This jargon problem needs to be better addressed in political education, which is relevant to this discussion.

I agree with this. “Anarchy” means lawless chaos to the general population, and it means many different things to different anarchist schools. It seems the anarchists have a general consensus that it means a “non-hierarchical system” but exactly what that is varies greatly between those I’ve discussed it with: from literally no actual structure, to a multi-branch system of checks and balances which really doesn’t look fundamentally different to American representative democracy.

It’s difficult to have a productive conversation about a topic with so much fundamental variance of definition.

When you (most people in my experience, including myself at one time) conceive of the criminal justice problem, and you locate a logical contradiction, you stop.

I think you misunderstood my point. I was not using criminal justice to, itself, justify any particular system. I was using it to illustrate the problem of conflicting goals in any practical system.

I could have used the conflicting goals of power and fuel efficiency in an engine to illustrate the same point. You can design an engine for maximum power at the cost of fuel economy, or you can design one for maximum fuel economy at the cost of power. In practice, you have to choose a middle ground which provides an acceptable balance.

My point being that you can design a system of government which is capable of preventing individuals from violating the rights of others, or a government which is incapable of violating the rights of an individual itself, but you can’t have both. In practice, you need a system with the power to “oppress” oppressors, but with checks and balances to limit its ability to oppress innocents.

When the people are educated, the power is with us, and the objective reality of class antagonisms is clear to the people, then a just revolution is possible.

The issue is that it is very difficult to educate the masses. Most people lack the interest, ability, or both. Especially when there’s so much antagonism from the in-group.

It may seem unsatisfying but I will die defending this, is that our job is not to imagine a more just world and then work our way backward, but to engage here and now in collective political, cultural, material struggle to create the conditions for such a world to exist.

I think the best approach in most applications is both. We need to imagine the perfect world, and work backwards from there, while also looking at our current conditions, and working forwards from there. Obviously the utopia-back side of that equation needs to be focused on solution spaces, with some flexibility.

On the present-forward end, I also think a broad approach is best. Vote strategically AND collaborate with local orgs AND engage in direct community action AND educate your neighbors AND unionize your workplace AND etc. We can’t know what will be the most effective vector of action in the long run, but the more vectors we engage the more likely we are to get there.

You seem like you’ve given this real thought, and you’re willing to engage the solution space pragmatically. I encourage you to visit [email protected] , it’s a fledgling community I created for discussing leftist ideas with a focus on pragmatism over idealism.