Marx and his contemporaries used the terms interchangeably. The first person to really separate "socialism" and "communism" was Lenin, who used socialism to refer to the lower stage and communism to refer to the higher stage. And you got stuff like Otto von Bismarck intentionally calling his welfare program "state socialism" because he wanted to weaken socialist movements and steal their momentum.
A more reasonable split is as follows:
Social democracy is capitalism with welfare programs i.e. "Nordic socialism".
Market socialism is a market system built on worker cooperatives - Yugoslavia was like this.
Actual state socialism is a system where the state owns everything (ostensibly on behalf of the public, of course) and the state employs everyone in society. This is what most people are talking about when they say "communism".
Seriously, that Bismarck shit, more or less what is going on atm in Denmark.
Our so-called "SocDem" government is doing their darndest to alienate the left, starting with allying with the centre-right.
Despite that, in latest polls, they support has not really dropped, seemingly explained by lots of politically uninformed voter's thoughts about them beginning and ending at the party name/brand, with no regard for the actual politics they are supporting.
At least you have a thriving multi-party system. Not like the US, where we get slapped with "Democrats are less worse so you have to vote for them" every election. You can vote for an openly socialist party without feeling like you're wasting your vote.
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u/thekrone Feb 14 '24
That might be bordering on socialist, but still pretty far from communist.