And this is why people &quot;don&#x27;t know what capitalism is&quot; and &quot;don&#x27;t know what communism is&quot;. Different people take the words to mean something different.<p>For a lot of people, &quot;communism&quot; is little more than a synonym for &quot;authoritarian kleptocracy&quot;.<p>---<p>As the phrases are actually used in Leninist theory, the goal was stateless communism. Socialism was an intermediary stage between capitalism and communism accurately described by Lenin, who invented the concept, as &quot;state capitalism&quot;.<p>A &quot;dictatorship of the proletariat&quot; would take over capitalism&#x27;s economic and political infrastructure and support the citizenry until a transition to true communism was possible. To the surprise of nobody who owned a history book, it turned out the dictatorship came to be corrupted by a ruler with no real interest in communism, but plenty of interest in being a dictator.<p>It&#x27;s worth noting that Marx didn&#x27;t advocate any particular method of transitioning from capitalism to communism, because Marx wasn&#x27;t, precisely, a revolutionary. He regarded the transition as simply an inevitable consequence of capitalism&#x27;s failings.