Semantics of socialism/communism question..

[☭World Views]

True or false:

Marx and Engels used socialism/communism interchangeably, it was Lenin that began using socialism as the "lower stage" and communism as the "higher stage".


I get conflicting reports.

[NecroCommie]

Not sure. I have always lived under the impression that Lenin invented those definitions. Marx and Engels did recognize the two stage idea if that's what you mean.

So to put it simply: this post is a waste of your time. :D

[New Tet]

True or false:

Marx and Engels used socialism/communism interchangeably, it was Lenin that began using socialism as the "lower stage" and communism as the "higher stage". I get conflicting reports.


I think that it doesn't matter what Lenin had to say about it since the "stages" of socialist development aren't determined by a formula but by the material conditions and the level of consciousness of the revolutionary class that propel them.

I'm on the side of using the term interchangeably depending on who I'm addressing. However, I prefer the word 'socialism' since it carries less stigma in the popular mind than 'communism'.

[ZeroNowhere]

True or false:

Marx and Engels used socialism/communism interchangeably, it was Lenin that began using socialism as the "lower stage" and communism as the "higher stage".


I get conflicting reports.
True. Though they did have their preferences, for example, in the earlier days (around the time of the commie manifesto and such) they referred to themselves as 'communists' and other tendencies as 'socialist' ( or at least 'so-called socialists') in order to differentiate between the two. Though I do recall Marx referring to Proudhon, Saint-Simon, Fourier and such as following 'utopian communism' at least once, and Engels generally used the word 'socialism' to describe himself later. Also, they referred to primitive communism, rather than primitive socialism, presumably because it sounds better. Somewhat like how some people use thesauruses to look for words to use instead of the ones they know in order to make things sound better and so on. Though yes, they didn't differentiate between a 'socialist' and 'communist' stage. Lenin introduced that distinction, between what Marx had referred to as the 'higher' and 'initial' phases of communism, though Lenin's conception of the initial stage was quite different from Marx's, but I suppose that's not really relevant to the question.

[Q]

Marx used "communism" in the Communist Manifesto as a way to provoke, to go a step further socialism (which was mainly an utopian movement in those days). Marx did however consistently talk about the lower and the higher stages of communism, but otherwise used socialism and communism interchangeably. Later on the "lower stage" was replaced by the word socialism and the "higher stage" by communism. I'm not sure if Lenin was the first to do that though.

[ZeroNowhere]

Marx used "communism" in the Communist Manifesto as a way to provoke, to go a step further socialism (which was mainly an utopian movement in those days). Marx did however consistently talk about the lower and the higher stages of communism, but otherwise used socialism and communism interchangeably. Later on the "lower stage" was replaced by the word socialism and the "higher stage" by communism. I'm not sure if Lenin was the first to do that though.Well, he does imply that it was how the term was generally understood by the socialists around him ("What is usually called socialism"), so he probably wasn't the first one to use the term like that, though he did popularize it.

[mikelepore]

True or false:
Marx and Engels used socialism/communism interchangeably,

They often used the two words interchangably, but not with the same degree of precision. They used the word "socialism" to include their own "scientific" version in addition to any and all "pre-scientific" interpretations, such as as "utopian socialism", "medieval socialism" and even the sarcastic phrase "bourgeois socialism". They were usually fussy about reserving the word "communism" for their modern scientific conception. Their main exception this pattern was to call early tribal society "primitive communism", a way of emphasizing that tribal society was genuinely classless.


it was Lenin that began using socialism as the "lower stage" and communism as the "higher stage"

The earliest occasion in writing of that usage is in Lenin's pamphlet "The State and Revolution."