I predict there wouldn’t need to be a violent revolution between socialism and communism as at that point, we would be acting like civil adults for once. By the time socialism comes to an end, humanity would be conditioned to be not reactionary anymore (or at most minimally). Socialism and communism would be teaming up against capitalism, imo.
Communism couldn’t happen in a world with capitalism, or at least socialism would need to be as entrenched as capitalism is nowadays. I agree that it would be achieved through reform, not revolution. Late stage socialism will just bleed into communism, there won’t be some indelible line separating the two
I was a bit lazy on the “communism and socialism teaming up” as an analogy. I just meant if socialism and communism were personified as two people in this meme, they would be working mutually in separate timelines. To improve on the analogy, I could say socialism has a gun to capitalism’s head while giving a handshake to communism sitting behind.
I’d personally put socialism on the balcony and communism on some kind of orbital space laser. But then again I haven’t read enough theory to back this up.
Juche Space Lasers™ made me flee from the DPRK -Pak Yeon Mi, probably
Needs another layer with an orbital laser from space saying ‘Posadism’
Isn’t socialism and communism essentially the same thing based on the origin? They just started using them to mean slightly different things because communism became the big scary word?
Nah, socialism is a transitory system between capitalism and communism
If I’m not mistaken I think that was Lenin’s view, I think Marx used them interchangeably. There may have functionally been earlier distinctions, but I’m honestly not that well read in that area.
I need to reread State and Revolution, cause I want to say Lenin distinguishes between the two there as OP replied, where one is transition state and the other is after the state has “withered away” but now I can’t recall exactly if he used that specific terminology. Either way, the phrasing I tend to see used is that there is a socialist worker state with a vanguard party who suppresses the capitalist class and has a dictatorship of the working class, or proletariat. And then there is communism, which is the end goal to transition to. But the party itself is communist.
So something like:
- People doing socialist worker state: communists heading up a communist vanguard party that focuses on the needs of the masses and on educating them in communist principles and methods of analysis (such as dialectical materialism), and guards against the reaction
- The state power model: dictatorship of the proletariat in order to suppress the capitalist class and empower the proletariat
- Goals: to create and maintain a socialist state along the lines of “to each according to their contribution” and transition to a communist “to each according to their needs” as the need for the state “withers away,” and maintain the revolution which is an ongoing process of transition and guarding against the reaction, not something that ends as soon as you have state power.
If anyone thinks I’m oversimplifying, am open to correction. (Is worth noting that the details of this will vary some in practice because of the conditions unique to the socialist project and what they have developed and so on.)
