Socialism describes one specific path though. What all approaches have in common is socializing of the means of production, abolition of private property and dictatorship of the proletariat, the last one meaning the exclusion of former economical and political elites from power.
The alternative to socialism is anarchism, where the end goal of communism, that is a stateless, classless society without hierarchies, is present in the means.
As others have stated - communism is the end goal, socialism is how we get there.
What this also means, of course, is that there are many different types of socialist countries and socialist projects and socialist ideologies.
Socialism describes one specific path though. What all approaches have in common is socializing of the means of production, abolition of private property and dictatorship of the proletariat, the last one meaning the exclusion of former economical and political elites from power.
The alternative to socialism is anarchism, where the end goal of communism, that is a stateless, classless society without hierarchies, is present in the means.