Difference between socialism and communism

The two are synonyms for each other, so libertarian communists don't mind calling themselves libertarian socialists. Where they differ is in how they are used at different points in history, or by different people with differing perspectives. But how they are last used or most used don't constitute the final and most valid definition. If you try to do it the latter way, then it becomes confusing and complicated. Its best to try to look at how their usage changed historically, and to try to differentiate the contents behind the labels. Originally (I suppose), they meant the same thing.

They are not synonymous at all.

Among the etymological source quotes in the Oxford English Dictionary (that's the big multi-volume bugger you find in libraries, not the Concise version) you find:

"Forster Diary 11 May in T. W. Reid Life (1888) .... I learn that the great distinction between communism and socialism is that the latter believes in payment according to work done and the former does not".

In other words, socialism is "...to each according to deed" as opposed to communism's "...to each according to need". Remuneration for labour-time is the essential characteristic of socialism (see Parecon, for e.g.). Or, as communists since the time of Malatesta and Kropotikin have called it, "the Wage System".

The primary difference between communism and socialism is, given that a classless society based on the wage system is impossible, is that the former, however difficult to achieve, is at least possible. Whereas socialism is not.

edit: and no Forster is not the only source, by any means. It's in J.S.Mill's "Principles of Political Economy" for e.g.

Ocelot #3

I disagree, as the meaning of a word is contextual, therefore its historical meaning/s are dependent on when and who used it. The SPGB believes their use of the word ‘Socialist’ is historically ‘correct’ and they mean something not dissimilar to ‘communism’ as used on libcom. Why this obsession with trying to nail one meaning to one word? Or in this case two mutually exclusive meanings to two words. It is best just to ask what the user means when using a word. Stops a lot of futile arguments based on misunderstandings.

in my interpretation of it anyway, socialism is a society with a state and business, even bosses and representative democracy.... but it is run with the ideals of eliminating capitalism, inequality and classes.

whereas communism is stateless, classless society run by communities and direct democracy.
i think a good way of looking at it is that communism is both more socially libertarian and economically authoritarian than socialism... which bridges the gap between capitalism and communism.

of course your welcome to disagree.

Words have many uses, but the main one in this question is conveying meaning from the speaker to the listener. It relies on shared reference points and mutual understanding. So of course socialism and communism can sometimes mean the same thing. Of course sometimes they can mean complimentary but different things. And of course Tony Blair could call himself a socialist sometimes. And it still be meaningful. These words are not from heaven, to both distort and nick a phrase off a thing I can't remember the real name of.

I like to attach the word communist to my understanding of capital and social change, but realise most people understand something different by the word. I also prefer to use socialism as a synonym for communism when it comes to anything programmatic. But I try to use these words as a a means of communication. Not as independently existing ideas up in the sky that I have loyalty to.

Mostly when talking to people about this sort of thing I steer away from using any of these ideologically contested terms. And I think there's a kind of tribal warfare that ideologues of the left wage over them*

If you want a good historical overview of what the words popularly meant until the mid 20th C. Keywords by Raymond Williams is good. And that's really interesting. But there is no reason I can see to say X means this forever and Y means this forever and never shall they meet/be separated. Talk in words you and your listeners can understand and then these big labels can actually be useful shorthands, not things we use to divide us into waring factions.

*all anarchists are hypocrites/petite-bourgious/individualists, all Trotskyists are authoritarians/putschists/nationalists, all council communists are workerists/anti-organisation/whatever. Actually the accusations overlap so much any could be applied to any other by the right twisting of words. Too much bad blood for often not much reason than investment in a 'tradition' and the smugness of being acclaimed for slagging off 'the enemy'.

edit: the bolded phrase was nicked from old lettersjounral's 'These numbers are not from heaven'. An article I slagged off a bit. Letters did have a good turn of phrase there though!

I have always understood Communism to be the end-all, be-all of Socialism.

Great post by RedEd. I prefer to just avoid using either word or -isms in general, since it often seems to lead to total dead ends about what this or that word "really" means that really bog down actually communicating anything. But that aside, I usually use them interchangeably. Doing otherwise seems to suggest some sort of non-capitalist and non-socialist but rather intermediary society between the two that couldn't really exist.

