Socialism is economic and need not distribute only according to need. Communism is political with some economics. In Europe there's a lot of shades of grey. No

Socialism is economic and need not distribute only according to need. Communism is political with some economics. In Europe there's a lot of shades of grey. No one would consider the UK or Nordic countries communist, and no one the UK socialist. Yet with the NHS there is a socialised health service. Nordic model countries go much further with their social policies but are still capitalist democracies far removed from communism. Few would even call them socialist but social democratic or similar. Europe has a lot of social democrat, and middle ground socialist parties that believe in some level of redistribution and other somewhat socialist ideas and healthy capitalism with profit, and freedom to become wealthy. America uses them in a far more black and white manner.