, and socialism has in no way led to it, .
how completely stupid and 100% illiterate!! Socialism was conceived of as a step toward communism. Obama is a liberal who had 3 communist parents and voted to left of Bernie Sanders. The left is the left!
There are many forms and schools of socialism, some practiced even before Marx.
Marx believed it would be difficult to move from the present system to communism, so a training period was established called "Scientific Socialism." The USSR dropped the scientific socialism thing a few years after the revolution as it dropped Marxian communism. Republicans, however, have used that scientific socialism thing since, using the premise that socialism leads to communism. As of now no country has practiced Marxian communism and most industrial nations use a mixture of capitalism and socialism as its economic system.