An interesting difference in perception: My wife, who is from Russia with a PhD in Economics just shakes her head when she hears Americans use terms like socialism, communism....
Communism is a philosophy, socialism is an economic system sometimes based on communistic philosophy. I got to thinking about how we use these terms, comparing communism to democracy, socialism to free markets, capitalism to anything we choose to term as something else. I, personally, am unsure of what is being talked about when these terms are used; not because they are imprecise terms, but because we interchange them seemingly at will. They take on different base meanings depending on the conversationalists and the conversation. I am certainly no expert! My point is that these terms have slippery meanings, and unless conversations that use the terms begin with an agreed upon base understanding of any of them, the conversation itself is slippery! (not a bad thing, just a thing). :-)