In regards to Marx, in his earlier writings (e.g. Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts) he uses the term "communism" to refer to the revolutionary process itself, "the real movement which abolishes the present state of things." I think that for the most part, he used both terms more or less synonousmly to mean a society organized on the basis of from each according to their ability, to each according to their need and all that entails with the abolition of wage-labor and value and so. From what I can tell, the term "socialism" was often used more broadly than "communism" even at that time, though. Bakunin comes to mind as someone widely and unconteoversially described as a socialist despite favoring the use of labor credits in a post-revolutionary society.

Cooperative commonwealth was also a fairly popular synonym for socialism/communism for a while. And of course social democracy meant much the same as socialism/communism before that too fell out of revolutionary usage.

Hillel Ticktin also supports the view that there is no distinction between the two terms.

"The fundamental aspect of a communist or socialist society (I make no distinction between the two) is that for the first time a society is planned by the associated producers themselves."

But goes on to claim Lenin and Trotsky also accepted that view and used apostrophes when talking about "socialism"

"Now it is true that the distinction between socialism and communism was actually made and employed by Lenin, Trotsky and so forth. But they put inverted commas around the word ‘socialism’: ie, so-called socialism."

Yeah, basically they can be different if you define them differently. On libcom, we generally use them interchangeably.

Ocelot, I do see your point, but as others point out the SPGB, and others use "socialism" meaning a stateless and moneyless society, and you can't really say they're wrong because of "the dictionary", as dictionary definitions are often inadequate for political terms.

It's not about the dictionary, it's about the history.

The word socialism comes from the (original) London Cooperative Society, based on William Thompson's term "social science"*. In the Chancery Lane debates of 1825 between the Political Economists, led by J.S.Mill and the Cooperators, led by Thompson, the term "supporter of the new social science" became shortened to "socialists" (as attested by the 1826 edition of the LCS journal). So originally, as Mill mentions in "Principles of Political Economy", the London and wider UK (including Ireland, Thompson was a Cork man) Cooperative movement "socialists" were communist. The word "communist" doesn't appear in the language until the 1840s (although the word "communionist" also appears in the 1827 LCS journal as an alternative for socialism). The word had been in circulation in France, even prior to the revolution and with a different meaning. One writer, Restif de la Bretonne applied it to Babeuf's conspiracy in the 1790s, but it doesn't reappear in France until the foundation in 1839 of the neo-Babouviste Société secrète des travailleurs égalitaires (Secret society of egalitarian workers) who use it to characterise their notion of proletarian revolution. An English member of the Cooperative movement. John Goodwyn Barmby, then writing/editing socialist journal "The New Moral World" claims to have imported the word into the English speaking world, after a visit to Paris in 1840 where he made contact with the neo-Babouvists. (Incidentally Barmby can claim some credit in introducing Engels to the notion - see Engels, 1844 letter to the New Moral World).

In the 1840s then, the meaning of the two terms start to swap places, communism taking over the original, restricted meaning of the original Thompsonite programme (i.e. the elimination of the "system of individual competition" or "competitive system", via means of abolishing remuneration/the wage and holding the results of production in common as well as the means of production) and socialism being adopted by every utopian whack-job going. Hence (i.e. the association with whack-jobbery), as Engels reflects in his 1888 introduction** to the Communist Manifesto, why he and Marx originally chose the "communism" over "socialism" for the League itself (in 1847) and its eponymous manifesto (1848). But, as Engels remarks in 1888, the semantic evolution of the two words in the intervening four decades meant that if they were to entitle it anew in 1888, it would be a Socialist Manifesto.

J.S. Mill's 1848 "Principles of Political Economy" also makes the point about the shift in the respective sense of socialist and communist:

The assailants of the principle of individual property may be
divided into two classes: those whose scheme implies absolute
equality in the distribution of the physical means of life and
enjoyment, and those who admit inequality, but grounded on some
principle, or supposed principle, of justice or general
expediency, and not, like so many of the existing social
inequalities, dependent on accident alone. At the head of the
first class, as the earliest of those belonging to the present
generation, must be placed Mr. Owen and his followers. M. Louis
Blanc and M. Cabet have more recently become conspicuous as
apostles of similar doctrines (though the former advocates
equality of distribution only as a transition to a still higher
standard of justice, that all should work according to their
capacity, and receive according to their wants). The
characteristic name for this economical system is Communism, a
word of continental origin, only of late introduced into this
country. The word Socialism, which originated among the English
Communists, and was assumed by them as a name to designate their
own doctrine, is now, on the Continent, employed in a larger
sense; not necessarily implying Communism, or the entire
abolition of private property, but applied to any system which
requires that the land and the instruments of production should
be the property, not of individuals, but of communities or
associations, or of the government.

