this post was submitted on 22 Jul 2023
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How's about a website that generates money, like Facebook or YouTube? Can you own that?
What about products that designed to create ongoing streams of revenue, like a patent on an invention or a piece of art you can collect royalties from every time it is displayed? The USSR famously took ownership of Tetris away from its creator.
Under communism, how does the stock market work? I'm not a big fan of it, but it's pretty hard to imagine getting rid of it now that the global economy is pretty much dependent on it.
Today, five countries exist that can be said to be communist: China, Russia, Vietnam, Laos, and Cuba. Of those five, none have achieved actual communism, and several have inarguably embraced capitalism to a great extent. All of them have essentially authoritarian governments. Which is unsurprising, since a dictatorship of the proletariat is central to the Marxist vision of how to create a communist society, and involves the creation of a single-party transitional government that forcibly suppresses all its critics and rivals.
I'm not big into capitalism and I think we should implement plenty of socialist reforms, but I will never understand why some people on the Left—or anyone for that matter—think communism is what we should be striving for.
"Today, five countries exist that can be said to be communist: China, Russia"
Tell me you have no idea what you are talking about without directly telling me you have no idea what you are talking about. In what way can today's Russia "be said to be communist", and how does its current, very explicitly anti-communist government, contribute to the point you are making?
You can replace Russia with North Korea if it suits you, I forgot to include that one. Yes, the USSR was communist, while modern day Russia much less so. Doesn't change my point and doesn't mean I don't know what I'm talking about.
Modern Russian is a capitalist oligarchy. Your entire position is based on ignorance of how the world functions.
You point out one quasi-mistake I made and all of a sudden my entire position is false and based on ignorance of how the world functions?
People like you are what make the internet a shitty place to be sometimes.
It’s not a quasi-mistake, it’s an error that betrays at best a bad case of brainworms and at worst a grievous misunderstanding of history that may well have happened in your lifetime.
Dude, what you just said is on the level of saying 2+2=5. Or, "like any forms of sandwich, bananas are sentient." It was THAT level of incorrect and detached from reality.
I once read somewhere that presently no country in the world runs government in the form of 100% true communism including China and Russia. They are just some sort of mixed communism and other types.
Stock market? The thing where you buy tiny fractional ownership of of a company, too small to influence it, then try to sell that legal construct for a little more to someone else later? Why would you need that at all?
As I said, not a fan of it, but the global economy is pretty entrenched in it. Can't just get rid of it cold turkey style.
He developed the game on company time. If he'd lived in a capitalist country, the government wouldn't have taken control of Tetris, but the company would have. Every software company contract I've ever heard of has a clause that says the company owns any code you produce while working there.
Yes, but you choose to work for a company. Don't pretend that's the same as the government of the country you happen to be born in taking ownership of your creations. In a capitalist country, had Alexey Pajitnov chosen to develop the game himself, he would have made much more from it. If he had done that in the USSR, he'd still have his creation and all its monetary proceeds taken away from him.
Under capitalism your choice is to sell yourself or become destitute. That's not really a choice, it's just indirect coercion.
Not going to waste my time with someone who has such absolutist views untethered to reality.
Xoxo 💋
I’ve worked at a handful of companies and am currently employed at one that do not do this.
Those websites are highly capitalistic and never brought any innovation, all technologies related to the internet were researched by public money.
Look into patent trolls. Patents are bad, publicly funded research is always better, but it doesn't prevent people from spending money to do research, but it doesn't entitle them for the profits.
I'm not advocating FOR communism, I'm just trying to dispel myths.
Socialism is soluble with capitalism.
Never brought any innovation? VP9, AV1, zstd, GraphQL, React, and many more were made/contributed to by Google/Facebook specifically to improve those services. We benefit from this as they release these programs/formats.
Programs and format are not research. Nothing new was invented, they're just alternative to existing things.
They're improvements on existing things, which is the basis for pretty much all research. A nuclear reactor is just an "alternative" to a coal power plant, but I'm sure everyone here would agree that the nuclear power plant is better. In the case of the video formats, image/video processing is literally part of computer science.
In the case of React, you could follow the breadcrumbs back to JavaScript, created by a capitalistic company.
No you can't own a platform like youtube or facebook, but you could make content on it, intellectul propriety is not a thing as you don't have to produce art just to get a monetary return, but just because you enjoy doing so, there's no need of a stock market in an ideal communist world because everyone gets what they need based on what they can provide, but if it's just a country i guess it's the government who takes care of it.
Regarding those 5 countries i'm not sure of every one of them, but talking about China as you said it's not a communist country but it is not a dictatorship of the proletarian either, as it's not the proletarian class nor their democratically elected representatives who govern the country.
