useless to the system and they're being subject the most extreme case to genocide uh in in Palestine. And of course, it is a um uh an environmental crisis as you mentioned in the introduction that capitalist system is plundering nature faster than it can be replaced. The biosphere is collapsing. And this is ex this is what makes it also existential more than just the previous structural uh crises.

[00:07:56]Before I get into the economic dimension, which I'll leave um uh uh uh uh I'll leave for last. Uh global uh heat warming and the global environmental crisis is leading to a situation where over the next 20 30 years vast tracks of land in the world cannot be inhabited by human beings. Um and they're too hot to inhabit and that is going to lead to a situation where capital cannot exploit labor and have access to those resources. Um agriculture is is headed towards collapse as you know as an environmentalist. um yourself. I mean I can go on and on with the environmental dimension but basically capital capital has already colonized the entire planet and it is not going to be able to expand in the way that it did in previous structural crisis would have allowed it to stabilize and have a new round of prosperity. Finally, there's the economic dimension um which we technically call overaccumulation.

[00:08:48]Meaning that the what I call the transnational capitalist class, they've accumulated such enormous amounts of wealth that they do not have anywhere to continue uh investing it and continuing to accumulate capital. I'll conclude with this one piece of data. The global economy in 2025 was valued at between 105 and 110 trillion dollars. That's the production of goods and services which all of us human beings need in order to survive. But um speculative capital reached $1.7 quadrillion dollars last year. I mean you can't even wrap your mind around these figures. $105 trillion is the real economy that we live on and 1.7 quadrillion is the amount of money not backed by anything in the real economy floating out there. I want to stop a moment, William, because this point is one that I I want our listeners and our viewers to really understand because the real world, the actual world is that first number uh that William gave us. The financial or the the made up the construct is like what's the ratio, William? Like it's it's almost mind-boggling to me.

[00:10:01]>> Yeah. It's 1.5 trillion to 1.7 quadrillion. So that is what 1,700% more fictitious capital.

[00:10:10]>> It's just zeros and ones, right? It doesn't even exist in the real world.

[00:10:15]>> Exactly. We don't even use that that that number quadrillion. Right. All right. I Exactly. This is what we call fictitious capital. It means that c and and it's pointing to a cataclysmic crash there. There's no way to avoid that. it might be postponed further into the future. Uh there may be the burst of the AI bubble and that will be a more minor, you know, bump in the road. But we're moving towards a cataclysmic crash here because capital cannot continue to accumulate all of this fictitious capital. That is also why this capitalist system is moving ever more towards war and conflict and crisis all over the world. Political and military and conflict and social upheaval. the system is desperately trying to to to expand to um and and it can't.

[00:11:02]>> So, William, I I want to make sure that we give you enough time to talk about what is to be done. Uh, and that is a very intentional reference that I know you got. But I do want to ask this question because for many people hearing this kind of these numbers and it it seems it it seems almost impossible to imagine what we can actually do about it because it appears extraordinarily powerful. But you're also arguing that it's actually profoundly unstable and that this is a moment where this rupture could give us an opportunity to comp make an advance that I think that most people are not thinking about. I want to invite you to make that case because you do make that case in the epoch crisis.