"Book 2, Ch 1, "On Property"

Moving to the 1860s the first great confrontation within First International was between the collectivists and the Proudhonian mutualists. At the 1868 3rd Congress in Brussells, the collectivist charge was led by César de Paepe (at that time probably the pre-eminent leader of the AIT) against the followers of Proudhon, both Marx and Bakunin (neither of whom were present) directed their followers to back de Paepe against the mutualists (the main bone of contention being the land issue - ironically both "marxist" and "bakunist" descended tendencies have tended to adopt, in practice***, the mutualist "all land to the peasants" position, albeit 'encouraging' collectivisation - rather than forcing it upon the peasantry). The tensions between Marx and Bakunin appear in later years, after this moment of tactical (some might even say opportunistic...) unity, But the divergence was over means of social transformation ("conquest" of state power, or not) rather than collectivism, which they both maintained to their graves. NB neither Marx nor Bakunin were communists, properly speaking.

In the emergence of communism within Bakunin's International Brotherhood, great care was taken by the participants (mainly the Italians, Cafiero, Covelli, Malatesta, and Reclus for the French) to avoid Bakunin discovering their conversion to communism, as they thought this would cause a rift with the "old man", who by that stage was ill and near the end of his life. Hence they waited until Bakunin's death in 1876 before publicly announcing (coyly at first, in the Florence congress resolution, which framed communism as "the logical complement to collectivism in the means of production") their conversion.

All the classical era libertarian communist texts use the collectivist/communist distinction, and there is ample documentary evidence that "collectivism" was widely used for the programme of socialising the means of production while retaining waged remuneration and, effectively, markt exchange between collectives. The Spanish anarchist movement's final formal conversion from the AIT's original collectivism to communism did not take place until the very eve of destruction with the adoption of Isaac Puente's manifesto at the May 1836 Zaragossa Congress.

In the 20th century, due to the influence of the Russian revolution and Bolshevism, the term collectivism has been substituted by "socialism". But nonetheless, any person claiming to be an anarchist who doesn't know the difference between collectivism and communism, is entirely ignorant of the history of the anarchist and broader workers movement.

Happy now?

* Thompson introduced "social science" into the language, nb, also "suplus value" (where Marx got it from", not to mention the adjectival form "competitive" as a characterisation of the essential fault of capitalism.

**

Yet, when it was written, we could not have called it a socialist manifesto. By Socialists, in 1847, were understood, on the one hand the adherents of the various Utopian systems: Owenites in England, Fourierists in France, [See Charles Owen and François Fourier] both of them already reduced to the position of mere sects, and gradually dying out; on the other hand, the most multifarious social quacks who, by all manner of tinkering, professed to redress, without any danger to capital and profit, all sorts of social grievances, in both cases men outside the working-class movement, and looking rather to the “educated" classes for support. Whatever portion of the working class had become convinced of the insufficiency of mere political revolutions, and had proclaimed the necessity of total social change, called itself Communist.

Preface: 1888 English Edition

*** At least until we get to the Trotsky/Stalin programme (indistinguishable on this question, as so many others, Trotskyist bullshit notwithstanding)

edit: Incidentally, for anyone who reads French, there is a reasonable introduction in the WP article - Histoire du communisme - unlike the English version, which is pathetic.

I think of the whole left-wing as socialists and social democrats, democratic socialists, social activists and communists as part of the socialist system.

the difference between "socialism" and "communism" was rigidified by the Communist international. Prior to the Russian revolution, the words were often used more or less interchangably, or at least without any clear difference being rigidified. within ML lexicon, as it developed by '30s, "socialism" was used to refer to "state socialism", what existed in the "Communist" countries & "communism", understood more or less as Marx did, was put far into the future. "communism" in this sense referred to a stateless, classless society. In the USA the revolutionary left before the Russian revolution rarely used "communist". but there were different interpretations of what socialism might be. but of course the reason for the ML rigidification of the terminology was because the "Communist"-run societies were obviously not stateless or classless. in the libertarian left in the '20s, '30s and earlier, "libertarian socialism" and "libertarian communism" were often used interchangeably.

