One also has to differentiate between private property and personal property and what ownership means.I think it's on a spectrum. A lot of right-leaning people think any entitlement is a step towards communism, and in a sense I guess you could say that's true (a very small step). The big thing with Communism, IMO, is property ownership. In a true Communist society it doesn't exist. I think a lot of the entitlements are actually forms of socialism, and not necessarily a bad thing. Governments with no safety nets don't do too well.
On the other hand Governments trying to achieve "Communism" have a poor track record for success. Sometimes it's well intentioned (Mao creating famines, I think, was actually intended to help people but did the opposite) and sometimes it's more about disguising a brutal dictatorship. Every form of government is fair game for criticism, IMO, because everyone wants different things from their government. I don't often see capitalism and communism mixed up, though. I usually see fascism and communism mixed up. Do you have an example of what critics say that's mixing the things up?
Also, an interesting read if anyone has the bandwidth for it: The Dictator's Handbook.
In my opinion, effective socialism can only happen in a very democratic society and we mostly do not live in such societies, as most decisions are taken by powerful headfigures (both in corporations, politics or other forms of leaderships), they are not taken among a community.
For example, the workers in a factory have no say about what happens in that factory, and that effectively means that aside from outside regulation, that factory has no democratic control or regulations. That makes sense in smaller businesses (after all, if you open a shop with 5 workers, having them overrule you would be absurd). But certainly, there can be made a huge case about workers in giant franchises like amazon or mcDonalds having a say about their working conditions and having a say about some decisions regarding their workplaces. And that is where the modern form of private property would end and be under a more democratic control.
On a broader scale, that is also true for politics. Right now, one can vote, but cannot influence the decisions that are being made. In the US, effectively, if both the democrats and the republicans think that deportations and their current form of border control is necessary, you cannot vote against it. And in some cases, things that the majority wants are not done because both parties do not want them to happen.
You cannot actively fight for a more just society via politics, because you can (as a normal citizen) only influence who makes decisions.
That way, socialism would always fail, because, as we saw in most examples, it would go along with authoritarianism where a strong state enforces some pseudo egalitarian policies but has to keep being in power by corruption and other undemocratic forms of government.
To achieve socialism, one needs more democracy first.