It’s a distillation of intent. To hit the bullseye, it is generally accepted that one ought to aim.

But should we be aiming there is my question! To me, it’s a similar goal to saying that the anarchist project is about making everybody happy. It’s utopian.

We need to think deeply about what we’re trying to achieve and how we’re going to judge our success, is all I’m saying. I could co-exist with certain types of states just as much as I could co-exist with criminal gangs. Moreover, I can and do co-exist with the *people* who support those types of organizations.

I guess I have a problem with a framework that strives towards an “end state”, short of which nothing is acceptable. It’s utopian. Anarchy is about whatever people freely choose, and yes, violence, or those darker natures which coalesce in what we call “statism”, all of that is part of what it means to be human, no? Why, then, should we assume that the struggle against the State is more finally achievable than any other long-running human goal?

In my opinion, we are strongest when we describe our project as propaganda. We are trying to change people’s minds about the State. We don’t want them to make exceptions for the state, but rather regard it in the same light they regard any organization. It is the State’s *legitimacy* that makes it powerful - take that away and it has no authority or metaphysical sway on the individual. And we’ll never, I believe, totally get rid of gullible people, any more than we’ll totally get rid of criminals.

The answer is that, in the present, all property is stolen.

Due to property taxes, nobody in the present own any property at all. If you don’t pay property taxes, policemen will steal your property from you. You don’t “own” your house. You really have a perpetual transferable lease.

This is one of the key planks of the Communist Manifesto.

Reading up on agorist revolutionary theory, we come to understand that the anarchist project of revolution is one of bootstrapping a system of Stateless law, one fully capable of suppressing the State (as the criminal gang we rightly recognize it as) while not becoming a de facto State itself.

Is this not a bit too much to expect of a theory? The ability to overcome and keep any bandits at bay is more of a question of strategy and tactics and the circumstances of the particular situation, no?

Not to sound like I’m nitpicking, but I just don’t know if, as an anarchist, I would want to guarantee any eventuality, including the re-emergence of states. I mean, I wouldn’t call a stateless society a failure simply because it features organized crime.

Maybe I’m misunderstanding you: are you rather more concerned with simply projecting a vision of a society where even well-organized, institutionally structured bands of armed criminals COULD be continually and successfully suppressed?