Your what-if is too much of a stretch, XX. Socialism exists as an abstract evolving political notion which does not belong to any particular person. Christianity exists as a notion predicated on the almost-certain lie that a particular holy man existed who laid down the tenets (and let's not start on how so many of his followers misuse those tenets for all manner of perfidious ends). Whatever you think of socialism, you can't say that about it. We're talking about legitimate vs illegitimate here. And we have to set aside that Christianity just happens to have a few good ideas embedded among all the nonsense. Many would say the same about socialism, if we could ever agree what it actually is. :-)