https://www.britannica.com/topic/communism
"Communism, political and economic doctrine that aims to replace private
property and a profit-based economy with
public ownership and communal control of at least the major means of production (e.g., mines, mills, and factories) and the natural resources of a society. Communism is thus a form of
socialism—a higher and more advanced form, according to its advocates. Exactly how communism differs from socialism has long been a matter of debate, but the distinction rests largely on the communists’
adherence to the revolutionary socialism of
Karl Marx.
Like most writers of the 19th century, Marx tended to use the terms
communism and
socialism interchangeably. In his
Critique of the Gotha Programme (1875), however, Marx identified two phases of communism that would follow the predicted overthrow of
capitalism: the first would be a transitional system in which the working class would control the government and economy yet still find it necessary to pay people according to how long, hard, or well they worked; the second would be fully realized communism—a society without
class divisions or government, in which the production and distribution of goods would be based upon the principle “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” Marx’s followers, especially the Russian revolutionary
Vladimir Ilich Lenin, took up this distinction.
In
State and Revolution (1917), Lenin asserted that socialism corresponds to Marx’s first phase of communist society and communism proper to the second. Lenin and the
Bolshevik wing of the
Russian Social-Democratic Workers’ Party reinforced this distinction in 1918, the year after they seized power in Russia, by taking the name All-
Russian Communist Party. Since then, communism has been largely, if not exclusively, identified with the form of political and economic organization developed in the
Soviet Union and adopted subsequently in the
People’s Republic of China and other countries ruled by communist parties.
For much of the 20th century, in fact, about one-third of the world’s population lived under communist regimes. These regimes were characterized by the rule of a single party that tolerated no opposition and little
dissent. In place of a capitalist economy, in which individuals compete for profits, moreover, party leaders established a
command economyin which the state controlled property and its
bureaucrats determined wages, prices, and production goals. The inefficiency of these economies played a large part in the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, and the remaining communist countries (excepting North Korea) are now allowing greater economic competition while holding fast to one-party rule. "
So communist/socialist/progressive/Democrat - 6 of one or half a dozen of another, if it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, looks like a duck you can call it a fvcking eagle, it's still a duck.
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