Libs thinking we’re on their side, until the point we reject electoralism and US imperialist propaganda. Then label as as “tankies”.
Campists thinking we’re on their side until the point we reject “AES” and “left unity”. Then label as a “liberals”.
Anarchists are clearly the rare species of “liberal tankie” 😆
It boils down to cooperation vs coordination.
A cooperative force has fewer week points. A single point of failure would be unlikely to cause the rest of the cooperatives to quit. Contrast that to a coordinated war machine where a coup d’etat could quite literally cause them to lay down arms.
Cooperatives by their nature are volunteers whereas state solders are frequently conscripted or coerced in other ways.
A state has hierarchical structures which allows a few leaders near the top to organize a large portion of the state’s workforce and economy into a war machine. We have seen examples of that many times through history. Have we seen a counter example of an anarchist cooperative building a war machine to protect itself? Bonus: Has that ever happened without then turning into a state because of the systems it built took on a life of their own birthing regime soaked in the blood of its own? I digress.