this post was submitted on 30 Jun 2026
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Im also not dumb enough to think everyone will play nice when states no longer exist.
So in political science broadly and especially foreign policy, the default is to assume that states themselves exist in an otherwise anarchic environment with no supernatural rules. Only responses to their own behavior, to the extent that another state can actually impose that on them, exist to potentially 'govern' them.
States are literally an abstraction, the fundamental reality is anarchy.
States also tend to not play nice with each other, nor with their own subjects.
So an abstraction that puts you in its prisons when you break their rules doesn't seem very abstract to me.
You've missed the point.
I can put you in a dungeon if you break my rules.
... when a person acts this way, they tend to be viewed as a serial killer or perhaps vigilante or terrorist.
What's the difference?
Scale of power? Perception of legitimacy or moral justness?
A constitutional charter that defines the limits of one's authority tends to aid the perception of legitimacy, at least until that charter begins to be ignored.
In theory at least, the charter is written by folks representing their constituencies, and approved by those constituencies either directly or through their representatives. Thereby gaining legitimacy through the consent of the governed.
In practice though, it doesn't always work out like that. Representatives might not truly represent the interests of their constituents, or might be captured by financial powers or ideological interest groups. Hence, corruption ensues.
I think smaller-scale units of governance would enable more direct democracy. These could then be syndicated into larger units to prevent issues like border skirmishes and resource wars, as well as competing value systems (like you might live in a socialist utopia, but the next village over might be a fascist hellscape that frequently raids your land to capture and enslave your people).
It's a more bottom-up, grassroots approach. As opposed to what we have now, where we still have multi-tiered levels of governance (federal, state, local, and sometimes municipal or metropolitan), but it's more top-down. The federal government makes the primary set of rules, and each level down makes more detailed rules to fill in the gaps and work within the space that's left to them.
In a syndicated system, the smallest unit makes their primary set of rules, and then those small units get together with others of comparable size to form an umbrella set of rules which governs their relations with each other. Then another level up, etc.
Of course, any system is only as just as the people who are running it, but anarchy is no different. In an anarchical society, nothing is stopping the next village over from becoming more powerful than you and asserting their will and dominance upon you.
Although it might seem contradictory, something can be abstract and concrete at the same time. These are relative qualities.
Relative to anarchy, the state is abstract. It depends upon a socially shared model of thinking that gets acted out by individuals. Take away this layer of abstraction and you are left with anarchy, i.e. the precursor of the state.
Prison is itself an abstraction, though its consequences feel very concrete to a prisoner. All of your thoughts and feelings are abstractions, and yet they seem concrete to you.
States aren't an abstraction, any more than the earth's gravity and atmospheric pressure are an abstraction. Both exist and are very stable, despite nominally existing in what's otherwise empty space, if you ignore the whole world.
They are abstractions in the sense that they are collections of rules that people made up.
They are real in the sense that those rules are reliably and effectively enacted and carried out.
You can say just the same for a single person with a moral code, or a group of people, some kind of organization with its own rules, codified or implicit.
A person can decide to shoot you or stab you, or give you a donut or sing a song in praise of you, depending on their rules... just in the same way as a group, or a state.
The difference is just scale, and the number of layers it takes to get from something you can drop from above the ground and reliably know it will fall, and things that have massive effects via much more complex processes.
The state 'exists' to roughly the same extent that 'I' exist.
I might change my rules, my behavior, so might a state.
A person's personality, the way a state functions and acts... both are emergent patterns or concepts or ideas that ultimately derive from something physically real, yet themselves are not directly, tangibly 'real'...
They're also not static, the way gravity is a static rule of reality. Their 'nature', their own internal rules are mutable. The speed of light, ohm's law, set theory... things that we discover, not invent... those are static, universal rules, spatially and temporally invariant.
Emergent patterns of course also often have particular ways that they tend to behave, rules that they tend to follow... but the more abstract, the more indirectly 'real' the thing is, the more complex and nuanced those rules tend to be.
Odd things begin to happen when you treat certain emergent patterns, certain rules, as more primarily, fundamentally 'real' than they actually are.
No one, certainly no anarchist suggested they would. So that's a really weird thing to assert. Just completely irrelevant, non sequitur. Hardship and tragedy will always occur even without the existence of a state. But if you want atrocity, mass oppression/suppression you need the state.
Yes there is the argument that the state is theoretically capable of being a net benefit. The problem is the reality where the state struggles to even stay net neutral. Generally outright oppressive corrupt realistically. Even the best states.
Are you seriously trying to say atrocities and oppression can't or won't happen without a state?
People will still exist. What do you think would happen in Texas or Oklahoma or the Carolinas if there was no longer a state telling them they can't enslave people?
(Caveat: yes, I know about the prisons carve-out. That's unjust, of course, but how do you expect to even patch that hole without a state?)
Any sufficiently large gang, left well enough alone for long enough, will become the de facto state.
