It’s unreasonable to expect one side of a debate to redesign all of society in exquisite detail where the other just has to argue for reform.
Yes, it is unreasonable to expect anyone to redesign all of society in exquisite detail, which is exactly why I prefer to argue for reform.
Slight tangent, but the other thing I see a lot is people describing "abolishing capitalism" as though it's a discrete action that can be taken. As if there's a big "CAPITALISM" switch in the middle of the continent and the first step we need to take is to turn it from "ON" to "OFF". When in fact, capitalism (whatever that is -- are going with the "mode of production in which blah blah blah" definition or something else?) seems to permeate the system at every level. Which means that "Abolish capitalism now, figure out the rest later" doesn't really make sense. It would be a bit like saying "We'll plant the forest now, and we'll worry about the trees later."
One thing I've been impressed with is workplace organizing and the idea of building dual power. I attended an IWW workshop on organizing, and one of the things they emphasized was that, in order to have power in their workplace, the workers need to understand how the business works at least as well as their bosses do. The catchphrase that came up was "Organizing is Reorganizing". This kind of local organizing seems to me like a potentially promising way to find practical answers to questions in the category of "How would a non-capitalist system handle X?" in specific situations before capitalism has been entirely abolished, rather than just postponing the question until after the revolution.
But there is a big switch. It's getting rid of the owner class, and transferring ownership of the business to employees. For businesses that are natural monopolies like oil, governments can take over those.
Yes, it is unreasonable to expect anyone to redesign all of society in exquisite detail, which is exactly why I prefer to argue for reform.
Slight tangent, but the other thing I see a lot is people describing "abolishing capitalism" as though it's a discrete action that can be taken. As if there's a big "CAPITALISM" switch in the middle of the continent and the first step we need to take is to turn it from "ON" to "OFF". When in fact, capitalism (whatever that is -- are going with the "mode of production in which blah blah blah" definition or something else?) seems to permeate the system at every level. Which means that "Abolish capitalism now, figure out the rest later" doesn't really make sense. It would be a bit like saying "We'll plant the forest now, and we'll worry about the trees later."
One thing I've been impressed with is workplace organizing and the idea of building dual power. I attended an IWW workshop on organizing, and one of the things they emphasized was that, in order to have power in their workplace, the workers need to understand how the business works at least as well as their bosses do. The catchphrase that came up was "Organizing is Reorganizing". This kind of local organizing seems to me like a potentially promising way to find practical answers to questions in the category of "How would a non-capitalist system handle X?" in specific situations before capitalism has been entirely abolished, rather than just postponing the question until after the revolution.
But there is a big switch. It's getting rid of the owner class, and transferring ownership of the business to employees. For businesses that are natural monopolies like oil, governments can take over those.
I need to clarify my points but I also need to go to sleep so I'm gonna get back to you tomorrow