Here is Marx referring to "the first phase of communist society" and "a higher phase of communist society". Popularly ( before the existence of the Soviet Union or Marxism-Leninism; didn't originate there) the first phase has come to be referred to as "socialism".
Charles
But these defects are inevitable in the first phase of communist society as it is when it has just emerged after prolonged birth pangs from capitalist society. Right can never be higher than the economic structure of society and its cultural development conditioned thereby.
In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labor, has vanished; after labor has become not only a means of life but life's prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-around development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly -- only then then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/ch01.htm