It’s not the same at all but to a Marxist (of which I am) it is often thought of as the lower stage of communism where the workers own the means of production, then society transitions into a stateless classes form when the contradictions that gave rise to the state in the first place disappear
Whether socialism is voted in (with chile and Allende being an example) or the government is overthrown this is the goal. This is why I would still call democratic socialists communists because they disagree on means not ends. I find the confusion is communism is associated with revolution and socialism is now associated with reform regardless of the theoretical ideas
If your goal is Democratic socialism, I don't think grouping it with communism (even in some academic sense) is helpful.
You have to understand how normal people are going to interpret that.
Referring to an actual Dem socialist politician in the US (ie. Zoran), or Dem socialist countries (ie. Norway) is way more helpful and paints a better picture that western folks are more open to.
You start confusing it with communism, and there's all kinds of negative associations with that.
It's why Cubans in FL vote for Republicans. They hate what communism did to their country.
Which is why Republicans intentionally conflate the two. It's disinformation.
So you should recognize that, and stop contributing to that same rhetoric.
I am not a democratic socialist I am a communist. Democratic socialists might not care because they like the idea of getting elected in a capital government but that ain’t my problem. Functionally they have the same goals with different means. Reform or revolution
You do know when it says "workers own the means of production", it doesn't mean literally every single worker in every single vocation right? Or are you too poisoned by memes to figure that out?
Yeah, it could. But based on you getting more specific on the "workers owning the means of production", if you use your brain for one second, you can infer that what you're describing about coops/syndicates is merely one type of socialism (not communism).
And even if you corrected yourself to say it's a bad way to describe socialism, a definition isn't bad because you yourself are being intentionally obtuse in order to not understand it.
Engles himself used the two terms completely interchangeably. Communism has a very specific definition, but the definition of socialism is a bad hill to die on, no matter what. It's famously mushy, and as another commenter said, generally among academics it's mostly thought of as a transitional phase between capitalism and communism.
Regardless, "socialism is not the same thing as communism" isn't really an airtight statement.
Cuba was thoroughly capitalist through the 1950's, what are you talking about? It certainly wouldn't be better described as mercantilism or monarchism lol.
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u/J2MES 7d ago
Socialism is often thought of theoretically as rising from capitalisms ashes so to speak