In the traditional Marxist view, this is absolutely true. However, before I explain why, we need to go through some definitions - some terms have different meanings in Marxist theory than they do in modern political discourse. Socialism, as seen by Marxists, is a state of society where the means of production (factories, farms, mines and so on) are owned by the workers, mainly through their participation in a representative government. Communism is a utopian, post-scarcity state of society, where class distinctions are meaningless, and there is no overarching government. The Marxist idea of the progression of society to communism starting in a capitalist society involves the internal contradictions of capitalism causing a crisis. This crisis leads to a revolution where the old order is overturned and a socialist 'dictatorship of the proletariat' is set up. Note that this 'dictatorship' is, at least in theory, a government that represents the workers and their interests, not an authoritarian state. The state will then wither away through some mechanism (poorly explained in Marx's original conception), to leave a communist utopia. There are, of course objections to this. The key objection from the left is that the state has strong incentives not to wither away.