I can't really decide which I agree with more, so I'd like maybe some advice from some experts as I am new to the left and all that
Socialism or Communism?
Landon Taylor
Kevin Roberts
Marxism
Blake Roberts
Mind telling me what marxists believe?
Jayden Baker
Just so you know, Socialism is the pathway towards Communism, so if say you're one, you're basically both. What you want to be asking is individual ideologies. i.e. Leninism, Anarchism, Deleonism etc
Isaiah Gonzalez
Neat. Thanks.
Alexander Ramirez
In some contexts there's a distinction between socialism and communism, but generally leftists will use the two interchangeably.
Marxist-Leninists will use "socialism" to refer to the first stage of communism, the one the USSR was in for most of its history (except the brief capitalist part), and "communism" for the end-goal of this period.
Austin Fisher
I know some people don't like this definition but the one I think is most useful is;
Socialism: An economy/society organised around collective ownership of the means of production, with some kind of coercion present to make people contribute their labour
Communism: The same but with no coercion present since the economy is so automated and efficient that it can continue to function even if a huge amount of people decide not to contribute their labour.
Samuel Gomez
National baboonism with Anarchist characteristics.
Jason Moore
Read Althusser.
Easton Williams
I'll give you an explanation:
socialism: socioeconomic system where the means of production are collectively owned, there's no private property (just in case you don't know, there's a big difference between private property and personal property in socialism)
communism: advanced socialism, where there are no social classes anymore (everyone is a worker and contributes to society), there's no money/currency (from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs), and there's full democracy, to the point where the state can't be considered a state anymore.
communism is socialism, and socialists want to achieve communism.
this is why socialism and communism are used interchangeably despite the fact they're not exactly the same thing.
if anyone tells you there's any difference at all though without explaining what I just explained, they're retarded and think social democracy is socialism, this is very common in countries like USA.