For me, it starts utopian: classless, stateless, moneyless, police/prison abolition, environmental harmony, abolition of work etc... All sounds awesome! Discussing how society could look in this manner would probably make anyone an ancom, it did for me for sure :)
Liberals (both right and left liberals) basically do this to a lesser extent: we should have more or less separation of state, we should have such and such tax structure etc ... It all ends up being a discussion of ideals.
To me, scientific socialism is taking the conclusion that I agree upon with our ancom comrades and dissecting what steps could and should be taken to get there. Different nationals and societies will have different options available to them to transcend the capitalist mode of production and move toward a socialist mode of production as an intermediate step toward achieving FALGSC. MLs for instance, look at the success of the Russian Revolution under Lenin, and say that "if we want to overthrow capitalism we need to study what they did, and make specific adjustments based on the material conditions that a particular nation faces. We need to spend less time calling out particular nations for not being socialist enough and ask why they deviated from the socialist path, and what the pros and cons of that are".
For what we consider utopian socialists, such as ancoms, they look at the same nations, such as the PRC or USSR and say that they made too many compromises, and every action taken on the name of socialism, must be inherently socialist in nature. MLs and/or others may respond that the revolution would not be successful without making the hard decisions and "playing dirty".
There's a lot more nuance than I'm making there out to be, but that's a skeleton explanation.
For me, it starts utopian: classless, stateless, moneyless, police/prison abolition, environmental harmony, abolition of work etc... All sounds awesome! Discussing how society could look in this manner would probably make anyone an ancom, it did for me for sure :)
Liberals (both right and left liberals) basically do this to a lesser extent: we should have more or less separation of state, we should have such and such tax structure etc ... It all ends up being a discussion of ideals.
To me, scientific socialism is taking the conclusion that I agree upon with our ancom comrades and dissecting what steps could and should be taken to get there. Different nationals and societies will have different options available to them to transcend the capitalist mode of production and move toward a socialist mode of production as an intermediate step toward achieving FALGSC. MLs for instance, look at the success of the Russian Revolution under Lenin, and say that "if we want to overthrow capitalism we need to study what they did, and make specific adjustments based on the material conditions that a particular nation faces. We need to spend less time calling out particular nations for not being socialist enough and ask why they deviated from the socialist path, and what the pros and cons of that are".
For what we consider utopian socialists, such as ancoms, they look at the same nations, such as the PRC or USSR and say that they made too many compromises, and every action taken on the name of socialism, must be inherently socialist in nature. MLs and/or others may respond that the revolution would not be successful without making the hard decisions and "playing dirty".
There's a lot more nuance than I'm making there out to be, but that's a skeleton explanation.