The answer to your question is yes.  Socialism is government ownership of the means of production or enterprise.  Whether or not it creates actual equality is an empirical debate, requiring a value-neutral conceptualization.

Many conservative Republicans refer to Democrats as "socialists" and Obamacare as "socialist."  They are not and it is not.  Democrats do not advocate putting the means of enterprise into government ownership and Obamacare moved none of the health care industry or health insurance industry into government ownership.  The British National Health Service, by comparison, is socialist.

Can anyone who claims to be a capitalist defend collusive pricing, monopolies and patent protections?

Well Arthur, there is socialism; and then there are claims You are right about the NHS. It has been socialist since its famous launch in 1948 under - dare I say? - a genuinely socialist Labour government. Successive Labour governments - notably the three  governments headed by Tony Blair - put a stop to that.

 Edward. You are right of course. Capitalism and the other many labels (including socialism) are just that - unconvincing claims to respective affinities, absent substance. 

Anders. You are right to note that a welfare state can be ´played´ by unethical persons. But this happens in all walks of life. That problem should not detract from the greater good.

I am not sure that to be a socialist one has to be impoverished, or that would make them more qualified to speak about socialism. All that would do is make them more qualified to speak about poverty. Capitalism diminishes us all. Even TV news presenters are wage slaves and are being exploited. They just happen to be better paid than some other jobs. In the same way what should we say about doctors earning fortunes in places like the US. Is their life saving work any less valuable because they earn vast sums of money doing it? The answer is that until we can eradicate the capitalist system, injustices will continue.

Let me introduce my answer with a slightly provocative question of my own. I wonder how tens of millions of people lacking health care, jobs, education for their children, decent housing etc. vote and support a government devoted to make possibly America Great Again, but certainly their condition far worse. 

The issue is what you mean by "socialist", and I suspect we have a different interpretation. Perhaps I could be labeled as socialist sustaining that economic success requires the full exploitation of externalities, and therefore it is both fair and economically justified to raise high taxes on rich people to fund the base of these externalities.  

Is money really the issue? Friedrich Engels was, from what we can tell from a few pieces of information, relatively wealth for his time period, earning income from a 7.5% ownership in a firm in which his father was partner (Ermen & Engels Co).  He used  portion of his income/wealth to support Karl Marx.  While his annual income may not have been excessive by today's standards (I have seen someone estimate that he perhaps had earn about the equivalent of $ 168,000 in 1859), it was certainly sufficient to count him among an upper income group.  So, should we discount him as a "marxist," "socialist" or whatever else you might want to label his writings?

I do not label anyone. Engels was also an expert horseman, explaining that this skill was necessary for any revolutionary leader. I believe in sharing the cake with regard to proportionate fairness and decency.

That was an interesting way to avoid answering the question.

Anyway, people can have money and identify and even act as socialists, even if they live in a country with a lopsided distribution of income.  That individual didn't likely create the lopsided class structure, but maybe they act to do something about it.  Since this is all hypothetical, what if they have a million, but gave away $10 million? 

Giving money away doesn't make you a socialist, does it?

Capitalists give away a lot of money. In 2016, Phil Knight, cofounder of Nike, gave away $500 million to the University of Oregon.  He also donated $400 million to Stanford University. Granted, his is still worth nearly $25 billion.  Nike has had issues related to the exploitation of workers in the past, and has sought to remedy those problems, at least in part, to help reshape their public image.  So, they improved working conditions for some workers...does that make them socialists? In 2016, their value added/profit was $ 2.163 billion.  You still need to exploit workers significantly to generate that volume of value added.

Capitalism in its typical setting lets capitalists earn disproportionately huge incomes. It is quite common in countries such as the UK and the US for some of these persons to oppose small increases in the incomes of the very poor. It is not uncommon, however, for the high-end profiteers to do all they can to avoid paying tax on the profits they receive. Socialism - my take - is an egalitarian system much like biblical Christianity. The Nike example you refer to seems to be a case of getting things wrong in the first place and then tinkering round the edges of the problem, after the fact

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Read G. A Cohen's book : If you are an egalitarian , how come you are so rich?

Thank you Nomaan. I shall certainly follow this up.

As a socialist myself, I await the results of the impending General Election with some trepidation. The Labour Party has, I fear, elected an unelectable leader in the person of Corbyn. Those who support him include some rich intellectuals who immerse themselves - intellectually, of course - in the grand march-of history narratives. They are more interested in maintaining power within the Labour Party than in gaining office. So where am I going with this? The upshot is that they will vote for a person who will lose, thereby (granted, not in a planned fashion) continuing to pay low tax on their ample returns under the next Tory government. Those who will suffer most are the low paid unemployed, disabled and old. Doesn't look like socialism to me!