This reminds me of my occasional encounters with ultra-left under some YouTube comment sections. They said that China and Vietnam are “not real socialism”. Some even name China as “imperialism”.

One of them said that Vietnam doesn’t fit the “definition of socialism”.

I told one of them that definitions don’t create things, things necessitate defintions.

They tried bringing physics (Newtonian Gravity) into the debate which is quite sloppy because I believe I have a slightly better understanding of it than them. Regardless, I separate mechanical materialism (which is most natural science where things are largely static) from dialectial materialism (which are historical, economic, and political analyses where the subjects are aware of being observed). I also distinguish between dogma vs. science.

Then they said that “dialectial materialism is a philosophy, not a scientific method”.

Then I thought to myself “Why the fuck do you lots follow it in the first place, then?! Some kinds of religions?”

Then I told them it’s very much a scientific project. I also told them that, whilst I cannot convine them to drop dogmatism, if they want to preach their ideas, they better prove it on the grounds rather than sabotaging other people’s socalist projects (i.e. actually existing socialist countries) on the Internet.

They stopped responding.