Are communism and socialism the same thing?

No. According to Karl Marx socialism would just be (if necessary) an intermediate step between other systems and communism; for the purpose of developing the productive forces that would lead to a superabundance of goods and services.

The main differences between communism and socialism are: communism is stateless, while socialism is controlled by the state; and communism is oppression-free, while state oppression can exist in socialism.

All those countries around the world known as "Communists" actually never made the final step into Communism, and therefore got stuck in Socialism. Furthermore, most got stuck on the most tyrannical form of socialism: Stalinism or Neo-Stalinism; an oppressive system in which the state has total control over its citizens.

4 comments:

  1. Hmm, how can I answer your request for comments?

    Accepting your definitions of socialism (on which we have a lot of data) and communism (which did not exist), why do you focus on communism rather than on socialism? That was my impression, based on what I selected to read. I am a physicist, not a sociologist. That is why I am not a person whose opinion should count.

    Ludwik Kowalski

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  2. Thank you for your comment Ludwik.

    In answer to your question: the reason I focus on communism is precise because we already have a lot of information about socialism, but very little about communism. The amount of anti-communist propaganda in the west creates confusion about what communism is, and most people don't realise that there is a considerable difference between communism, socialism and stalinism. The object of this blog is to explain the least known of the three.

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  3. communisn is more famous in asia than europe because they (asians) want change right now not slowly and silend way thats the difference of communism and socialism socialism is almost same than communism but socialism dont want to have so much change than communism

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  4. Inaccurate. Communism is a form of socialism. Socialism can be everything from social-democracy to anarchism. Communism is not stateless, Marx only said that "it could be an outcome", and it isn't even part of the theory. A communist state would be 100 % controlled by a government. I am a stalinist, and I can't say it is something tyrannical. Without Gospodin Tovarish Stalin, we would have had a mix of fascism and nazism still to this very day. I have read marxism for the last six years.

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