For me, it’s pretty clear that police and prisons reinforce class society and are things that factor into proletarianization. Therefore there can be no socialism without abolition. A corollary states that socialist projects that reinstituted police and prisons (gulags and checka anyone?) couldn’t be socialist because by using police and prisons it reinforced proletarianization and class relations.
What do you think?
There isn’t an immutable human nature. Things like authoritarianism is learned, produced, and reproduced. Abolition doesn’t mean that counterrevolutionaries get a free pass, it means unlearning these hateful things on an individual and social level.
I didn’t say it was necessarily immutable, certainly we can learn to be civilized people. However, we do have 3 or 4 current generations who have widely learned this behavior*, and unlearning a behavior is far more difficult than learning one.
Furthermore, there’s a chicken and egg problem, we likely cannot begin learning to be better people until we have a better society. (Hurt people hurt people, and all that.) This would seem to imply that complete abolishion is only workable after about 50-60 years (at least) after worldwide revolution. (Of course, “workable” and the structure of society that is building towards abolishion are not binaries. But I hope you understand my meaning.)
* (As a side note: while I’m making people mad at me, this is why I disagree with anti-electorialism. There are studies that show the more people are exposed to ideas while growing up, the more they have those ideas when grown up. So if Republicans are allowed to control the airwaves legally using positions of influence and power then not only capitalist but also fascist rhetoric will be part of the cultural mileau of new generations. If we cannot stand up and crush them, we will never have the political conditions necessary for revolution, as our talking points will be continually usurped by them. This is not a vote blue no matter who statement, you should also be attacking and fracturing the Democrats. Primarying them. Filling their seats. Pushing for electorial system reform (Score voting, approval voting, IRV) to make them less important andrelevant to a leftist strategy. Fighting them tooth and nail for power.)
The most important thing is having people aware that there is a better way, and we can’t do that if we don’t have people in prominent positions. I don’t think we can “out elect” Dems and Republicans. But we don’t need to. I don’t think elections are a viable tool for performing revolution, we will certainly need more than that, but I do think they are an important tool for widespread awareness, and not just a harm reduction strategy.)