Comment by dontlaugh
Socialism is the transition stage where collective ownership of the means of production, where the working class gains state power from the capitalist class.
Communism is a later stage of such abundance that money, classes and state power become redundant and are abolished.
The Culture is an imagining of the latter, where many means of production become people. They thus become workers that can labour for each other if they collectively decide to.
My reading of the Culture novels is that few people produce anything at all, or do any work or labour, and nearly every is produced by the ships, orbitals, and the Minds that control them. It’s not clear who exactly decides what gets produced, but decision making seems to be largely controlled by the Minds.