[00:11:50]>> Absolutely. So let's go back for a minute to the political dimensions of this crisis because I mentioned a crisis of of legitimacy. The system is not considered legitimate now by a majority of people uh around the world because the system cannot meet the the survival needs of billions of people around the world is facing a a severe crisis of legitimacy. There are is a global revolt underway for it's been and has been gaining steam for for years now. We might not see this in the corporate media. It doesn't make headlines, but everywhere you turn, there are uprisings. As we speak, there's a general strike taking over Bolivia, making Bolivia ungovernable in the face of austerity measures. Um, there was just a general strike in Argentina a couple of days ago. Remember in fall there were these uprisings by Gen Z everywhere we went in set 10, 11, 12 different countries. And the remarkable thing about those Gen Z uprisings is the young people in these different countries recognize that they are part of a generation that has no future if they don't radically change things. So there is a global revolt underway. Now if we want to talk about what we do in the face of this uh crisis and in the face of this uh onslaught, we we we have to there's a number of things we have to do here. One is we we need to see that um the the left the organized left institutional left is in a state of crisis around the world. So we have this really tragic situation where people everywhere around the world they want radical change. In fact I'll throw this out now and maybe we can come back to it later. You know, Trump was elected by some people that may be diehard racists and diehard right-wing extremists, but a mass of workingclass people that simply voted for Trump because they're desperate for some kind of change and got uh fooled by his um uh by by that manipulative uh discourse. Um but we we need powerful political organizations, but not like we had in the 20th century.

[00:13:42]The 20th century model for revolution against capitalism is completely bankrupt. Um and we need emancipatory projects. That's the problem is you have all of these revolts around the world.

[00:13:53]You have all of these uprising. You have people desperate for change and we have do not have the left political organizations that can carry out the role of articulation and putting forward a vision of a transformative uh uh future. Um there's something else David that we have to touch on here and it's that we have a global working class which is the the biggest class in history at this point. Five billion people belong to the g global uh proletariat. But when we think of a proletariat, we imagine the 19th and the 20th century an industrial working class people with stable full-time jobs that can go on strike and and undermine uh you know and bring production to a halt.

[00:14:31]But out of that five billion people, one half of them have been expelled as what I call surplus humanity. Workers that have no stable employment, no stake in the system. And the other half is increasingly face facing what we call precarious conditions, unstable employment, precarious employment. Uh just here in the United States, and this came out just late last year, is 60 65% of households in the United States can't afford the very basic necessities um because they don't have full-time stable uh employment. So when we talk about organizing the working class, sure we need the old 20th century unions and workingclass movement, but we also have to think of new ways of organizing the the masses of workingclass people who are precarious, who are structurally undermployed and uh and you know and unemployed. And also we used to think about workingclass struggle at the point of production in the factories, on the farms and in the mines. That is still extremely important. But we how do you organize and how do people that are structurally unemployed for whole stretches of their life? How do they confront capital if not through a strike by withdrawing their labor? So we also need to think about struggles at the level of I know it's a little bit technical but what we call social reproduction. How communities um uh uh how communities can take care of each other to care of each other and find ways uh to survive to to to socially reproduce uh in this system. uh you know as we also challenge the powers that be the capitalist state and the capitalist class.

[00:15:59]>> So I want to take this opportunity then to to ask you uh very directly uh because I know that epoal crisis actually came out just before Trump was reelected but you have referenced Trump and I know that you've since written some a very provocative essay. So, I want to ask you, do you interpret Trumpism as true right-wing populism? Is it authoritarian nationalism? Are these temporary reactions or these expressions of a deeper restructuring of the capitalist power itself?

[00:16:36]>> It's a deeper restructuring. It's basically we we are experiencing this time the vertigo of a world capitalist system that is disintegrating before our very eyes. And this uh throws up all of these morbid political forms, in this case, Trumpism. And it's not just Trumpism in the United States, but what I call now global Trumpism. Meaning that around the world, one of the responses, far right, what I consider neofascist, 21st century uh fascist responses to the crisis is global Trumpism. So you have all of these figures that we're so familiar with. Netanyahu in Israel. Uh Orbin was just just left. That's great.