Stalin famously used the terms socialist and communist interchangeably, in fact calling the higher phase of communism socialism.

That is why Marx said in 1875:

page 339

"In a higher phase of communist (i.e., socialist) society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labour, and therewith also the antithesis...

http://www.marx2mao.com/Stalin/AS07.html#c3

Peirre Leroux in 1850? claimed that he invented the term socialism in 1832;

what I said previously (pages 121 and 160 of this Volume). When I invented the term Socialism in order to oppose it to the term Individualism, I did not expect that, ten years late…

http://libertarian-labyrinth.blogspot.co.uk/2010/02/pierre-leroux-individualism-and_03.html

It was Lenin in his State and Revolution in 1917 who described the lower phase of communism as socialism.

The word social was being bandied about at the beginning of the 1800’s so I suppose it was only a matter of time that the ism would be added to the end of it.

It is said that Robert Owen had been using the word around 1830.

As an aside the subject was introduced in the most popular and widely read piece of English fiction at the time; The Vicar of Wakefield;

…….we are all originally equal. This is my opinion, and was once the opinion of a set of honest men who were called Levellers.' They tried to erect themselves into a community, where all should be equally free. But, alas! it would never answer; for there were some among them stronger, and some more cunning than others, and these became masters of the rest; for as sure as your groom rides your horses, because he is a cunninger animal than they, so surely will the animal that is cunninger or stronger than he, sit upon his shoulders in turn.

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2667/2667-h/2667-h.htm

Although after having read the book recently I am not sure how to interpret it.

I understand that it is generally recognised by the people responsible for editing dictionaries, that the products of their labours are dated even before the publication of the latest edition. They are therefore ‘historical’. To use linguistic archaeology (no matter how interesting and useful it is in itself) to dictate the ‘true’ meaning of words is nonsensical.

More than forty years ago I was accused of debasing the language by referring to ‘gays’ and was informed the ‘correct’ word was homosexual. There are innumerable examples of words evolving and that’s why it’s an ideological battleground.

Sylvia Pankhurst "The words Socialism and Communism have the same meaning."

http://www.marxists.org/archive/pankhurst-sylvia/1923/future-society.htm

Dave B

Peirre Leroux in 1850? claimed that he invented the term socialism in 1832;

what I said previously (pages 121 and 160 of this Volume). When I invented the term Socialism in order to oppose it to the term Individualism, I did not expect that, ten years late…

http://libertarian-labyrinth.blogspot.co.uk/2010/02/pierre-leroux-individualism-and_03.html

Yeah, but Leroux was an gobshite and part of the Masonic "Brotherhood" wing of politics which was virulently hostile to the original socialist/feminist movement. He was the printer of the Globe newspaper which after originally defending liberal anti-restauration views, aligned itself with the St Simonians and became its house organ. Leroux himself joined the St Simonians briefly, as well as the Charbonniers (the French version of the Carbonari, originally set up by, amongst others, Saint-Amand Bazard, then co-leader of the St Simonians) and took part in their workers educational project the Degré Ouvrier (Workers Degree) mainly instructed by Claire Bazard. After the July days of 1830 the St Simonians had decided that even though nothing fundamentally had changed in the social order, that the working class had demonstrated their decisive power for social transformation, and they therefore oriented themselves towards the working class, both through the educational programmes and through sending "missionaries" to seek employment in factories and workshops to spread the word and get "with the people" (truly, there's nothing new under the sun). Without much success, it should be said (plus ca change...).

However a nasty split was brewing within the St Simonians between the Bazards and the other "co-leader" (or co-"Father" in fact, following the "religious" turn already begun in 1829) Enfantin. Increasingly "le Pere Enfantin" put himself forwards as "le Pere Superior" and demanded the sharing of women in common by the order's superiors (i.e.himself - specifically as regards Claire, as far as I can make out). Which lead to a major falling out and the Bazard's quitting the movement (Sainte-Amand died soon after in early 1832). The young women worker students of Claire also left, setting up a feminist and socialist journal in 1832 (Marie-Reine Guindorf, Desirée Véret, Claire Démar) with the aid of Anna Doyle Wheeler, partner-in-crime and chief inspiration for both the socialism and feminism of William Thompson. Flora "the emancipation of the workers is the task of the workers themselves" Tristan later joined that socialist-feminist circle.

