Before Lenin tried to make a distinction between “socialism” and “communism,” the terms were often used interchangeably. This was not by accident. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engles — who together developed the ideology now known as Marxism — certainly didn’t see much separating the two. The act of supplanting “communism” with “socialism” is actually more of a successful modern branding exercise than an acknowledgement of any substantive difference between the theories.
After all, championing “communism” to anyone even remotely familiar with Stalin’s purges in the Soviet Union, Mao’s collectivization schemes which starved millions in China, or Pol Pot’s massacres in Cambodia is a pretty tough sell. So, leftists in predominately free countries must find a different way to pitch their favorite failed concept, pivoting socialism away from the label of “communism” by describing their political and economic philosophy in terms of “objectives” rather than policies.
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