I’m not convinced the debate

I’m not convinced the debate has any value. A word can mean whatever you want it to mean. Meanings can only be fixed on provisionally by groups of people who want to talk to each other and be confident they are understood. Marx and Engels, in the space of a single document, the Communist Manifesto, use the words socialism and communism interchangeably to mean (non exhaustive list):1. A semi mystical force which everyone recognises is a power in Europe, even if people or parties calling themselves communist barely exist.2. A hodge podge of different beliefs held by widely divergent political trends, eg, “conservate socialism”, “critical-utopian socialism”, “petty bourgeois socialism”, etc, etc.3. A political party that fights for demands, such as the abolition of taxes on articles of consumption, the universal arming of the people, and the establishment of a state bank.4. A movement that refuses to set up a separate political party, but merely aims to “point out and bring to the front the common interests of the entire proletariat”.5. Full communism, ie, “the communistic abolition of buying and selling”.