[00:17:14]Uh but there's a lot of orbins all around the world. There's Malay in Argentina. There's Boulli in El Salvador. There's Modi in India. So this is one far-right really 21st nail fascist response to the this epical crisis of global capitalism is this global Trumpism. and global Trumpism is ruling now through warlordism from global warlordism from uh systematic corruption and plunder of the uh of of the state um and seeking to tr two things to one transfer the costs of the crisis onto the working masses the working-class masses around the world including very much so uh in the United States and secondly we have to introduce something else here that um in the last few years we've seen the rise of what I call a new uh hedgemonic capital complex which brings together the giant tech corporations because we have to remember remember while we're facing this epical crisis we're also facing an AI revolution and it is not us that controls this new technology but transnational capital the absolute heights of transnational capital and they have one vision which is how you maximize profit and maximize control uh and access to resources so we have um the giant tech companies uh coming together with the military ary industrial repression complex and with transnational finance. Those three factions of capital are fusing not just in the United States but around the world. It's the new power block. And those factions of capital have turned to global Trumpism to and also into other uh authoritarian um dictatorial and even fascist systems to represent their interests. And so this hegemonic complex of capital has launched a predatory round of expansion worldwide in response to the crisis. How do you smash open new spaces for accumulation? Seize create and seize new markets and seize new uh resources especially land energy and uh minerals the critical minerals needed for the AI revolution. So that's why we're seeing all of these conflicts around the world because it is response to the crisis led by global Trumpism behind which is this new hegemonic block of capital. So, William, you've spent your uh your your your entire intellectual career studying the system like the the the patterns etc. Many of us talk about building a new society within the shell of the old and I as a lawyer have helped people create community land trust. I've incubated worker-owned cooperatives. Uh, and I want to ask straight up, is it possible still from the bottom up to do the kind of what we call displacement theory of overgrowing the system or is that pay and I need to shift my focus? It's a genuine inquiry and invitation for you because I want to meet this moment and I'm not sure that the approach that I have been taking is going to but if you think no David you and others like you were meant for this moment I want you to say that but if you want to say no David you need to shift I'm inviting you to help me think differently if I need to.

[00:20:25]>> Right. Well, I think half halfway we're going to meet halfway there because absolutely earlier in this interview I was saying that the the the the internet the organ the institutional the organized left is in crisis worldwide at a time when masses of people are in open revolt or uh prepared to revolt and want to see uh radical change. The only viable strategy at this point for humanity is the self-organization of communities at the from the bottom up.

[00:20:55]um uh whether we're talking about workers councils or um uh community uh community organizations. So a strategy from the bottom up um and not from the top down and not led by uh political you know led from the top by political parties uh is the only way forward. But the question and also and and the second thing it is there is no contradiction between struggling for urgently needed reform um whether we're talking about environmental measures whether we're talking about universal health care um social spending there's absolutely no contradiction between fighting for these reforms and people don't fight to overturn the system when people fight in order to survive. Um so we need we desperately need um reforms and at the same time we there is no way that we can survive in global capitalism. We need to move beyond the capitalist system. Um so I I don't have a crystal ball and I don't have the scenario for how we move beyond the capitalist system but I don't think we can transform it from within.

[00:21:56]Um there needs to be some rupture with the capitalist system. Uh, I don't know how much that response um gets at your concern.

[00:22:06]>> So, you know, William, I I I am keenly interested uh in you helping me think about advising movement organizers, not just me, but in general, where should our greatest strategic emphasis take place? Or do we have to do all of these?

[00:22:24]Should it be on labor organizing? Should it be on political education? Should it be on electoral struggle? Should it be on mass mobilizing? Should it be on alternative institutions? Should it be on something else? Or do we have to actually do all of these things at the same time?

