David I think the west is eventually (in the next generation) going to actually embrace socialism, and from there, it will likely develop and become full-blown communism. That's my two cents.//// I have substantial agreement with you on this. I think more in terms of objective tendencies within capitalism to prepare the ground for socialism, such as Lenin's reference to monopoly as proto-socialism still within capitalist relations of production. (See _Imperialism: the Highest Stage of Capitalism_) Also, things like socialized medicine in Canada or Scandinavia or France. Healthcare would be substantially the same in socialism, as far as I see. Socialism is a supercession or sublation of capitalism, meaning it overcomes and preserves capitalism. Some of what is capitalism now will be preserved as socialism.
Karl Marx: "One capitalist always kills many. Hand in hand with this centralization, or this expropriation of many capitalists by few, develop, on an ever-extending scale, the cooperative form of the labour process, the conscious technical application of science, the methodical cultivation of the soil, the transformation of the instruments of labour into instruments of labour only usable in common, the economizing of all means of production by their use as means of production of combined, socialized labour, the entanglement of all peoples in the net of the world market, and with this, the international character of the capitalistic regime. Along with the constantly diminishing number of the magnates of capital, who usurp and monopolize all advantages of this process of transformation, grows the mass of misery, oppression, slavery, degradation, exploitation; but with this too grows the revolt of the working class, a class always increasing in numbers, and disciplined, united, organized by the very mechanism of the process of capitalist production itself. The monopoly of capital becomes a fetter upon the mode of production, which has sprung up and flourished along with, and under it. Centralization of the means of production and socialization of labour at last reach a point where they become incompatible with their capitalist integument. This integument is burst asunder. The knell of capitalist private property sounds. The expropriators are expropriated."/////////
/////////// comment CB : "the cooperative form of the labour process, the conscious technical application of science, the methodical cultivation of the soil, the transformation of the instruments of labour into instruments of labour only usable in common, the economizing of all means of production by their use as means of production of combined, socialized labour, the entanglement of all peoples in the net of the world market, and with this, the international character of the capitalistic regime..." and "Centralization of the means of production and socialization of labour " are all socialist forms developed in monopoly capitalism that are preserved in some sense in socialism.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch32.htm