Quote:
Originally Posted by Bonzo'sCostar
Who were these "defining" socialists? Sounds suspicious to me. And, my text (Samuelson) defines capitalism as "the use of produced goods for further production."
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Using Samuelson's definition, socialism and communism can both be capitalism. Every industrial civilization uses "produced goods for further production".
Communism is a political and social movement, with a single economic aspect (communal ownership of the means of production). In this it is distinguished from socialism which doesn't require ownership of the means of production (but can, but really calls for some control over distribution but doesn't care about the political form of the government (socialism can exist under dictatorships or democracies).
Capitalism, as it is called, usually says that there is private ownership of capital. But socialism can allow for this as well. Hence the word doesn't actually define anything. It was originally coined from Marx's obsession in Capital by marxists and it has stuck, despite not defining anything.
Again, as I pointed out wildly different economic systems with nothing in common are called capitalistic. When this occur this generally means that the word is useless.