The cross-over between early feminism and socialism needs to be emphasised, because it sheds light on some of the hostility expressed by the Carbonari/Charbonniers (NB, both Proudhon and Bakuinin were also Charbonniers) towards the socialist-feminists in the 1830s and 40s.

Basically you had two inter-related but mutually suspicious traditions - radical republicanism and socialism - which tended to be split along insurrectionist/pacifist, conspiratorial/public, illegalist/legalist, masonic fraternity/salons, male/female lines.

The first line comes down from the general heritage of the French revolution with its republican clubs (often indistinguishable from the masonic lodges behind them) and their exclusively male, primarily insurrectionist conspiratorial orientation. The radical tendency descending through Babeuf's co-conspirator, Buenarroti, through Briot, Blanqui, Blanc and the Charbonniers.

The socialist line is initially made up of those people who, while initially enthusiastic for the French revolution, were later dismayed by the blood-letting of the terror and advocated for more pacifist methods of social transformation by establishing example communities. However the emphasis on egalitarianism by example (rather than after your secret "band of brothers" has seized the state and imposed it from the top down, via state terror) meant they took equality between the genders in the here and now more seriously. Hence both the St. Simonians (until Enfantin's coup in 1831 and his subsequent edict banning women from progressing up the hierarchy - another impulse for the exodus of feminists from the St Simonians in that year) and the Fourierists allowed women (obviously banned from the secret masonic fraternities) to participate in a more equal manner than open to them anywhere else in early 19th C society in France, Britain and Ireland (Anna and William were both Irish Ascendancy). While working class women joined the St Simonians, through the outreach programme, upper class women also played a significant role. Particularly through the institution of Salons. Salons had evolved from the habit of upper class "ladies of leisure" hosting visitors in their drawing rooms for entertaining discussion. In an Ancien Regime world where public political discussion was legally impossible (hence the need for the fraternal political clubs to be mostly secret societies), salons represented a social loophole as they were technically the private space of the hostess. Of course the baudy and often violent drunkeness (and boy were they very, very drunk, mostly) of the frat boys was not acceptable, nor was openly sedition or calls for violent insurrection. However, so long as a careful line was trodden, depending on the political sympathies of the hostess, salons became the place where radical politics and philosophy could be semi-publically debated without fear of arrest (again depending on the networking skills and connections of the hostess).

Consequently the attitude of the radical republican masonic "brothers". particularly those from an artisanal or relatively humble background towards the salonnières of the socialist-feminist movement was often laded with misogynist resentment towards what they saw as "stuck up bitches". Proudhon was a particularly bad case. In fact one of his vilely sexist attacks on a St Simonian or Fourierist (can't recall which) socialist-feminist*, that provoked Jacques Déjacque's famous letter of rebuke in which, apart from his sexism, he upbraids Proudhon for his mutualist economics being "libéral et non libértaire" - thus coining the term as a synonym for libertarian communism (which is hence, historically-speaking, a redundancy), and reiterating the link between communism and feminism (and anti-racism, it should be said - Proudhon's anti-slavery credentials were shit, whereas Déjacque's journal in the US was an early campaigner against slavery and racism).

Leroux originally used the term "socialisme" as a term of abuse for his former St Simonian leaders, presumably mainly inspired by Enfantin's increasingly despotic theocratic fantasies, but perhaps also resonant of a certain frat-boy resentment at his feminist former educators.

Anyway. Good excuse for an info dump.

edit: * Proudhon's target was an advocate of Cabettian communism, Jeanne-Marie Poinsard known as Jenny d’Héricourt

Only revolution can bring the real meanings back into play. Until then no matter what any communist intellectuals say, communism is stalinism or crazy hippies, and socialism is hardcore liberalism

The American Trotskyist James P Cannon:

Socialism and communism are more or less interchangeable terms in the Marxist movement. Some make a distinction between them in this respect; for example, Lenin used the expression socialism as the first stage of communism, but I haven’t found any other authority for that use. I think that is Lenin’s own particular idea. I, for example, consider the terms socialism and communism interchangeable, and they relate to the classless society based on planned production for use as distinct from a system of capitalism based on private property and production for profit.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/cannon/works/1941/socialism/ch02.htm

