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Both socialism and communism place great value on creating a more equal society and removal of class privilege. The main difference is that socialism is compatible with democracy and liberty, whereas Communism involves creating an ‘equal society’ through an authoritarian state, which denies basic liberties.
Both socialism and communism are essentially economic philosophies advocating public rather than private ownership, especially of the means of production, distribution and exchange of goods (i.e., making money) in a society.
What is one difference between socialism and communism?
1. Socialism is an economic system while communism is both an economic and political system. 2. In socialism, the resources of the economy are managed and controlled by the people themselves through communes or councils while in communism, management and control rest on a few people in a single authoritarian party.
What are the variations of socialism and communism?
There are dozens of variations on both communism and socialism based on the different ways these ideologies are implemented in different countries. There is Stalinism, Leninism, Trotskyism, Maoism, and others which are essentially all versions of Marxism coupled with various styles of revolution.
One similarity between capitalism and socialism is that both systems consider labor and capital to be the primary economic forces. Both capitalism and socialism agree that the world is composed of a variety of natural resources that are for the most part value-neutral until human labor imparts value to them.
But the opposite of capitalism is not democracy, it is socialism. Democracy is the opposite of fascism. One might say that fascism is really corporate control of politics, which is the sense in which Moore is using the term capitalism, so in fact democracy would then be the opposite of capitalism.