I can’t remember seeing anybody unjokingly saying ‘that wasn’t real socialism/communism’. That is not nearly as common as anticommunists make it out to be. If you mean the pedants rejecting the people’s republics as socialist or communist, then yes, I occasionally see that and I do find it tiresome.

I’ve said this before, but attempting to review my comment results in an error page, so I’ll repeat myself: it isn’t that I completely disagree. I am unaware of any people’s republic that has completely abolished capital, the law of value, and generalized commodity production, so I do consider the people’s republics merely presocialist…but the same could be same about the Paris Commune. Waving off the people’s republics because they failed to meet all of socialism’s criteria is an uninteresting, pedantic counterargument that gets us nowhere.

Instead, integrate the people’s republics into the broader continuity of class struggle, like the strikers who prioritize better working conditions over the long‐term goal of capitalism’s abolition. When we disempower capitalists and empower ourselves, we can make substantial progress in spite of the capitalists relegated to the background. For example, when the DPRK severely weakened landlords, the communists rapidly improved agriculture now that their opponents were out of the way. Such progress would have been impossible in an economy that prioritized profit over need. In effect, the communists diminished the phenomena of capital, the law of value, and generalized commodity production.

That is why I rarely mention my own classification of the people’s republics as presocialist. The achievements that the working masses made are far more important and interesting to me than their imperfections.