What is socialism?

On both sides, lots of pundits are bandying the word "socialism" about: first with the bailout plan "socializing" the banks; then with Barack Obama telling Joe the Plumber that it was a good thing to "spread the wealth around." But it seems like no one has taken the time to explain what they mean by socialism. Just that there is a general notion that it involves the government using taxpayers' money.

From the little reading that I have done on the subject, this seems simplistic in the extreme. However, there is a wide spectrum to the notion of socialism as befits a complicated economic system with over a century's worth of thought and practice behind it. These thoughts below are based on the crudest definitions of the term based on some brief Googling on the topic.

Is socialism when the government owns the means of production? That's one rather simple definition, which certainly doesn't seem to be broadly applicable even to the bailout plan. The banks, as far as I can tell, are still publicly owned, though of course the stock values have sunk. I don't pretend to understand what is going on with the bailout plan, but it only resembles this form of socialism in the most limited way.

Is it worker-owned collectives? That's another quickie definition, which certainly doesn't sound anything like either the bailouts or this "spread the wealth around" notion.

Is it a focus on publicly owned rather than private property? It seems like the notion of private property is still a very strong one, even in the midst of floating plans about helping people facing foreclosure. There's never been a suggestion that the government would then own people's houses, as far as I've been able to determine.

I think Colin Powell spoke eloquently on the difference between socialism and taxation in this interview after his interview endorsing Barack Obama.

I wonder if part of the bogeyman imagery of socialism comes from the political radicalism that characterized socialism in the United States, such as Eugene Debs in the early 20th century.

At any rate, be aware of these cheap shots about socialism. I think most people making them are just bandying the word about without having any idea what it means.

"losing focus"

Obama himself got distracted from his planned focus on education this week by talking about Palin, partly in response to media questions but also in reaction to the lipstick brouhaha.

Thus saith the SF Chronicle yesterday in an article headlined "As battleground shrinks, rivals narrow focus." But there's no attribution to this statement, no supporting quotations -- nothing. Just a bald assertion.

If you google "Obama speech education dayton" you will find a transcript in the Chicago Sun Times, among many others, and a YouTube posting of the 35-minute-long speech, in which Governor Palin is never mentioned. Not once. I wonder what he will say when he's not talking about Governor Palin and focusing on education instead.

It seems to me that the focus on Governor Palin isn't coming from Senator Obama. When I did a search on SFGate.com, the Chronicle's search engine, on "obama speech dayton," I found a single AP article that referred to Obama's Dayton appearance as follows, in total:

In Dayton, Ohio, on Tuesday, the crowd waiting for Obama to take the stage chanted "No pit bulls! No pit bulls!" — a reference to Palin's joke that lipstick is the only thing that sets hockey moms like her apart from the dogs.

I'm not sure that's evidence that Senator Obama has been distracted by Governor Palin.

If I may venture another opinion here: Don't believe everything you read in the paper! And I'm incredulous at the number of opinions out there masquerading as fact. It's egregious.