Karl Marx himself believed that Socialism was a waypoint on the journey to Communism as the ultimate theory and government.

I like your point when it comes to social vs socialism. In theory, if socialism does what it supposed to do, it redistributes the wealth so that there is no economic inequality in society, including health care for everyone, pension... In capitalism, there is ownership or business owners and there are workers. Usually owners become rich and workers compete for wages. Capitalism is about growth and how to get rich and socialism is about redistribution. It’s clear that Socialism and Capitalism are literally opposite economy policies. However, both if not led properly can lead to disaster. You can clearly see the example in Venezuela when it comes to socialism which led to dictatorship and then led to collapse. On the other hand if capitalism gets out of hand, rich become richer and eventually country can destroy itself as well. In US it’s just inevitable when the country collapses due to its debt and derivatives issues. Than of course there is social democracy which is in other word capitalism, but unlike socialism or capitalism it does allow private ownership, but it is socialism because it taxes the rich and redistributes the wealth to maintain equality. You could call it hybrid of both.
All of them can work well if handled properly. Unfortunately we are humans and eventually greed gets involved and evil replaces good no matter what we do.
My conclusion if I had to choose Socialism or Capitalism I would choose social democracy.