Here's an interesting snippet of the difference between socialism and communism:
link [www.marxmail.org]
Socialists see the means of producing wealth as belonging to the people. So if you get successful and start producing and being industrious, it'll be taken away from you and given to those who obviously couldn't create if for themselves.
Socialism-to each according to his deeds
Communism-to each according to his needs
Just one difference there.
Socialism rewards an increase of work with more wealth, whereas communism rewards those with the greatest need (and perhaps the grossest?). Communism has to work out a way of distributing wealth equally, according to who needs what-a very appealing idea to the masses.
Here is communism's achilles heel for the only way to really do that is to have a free market economy where those worthy get the reward and not some parasite. Central planning in a communist country could never hope to work out the demon of distribution because you may end up wasting resources on a certain area that can't repay you. It all gets lopsided and neurotic-hence the need for massive loans from capitalist countries
Does the ultimate communist state mean sharing everything and if so, does this always mean having cental planning? Is anarchism (investigated by someone called Chomsky I believe), a further stage from communism-the state after the government had '...withered away...'?