Utopia After Capitalism

Published in Radical Literary Inquiry , Author : Carter, Mason ORCID iD : 0009-0004-6420-4114 Abstract Contemporary speculative fiction imagines social organisation beyond capitalist relations through sustained construction of communal forms grounded in mutual aid, voluntary association, and the refusal of proprietary accumulation. Drawing upon the theoretical frameworks of Peter Kropotkin and Murray Bookchin, this essay examines the ways in which works by Ursula K. Le Guin, Octavia E. Butler, M. E. O’Brien and Eman Abdelhadi, and related solarpunk narratives elaborate post-capitalist social arrangements. The analysis demonstrates that speculative fiction functions as a laboratory for prefigurative politics, rendering visible the practical textures of life organised through reciprocity rather than extraction, and affirming that collective possibility remains expandable through the continual labour of mutual aid and direct participation. Keywords: utopia, post-capitalism, mutual aid, speculati…