Socialism, Communism, Marxism... For Beginners..

[tellyontellyon]

Is there any difference/ or what is the difference between:
Socialism, Communism and Marxism?

Thanks :)

[blake 3:17]

You're getting into the definition of the whole of socialist and left wing thought. All three refer to ideas which vary greatly according to time and place. Socialism and Communism also refer to what many on this board would consider sets of social relations.

A little more specific, please?

[Luisrah]

Is there any difference/ or what is the difference between:
Socialism, Communism and Marxism?

Thanks :)

Communism - A stateless, classless society where eveyone's needs are satisfacted.

Socialism - The road to communism which usually involves a revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat (workers unite and overthrow the current governments and take a hold of the means of production)

Marxism - One view on how to reach communism.

Careful, I'm still a beginner too

[Pogue]

^ thats one perspective

Socialism could be, in its boardest sense, any ideolgoy which advocates public ownership of the means of production. So this could be state ownership (welfare state, social democracy, often called socialism) right through to workers ownership through direct democracy. The socialist movement could arguably contain every single tendency on this board as well as social democrats.

Communism is a classless, stateless society, the eventual goal (apparently) of everyone here. Often its used to refer to Stalinist states and their economic practices, especiallty in western academia.

Marxism is the sociological/political perspective based upon the rightings of Karl Marx and subsequent sociologists/political theorists. Marx proposed a specific type of socialism/communism based upon a class and certain methods of social analysis in a period when socialism was held by many to be a vague utopian idea.

[yuon]

How about another few definitions?

Socialism is the broad "super-set" of ideologies on the "left", as mentioned above, it basically means public ownership of the means of production. Historically there have been two major strands, "state socialism" and "state-less socialism".

State socialism is where there exists a government (state) which controls things, a bureaucracy and all that. The government may or may not be elected. There is debate about whether or not "state socialism" can truly be socialism. After all, socialism is, to a large degree, about equality. Where you have a state, you have people ruling over others. That's a bit unequal.

(Side note, some Marxists like to use the term "socialism" to mean the "transitional stage" between capitalism and communism. They generally want a state to run things until said state "whithers away", due to not being needed any more.)

Non-state socialism includes anarchism, (true) communism, and other ideologies which posit a society without a government as normally understood. Direct democracy and all that is often thought of as a good method of making decisions.
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Communism:
1) A class-less state-less society, often thought of as where the economy is run along the lines "from each according to their ability, to each according to their need". The means of production are socialised.

2) An ideology which aims to bring about 1), normally via revolution.

3) (Misused, don't use this definition, and attempt to correct others who do.) A state, such as the USSR, China, North Korea or Cuba, where the "Communist Party" is in power. Generally considered a dictatorship by the governments of "liberal democracies". Normally these countries aren't any sort of socialist, or are no better than the "social democracies" of the "West" in that regard. The differences between these countries renders this definition useless, and it's partly for this reason this definition should not be used.

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Marxism is generally an ideology based on the writings of Karl Marx, a German sociologist writing in the 1800's. There are various sorts of Marxism, depending on which other writers the ideology is based on (Engels, Lenin, Stalin and Mao are some of the big names you probably of heard of, but there are also many others), and whether the person follows more "young Marx" or "old Marx".

Marx wrote a theory of history, and created "historical materialism". Basically, he examined history from a "materialist" perspective, and came up with some ideas. He put forward the hypothesis that the next big revolutionary movement in the world would be that of the "proletariat class" taking control, and then society as a whole moving towards communism.

Apparently the "late Marx" stopped being so deterministic, and said that maybe it wasn't guaranteed that the Proletariat would ever get control.

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I would also suggest looking at the following threads:
http://www.revleft.com/vb/marxism-socialism-and-t67642/index.html
http://www.revleft.com/vb/communism-socialism-marxism-t46860/index.html
http://www.revleft.com/vb/socialism-communism-marxism-t6036/index.html
http://www.revleft.com/vb/communism-socialism-marxism-t5514/index.html
(Any any of the others which you could have found using the search function, or even the RevLeft Dictionary (http://www.revleft.com/vb/revolutionary-left-dictionary-t22628/index.html) or Frequently discussed topics (http://www.revleft.com/vb/frequently-discussed-topics-t62635/index.html).)