> collectively humans have stopped imagining alternate socio-economic-political systems
...right that's why it never stops being salient on social media like an undead beaten horse and you're talking about it right now.
Maybe one problem is that imagination qua alternatives tends to stop rather short, and idealists too often consider the details and consequences to be an afterthought (everything just gets sorted if only you're rid of Capitalism). Or disregard history in some cases.
It's comforting that the suggested approach by those who aren't fond of State Socialism (e.g. ancoms) is some variation on "do anarchism/syndicalism until communism happens", which seems harmless. They can get the worker-owned coffee shop out of their system.
And perhaps social media doesn't exactly encourage long thought. And cooperating on deeper thought political ideas. Debate and sports education push winning quick by crushing the opponent - not by building a gorgeous final conversation to be revered by the reader years later.
This is such a deeply ingrained part of Anglosphere social media culture that the GP didn't even have to take capitalism in name, but all of us know exactly what fight is being started and what position the GP is taking. I don't think anyone has stopped imagining alternate socioeconomic systems. The problem is that the people that like to discuss this on the internet just want to argue large, abstract ideas instead of the actual details of life under an alternate system. Le Guin herself did a lot of the latter in The Dispossessed. Her book wasn't a flamewar on Capitalism/Communism Bad (TM).
I like Le Guin's novels but if they deserve accolades it's not for "details" of an alternate system. This one depicts central planning, syndicalism as the proxy for democracy, and a bureaucracy that "just works".
It doesn't get into the details of the system, but I felt that The Dispossessed was a good look into what it was like to practically live under that sort of a system. Bureaucracy that was clunky, slow, and led to inefficiencies. Poor living standards even for highly educated people. Time spent doing manual labor despite skills that could be better applied to other things. Yet a sense of togetherness due to the relative lack of class differences and a general welcoming of the other rather than the atomization Shevek experienced off-world.
I was especially struck by Shevek noting that Atro was unique for A-Io in that his behaviour was reminiscent of an Anarresti: the same way all the time, whether public or private.
I'm not sure Dispo needed to go into details; we all can think of analogues to the nations of Urras, and Anarres itself mentions many things reminiscent of 1970s kibbutzim. (when I watched «Карьера Димы Горина»* the work camps also reminded me of Shevek's experiences in the Anarres outback)
* 1961. sometime I need to watch it with subtitles to check how it scores on the Bechdel Test. Cameo by Sputnik.
...right that's why it never stops being salient on social media like an undead beaten horse and you're talking about it right now.
Maybe one problem is that imagination qua alternatives tends to stop rather short, and idealists too often consider the details and consequences to be an afterthought (everything just gets sorted if only you're rid of Capitalism). Or disregard history in some cases.
It's comforting that the suggested approach by those who aren't fond of State Socialism (e.g. ancoms) is some variation on "do anarchism/syndicalism until communism happens", which seems harmless. They can get the worker-owned coffee shop out of their system.