[00:22:41]>> I mean, without any doubt, we have to do them all at the same time. I mean, that's all part of of, you know, that's that's all part of the type of movement we need to confront this system. I mean, we cannot abandon or lead to the side any of those things you just raised. And we're stronger on some of them. were stronger at working with organized labor. But I was mentioning previously that a big chunk of the global proletariat or if we're talking about just in the United States of the working class in the United States doesn't have stable employment. Um and if you're unemployed, one of the concept of trade unions is that you have to be employed in order to join a trade union. So we need a very different concept of the working class organizing itself and us participating in that organization. You also mentioned um uh political education. We desperately need political education because I want to go back to the observation I made previously around the world people are desperate for radical change but the level of political um you know political and ideological and historical understanding of what's going on is very low. It's not the fault of workingclass and poor people that are in their daily struggles for survival. Uh so we also desperately need political education. We should be participating in elections without having the illusion that we can simply electorally uh overthrow capitalism. But we still have to participate in elections. We have to build mass social movements, not just unions, not just trade unions, but mass social movements which bring together all of our multiple struggles. I want to get back to the issue of articulation, but just let me finish this point. We have the environmental movement. We have workers movements. We have the feminist movement. We have students movements. We have where there's peasants in in other countries. We have the the peasant movements. We we have every community movements have every single anti-racist movements. We have every single movement and uh imaginable and we need them all.

[00:24:26]But what we need is them to be articulated. Right? that that and that is where powerful political organizations come in that we don't have organizations that don't want to control the mass social movements but want to play that role of political education and of articulation. So everything you laid out there, I mentioned four of them, right? Political education, the mass movements, electoral participation, and uh uh I forgot the fourth, but you mentioned five or six. We need we need all of them. We need to deepen all of them. But again, I want to keep on stressing because you asked me, you know, what could the our struggles, what are we missing? Uh so the role of articulation without control. So you have all of these left parties and this is not just in the United States, it's around the world. I travel or at least I I used to and I speak with people and on the the left all over the world. Uh there's still this concept of a revolutionary political party from the top down will organize mass, you know, workers and and and social movements to overthrow the system. That's the 20th century. That didn't work. That has really nothing to do with what we need to do at uh um uh at this point. And I'll just conclude by saying I appreciate the question, but I certainly don't have the answer. My role in our struggles is to analyze global capitalism to let people know this is what's going on with this monster of a system, right? This is where it's at.

[00:25:46]How do we make sense of all of this?

[00:25:48]>> William, I appreciate the humility. I also appreciate you pushing us to and not only me but every listener, participant in redneck on green. This is a growing community of both practitioners of solidarity economy, but it's also folks who are coming to terms with taking the world as it is, not as we want it to be. And part of what we have to acknowledge is this system is dying. It's collapsing. But I don't celebrate that, William, because I see and I think Giannis Farafakus' articulation of technofudalism and that kind of new era fascism is what's coming next. So I don't celebrate it. What I'm saying is I think that this is something like some people say, "Oh, we need just a displacement of the current system.

[00:26:39]Let's overgrow the system and we do it sort of slowly, methodically." Others are saying a rupture. I'm saying this.

[00:26:47]I'm not banking on either one of those.

[00:26:50]But what I do know is that there is a rupture happening. And if we don't have the imagination and the vision for restructuring society, the the the predatory class have a plan. Uh and it is a horrific plan because it is a dystopian future for most of us and big walls for them. So William, to me, what I'm going to invite you to do is to sort of make the case about is there a path forward here? Not the pie in the sky.

