Whether or not President Obama is actu­ally a social­ist lies entirely in the mean­ing of the word

Socialism: one lit­tle word that strikes panic in the hearts of Americans for fear that their ideals of free­dom will be jeopardized.

After attend­ing Dr. Thomas Jorsch’s lec­ture, I now real­ize that some Americans’ ideas about social­ism are incor­rect and that the crit­i­cisms of President Obama being a social­ist are based solely on ignorance.

Dr. Jorsch defined social­ism as pub­lic own­er­ship of the means of pro­duc­tion. The peo­ple col­lec­tively own and oper­ate the busi­nesses and com­pa­nies instead of wealthy CEOs. The goal of a pure, demo­c­ra­tic sys­tem of social­ism is that every­one works for every­one else’s benefit.

Although sev­eral things about social­ism were brought to light after attend­ing his lec­ture, there are still a vari­ety of issues that are still unclear to me.

First, look at the def­i­n­i­tion of social­ism. Merriam-Webster describes social­ism as “any of var­i­ous eco­nomic and polit­i­cal the­o­ries advo­cat­ing col­lec­tive or gov­ern­men­tal own­er­ship and admin­is­tra­tion of the means of pro­duc­tion and dis­tri­b­u­tion of goods.”

This fol­lows along with what many Americans believe social­ism to be: gov­ern­ment own­er­ship. While search­ing through var­i­ous his­tor­i­cal and eco­nomic ref­er­ences, I was unable to find a con­crete def­i­n­i­tion of social­ism. Some said pub­lic own­er­ship while oth­ers said gov­ern­ment ownership.

This dif­fer­ence over the tech­ni­cal def­i­n­i­tion of social­ism may be all the American peo­ple need to believe that Obama actu­ally is a social­ist. If we fol­low the mean­ing of gov­ern­ment own­er­ship, then not just Obama, but the entire U.S. gov­ern­ment is headed toward socialism.

If we fol­low Dr. Josrch’s def­i­n­i­tion of social­ism, that the peo­ple own the means of pro­duc­tion, then per­haps it is pos­si­ble. It is my belief, how­ever, that social­ism would only be pos­si­ble if America was a true demo­c­ra­tic soci­ety, where the peo­ple actu­ally have con­trol over the means of production.

Even though we elect our politi­cians and law­mak­ers by pop­u­lar vote, it can be argued that we really don’t have any power.

The belief that every­one could actu­ally work for every­one else’s ben­e­fit is some­thing that I wish America could be. Historically, Native American tribes existed in this type of fash­ion for generations.

However, in the cur­rent belief sys­tem that Americans have today, it would be almost impos­si­ble for peo­ple to oper­ate under a social­ist soci­ety. Too many peo­ple today are moti­vated by greed and many would exploit the sys­tem by attempt­ing to be “bet­ter” than every­one else.

Dr. Jorsch called him­self an opti­mist and believes that every­one wants to work and con­tribute to the bet­ter­ment of soci­ety. I, too, am an opti­mist, but I’m also a real­ist. Not every­one wants to work and American’s are too indi­vid­u­al­ist to work for the com­mu­nity instead of only think­ing of themselves.

Personally, belief that a people’s own­er­ship type of social­ism can work in America is utopian. Unless America goes through a rev­o­lu­tion­ary period in which soci­ety becomes col­lec­tive and the American peo­ple reshape their beliefs, then social­ism in America will never be possible.