What are the differences between Socialism and Communism?

[TheJungle]

I'm new to the whole Marxism thing. I got interested after reading the Jungle by Upton Sinclair and it made the definite case that we need socialism. As of now, I would say I'm a Democratic Socialist, meaning the public should own the means of production either by worker's councils or democratic private ownership.

My main question is, what would be different under a true Communist society than with the current economy and a Socialist society? The Jungle has a summary of Socialist economics that says that the value of something is based on the amount of labor put into it and people should be paid that amount. It also says that not all work would be paid equally since some is harder and more stressful than others. I agree that it doesn't exactly make sense to pay people the same for work that may be harder or easier to do.

Also, since I'm new, I still can't shake the fears that we won't have another Stalinist Russia on our hands if we go all the way to Communism. Socialism seems less extreme and less likely to be overrun by nuts. Somehow, some greedy person will get control and we'll have gulags and mass killing before you know it. I agree with the theory in principle wholeheartedly, but I need some assurance that Communism would not end up state capitalist. If I can get past that obstacle, I might even join the Communist Party.

[x371322]

First of all, don't join the Communist Party USA, if that's the one you're referring too. Nothing but social democrats, ie. not communists.

To answer your question, Socialism is the phase after capitalism and before communism. The workers in a capitalist society will eventually revolt, taking over the government and setting up a workers state, (or the dictatorship of the proletariat as Marx put it.) During this stage all private property is abolished. Eventually, when everything has come together as it should, that state will fade away, and then we're left with Communism: a moneyless, stateless, and egalitarian society.

To put it even simpler:
Socialism = State
Communism = No State

This is a very simplistic description of course, and all theoretical. It has never happened. And the details about how we're going to achieve this are constantly being debated.

[syndicat]

The Communist Party's politics are hardly different than the Democrats these days.

You could mean "Communism" (capital C) that has existed in the various "Communist" countries...this is a bureaucratic class dominated mode of production.

Or you could mean "communism" (small c) as this was used in the 19th century and prior to Russian revolution. The latter was never clearly defined but is supposed to have no longer a division into classes.

In the 19th century there was no clear distinction between "socialism" and "communism". Marx doesn't refer to a distinction between "socialism" and "communism" but a distinction between higher and lower phases of communism.

Because of the ambiguity of words like "socialism" and "communism," my advice would be to focus concretely on what exactly one takes this to refer to. For example, I don't think the working class will be free of domination and exploitation as a class until they gain complete authority to manage the industries where they work. But there also needs to be social self-management, not control of society by a topdown bureaucratic state apparatus. And the assets used in production need to be "owned" by the society as a whole, meaning that what workers do when they run production is limited by their need to be accountable to the larger society in terms of what they produce, effects on the society such as pollution, etc.

[TheJungle]

Wow, really? The CPUSA is just slightly more left wing than the Democrats? That's pretty sad that that's where America is.

So, how would the state in Socialism not turn into Soviet Russia bureaucracy and authoritarianism? Are worker's councils or democratic ownership feasible options? Also, who would set the prices of things under Socialism, not the market 'cause we know how that works. Would there be a state planning of the economy? I heard one place that the people would own businesses as co-operatives and have a once a week meeting to set policy, and then act based on the policy. That seems better than some unaccountable government panel saying "WE NEED 50 COMPUTERS BY FRIDAY!"

[revolution inaction]

in communism the workers control the means of production and society, there is no state, property or money, instead the principle "from each acording to ability, to each acording to need" is applied, that is, people do work according to what they are good at and how much they can mange, and in return are provided with there needs, including there needs for lucksherys entertainment etc.

the ussr was in no way communist, even its most ardent suporters only call it socialist. in reality it was state capitalist, the workers still worked for a wage and internal trade still existed, and of cause the workers didn't have control over the means of production, the state did.

joining the communist party would be a stupid thing to do for some one who belives in communism, they are not communist at all.

[TheJungle]

So, Socialism is inherently bad or would only result in state capitalism? Shit. So how are we supposed to get from capitalism to communism.

I figure the reason Russia failed and China is so terrible is because they skipped the necessary Socialist phase. If you don't do that, you can't get Communism. There has to be gradual progress for anything to happen. This, unfortunately, means that America is at least 50 years from any socialism, because of the years of "CAPITALISM GOOD, COMMUNISM BAD!" propaganda we got and the fallacies that persist today.

You look at how that Paris Commune ran and you're amazed. That's what we should work for. That's what society should be. Why, when I say I'm socialist, do most people go on tirades about "No incentive to work harder," which Socialism will allow, or "People want themselves first naturally."

Is the revolution just a false promise that we all say would be great but never do anything about? Is this cake a lie?

[Red Commissar]

What you have to realize is that we're all "socialists" so to speak in this forum. We all have different versions of it and hence all the different schools of thought.

What you are referring to as "Communism" is probably the way Marxists have been approaching it. The thing is we've always had concepts of communism- that being a stateless, classless society- in history, but it has usually been written off as being utopian.

Marx and Engels believed in a form of correctly administered socialism founded on firm principles- "scientific socialism"- that can be used as a route to communism, to acheive what had been written off as Utopian and impossible.

What we need to remember is socialism is set opposed to capitalism, and is concerned over for one thing the ownership of the means of production. In capitalism, the means of production are privately owned. In socialism, the means of production are owned by the workers, in common.