Your own local anarchist conclave may all be friendly and would never do such a thing to their neighbors. But if the next one down the road decides they need your land and resources, and if they outnumber and outgun you, then you're just done for. No one will come to help defend you. No one will arrive to mete out vengeance afterward.
The state holding an implied monopoly of violence is what enables said state to enact their atrocities, but is also what prevents smaller groups from falling into the same trap.
We don't have territory wars within the US states because if you start shooting at your neighbors, the police arrive. They are a higher authority that can compel punishment for your crimes. Say what you will about the cops (trust me, I've got a lot to say, and most of it ain't nice), but the threat of the police compels civil behavior from people who would be otherwise disinclined to it.
Another key part of that, is that the police force is effectively inexhaustible. There may be, factually, a limited number of cops that exist in America, but in practice, if you just start blasting at them, you'll never see the end of it. You'll be hunted by police and feds and SWAT teams until you achieve death.
In smaller, more localized communities, none of this remains true. You may have local peacekeepers, folks in your community that serve the same function that police would in a different environment, but they aren't going to be numerous enough or authoritative enough to combat an outside threat. When a bike gang rolls up with a dozen shotguns, and you have, say, five peacekeepers in your commune, the bike gang is getting whatever they want, one way or another.
And here we have the primary argument that prevents me from supporting anarchism as a realistic political standpoint. We can all chant "Abolish the state!" all we want, but when the state is gone and someone takes advantage of their absence, we return to the "might makes right" era of human history, which has, historically speaking, brought about many of the very worst times to be a living human being.
You are aware of ICE going around and terrorizing and shooting at people, and doing all kinds of property damage... commiting literally tens of thousands of crimes... and the police largely just do nothing about this, in the moment, often outright aiding them in this?
This is where your model breaks down.
You don't even need ICE. You just need 'protestors' the police are friendly toward, vs 'protestors' they are not friendly toward.
Or, howabout civil asset forfeiture? Police can legally steal your money, literally charge the money itself with a crime, and the money is presumed guilty untill proven innocent... the onus is now on you to prove that your property is not guilty of a crime.
Or, a similar kind of thing, scaled up is when states do this to other state's funds, 'freezing' them is usually the terminology used.
Or what about mass, systemic, persistent wage-theft? One class of people/legal entitities are just allowed to commit... on the book, illegal crimes, all the time, every day... and nobody really looks into that, the victim usually has to do an inordinate amount of work. Compared to the reverse situation where an employee embezzles money or steals a thing from a company, or where a customer steals a thing off a shelf.
States and state-based and state-backed/favorrd organizations play by the same actual rules as anarchists do.
Anarchists just don't lie about that fact, as state-based/backed/favored organizations often do.
Again this is kind of non sequitur. No one argued that they wouldn't. States are definitionally just gangs that have been legitimized.
And? None of these are gotchas of any sort. Even that case is still preferable to the state doing it. If the state does it does that make it better/more acceptable. And at that point wouldn't that group be a burgeoning state anyway? This is why anarchist are strong advocates of arming the populace.
Smaller groups are capable of less total violence at scale. That's like saying, more violence is justified, otherwise we would effectively have less violence. It doesn't make the sense you seem to think.
Oh and there is also a huge difference between the state acknowledging that it is at War for territory. And not being at war for territory. In the United States my people are constantly at war with the state to preserve what little territory we've been left. Let alone get back what the state stole. But it's okay because the state did it therefore it's okay. Otherwise some roving gang might have gotten much smaller section of it. And that would be so much worse than losing nearly all of it as we did.
And no community is an island. You keep mentioning "my community" as if that is all there is. Or that having neighbors and allies is impossible. All you arguments realistically just boil down to "we need the state, or else the state". Classic circular reasoning.
Which is different from states invading their neighbours how?
We never left it. The might just calls themselves governments and CEOs.
thanks for the input, but also, im not sure who you are or why you're worried about seeming intellectually superior to the next person
Did they say "everyone else?"
no, i dont think so. did i?
Mu. You're accusing someone worried about everyone being a dick, as if they think the problem is only other people. It's a rhetorical attempt at reversing a nonexistant grasp for superiority - and it's a non sequitur. Even if someone believed they, themselves, would act decently, they could be right to worry about other people, and only mistaken in forgetting they are other people.
appreciate the thorough explanation, but unfortunately it seems completely irrelevant to the actual words i said, or any meaning, intent, or purpose therein.
They aren't.
'Everyone should be smart enough to figure this out' is not a claim to be a suuuper geeenius.
more like, im so smart, i can misrepresent the core ideals of political ideology, and then poke holes in my own misrepresentation.
Criticism zero percent conveyed by snipping 'okay, Einstein.'
sorry you didnt get it
Incorrect.
not even sure what there is for me to be incorrect about, we're talking about your own misunderstanding. you burnt multiple comments on a point i never even made. sorry youre so mad about that.
I could put a sticker on your forehead and you'd try to pick it off the mirror.
whatever makes you feel better about yourself