That’s true. A forseeable future can only be deduced what we have already seen, and as we have not seen such a society yet, and have no data on it, who’s to say?

It’s not even about foresight per se. It’s about a very simple question. Let’s assume taht we even are in the primary stages of socialism, which means some vestiges of capitalism are still residing in all of us, and as such, also crime. What do you do with criminals, thiefs, etc.? Reeducation through labour of course, or in other words - prison. Only when the material and superstructural causes for crime to be commited are gone, and as such, crime withers away, only then can prisons be done away with. So don’t hit me with “future is less forseeable” as if it were some mystical thing, instead of a question that can be worked out scientifically/logically.

Prison abolition is not viable in the forseeable future.

I am just worried that it is a change of social relations that cannot be “rolled back” without another violent revolution.

Umm what? Do you thunk that decollectivizing agriculture and reintroducing markets and labour-as-commodity is a step TOWARDS socialism? The productive forces have been expanded enormously but when do we start seeing the class distinctions being abolished onstead of bolstered year-on-year?

I don’t know about the event itself, but In Defense of Marxism is a well-known Trotskyist site (sometimes tinging on reformist side). plus the domain is marxist.com(mercial)

Richard Wolff is a reformist and not a reliable source.

I highly reccomend reading both together as this book contains Lenin’s notes on that particular book :)

Science of Logic by Hegel alongside Lenin’s Philosophical Notebooks

The biggest problem they fall in is constant universalism. Anything that is not pure in content, anything that includes any particular solutions to concrete problems, especially if it deviates from the Idea of Full Communism is deemed as a betrayal of the revolution. (Check out the conceptions of universalism and particularism in Hegel). Just to give an idea, he criticized Stalin for introducting wage-differentiation for different occupations (as in a doctor is paid more than a line worker). This was made to combat flight from factory to factory, in search of better wages and general reluctance to engage in more demanding jobs (as there were little to no incentives in the early collectivization phase). Since SU was trying to industralize heavily and was in need of experts, there had to be incentives for such experts to come to be. Trotsky criticized this as uncommunist, and insisted on keeping the wages the same for EVERYONE, as to build communism here and now, ignoring the reality that existed at that particular historical moment (and aleo because he hated Stalin).