Socialism is Communism not realized. Marxism is the teachings of Karl Marx and is available in the writings of Marx in the Communist Manifesto. History shows that Communism is a failed system, failing in the Soviet Union, and failing throughout Europe. Communist China only saved itself through injecting bits and pieces of American Capitalism into its economic system. It, too, will eventually be doomed to fail.
When defining Socialism, or Communism, or Marxism, whichever you choose to identify it with, at the root of the system is the creation of a "collective social model." The "individual," in such a system, is not healthy for the socialistic society. Any remnants of individuality must be eliminated for the system to take hold. After all, in a communal, or communist, setting, the society (or village, or collective group) takes precedence over any "selfish" individual wants, desires, or needs. Serving the "community" is the most important thing to do as a member of the collective. This is not to say that serving the community is a bad thing, but it cannot be the only thing, or something not done on a voluntary basis.
Capitalism is the enemy to a Marxist system. A culture based on money, on making a better life for yourself on an individual basis through profit and success, is frowned upon and considered to be destructive to the collective. Marxism proclaims that it is better to serve the collective, than to separate yourself from the herd and chase after success, and any rewards of such success. This is not to say that one should not be "giving" once reaching success, but again, this must be an individual decision, not one that the government makes for you.
The Marxist believes that as a citizen of a communist society you have an obligation to allow anything you gain from success to be returned to the community. That way, all workers benefit, for the labor was performed for the community, not the individual. Any success, claims Karl Marx, was gained because of all of the help the successful citizen received from the collective, and it is your obligation to pay back the collective for helping you reach whatever level of success you achieved.
In a Marxist society one must cease to be an individual, and become a productive part of the collective. By being an individual, according to Communism, you are only thinking of yourself, and such ambition is bad for society as a whole. The community is larger than you are, and contributing to the community is the path to fulfillment. You will not be truly free, proclaims Communism, until you let go of your individualism, and take upon yourself your role in the great collective.
Many of Barack Obama's plans seem very similar to those of Karl Marx. Like the Communists, he supports a heavy progressive tax plan that hits all avenues, and would give the United States one of the highest tax rates among developed countries. He plans to restore the inheritance tax, which is a move in the direction of the Marxist plan of abolishing all rights of inheritance. Through his mortgage bailout plan it creates a move towards centralizing the banks. The Democrats, a plan Obama supports, are pushing for a return to the Fairness Doctrine, as well as censorship of the internet, which is an obvious move toward the centralization of communication and information transfer. He has called on all of us to share the equal liability to the community, has called for a civilian army not unlike the industrial and agricultural army that Karl Marx called for, and supports the mandatory attendance of all children in the free public schools (hence, eliminating home-schooling and private schools in the process).
I think Barack Obama summed up his Marxist aspirations, however, best in a speech he gave when subbing for Senator Kennedy at the Wesleyan (Connecticut) commencement ceremony in May, 2008.
In part of his speech at Wesleyan he proclaimed:
There’s no community service requirement in the outside world; no one's forcing you to care. You can take your diploma, walk off this stage, and chase only after the big house and the nice suits and the other things that our money culture says you should buy. You can choose to narrow your concerns and live life in a way that tries to keep your story separate from America’s.
But I hope you don’t. Not because you have an obligation to those who are less fortunate, although I believe you do have that obligation. Not because you have a debt to all those who helped you get here, though I do believe you do have that debt to pay.
It’s because you have an obligation to yourself. Because our individual salvation depends on collective salvation. Because thinking only about yourself, fulfilling your immediate wants and needs, betrays a poverty of ambition. Because it’s only when you hitch your wagon to something larger than yourself that you realize your true potential and discover the role that you’ll play in writing the next great chapter in the American story.
In other words, forget your good job, any of your silly notions of individuality - You need to be working for the collective. In the end, in the attempt to achieve what he sees as a noble move towards tolerance, understanding, and working together as a team in this nation (all of which in their selves are noble intentions), he will moves us closer to Marxism, and farther away from the liberty our founding fathers, and our honorable men and women of the military, have fought so hard to give us.
Below is a video of that portion of his speech: