• Tedesche@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    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.

    • trot@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      “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?

      • Tedesche@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        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.

        • irmoz@reddthat.com
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          1 year ago

          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.

    • voidMainVoid@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      The USSR famously took ownership of Tetris away from its creator.

      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.

      • Tedesche@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        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.

    • masquenox@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      think communism is what we should be striving for.

      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.

      • Tedesche@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Simple - it’s the ideal.

        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.

        • irmoz@reddthat.com
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          1 year ago

          I don’t want the State owning all sources of wealth and material goods.

          Good news - neither do communists! In fact communists want NO state :D

    • Lucane360@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      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.

      • Tedesche@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Give me an example of a communist country that has not resulted in the creation of an authoritarian government.

        • irmoz@reddthat.com
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          1 year ago

          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

    • hairinmybellybutt@lemmy.worldOP
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      1 year ago

      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.

      • jmshrv@feddit.uk
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        1 year ago

        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.