Comment by impossiblefork

If we go by Marxist definitions, universal healthcare, universal education, etc. are communism, not socialism ('to each according to their need', which I interpret as capacity to provide a return on an investment of resources by society in one).

We have really little socialism in modern society, instead we have market systems combined with elements of communism. The only socialist elements we have are copyright and patents (you get them for contribution, so it follows the Marxist maxim characterizing socialism 'to each according to his contribution').

It's really a strange thing that communism, this hypothetical post-socialist stage of development, is so easy for states to adapt and so uncontroversial that elements of it are implemented today on a large scale, everywhere from the US to Africa, when socialism which Marx imagined as the stage that would give rise to communism is a relatively small element of society. I suppose the software industry has eaten a lot of other businesses though, and that it in the end is dependent on copyright, so maybe we actually are in the socialist stage, only with large middlemen intermediating 'to each according to his contribution' part. Socialism but with capitalist middlemen.