Reply #44: Huh? Marx was pretty clear about Socialism vs. Communism

[lefador]

Marx was clear in his economic theories, which stated that a desirable progression would be from Capitalism to Socialism, once Socialism was in place, there would be enough infaestructure both phisical and mental to go into Communism. In Socialism there is still a government which is in charge of effecting the distribution of wealth and resources, once the distribution structures are in place... government dissapears and it becomes a distributed society, i.e. Communism.

Anyhow, Marx was a theorist so you always have to take his ideas with a grain of salt, although he was clear in the fact that he expectd human social evolution to progress in the following fashion: Feudalism -> Capitalism -> Socialism -> Communism. The main problem is that the societies that attempted communism went from Feudalism -> Communism and thus avoided two very important steps according to Marx: Capitalism puts in place the production infraestructure, and Socialism puts in place the distribution. Both are necessary, and both take time, i.e. his theories expected to take decades to hundreds of years... at least a few generations. Both Russia, China, et al. attempted to go from pretty much Feudal societies to a Communist utopia in a generation and as such they were bound to fail.