As I wrote in my Prehistory of the Idea: Part One here at libcom:

Socialism and Communism

The term ‘socialism’ first saw the light of day in England print in an Owenite publication of 1827, The Co-operative Magazine. It described the co-operative practices of the Owenites. In France it first appeared in Le Globe in 1832. This was a paper produced by the journalist Pierre Leroux, and was an official organ of the followers of Saint-Simon. Again it was used to describe Saint-Simon’s ideas for a collective plan of society. Leroux was later to rather inaccurately claim that he had first coined the term as a neologism to counter the other neologism individualism, which was increasingly being used because of the circulation of Jeremy Bentham’s thought. Thus it implied a quest for social solutions to the ills of society rather than Benthamite individualism. It was officially adopted as a term by the Owenites in 1841, and was often used to describe the followers of Saint-Simon and Fourier.As Corcoran notes (p3.) “…this innovation only incorporated the meanings already widely associated with le social, the complex of social concerns focused upon by several schools of ‘social science’ and an increasingly politically oriented literary and artistic romanticism”.
Communism, for its part, referred to a belief in absolute social equality which must develop into the Communauté- the community of liberty, equality and fraternity. This term preceded that of communism and was used by Babeuf to describe his social vision, just as it was later used by the likes of Dézamy etc ( note that Babeuf also used the terms “communautiste”.

The term communist became more and more widely used under the July Monarchy as more and more political activists began to associate themselves with the concept of communism. One one hand were the revolutionary communists, from a Babouvist background, on the other were the followers of Cabet. At the trial of Darmès one witness testified that there were “ two branches of the communists, one of which he did not think was in favour of violent means, the other, the communistes immédiats, who wished to overthrow the present government by any means.”

removed

"democratic worker control of the means of production." Correct me if I'm wrong.

Democratic worker control by itself does not necessary defines libertarian socialism although without it, there wouldn’t be any socialism, either. The ideal of worker-owned and -operated production neglects the fact that, as Marx observed, the conditions for industrial production are not essentially the workers’ own labour, but rather more socially general: production has become the actual property of society. Socialism is SOCIAL ownership and DEMOCRATIC control of the means of production and distribution with PRODUCTION being FOR USE to meet the needs of the community and not for exchange on the market to make profits nor should what is commonly used in short-hand "workers control" be confused with SECTIONAL ownership and control, that excludes wider society from the decision making of what, where and how production takes place.

Self-management under capitalism is self-management of your own exploitation. Socialism is a non-property system, and systems which accept and reject property cannot co-exist. If the very demand for workers’ control goes no further than seeking to change the form of management of the modern enterprise, it remains profoundly conservative. Even with bosses eliminated from the equation, the logic of capitalism remains. It would be left to us, the workers, to inflict the consequences of capitalism upon ourselves. In unprofitable years, if things got bad, we would be forced to fire ourselves, reduce our health benefits, or cut down on our own wages or lessen or increase our working hours. This is worker capitalism.

Let’s not forget that socialism aims not to establish "workers power" but the abolition of all classes including the working class. In socialist society, there would simply be people, free and equal men and women forming a class-free community.

removed

There is much confusion over the difference between socialism and communism, much of it stemming from the Gotha Programme notes written by Marx and then the later re-defining of the terms by Lenin. But already there was a blurring on the application of the word socialism as exemplified by the term “state-socialism” and now “market-socialism”. Many believe that we should yield to popular usage and drop the term "socialism" and use another. But will that guarantee that the new word's meaning won't become corrupted?

Marx did distinguish between an initial "lower" and a later "higher" phases of socialist/communist society but these two phases were not different societies as Lenin made them in 1917’s State and Revolution but merely adjustments made for the different levels of technological and productive capacities of a society emerging out of capitalism. Many would now say that the material preconditions for full socialism/communism – free access socialism, from each according to ability, to each according to needs has now been met for all practical purposes.

