• WldFyre@lemm.ee
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    2 months ago

    scientific approach to politics

    It’s not, because no approach to politics is. It’s not reproducible, and there’s no control. You can argue it’s logical, but that’s different.

    Also, this means that literally any functioning state “clearly works” as well, many of which have been around longer than modern China. Any place that isn’t pure chaos is a valid approach to politics with this argument, and if you (correctly) change what you mean by “works” to be some other criteria, then it’s not a pure evidence based approach anymore since we’ve brought value judgements into it.

    Politics can never be purely scientific because we have to make value judgements. Being purely “scientific” is what most communists criticize pure utilitarianism for.

    • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
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      2 months ago

      China isn’t merely a functioning country, it’s the fastest growing economy on Earth despite being backwards and feudal and colonized only a little over half a century ago. It’s an incredible and unprecedented achievement. You can’t ignore this.

      And sure, politics can’t be purely scientific, because nothing human is ever pure science, but it is possible to use a scientific approach to figure out what works and what doesn’t. This is why socialists call their politics a science.

      Liberals refuse to even attempt to make their politics scientific. They believe politics is just about doing what you think is right based on faith i.e. moralism.

      • WldFyre@lemm.ee
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        2 months ago

        You ignored nearly all of my comment and just repeated your logical fallacies.

        it is possible to use a scientific approach to figure out what works and what doesn’t.

        Refer back to how this is meaningless. Every country in existence “works” and changing what you mean by “works” means it’s not scientific (which it shouldn’t be).

        I haven’t even brought up the low hanging fruit of how since the USSR failed and the USA still exists, then “scientifically” socialism doesn’t work if you use that logic.

        And something working doesn’t mean it is scientifically correct or true, because that’s conflating poor philosophy with poor moralizing. It also doesn’t “prove” that it is the only thing that works, or that it’s the best thing we could have, or that anything couldn’t be better, or another way wouldn’t be just as good, or…

        Which is why enforcing conformity and punishing deviation because socialism is “scientific” is fucking stupid, because you can’t prove or even know any of the above.

        • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
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          2 months ago

          It’s a soft science, like psychology. You can take a scientific approach even if empiricism is more difficult.

          The USSRs failure proves that their own approach was wrong. We can learn from it, because socialists learn from the material results of policy. That’s scientific.