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this post was submitted on 11 Apr 2024
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chapotraphouse
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Whenever someone uses socialism and communism interchangeably, you know they don't know what either means.
Marx and Engels often did, as do many people here.
Marx and Engels had the advantage of having lived and died before the terms were fully clarified. Said clarification was in part by them.
Hell, Engels "Socialism: Utopian and Scientific" explains almost everything, contextually "Socialism" being the movement of socialists, with "Communism" and communists being a sub-movement. With Lenin later putting in the final bit providing socialism as another term for the lower phase of communism. In this context Communism refers to the stage of development, as does Socialism.
Ergo: Both Socialism and Communism have two clearly defined meanings, depending on the context. Their definitions make them non-interchangeable. In the context of stages of development they refer to two different things. In the context of philosophical movements, one is a subgroup of the other. While every communist is a socialist, not every socialist is a communist. c -> s is true, but not the reverse. Thus logically excluding interchangeability
Nerd rant over.
Logically if someone is a socialist but not a communist than most likely they're not much of a socialist to begin with (like being a doctor who wants to treat the symptoms but not the disease), at that point the differentiation is meaningless and very likely an example of anti-communist angst, Marx and Engels had it right in the beginning, there's no point in concealing our aims or glorifying half measures
Lenin's stage theory was very useful in a world dominated by Imperial European empires with no opposition or concept of restraint, so much of Lenin's writing was constrained by his awareness Tsarist censors could clap him at anytime
Now conditions have changed and a century of liberal opportunists and appropriation has made the differentiation toxic and useless to socialist/communist movements
As names of political movements or affiliations, they are usually interchangeable in the sense that what is true of "corvids" is usually true of "jackdaws". Not always, and circumstances might make just one the relevant term to talk about, but in common usage it's just being annoying to police the use of the word "socialist" when the person in question is a communist (and therefore also a socialist).
I'd never police someone about that. But sometimes it is really confusing trying to get what someone is saying if they switch the terms around all the time.