Thanks for agreeing to a good faith conversation. If you’ve ever heard of “leftist infighting,” understand that the closest political label I can place on myself is “leftist infighter.” The second closest would be “Anarchist” which I can’t claim because I disagree that it can be suddenly achieved and believe it must be worked toward over an indefinite period of time. I do not represent anyone other than myself. I would not call myself a Marxist. I think his explanations of the problems with Capitalism are excellent, but I don’t consider him to be a demigod to be quoted similarly to scripture especially when it comes to his prescriptions which I find myself often disagreeing with.

The main thing to understand about Socialism is that it’s an ideal rather than a practical reality we already have a plan for. Socialism broadly is the desire for a system which allows every individual exactly as much autonomy, government influence, and ownership of their own labor as every other individual in that given society. This idea has existed long before Marx and is found throughout the world and even among historical Christians. However long this desire has existed, we have not yet figured out how to do this yet in a sustainable way. The societies that come closest haven’t been able defend themselves from piracy-based cultures which have raped and pillaged their way through the entire world since armies were made possible (today on a scale never before seen), and the socialist states based on defending themselves from that suffer from their military having too much influence on their societies causing undue authoritarianism (China is doing a weird other thing which I’ll touch on later). This being the case all governments since the advent of agriculture have been similarly experimental and almost all of them have failed or are failing in a kind of cycle depending on the proportion of credulous bootlickers around.

Since we haven’t generally figured out totally stable systems for humans yet, I support moving in a Socialist direction according to the ideal I described above. I won’t pretend to know the best way to do that because the world is far more complex than any of us could possibly conceive, so in my opinion the only thing we can do is experiment and learn from the results of our experiments. The experiment of Capitalism has yielded enough results for me to doubt it could last even if left undisturbed as the accumulation of wealth in few hands inherent to Capitalism has to be managed in some way while the full force of Capitalism is against managing it and has now overcome the traditionally more powerful nation states which dominated the last century. You may know some leftists and self-described socialists who do not desire total equality of autonomy, government influence, and ownership of their own labor. I can’t speak for them. I will work with them as far as they progress the ideal of socialism and oppose them wherever they do not. Any experiment with a socialist system should not be considered an end state until the ideal is achieved in my opinion.

Now that you have a better idea of where I’m personally coming from, I can answer your questions

Should one’s private property be seized and distributed among the masses?

Some of it certainly should be. I may draw the line differently than others, but broadly I would be totally for immediately abolishing all rent-seekers who produce nothing and leech off of others only by “owning” their means of basic survival such as hedge-fund managed housing for example. “Natural Monopolies” make absolutely zero sense to be private enterprises even according to the logic of Capitalism which benefits the consumer only when there is competition. As far as seizing and redistributing I think there are some examples which would cause minimal disruption and would be ultimately good even for a liberal society. Those are easy ones. More gray area is in massive private institutions have the ownership changed over to the employees. The businesses themselves could run essentially the same as they did before because the owner or owners typically don’t work in businesses on that scale. This would immediately destroy a massive amount of “wealth” which never existed in the first place though which could cause any number of consequences so it would have to be done carefully.

How much water, food, territory, can one accrue before one has to fear the public utilizing violence against them?

How would an individual accrue these things? If this individual accrued these necessities of life, thus prohibiting others from accessing those necessities of life, wouldn’t violence be the inevitable consequence of that from starving people who have lost all rationality from hunger? As far as territory, how would an individual accrue territory and by what means would that individual maintain their claim? How would it benefit them to maintain it so, unless they plan on creating a family cult system?

Arguably the poorest person on welfare in a first world country is a king compared to someone living in a third world country. If you have access to a grocery store, electricity, running water and some kind of medical care regardless of how shitty or expensive it might be then you’re better off than thousands of people the world over. Then factor in things like health standards. Do you have to boil your water to make sure it’s clean to drink? Do you have to put up with insect or rat infestations? Do you have a working stove and fridge? And the. What if THOSE huddled masses wanted to take your riches away and redistribute then?

This is touching on an extremely important dynamic. Why do Westerners live in such privilege while the people living in their colonies do not? The answer here is not to redistribute, it’s to end the exploitation. I think Westerners are competent enough to sustain themselves and their cultures without the need to bleed people from across the world. I believe it’s possible that minimum standards of health greater than what even I have access to now (racketeers are between me and healthcare in my country) are achievable in every part of the world in a fairer system.

Look I’m not saying that having more money than one can spend is healthy personally or culturally. Honestly if I had a couple thousand dollars I’d be set. A million and I probably wouldn’t know what to do with it all. But that’s not the issue as I see it. Where is the cut off point if we sanction forced redistribution?

We agree here. As far as where the cut off point should be, I think that could have a definite answer depending on the individual circumstances of any given place. (cont)