And up until Lenin this was the case

Lenin early on even used the terms interchangeably

```a political and economic theory of social organization which advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole.```

advocates, owned OR regulated

Appeal to definition

it was regulated by the government that was leaning towards the community

and it did advocate instead of fully enforcing it, so people could still run away

perfectly fucking matches the example

https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/tools/lp/Bo/LogicalFallacies/27/Appeal-to-Definition

yeah we can use no definitions

we can play with shit, that sounds fun

lets draw circles and quarrel whos circle is the best circle

ffs

Well you could actually read up on socialism instead of using dictionaries

In What is to be Done by Lenin, and Critique of the Gotha Program by Marx, you can see a clear interchangeability between socialism and communism as terms

It wasn't until Lenin described Marx's "First Phase of Communism" as Socialism and said it was the transition to Communism(which is what he called Marx's final phase of communism) that socialism and communism were ever used to describe different things

Even separating socialism and communism like that clearly demonstrates Venezuela is not socialist

Currently most Marxists outside of a few uneducated Marxist Leninists, use the terms interchangeably

And Democratic Socialists, as well as even Anarchists still agree on the final stage of communism being the goal

There is a clear difference between socialism and communism yes

Socialism is collective ownership over the means of production, while communism is a classless, moneyless and stateless world many socialists try to achieve

As far as I know, all Marxists are familiar with this

yup that's pretty spot on

On the topic of Venezuela, I still believe that the government of the country sticks to socialism as an ideology, and haven’t really transitioned in practice.

All Marxists know the terms are interchangeable, there is no clear difference

Socialism is classless, stateless and moneyless

I'll show an example

```Why do the anti-authoritarians not confine themselves to crying out against political authority, the state? All Socialists are agreed that the political state, and with it political authority, will disappear as a result of the coming social revolution, that is, that public functions will lose their political character and will be transformed into the simple administrative functions of watching over the true interests of society.```

-On Authority by Engels

It was commonly understood that at best communism is just the full realization of socialism

But communism is still socialism

```But these defects are inevitable in the first phase of communist society as it is when it has just emerged after prolonged birth pangs from capitalist society. Right can never be higher than the economic structure of society and its cultural development conditioned thereby.
In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labor, has vanished; after labor has become not only a means of life but life's prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-around development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly – only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!```

-Critique of the Gotha Program by Marx

Lenin later called this first phase of communism socialism

And Stalin referred to the revolutionary worker state as socialism

Which is where the confusion lies as to what the difference between communism and socialism is

Simply put, socialism is at best just the broad over arching political ideas of a class less society with production held in common among all people and communism the fullest realization of it, or specifically the Marxist understanding of socialism

The distinction is not cut and dry

What is universally agreed upon is that communism is socialism

Everyone will agree to that

Currently there are zero socialist countries left except *maybe* the DPRK, but that's not something I'm confident in stating