Now the problem comes in over how to exactly acheive that- this is why we have reformists, Marxists (and their variations), and anarchists (excluding "Anarcho"-capitalists of course).

Americans have been fooled into misconceptions of socialism, typically involving "big gubmint and taxes", or associating it with the Scandinavian welfare models.

As for whether socialism inevitably leads to state capitalism, that's a matter of how it is implemented. I think the problem is no one has done it correctly.

And the cake is a lie? Seems you've been looking at too many portal memes?

[syndicat]

well, there are many different ideas about socialism. this is why I suggested looking at things in terms of more concrete language. from a libertarian socialist point of view, socialism requires direct management of production by workers, dismantling of the state and its replacement by a more participatory, democratic form of people's power in communities and society.

the idea of a socialist economy made up of competing cooperatives is called "market socialism." both the market socialists and the libertarian socialists are against state management of production.

the problem in the USSR was that they started from the begininning with a centralized statist conception of planning and "one-man management", that is, top down management. Lenin in 1917 said that the German post office was a model for socialism.

there are more grassroots forms of planning that have been proposed.

[ZombieGrits]

The strict definitions of communism and socialism in Marxist theory have been stated above, but in reality the words are essentially interchangeable.

One little thing is that sometimes you'll hear right-wingers and reactionaries use the word 'socialist' to describe social-democratic (think Sweden & Denmark) parties

[Red of Black]

We must avoid confusion between these three:

The leninist definition of socialism: transitory stage between capitalism and communism, in which the state controls the means of production. Also called "dictatorship of the proletariat" (or is it something different? Correct me if I'm wrong.).

The general definition of socialism: an umbrella term encompassing about all of the anti-capitalist trends present in this forum.

... and social-democracy. I don't need to say more about this.

[ZeroNowhere]

Marx and Engels believed in a form of correctly administered socialism founded on firm principles- "scientific socialism"- that can be used as a route to communism, to acheive what had been written off as Utopian and impossible.

Scientific socialism was not the name of a form of society.

the idea of a socialist economy made up of competing cooperatives is called "market socialism."

It's generally the kind of thing Marx dismissed as seeking to do away with capitalism while presupposing it (generalized commodity production, etc). I'm not sure that they would qualify as socialists so much as Engels', "so-called socialists."

A system of commercial exchange between free and autonomous enterprises such as might be supported by cooperators, syndicalists, libertarians, has no historical possibility nor any socialist character. It is even a step backward compared with numerous sectors already organised on a general scale in the bourgeois epoch, as required by technology and the complexity of social life. Socialism, or communism, means that the whole of society is a single association of producers and consumers.

-Bordiga.

in communism the workers control the means of production and society, there is no state, property or money, instead the principle "from each acording to ability, to each acording to need" is applied, that is, people do work according to what they are good at and how much they can mange, and in return are provided with there needs, including there needs for lucksherys entertainment etc.

That's what Marx referred to the as the 'higher stage of communism', which is only a stage of communism, not its totality. The initial phase included what are now called 'labour credits', but labour would still be directly social, and there would be democratic social control of production.

Anyhow, regarding socialism and communism, they are terms that were used synonymously by Marx, Engels and De Leon, to mean an, "association of free men, working with the means of production held in common, and expending their many different forms of labour-power in full self-awareness as one single social labour force." On how they came to be divided, that is discussed in this article by Paresh Chattopadhyay.

The dictatorship of the proletariat takes place during the revolutionary transformation of capitalism into communism, during proletarian revolution, hence under capitalism. It is more or less the use of enforcement by the proletariat in order to expropriate the expropriators, the representation of their interests as the general interests in a class-divided society in order to abolish this class-divided society.

Further, it follows that every class which is struggling for mastery, even when its domination, as is the case with the proletariat, postulates the abolition of the old form of society in its entirety and of domination itself, must first conquer for itself political power in order to represent its interest in turn as the general interest, which in the first moment it is forced to do. Just because individuals seek only their particular interest, which for them does not coincide with their communal interest (in fact the general is the illusory form of communal life), the latter will be imposed on them as an interest “alien” to them, and “independent” of them as in its turn a particular, peculiar “general” interest; or they themselves must remain within this discord, as in democracy. On the other hand, too, the practical struggle of these particular interests, which constantly really run counter to the communal and illusory communal interests, makes practical intervention and control necessary through the illusory “general” interest in the form of the State.

-Marx.

[syndicat]

A system of commercial exchange between free and autonomous enterprises such as might be supported by cooperators, syndicalists, libertarians, has no historical possibility nor any socialist character. It is even a step backward compared with numerous sectors already organised on a general scale in the bourgeois epoch, as required by technology and the complexity of social life. Socialism, or communism, means that the whole of society is a single association of producers and consumers.

except that syndicalists and libertarian communists don't support such. this is why i differentiated libertarian socialism from "market socialism" (note quotes). in any event words get their reference by how people use them. sectarians don't run their own language.

[ZeroNowhere]

Sure, anarcho-syndicalists as I know them don't support it. To be fair, it was written a while ago in Italy, so they may have had different connotations at the time, or those ideas may have had more sympathy within those movements, which would seem possible. Nonetheless, that just makes it exclusively targeted at 'market socialists'.