Newbie

[blueeyedboy]

Hi guys. This is my first post so go easy on me. I'm just wanting to know what are the main differences between Socialism and Communism. Do the Communists agree with the Socialists and vice versa, and if they don't on what ideas do they differentiate.

[Whitten]

Socialism is the collectivisation and democraticization of the means of production (industry and "business") within a society. It is a very broad term that can apply to many individual ideologies, most of which agree most of teh time and disagree on some other things.

Communism is a specific variety of socialism, which refers to a classless and stateless society (hence the USSR wasnt "communist").

[cb9's_unity]

the relationship between socialism and communism is actually a quite confusing one. communism like whitten said is actaully a stateless and classless society. socialism is a term that covers a whole spectrum of beliefs. it actually gets confusing when it gets put into marxist terms. in this socialism is the stage directly after capitalism, its' when the workers initially take control and start to nationalize companies. equall distribution is put in place and capitalism is completly done away with. Communism is the stage after where the state is no longer needed and is then done away with.

so really a socialist is someone who simply opposes capitalism and a communist is someone who usually follows some sort of marxist ideaoligy.

[Janus]

Socialism nowadays is generally brought up to refer to a society in which the state controls the means of production and property.

Sometimes, it is used to refer to collective control in general which was more or less the original definition. In this respect, communism is a branch of socialism in which a classless and stateless society exists and ownership (at least the current conception of it) is done away with.

[blueeyedboy]

Thanks for that guys. That's cleared things up for me.

[apathy maybe]

I always give two definitions of socialism, what I call the broad and the narrow (or Marxist).

Socialism in the broad sense refers to a super-set of ideologies. It encompasses anarchism, Marxism, "utopian" socialism and a variety of other ideologies. If you are a socialist in this broad sense, then you wish for common ownership of property (meaning of property will change depending on the ideology you are subscribing to), equality etc.

The narrow is a socialist (in the broad sense) state. With the government owning the means of production etc. I call it "Marxist" because while Marx himself did not use the term in that way (he seemed to use the terms communism and socialism interchangeably) many Marxists use the term socialist to refer to the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. The transitional period, when the "whithering away" of the state happens, between the revolution and communism.

Note, however, that not all socialist states are Marxist (in fact most socialist states are not Marxist).

Communism is a specific variety of socialism, which refers to a classless and stateless society where everything is held in common. (Simply calling it classless and stateless is not giving enough information; all variants of anarchism are classless and stateless.)

Not all communists are Marxist, many communists are anarchists, many are utopian, many are religious. If someone tells you that only Marxists can be communist, or only materialists can be communist, don't believe them. If they said that only materialists can be Marxists, fine. But not all communists are Marxists. Being a Marxist means that you subscribe to a sufficient set of Marxian ideas, being a communist simply means that you would like for there to be communism.