I am talking about talking to people who are more or less sympatico. People of almost any ideological complexion fixate on anecdotes and personalities - all those aspects of individuals and agency you normally dismiss. And people who are engaged by circumstances are going to be engaged about particulars. So how do you reconcile this position with your dismissal of scandal and criminality, since that's almost always the starting point of engagement - a point which it is very difficult to get beyond - in favor of the Systemic? Who has direct experience of The Systemic?
[WS:] And that is why every revolution needs a guillotine. Systems do not exist in a vacuum - they are constantly reproduced by people with names and addresses. Those people ARE the System.
Looking at this from another point of view, every System unavoidably has loopholes. Some systems may have less of them than others, but every single one has them. It is logically impossible to create a perfect system. There will always be potentials for abuses, and greedy, vile, or merely lazy and stupid people taking advantage of those potentials.
The point, therefore, is to take both, the systemic and the individual approach. The goal of the systemic approach should be to strike a balance between closing the loopholes and abuse potentials and the efficiency and fairness of the system. The individual approach is, invariably, identifying the culprits, dragging them out of their hideouts, and incapacitating them. It is an ongoing process that will never end. Even after The Revolutions will finally have come. The only requisite here, form a Left point of view, is that this done by a due process.
Wojtek