One of the reasons I seldom use the term 'socialism' anymore is because there are many socialisms around, some of which have very little in common with one another. That is just about the only point where I disagree substantively with Adam's little essay that I posted, his equation of socialism and communism.
To me the idea of a market 'socialism' based on liberal principles, the rule of law, commodity production, money and property is an absurdity, but hey maybe even Tony Blair still thinks of himself as a socialist. At least 'communism' only has two meanings, the kind proposed by Marx and more or less well described in Adam's essay, and the kind that is identified with the statist regimes such as the SU, China, Cuba, etc.
Justin (I understand that I am only to refer to him in the third person now) obviously has an entirely idiosyncratic notion of 'liberalism', one that is apparently compatible with ending class oppression and with socialism. None of the defining characteristics of capitalism such as the pervasiveness of commodity production and property are to disappear from this 'socialism'. Instead one assumes that the laws that will be passed will be of a more and more benign nature that people will eventually be able to make money without exploiting anyone else. But liberalism has always meant at its core the freedom from political interference to do commerce. The furthest people have been able to move from that and still call themselves liberal (although not uncontroversially) is to promote some kind of welfarism as a concession in the face of the socialist challenge. It is also common today to elide the terms 'liberalism' and 'democracy' as if they are just two different aspects of the ! sa! me thing, but liberalism and democracy have often been at odds with one another, for entirely understandable reasons. I think that if someone has a different conception of liberalism than the one that most people are familiar with then they should spell it out. As has been seen here I am more than willing to share my conception of communism and to point out the difference between this and the other, perhaps more well known (unfortunately), understanding.
Now, on the question of determinism, I am by no means convinced that this communist future actually will come about. On a scale of probability from one to ten I wouldn't place it higher than about five. But I do know that there is no other human future worth living. I won't go into all the reasons as to why I think capitalism is not sustainable, but without revolution I see a horrible degeneration in the not too distant future. In fact the possibility is that the world will be so ruined that it is not good for anything much even if revolution does eventually come on a worldwide scale.
I notice that the liberals on the list are given to making much more confident and dogmatic assertions about what will or will not happen in the future - I am sure I don't need to paste an example here - but the marxists are still the 'determinists'.
On the question of the -isms: It is true that marxism and Marx's work are just two strands of communist thought among many others. I have respect for some of these others, for many anarchists, for example. But the bottom line for me is communism; the only reason why I identify myself as a marxist rather than simply a communist is because I think that marxism is the most rigorous and the most useful of them all. Contrary to what some people seem to feel, I think it is becoming easier to identify with communism, as the statist experiment fades into history. That is why there is a resurgence of interest in all the those leftwing currents, again including anarchism, that Lenin denounced almost a century ago. Try to find websites dealing with Stalin and Mao, for example - there is now very little, and what there is is not worth reading anyway, whereas the leftwing commie ones are blossoming and attracting a lot of readership.
On the question of value theory: this is really what separates marxism from the rest and what is of enduring, indispensable 'value' to the communist movement. Thanks to that I can have a much deeper understanding of capital as alienated labour, of how it is that wealth is extracted from third world countries as an internationalisation of the law of value, of how it is that 'women's work' (value-producing both as use and exchange) has been occulted through the 'cult of domesticity' and ever so much more.
I am happy when I see hundreds of thousands of protesters in say Genoa with a sea of red flags, because it shows me that the so-called anti-globalistation movement is really an anti-capitalist one and that communist thought, whether it is strictly marxist or not, is one of the most vital forces in the world today. That inspires me more than any dogmatic prediction of what will happen in the future.
Tahir