"From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs" ("à chacun selon ses besoins, de chacun selon ses facultés") was also written by Louis Blanc as a rebuttal to Henri de Saint Simon who claimed that each should be rewarded according to how much they work. It is speculated that the phrase was inspired from two lines from the Bible: “All that believed were together, and had all things in common; And sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all men, as every man had need.” (Acts 2:44-45)

Even American Trotskyist James P. Cannon wrote that in a socialist society money, indeed, even a system for accounting for what was produced and how it was allotted would disappear: "In the socialist society, when there is plenty and abundance for all, what will be the point in keeping account of each one's share, any more than in the distribution of food at a well-supplied family table? You don't keep books as to who eats how many pancakes for breakfast or how many pieces of bread for dinner. Nobody grabs when the table is laden. If you have a guest, you don't seize the first piece of meat for yourself, you pass the plate and ask him to help himself first."

As he explained “Socialism and communism are more or less interchangeable terms in the Marxist movement. Some make a distinction between them in this respect; for example, Lenin used the expression socialism as the first stage of communism, but I haven’t found any other authority for that use. I think that is Lenin’s own particular idea. I, for example, consider the terms socialism and communism interchangeable, and they relate to the classless society based on planned production for use as distinct from a system of capitalism based on private property and production for profit”.

Stalin in 1907 understood socialism to mean this if you read his pamphlet "Anarchism or Socialism"
http://ptb.sunhost.be/marx2mao/Stalin/AS07.html#c2

The Cannon quote looks like a paraphrase of the Trotsky one.

Leon Trotsky, The Revolution Betrayed, Chapter 3, Socialism and the State

The material premise of communism should be so high a development of the economic powers of man that productive labor, having ceased to be a burden, will not require any goad, and the distribution of life’s goods, existing in continual abundance, will not demand – as it does not now in any well-off family or “decent” boarding-house – any control except that of education, habit and social opinion. Speaking frankly, I think it would be pretty dull-witted to consider such a really modest perspective “utopian.”

http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1936/revbet/ch03.htm

There is another one from Trotsky as below where he uses the word socialism.

[Abramovich was a Menshevik with long standing deep rooted connection to the trade union movement and one of the last major one to be driven out.]

Trotsky’s Terrorism and Communism

The Mensheviks are against this. This is quite comprehensible, because in reality they are against the dictatorship of the proletariat. It is to this, in the long run, that the whole question is reduced. The Kautskians are against the dictatorship of the proletariat, and are thereby against all its consequences.

Both economic and political compulsion are only forms of the expression of the dictatorship of the working class in two closely connected regions.

True, Abramovich demonstrated to us most learnedly that under Socialism there will be no compulsion, that the principle of compulsion contradicts Socialism, that under Socialism we shall be moved by the feeling of duty, the habit of working, the attractiveness of labor, etc., etc. This is unquestionable.

Only this unquestionable truth must be a little extended. In point of fact, under Socialism there will not exist the apparatus of compulsion itself, namely, the State: for it will have melted away entirely into a producing and consuming commune. None the less, the road to Socialism lies through a period of the highest possible intensification of the principle of the State. And you and I are just passing through that period.

Just as a lamp, before going out, shoots up in a brilliant flame, so the State, before disappearing, assumes the form of the dictatorship of the proletariat, i.e., the most ruthless form of State, which embraces the life of the citizens authoritatively in every direction. Now just that insignificant little fact – that historical step of the State dictatorship – Abramovich, and in his person the whole of Menshevism, did not notice; and consequently, he has fallen over it.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1920/terrcomm/ch08.htm

I have a word document with 20 odd quotes from a range of bods on what communism or socialism is that I could dump here.

Including obviously the Stalin one which particularly interesting.

It was in part a refutation of Kropotkin’s assertion that the Bolsheviks would introduce state capitalism.

The content of the idea is even pre Christian; there is somewhere a quotation, by an early Christian, of Philo’s [25 BCE – c. 50 CE] description of the communist essene community.

Honestly, you lot don't half like to make a meal of it. It's very simple;

Socialism - Jeremy Corbyn

Communism - Arthur Scargill

And to complete the picture...

Liberalism - Jeremy Thorpe

Conclusion? The socialist and the liberal are both called Jeremy, making it clear to the meanest intelligence that these are middle class ideologies and not to be touched with a ten foot pole. Arthur on the other hand is a good solid working class name so obviously communism is the only game in town. Now stop the waffle and get building the gulags - there's a lot of fucking Jeremys out there!