Marxism and socialism? I don't think so

So I saw a clip of this on CNN today where Biden responds a bit incredulously to a question about Obama and his plan to "spread the wealth" being called Marxist:



Here's where I have a big problem - not only with his response, but with the whole accusation here: These people have no clue what Marxism/socialism actually entails, neither the accusers nor the responses from Obama/Biden/the Democratic Party in general.

Nicely summed up on Wikipedia: Socialism refers to a broad set of economic theories of social organization advocating state or collective ownership. It is nothing like the "spreading the wealth" that has been stated. Nothing that Obama has proposed includes state ownership of any industry. Calling "spread the wealth" socialism might work as a first grader's definition, but it vastly distorts the heart of socialism.

Even universal health care is not socialism, even the way in which it's practiced in Europe and Canada. It's psuedo-socialism, but at its heart, the state doesn't own the health care system; it simply provides health insurance coverage to its citizenry while still allowing them to purchase different and better coverage if they so choose. True socialism would involve the states taking control of the hospitals and insurance companies and not allowing private competition. You can see some true examples of this in the way Russia and Venezuela have nationalized the oil industries, and see that this is very dissimilar to anything proposed by Obama or practiced in "socialized" health care.

I've heard the term tossed about in relation to the banking bailout, and it's just as bogus there. The argument goes that, because the government took stakes in the banks that they lent money to, this amounts to a nationalization of those banks. Pure BS. Why? Well, the stakes the government has taken are considered non-voting shares, so they don't get a say in how the bank is run beyond the requirements placed on them as part of the initial loan agreement. The purpose of the stakes taken is to eventually provide a means for the government to recover (a portion of) the money it has lent these banks, not to take them over and turn them into national properties that have been effectively socialized.

If you really want to get down to brass tacks, accusations that "spreading the wealth" are equivalent to socialism are accusations that every government in the world that collects taxes is socialist. Why? The very purpose of taxes is to collect money from all citizens according to the tax code, and then spread that wealth around to where the government deems it most appropriate.

Is that socialism? No; it's simply a misunderstanding of the basic definitions of socialism and government. If spreading the wealth actually was socialism, John McCain and George Bush would be some of the biggest socialists in the world based on the levels of government spending they have been in favor of over the course of the last 8 years.

So, until each and every one of these people has the courtesy to at least take a course in basic philosophy to learn the actual definitions of these terms they're throwing around, they need to check their rhetoric at the door and stick to terms they have at least a rudimentary grasp of.