[00:27:22]Oh, I've got the answer. But as a his a sociologist who have studied history, who has studied systems, there have been advances made that seemed impossible at the time. So, in the closing, because I know we've only got you for a couple more minutes, I'm afraid. So, I really want you to lay out as an academic who studies this, give us like what's giving you hope as somebody who studies this with a clear lens, >> right? Yeah. Well, um you don't have to be a Leninist to appreciate uh Lenin's famous observation that there are years when nothing happens and then weeks when years happen and that's the the moment that we may be approaching and then it can give us some um some hope. So I think you you know it is correct when you say the solidarity economies and building up local communities that can sustain themselves that is absolutely crucial that I that's what I was getting at earlier with community self-rerodction and self-organization but the thing is that cap if we rely on that alone to take advantage of this moment and I'm going to explain what gives me hope right now but if we rely on that alone number one capital will come after us they won't leave us alone they won't say okay you guys in your community there aistas you down there you people in this urban area in the United States, you're you're you're organizing yourselves, trying to develop a solidarity economy, trying to pull out of the system. Uh we're just going to let you do that, right? That is not what capital does. Capital will come after us all the time. Uh and so we also have to as we develop our solidarity economies, our community, our you know, our community survival strategies, which we're using different language for the same thing, we also need to confront capital. What gives me hope at this point are several things. First of all, I want to repeat that there's a lack of political education, a lack of actual emancipatory program in front of us. But billions of people around the world want radical change. The Kato Institute, which you know is this libertarian foundation based, right-wing libertarian foundation based in Washington DC. I've been citing them because last year uh they published uh a a survey and the survey asked Gen Z people, kids, people in the United States 18 to 29 years old uh do you prefer socialism over capitalism. 62% said yeah that we want socialism. We want capitalism. And then they said do you want communism over capitalism? I'm not talking about 20 I'm sure they're not in their mind thinking about 20th century communism. They're thinking about communism as communal existence, right? And and repro and survival. Uh and 34% said yes. So I grew up in the cold war. I think you guys did too. You look about you look about the same age. But this is a generation that knows they have no future. They're ready to radically change their system. That gives me tremendous hope. Combined with and I'll conclude with this the fact that the system is headed for collapse.

[00:30:10]The danger moment is when it starts collapsing and it already is but it's not in freef fall yet. It's beginning.

[00:30:16]It's crumbling and now it's going to have freef fall when the next structural crisis whether it's in a you know stock market collapse whatever it is. you know at that moment the system is going to get even more uh violent but that's also a moment of um rupture that we need to um to prepare for but just to conclude again I'm so hopeful because of this younger generation all over the world not just here at all in the United States and secondly the system cannot survive it cannot reproduce itself the system is in such deep crisis the big question how do we take advantage of this system's crisis >> I love it I I'll conclude with this, William. I often say I'm not spending my life fighting to save this dying system.

[00:31:00]I'm fighting to create a new one. One that is ecologically sustainable, that is democratic, that is racially and socially just. I want to return to the world that our ancestors lived in that was pre- enclosure that was pre uh uh capitalism that was a pre-way of being.

[00:31:22]It's an indigenous worldview. William Robinson, I want to thank you for joining us here on Redneck Gone Green.

[00:31:27]Most importantly, I want to thank you, the viewer, listener. We're getting larger, stronger, and better organized every week because of you. Please like, comment, subscribe. I know everybody says that the reason that they do, the reason that we do is because we know the algorithm is not designed for us, but we can grow and are growing organically.

[00:31:48]So, please join our Substack, Redneck Gone Green, join Democracy at Works YouTube uh channel. Read Epac Crisis by William Robinson.

[00:32:00]And Shane, I know you're doing an offering with at Democracy at Work with the People's Network for Land and Liberation and the Wealthspring Cooperative. I want to give you an opportunity to invite folks into that conversation.

[00:32:12]>> Yeah, we've got another exciting round of the Worker Co-op Academy coming up, which folks don't know, it's a collaboration between People's Network for Land of Liberation and Wellspring Cooperative Corporation in uh Springfield, Massachusetts or thereabouts. um come together to produce a summer boot camp edition of our worker co-op in introduction course. So, anybody who might be interested in uh starting their own worker co-op or transitioning a business that they currently own or work in into a worker co-op, uh you can go to democracywork.infocca for worker co-op academy to find out more information about the entire 14week program. Um I will be there leading one session on the advertising and branding portion of that. Um and it's going to be a good time. It's going to be uh on Tuesdays I believe. I forget the exact time but we'll put it in the substack and make sure all that information is available to everyone. Again, we need to check it out. Go to democracyatwork.infowca.

[00:33:18]>> All right, y'all. Well, in the meantime, keep on keeping on. Can't stop, won't stop. I'm going to end with this. I believe we can win and we've got to win for the sake of our children. Peace.