What is the difference between communism,

Marxism and socialism in simple words?

Communism is most often used to describe an attempt to implement Marx's ideas. For example,
Lenin had a vision of how to implement Marx's ideas, otherwise known as Leninism or Marxist-
Lenin, which became the Soviet Union. Lenin created a political model that wrapped political
institutions around Marxism kind of like the US Constitution creates political institutions around
liberal economics to implement classical liberalism.

Obviously China's idea of Marxism was totally different and, to this day, China’s government
describes itself as communism.

People often associate Marxism with repressive authoritarian states but there is an example or two
of different ways to implement communism including the anarcho communism around Barcelona
that led to Spain's civil war. This was a libertarian form of Marx's economics that grew organically
from the bottom up and scared the Lenninists as much as Western capitalists. The Leninists who
were running Spain at the time moved to violently put down libertarian communists causing the
civil war.

Understanding that Marxism is a set of ideas and communism is an attempt to operationalize these
ideas is important to understanding the propaganda used on all sides of the issue. You have one
group of communists claiming that they are the true communists or you have US propaganda which
seeks to tie Marxism to failed states and generally confuse people about what Marxism is.

Socialism, Marxism, and Capitalism are about who owns what. Socialism is ownership by the state.
So examples of that in the US are roads, airports, shipping ports, dams, canals, the VA, scientific
research, the military, state universities, public education etc. Those are all socialism.

Capitalism, otherwise known as liberal economics was not well defined until the 1950’s when the
US found itself trying to explain its economic system to the third world. Capitalism is a kind of
libertarian economics which allows concentration of ownership among individuals. Property can be
capitalized and used to buy more property. Money gets money, and the more money one has the
faster they can enrich themselves. Taxes, particularly progressive taxes have been used effectively
to prevent too much concentration of wealth.

Communism or Marxism is where the people who do the work own the factory and the output of
the factory. An example of this would be a group of homeowners in the US who go off grid and
share the output of the solar panels. Maybe they sell some of their excess electricity to a power
company and split the profits. This is technically illegal in the US where electricity is concerned.
This is known as collectivization. A bunch of other small farmers and I harvested hay together off
of all of our fields and then sold it all to a buyer in California then split the profits. The reason for
doing this is that no one farmer needed to have all the expensive equipment necessary. This too is
collectivization and is a form of communism.