Forwardism in the Age of Real Utopias: Andrew Yang, Utopias Podcast, and the Rise of Socialism+
- Maryland Forward
- 3 days ago
- 4 min read
When Andrew Yang joined Dr. Ramesh Srinivasan on the Utopias podcast this week, it felt less like a media appearance and more like a signal. A marker in time. A reminder that the future is no longer a distant abstraction—it’s taking shape through leaders willing to redesign society from first principles.
And if the political earthquakes of the last few years have proven anything, it’s that America is hungry for bold, future-focused coalitions capable of thinking beyond the old ideological barricades.
Nowhere is this more evident than in New York City, where the election of Zohran Mamdani as mayorstunned the pundit class and electrified a new political generation. Mamdani’s victory—powered by working-class tenants, young tech workers, YIMBY reformers, and a Democratic Socialist base—showed what happens when an abundance mindset fuses with justice-oriented politics and simple affordability economics.
In many ways, Mamdani’s NYC is the first real test case of an idea gaining steam across futurist, Forwardist, and post-left intellectual circles:
Socialism +.
⸻
**What Is Socialism + ?
Beyond Socialism. Beyond Utopia. Into the Universe of the Possible.**
In every era, a new political formula emerges to meet rising contradictions.
• New Deal Liberalism in the 1930s.
• Neoliberal globalism in the 80s and 90s.
• Populist disruption in the 2010s.
Today, as automation, AI acceleration, climate pressures, and demographic stagnation collide, we need something bigger than “left” or “right” to organize around.
Socialism + is that formula—not socialism redux, but socialism reimagined through the lens of abundance, automation, markets, and radical democracy.
Socialism + recognizes:
🟦 Markets can produce abundance
🟥 Democracy can distribute abundance
🟧 Technology can accelerate abundance
🟩 Human dignity is the moral floor for any real abundance agenda
It synthesizes:
• YIMBY housing reform
• Data dividends and digital rights
• Worker power reshaped for the automated era
• Democratic socialist equity economics
• UBI as the backbone of the new social contract
• A futurist ethic that sees technology as a responsibility, not a threat
• And Forwardist radical centrism as the glue that holds it all together
It’s not post-left or post-right.
It’s post-scarcity with direction.
⸻
Yang on Utopias: First Principles for a Real Future
On the podcast, Yang and Srinivasan dove deep into what it means to design a functional political and economic system in an age of runaway automation and institutional decay.
Yang stressed what Forwardists have been saying for years:
➡️ GDP is dying as a measurement of human wellbeing
➡️ Automation is the central economic story of the 21st century
➡️ UBI isn’t radical—it’s inevitable
➡️ Democracy is failing structurally, not philosophically
➡️ Real utopias come from practical redesign, not ideological purity
Dr. Srinivasan pushed on issues of Big Tech power, social cohesion, and the necessity of new economic indicators. Their exchange was the kind of thoughtful, paradigm-breaking discourse that America’s political class rarely touches.
For Forwardists, technologists, and futurist dreamers—this is the conversation we’ve been waiting for.
⸻
The Mamdani Moment: Abundance Coalition Politics in NYC
The election of Zohran Mamdani was not an accident.
It was the culmination of overlapping currents:
• immigrant communities ready for economic dignity
• YIMBY urbanists tired of artificial scarcity
• Democratic Socialist organizers demanding justice
• tech workers frustrated with performative politics
• climate activists seeking systemic leverage
• abundance futurists tracking real solutions
NYC became the test bed for a new fusion politics:
YIMBY Abundance Agenda × Democratic Socialist Justice = Socialism +
It’s no surprise that this political synthesis echoes Andrew Yang’s core thesis:
When society is failing, don’t defend the system—redesign it.
⸻
The Forwardist Synthesis: Radical Centrism for the Automated Era
The Forward Party is uniquely positioned to champion the future because it is unshackled from the ideological baggage of the last century.
Forwardism argues:
🔹 Democracy must be upgraded — ranked choice voting, open primaries, proportional representation.
🔹 Automation must be managed, not feared — with UBI and new civic guarantees.
🔹 Markets must be aligned with human flourishing — not monopolistic extraction.
🔹 Housing must be abundant, not artificially scarce.
🔹 Human dignity must be unconditional, not transactional.
Where the old left fights for redistribution and the old right fixates on individualism, Forwardists say:
Why not both?
Why not abundance + dignity?
Why not technology + compassion?
Why not Socialism + Capitalism + Democracy in an equilibrium?
Forwardism is the bridge movement:
radical democracy + abundance economics + technological humanism.
This is the politics of the next century.
⸻
A Futurist Vision: Automated Abundance & Radical Democracy
We are entering a world where:
🧠 AI does most cognitive labor
🤖 Robotics does most physical labor
🌇 Cities densify into ecological hives
💠 Data becomes the new natural resource
💸 UBI becomes the societal equalizer
🕊 Democracy evolves into participatory, digital-first systems
The question is no longer:
Who will work?
The question is now:
How will we distribute the gains?
How will we govern abundance?
How will we redesign meaning?
Forwardism is answering those questions with the only framework that makes sense in the 21st century:
Radical centrism + Radical imagination + Real systems design.
⸻
The New Coalition: YIMBYs, Democratic Socialists, Forwardists, and the Abundance Future
For the first time, these groups align:
• YIMBYs want abundant housing
• Democratic Socialists want justice and dignity
• Forwardists want systemic reform and UBI
• Tech futurists want automation and innovation
• Climate activists want regenerative infrastructure
Together, they form the backbone of Socialism +
A political ecosystem capable of governing a post-scarcity world.
This is not the politics of yesterday.
This is the politics of the something ultrahuman.
⸻
Conclusion: Forward Into the Real Utopia
Andrew Yang’s appearance on the Utopias podcast was not merely a conversation.
It was a call to action.
A signal flare.
A reminder that politics is not about left or right anymore—it’s about designing new realities.
With leaders like Yang, thinkers like Srinivasan, and the new coalition powered by Mamdani’s NYC breakthrough, we are entering a new alignment.
The age of Socialism +.
The age of Automated Abundance.
The age of Radical Democracy.
The age of Forwardism.
The only real utopia is the one we build.
Together.
