The Difference Between Democratic Socialism and Stalinist Communism
According to Karl Marx, communism is an economic state in which everyone shares everything (think "communal" or, for any Christians out there, "communion") and socialism is a stage in the making of communism, where all property and resources are public, and everyone does their fair share of work in production (Campbell 2018). These ideas play out well on paper, but people are greedy, so it can be hard to implement either communism or socialism completely as Marx planned. When most Americans with a high school education in history hear "communism," they think of Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin and the Red Scare. Some only think of Stalin. The communism that many picture is of the government seizing private property and personal belongings without redistributing the wealth fairly. "Socialism," although it defines a different economic state that is present and functional in countries such as Nicaragua, India, and Portugal ("List of socialist s...