Socialism? Communism? Here’s what those labels mean.

“We are in an asymmetric war against communism,” said Republican U.S. Rep. Clay Fuller, who is running for reelection in his northwest Georgia district. “It is a worldwide fight that is now coming to our shores.”

Likewise, Republican U.S. Senate nominee Mike Collins has called his race against incumbent U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff a choice between “common sense and communism.” State Sen. Greg Dolezal, the Republican nominee for lieutenant governor, has said Georgia is in a fight to “save the West” from socialism. And other Republicans, including President Donald Trump, have echoed those attacks against elected democratic socialists across the country, including New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani.

“People just throw these terms around — communism, socialism, capitalism — oftentimes as pejoratives,” said Harrison Frye, a University of Georgia associate professor of political science. “So, making a clear account of these terms is really important.”

Communism and socialism are both economic systems that seek to solve what some see as problems created by capitalism, including wealth inequality and a system in which business owners keep a large part of the profit that the working class produces.

Frye said that both systems advocate for public rather than private ownership of the means of production and for restructuring how economic resources are allocated.

Karl Marx, considered the father of communism, believed that the working class would inevitably revolt against the capital class and take over production, ultimately eliminating all social classes.

Under this system, the state controls all aspects of economic production and provides the citizens with what is necessary to survive, which in practice, has led to authoritarianism in nations like the former Soviet Union, Frye said.

In his writings, Marx used socialism and communism interchangeably, but later political and economic theorists split them up with several distinctions.

Some see socialism as a transitional state before a society becomes fully communist. Others think the two systems differ by how they are implemented, with communism achieved by overthrowing the government, whereas socialism achieves similar goals through democratic means.

Some separate the two by claiming that communism advocates for the complete elimination of privately owned property, while in a socialist society individuals still have personal property.

Those distinctions, however, are not universally accepted in political discourse. The terms have historically overlapped, and their meanings have shifted as the theories have been put into practice.

Frye said it’s hard to pin down an exact distinction between the two and generally avoids using the term communism because it is unclear what exactly is meant by it. Instead, he uses socialism as a broader term that contrasts capitalism, and divides it into two categories: authoritarian socialism, as seen in societies like the former Soviet Union, and democratic forms of socialism that have gained appeal among some progressives today.

Democratic socialism would fall under the latter category, but it is also hard to define. The Democratic Socialists of America website says they advocate for collective ownership of “the key economic drivers that dominate our lives.”

“DSA believes in fighting to transform our society into one that transfers power into the hands of the people and the working class and away from the billionaires and the 1%,” said Brayan Ramirez, co-chair of Atlanta DSA. “(Socialism) is an economy and a society actually governed by the people who work in it: democratically run workplaces, public goods that belong to the public, and decisions about our lives and our labor made by working people rather than by a small class of owners.”

Frye said democratic socialists agree there is something fundamentally wrong with capitalism ― whether that is private ownership of the means of production or markets or both. They believe what went wrong with the socialist experiments of the 20th century is that they were not implemented through a democratic process, he said.

But the political movement seen today it is not necessarily only about how the economy is structured. Frye said that democratic socialists running for office are organizing around a set of policy decisions such as free healthcare for all and raising taxes on the rich.

It’s hard to say whether Republican claims that democratic socialists are communists have any merit.

“There’s going to be obviously some similarities between the policies and the ideas (that democratic socialists) promote and those that were adopted by the social experiments of the 20th century,” Frye said.

For instance, Mamdani launched an initiative to establish five publicly owned grocery stores in New York, which is also something that harkens back to the Soviet Union.

But democratic socialists are not comparable to the Soviet-style dictatorships that have defined communism in the past, Frye said.

DSA advocates for social reforms and redistribution of wealth through a democratic process and “leaves behind authoritarian visions of socialism in the dustbin of history,” according to their website.

“Republicans and the far right have spent years calling every left-of-center politician or policy ‘communism’ in an attempt to scare away voters, and over time it seems to have had the opposite of the intended effect,” Ramirez said. “It has normalized many of the left’s policy positions, and voters are aware of the fear-mongering when they see popular, sensible policies like fully-funded public schools, support for unions, and infrastructure demonized as radical.”

Frye said it can be dangerous to give too much attention to labels. Instead voters should pay attention to the policies proposed by candidates.

“We’re not going to fundamentally change the economic system tomorrow or in the next election,” he said. “What’s going to happen is a set of policies might be changed. And the label doesn’t help you think about whether the policy is a good idea or not. You have to think about what the policy is and its effects and its outcomes on actually helping people.”

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to include comment from the Atlanta chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America.