Please educate me!

[AdultCat]

There was quite a debate at work earlier about communists and socialists... I'm embarrassed to say I don't have a clue what they were on about! It was getting so heated, so I just stayed quiet.
I've tried to Google but even that is confusing me.
Can anyone please tell me in simple terms the difference or what it is / means?!

Try BBC bitesize! That's my go-to.

Communists are the extreme of left-wing and reject the capitalist system (property ownership, investment incomes, competition etc.) - but sadly they often finish up behaving like right wing dictatorships, and their ideal of everyone being equal goes out of the window.

Socialists are left-wing, but not extreme. They believe in a strong welfare state and support for the less fortunate.

Communism is socialism taken to the extreme.

It's why some in the US fear things like free healthcare etc (socialism) because they feel it's paving the way towards a communist society.

I think (but I'm not massively knowledgeable so happy to be corrected) communism is something that looks great on paper - dismantling the capitalist system and truly valuing the workers, but it tends not to work out in reality and ends up as a right wing dystopia- although some might use Cuba or possibly Vietnam as an argument to the contrary. Certainly historically communist states have ended up unpopular with their own citizens.

Generally I think socialism has been shown to work better in reality.

I once read an interesting piece describing politics and it described it as a spectrum with zero government interference (anarchy?) on one side and total government interference (ie a dictatorship) in all aspects of life on the other side. All political parties have to do is decide where on the spectrum they fall. Socialism would be quite far along the interference line as they would control the welfare state and parts of the economy. Communism is further along that line because property and all aspects of industry would be owned by the government.

i think communists want to redistribute wealth, through revolution.socialists want to redistribute wealth, but using the political system.