Labour, you weren't in power when that happened, WHY ARE YOU APOLOGIZING FOR YOUR ENEMY'S MOVES???
Of course, we know they're actually pre-apologizing for the even worse cuts they're going to make this coming winter, but still.
This is exactly how I feel, and is only a problem to liberals (I mean philosophical liberals) who don't understand that certain ends can only be reached by certain means, and conversely certain means can never reach certain ends.
They live in a reality where "authoritarian" measures like a one-party state are just the personal preference of dictatorial leaders who are misguided or evil and who could have just chosen to be "good" instead, rather than those measures being the only way to survive the imperial onslaught.
Not only is it scientific, not only is it science, it is the scientific method. Or rather, Marxism (dialectical materialism) as a philosophy contains the scientific method - as a justified part of a whole philosophy, rather than a free-floating 'neat idea' as it is for capitalist scientists.
To a dialectical materialist, the only way to understand the world, i.e. develop a theory about it, is through practice in the world. Practice and theory form an inseparable dialectical union. Make a theory, test it in practice, revise the theory, revise the tests, iterate again and again until you can fully describe the phenomenon you're studying.
Marx and Engels expressed this as part of the philosophy of dialectical materialism, an advancement beyond Hegel's dialectical idealism, and then used these methods to study economic relations and the society that results from them. But dialectical materialism goes beyond the theories of political economy that Marx developed using it, even if the search for answers about political economy was what caused Marx to develop it in the first place.
If this formula (theorize, test, theorize) seems completely obvious as the only way to generate knowledge about the world, it's only because most competing philosophies of knowledge have fallen by the wayside. But even so, this is not actually the dominant understanding in the world today, because all bourgeoise science eventually has to blind itself to reality, smudge its own results and ignore the real explanations of phenomena in order to justify its own existence. And even when scientists do manage to follow this method, either through principle or in a field that capitalist ideology doesn't need to corrupt, an understanding of dialectics gives it a much deeper and richer meaning.
Only under dialectical materialism, the proper philosophy of the working class, is true science even possible. And the results speak for themselves, because an advantage in creating true knowledge about the world gives an advantage in controlling the phenomena of the world, so throughout history, socialist nations have made strides in scientific progress, matched by strides in industial progress, far in advance of what the capitalists can achieve.
'Building socialism' and 'actually existing socialism' are pretty much synonyms, because the terms for the transition stage between capitalism and communism are vaguely defined.
Some call the end point of a "classless, moneyless society" communism, some call it socialism - and some call the transition period, where a society still has features of capitalism alongside features of communism, socialism.
Ultimately it comes down to: who holds political power in a given society, how strong is their grip on it, and how forcefully are they pushing in the direction of communism?
For myself, I would use the word 'socialist' for any country that's somewhere along the transition stage, with whatever features are peculiar to that particular country's history, as long as it's controlled by a Dictatorship of the Proletariat led by committed communists.
So for instance, I would call the USSR, China, the DPRK, Cuba etc. "Actually Existing Socialism" whereas countries with 'socialist policies' (basically, pro-welfare and pro-development) but no DOTP like Venezuela are less clear. Conversely, imperialist nations with big welfare states, like Norway for example, despite being called 'socialist' all the time in the capitalist media are very certainly not.
I'm so sorry, but it's already too late
All you can do now is make him comfortable and buy a better panel liner, I recommend Tamiya Accent Color (Black)
"Through analysis of thousands of recorded transactions, the Marxist has determined that the geometric distribution of linen in any economic system is a dialectically predictable element"
::: spoiler It's about letting go of the gold in your vault, cause it's leaving with me :::
@CascadeOfLight
@hexbear.net