""Actually existing socialism" simply refers to countries in which socialism is the dominant mode of production. So for example the USSR, China, Yugoslavia, Cuba, DPRK, Albania, etc. were/are all examples of actually existing socialism, despite having obvious differences in how their economies and societies operated. It was contrasted with purely theoretical conceptions of how a socialist society would operate, e.g. Laurence Gronlund's The Cooperative Commonwealth, the latter portions of August Bebel's Woman and Socialism, and Karl Kautsky's On the Morrow of the Socialist Revolution. This doesn't mean that theorizing about socialism is a waste of time, just that it is nowadays possible to establish a relationship between theory and practice as to how socialism works. Modern theories benefit from the experiences of former and existing socialist countries." #communism #leftism