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Before invoking the nebulous concept of "attractive to the public" would it it not be useful _first_ to explore the actual content of the proposal? "Prison _system_," incidentally, is the subject, NOT, "Prisons." I know that in commonplace usage the term "system" means something like "all those things out there someplace," but must we be confined to that sense of the word? Can't we, for a minute, be serious intellectuals (or pretend to be) and take our terminology seriously? If, as is possible, "the prison system" does not exist, debating its popularity would seem pointless. If it _does_ exist, dit is still pointless to debate its (hypothetical) popularity until we have some notion of what are the priciples defining that SYSTEM.
The principle describing Marv's statement above, I submit, is that political discussion is inappropriate on lbo-talk, and he enforces that principle by shifting the topic away from either the prison system or capitalism to chit-chat about public opinion. Carrol
P.S. I have been unable to refine my conception of "the prison system" in part because I have been unable to generate discussion of it. Can it, for example, be separated from a prior (or accompanying) discussion of the "War on Drugs"? When did the "System" come into existence. Can the various sectors of law enforcement, prison architecture, etc in (say) 1900 to 1940 be considered a system, or did the present system come into existence with the launching of the War on Drugs? (I tend towards the latter view, but clearly further analysis is needed.)
P.S. 2. I paste below the important post from Michael Yates to which Marv was responding. It raised a number of of the crucial issues.
michael yates Tuesday, October 22, 2013 7:55 PM
Carrol offered some remarks on helping to foment radical change. His critics say that we must be able to connect what we say to actual problems faced by people and not just say the problem is capitalism. Now nowhere has Carrol ever said that the problem is capitalism without also discussing something specific. He said some time ago that we should abolish the prison system. There was a lot of hooting from the peanut gallery about this. Yet millions of men, women, and children are locked up or in the parole and probation systems, and these people have mothers, fathers, children, etc. Most are poor. So this is a very big problem for millions of people. I can't think of a single reason why, in agitating around the prison system, or any other problem, why we can't talk about capitalism. It seems stupid not to. And more stupid now than ever.