I feel like the most significant split amongst western socialists is between those who believe they know what socialism constitutes, and those who understand that socialism is a scientific process which can only be known through direct participation and experimentation

I don't take a position on Chinese socialism because I have no idea what it should look like. I can't know, because there's no way for me to engage in scientific struggle in the Chinese context. For me to proscribe what system should exist in china would be an imperialist impulse

Attacking China is counterproductive because whatever criticisms I have will be wildly out of context. Even if it turns out that China isn't socialist, I am not going to be the one to discover this. I should instead direct all my efforts at dismantling the British bourgeoisie.

The British state marches its armies around the globe, murdering millions. This action is taken in my name, and the name of all workers, and to our benefit, whether we object to it or not. Stopping this should be the primary focus of all our rhetorical and practical efforts

The only place I can truly understand what socialism can look like is in England, and even then I can only gain this understanding by finding ways to serve the people, engage directly in class struggle and apply a scientific method to my actions

While we can't know what socialism looks like yet, the historical failures of existing socialist tendencies, such as the labour party, generic "movementism", the trotskyist and ML organisations and the trade unions give us a good set of experiments for determining what not to do

These organisations all have great confidence in their rigid descriptions of what constitutes "socialism", and scoff at the other formations who don't agree. This confidence is completely at odds with the consistent failure to make revolutionary progress that their history shows

But even if we were successful in scientifically building socialism in England, our analysis and strategy would only be relevant to our particular material conditions, maybe the imperial core at a stretch. We could still not be in a position to dictate terms to colonised nations

Anyway I made this thread because this dude is a fuckin youtuber in a country where we can't even get a crusty old socdem elected against a cartoon character and he thinks he's worked out the precise formation of socialism lol