In the end i'll add that greed is not more "human nature" that wishing to kill someone annoying.
We didn’t own Reddit’s platform, but we made content and engagement for that community anyway.
That worked out awesome. Let’s scale it up to an entire society.
I really can't tell if you're being sarcastic. I think so, but Poe's Law
Yeah, fair. I mean, I’m engaging in the community here, rather than there, so I thought the context clarified my sarcasm.
Give me an example of a communist country that has not resulted in the creation of an authoritarian government.
Capitalism is an authoritarian, both liberal and conservative wants capitalism, the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. You don’t have choices.
You're not wrong, but also give me an example of ANY country that doesn't resort to authoritarianism when the government is threatened by a plurality of citizens.
There are plenty of governments out there that aren't authoritarian. What do you mean when you say "the government is threatened by a plurality of citizens?" What is the nature of the threat in question? A democratically-elected government that puts down an armed rebellion from part of its populace doesn't magically become authoritarian simply because it used forced to maintain its existence in response to a domestic threat.
I mean that there is a realistic existential threat placed on the system of government, by a large part of the population. By plurality, I mean that the largest segment of a population (even if it's not a majority).
You're telling me that govt's that put down a large rebellion don't then start introducing authoritan laws like monitoring communication, restricting free speech, and targeting non-violent sympathizers?
...any democracy? Different governments get voted out of power constantly. A lot of countries elections are almost 50/50
I would say you’re arguing from ignorance then. The civil war in America happened because slavers didn’t like the outcome of an election.
They asked for an example of ANY country that doesn’t resort to authoritarianism when the government is threatened by a plurality of citizens. You can choose any currently functioning democracy after a tight election.
The question becomes then, are those stable democracies threatened? I would argue no, that you’re using irrelevant examples to prove your position.
American capitalism was threatened to an extent by Bernie’s campaign and a contemporary cnn headline compared his “rise” to that of Hitler. So you tell me. Do they get defensive when actual leftist principles are on the line. Looks to me that it is the case.
Ukrainian stable democracy seems very threatened at the moment. I am not too into American politics so i dont know about the Bernie situation.
Democracy itself gets voted out, without any resistance?
Give me an example of any single communist country with an authoritarian government
And note that what I just asked for is like asking for a sandwich without bread
If it makes money (or some equivalent) then you can't own it. Parents aren't necessarily, if you're supported so that you can invent for the betterment of society or for fun.
Dictatorship of the proletariat is supposed to be a temporary phase, but it is a fundamental weak point in the transition to communism that I think cannot be overcome, because once people get that power, they won't be able to give it up (or they'll be removed by people who don't want to give it up).
So I consider communism sort of an unattainable ideal that we should strive towards rather than actually considering implementing irl.
Marx believed in the natural progression of economic systems, from feudalism to mercantilism, mercantilism to capitalism, and capitalism to... well, something else anyway. Socialism, communism, fascism, and really any of the other isms that came about in the late 19th and 20ths centuries were meant as post-capitalist systems. Marx of course was a proponent of socialism or communism, but it's not a foregone conclusion that one of those will be the preeminent system after capitalism.
Anyway, my point is that the USSR et. al. were too early to the game. Capitalism hasn't yet run its course naturally.
I agree with everything you said, although important to note that "natural progression" may not be smooth progression. How much suffering needs to pass before a violent uprising is natural instead of forced? I expect it's hard to tell when you're in the thick of it.
Under capitalism, how would fiefs work? I'm not a big fan of it, but it's pretty hard to imagine getting rid of it now that our grain reserves are pretty much dependent on it.
Simple - it's the ideal. Will we ever get there? Possibly not. Is it even desirable? Debatable. But it's always better to know where to go and not know how to get there than having the option of going anywhere and not knowing where to go.
Not in my view. I don't want the State owning all sources of wealth and material goods. The problem with capitalism is that too much of that stuff gets funneled into too few hands. Communism is the same problem, just different people. No thanks.
Sounds like your problem is with something else because, by definition, communism is stateless
This. Someone who knows how to use their brain.
There is no Paradise. There is no solution. Reality will always be messy and every solution will always end up creating its own problems. True for capitalism, socialism, or any other social order.
Which is not to say we should not always attempt to improve the world.
Who decides what's good? I learned lots of stuff on YouTube and Facebook helped me stay in touch with people I would have never been able to connect with again otherwise.
No you wouldn't be able to own Facebook or Youtube as its private not personal property.
Patents could either not exist or be owned collectively depending on the flavour of your ideology.
There would not be a stock market as that would be private ownership even though most stocks on stock exhanges do nothing even if you own all of them.