We hear these terms bandied about a lot lately, and often interchangeably. But precisely what is the difference between the two?
Ask ten people and you’ll get twelve different answers.
Marx and Engels (who did not invent the terms) used them interchangeably to refer to a socioeconomic system characterized by free access to goods and services and the absence of social classes, money, employment, and wage labour. Lenin later redefined “socialism” to mean an intermediate stage between capitalism and communism. The term “communism” later came to be associated with the repressive, totalitarian régimes of China and the Soviet Union, because they were single-party states led by so-called “Communist Parties” whose professed aim was to lead their countries to communism. The term “socialism” is now often used to refer to a capitalist socioeconomic system with a high degree of government involvement in the economy and high government spending on social programs.
Of course, both terms are still used in various different senses by people of various different political persuasions. The only way of finding out what sense is meant is to ask (or infer) on a case-by-case basis.
Left-winger you like = Socialist
Left-winger you don’t like = Communist
Or what psychonaut said.
More like, Left-winger you want to imply is anti-American by implying he’s a Communist = Socialist.
The way I learned it was capitalism begat socialism which begat communism. Communism being the nirvana of political/economic systems.
Me, too.
Capitalism creates the wealth, socialism distributes it evenly, and then communism arises when the state “whithers away” and people live in anarchic bliss.
To put the question another way, given the state of social spending in the US today vs a communist regime, at what point is it fair to call a given politician “a socialist”?
That depends on what you mean by “communist”. For some definitions, the term “communist regime” is an oxymoron, since communism implies the absence of a coercive state and monetary exchange; under such a definition there would be no “social spending” because there would be neither a government nor money. Not even the governments headed by so-called Communist Parties claim that they are administering communism, but rather their (Leninist) interpretation of socialism.
It’s generally fair to call someone a socialist if that’s the label they use to describe themselves, or if they hold the general political views of other people who call themselves socialists.
Do you really think there is a factual answer to that question? I’d suggest opening a GD thread, but my guess is that it would quickly become a trainwreck!
Well, a lot of people seem to think so, given how often they use the term.