Marx on the choice between socialism and communism

On December 4, 1978, the Kampuchean United Front for National Salvation broadcast its program, call ing for overthrow of the government headed by Pol Pot and leng Sary. According to an account published next day in the New York Times, among the abuses this declaration condemns are the establishment of communes and the abolition of money and markets. The Pol Pot government is accused of herding the Kampuchean people into camouflaged concentration camps, forcing them to overwork while providing them only the minimum of food and clothing, so that they live in misery as slaves. In place of this system, the United Front promises to establish a planned economy with markets, banks, and money; to abolish forced labor; and to institute an eight hour work day with pay according to work done.

From the standpoint of Marxist-Leninist orthodoxy, the program of the United Front is correct. It is true that wages and markets, money and banks, have no place in a fully communist economy. But, according to The Critique of the Gotha Program and State and Revolution, the foundations for that economy must be built in a transitional economy-which Marx calls the lower stage of communism and Lenin calls socialism.