by JR Hagler

J Hagler, an anti-war community organizer in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, summarizes his chapter.

Full Chapter:

“The acquisition of wealth is no longer the driving force in our lives. We work to better ourselves and the rest of humanity,” said fictional Captain Jean-Luc Picard of Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Humanity is standing on the cusp. Climate change is presenting the U.S. with the same choice nature has gifted all its species: evolve or die. Change is the only constant.

As the cost of basic goods and, more importantly, energy continues to rise across the capitalist economies of Japan, Western Europe and North America, others have decided to utilize their economy to actually innovate. Instead of phallic vanity projects of the impotent super-wealthy, presented by SpaceX and Blue Origin, the Chinese Academy of Space Technology (CAST) has shown humanity a different way forward into the stars.

The construction of a “Space Solar Power Station” (SSPS) has already begun and is expected to launch into low orbit by 2028. Over 100 researchers and students across a multitude of disciplines are collectively leading the project for the SSPS at Xidian University.

An article from the Chinese Global Television Network (CGTN), published in June of 2022, reads: “SSPS is a space-based power generation system used to collect solar energy before converting it to electricity and then microwaves. Next, the energy in microwaves is to be transmitted and harvested by the receiving antenna either in space or on the Earth’s surface, which converts microwaves back into electricity.” 

The project illustrates socialist China’s ability to do long-term planning. The same article says: “By 2035, the microwave transmitting antenna is expected to be enlarged to about 100 meters plus power generation of 10 megawatts. The goal in 2050 is to build a commercially operated solar plant that generates electricity of two gigawatts with an antenna that would be around one-kilometer and a complex solar cell array to be assembled in space.”¹ This monumental undertaking has the power to generate more kilowatt-hours of energy in one year than all of the oil contained within the Earth. It has been called everything from the “Manhattan Project of Energy” to the “Three Gorges Dam in Space.”² 

The potential to create free, clean energy is here, and is being led by a country with a planned economy, actively pursuing socialist development.

U.S. Scientists Knew it Since 1968

The irony of this announcement is that scientists in the capitalist-led United States have known about this technology since 1968, when scientist and aerospace engineer Peter Glaser conceptualized the idea. U.S. corporations could have spearheaded the development of this technology decades ago. Instead, the government invested a measly $17.5 million into Northrop Grumman in 2013 so the weapons manufacturer could “research” the development of an SSPS.

Similar investment is also going into other weapons companies like Lockheed Martin. Imagine, instead of spending 1.5 trillion U.S. tax dollars on the boondoggle of all weapons systems, the F-35, the U.S. had spent that money building the groundwork of an SSPS. If the U.S. government had something akin to a “five year plan,” it could have made progress in developing this energy source.

It’s easier, however, for capitalist enterprises to make quarterly profits supplying weapons for killing women and children in Palestine than to develop an economy in a way that benefits all of society, instead of just a wealthy few.

Projects like the SSPS could not be coming at a more crucial time. Climate change is putting into question the future of humanity and, if the worst-case scenarios are to unfold, of most other species as well. The rate of CO2 being pumped into the atmosphere is unprecedented in planetary history. Humanity is truly in uncharted waters.

Running an entire economy and society based on what is most profitable is what led the U.S. into these crises. The capitalist class cannot lead the U.S. out of them, because the gears of capitalism would grind to a halt if profits are even interrupted, never mind if they ceased entirely due to technologies capable of providing near-limitless, scarcity-free energy.

The Communist Party of China has proven that innovations capable of seeing humanity through this storm are possible with central planning and socially directed investment, if necessary over a long term. The U.S., Western Europe, Japan and world capitalism are going through yet another economic crisis while engaged in yet more “forever” wars as their rates of profit continue to fall.

The working and oppressed masses of these countries do not have to continue letting their leaders take them down the primrose path to ecocide and World War III. As we near the physical limits of the planet itself, Rosa Luxemburg’s challenge of “socialism or barbarism” is now being replaced by the challenge of “socialism or extinction.”

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¹CGTN, “China Aims to Construct First Space Solar Power Station in 2028,” China Global Television Network, June 22, 2022, https://news.cgtn.com/news/2022-06-22/China-aims-to-construct-first-Space-Solar-Power-Station-in-2028-1b49ktMx5W8/index.html.

²Zhang Tong, “China Plans to Build ‘Three Gorges Dam in Space’ to Harness Solar Power,” South China Morning Post (Beijing), January 9, 2025, https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3294091/china-plans-build-three-gorges-dam-space-harness-solar-power.

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J Hagler is an anti-war community organizer in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, a stronghold of right-wing reaction where the youth have a very limited future. J focuses on the liberating potential of the masses and scientific social planning as a way out of capitalist dystopia.