I think one of the most frustrating things about talking to ultras is that they never really grapple with why they keep "losing" over and over and over again. Even calling them "losers" is generous because they were never really in the game.
All of their projects have either never existed or when they did exist they quickly morphed into democratic centralism as was in the case of the USSR. They scream and cry revisionist, capitalist roader, deformed worker's state but never ask themselves why these changes happened in multiple countries.
Take the five remaining actually existing socialist countries. All five of these countries have implemented "market reforms" that are called revisionist by these groups of people. In the case of China, Vietnam, and Laos they have also integrated themselves into the international economy. DPRK and Cuba have also tried integrating themselves into the international economy and would if they could, but the US has refused to lift sanctions and actually punishes neutral countries like Mexico for trading with those countries. So all five of these countries have more or less followed the same path. Shouldn't that tell us something?
Even if they have the "correct" or more "pure" vision of socialism, what good is it if it's never actually been implemented? Why should we listen to these people when they can't produce results?
The five AES countries are not perfect but life continues to get better for all segments of society year after year after year. And many of the reasons why these countries aren't perfect is due to being historically colonized and undeveloped as a result. Xi has recently taken a more aggressive approach to ending rural poverty at the expense of pure economic GDP growth. A capitalist nation would not do this, even if the ruling party were socdems.
The only real argument these people have is "Read theory!" They never even say what "theory" in particular I should be reading. One of them recently told me I don't understand dialectical materialism.... really I think it's these people who don't understand DM. Socialism is a process, it cannot happen overnight, it is a gradual thing.
Imagine it's the feudal times and we're all liberals and there's a movement in our country to implement constitutional monarchy. But then some of us are like "Oh we can't support that because it's not a full dictatorship of the bourgeosie, the king still has some rights" and then they refused to support any liberal movements for centuries because it wasn't good enough. Wouldn't we all think they were incredibly stupid and just wasting time? It took capitalism centuries to be fully realized. Hopefully socialism will be faster but it's not going to be an overnight thing. I just wish these people would stop being dumb.
