In political circles and polite conversation, people often use

the terms ''Marxism,'' ''socialism,'' and ''communism''

interchangeably, as if the three philosophies are the same.
However, they have important distinctions. Each philosophy
builds upon the other. Marxism is the theoretical framework
which lays the foundation for the economic and political
philosophies of socialism and communism.
Karl Marx, writing with Friedrich Engels, developed a theory
of social and economic principles and a sharp critique of the
capitalist form of government in the mid-1800s. Marx
believed that workers, under the capitalist system of
government, sold their labor and that this labor became a
commodity. This commodity, or "labor power" translated into
surplus value for the capitalist, but not for the worker. Marx
concluded that this created an inherent conflict between the
working class (proletariat) and the ownership class (the
bourgeoisie). Because capitalism has this "built in"
inequality, Marx argued that the working class would
eventually take power over the ruling class, reconstructing
society. This reconstruction would take place in stages. The
next stage after capitalism, according to Marx, would be a
socialist form of government.
Socialism advocates public ownership of property and
natural resources rather than private ownership. The
socialist system of government values cooperation over the
competitiveness of a free market economy. Socialists believe
that all people in society contribute to the production of
goods and services and that those goods should be shared
equally. This differs from the capitalist system in which
individual efforts trump the collective and the free market
determines the distribution of goods. Examples of socialist
policies include a living wage, free higher education and
universal health care. Advocates of socialism believe that
capitalism creates vast inequality and that it ultimately leads
to imperialism, a hyper-form of capitalism.

Countries which were termed communist never in fact

were communist, they were socialist countries where the
goal was achieving communism. Cuba, PRC, DPRK,
USSR, Warsaw pact countries, all of these countries

practise(d) socialism, with the intent of achieving

communism by Dialectical materialism. The idea here is
that capitalism is the thesis, socialism is the antithesis
(or opposite), and communism is the synthesis (or result
of having gone through the two). The State ideology was
definitely communist; they practiced socialism in order
to obtain communism eventually.
Socialism is workers' ownership of the means of
production, central planning of the economy and the
absence of markets, and enforced equality; in practice
this has invariably turned into the nightmare of singleparty totalitarian dictatorship, resulting in warfare,
conquest, famine, poverty, genocide, corruption,
absence of the most basic human rights especially
freedom of speech, and intense propaganda and
revisionism. What people call today socialism is more
properly termed social democracy, something
completely different.
Communism is essentially anarchy, where the state
doesn't exist anymore, social classes don't exist
anymore, nor is there any money (socialist countries all
have money). The very existence of communism is
entirely theoretical and mostly pseudoscientific, more
akin to an unobtainable utopia. Communism has never
existed, there is no evidence that it is even possible (or
desirable), and every attempt at having it, through
socialism, resulted in complete disaster.