I’ve been thinking a lot about the relationship between anarchists and the state. Obviously I understand the reason behind anti-statism but I think mindless opposition to any idea is unproductive. So I want to discuss the concept of an anarchist-friendly state.
The starting point is the thought: “what if some people cannot be anarchists?”. The effort needed to maintain anarchic structures is considerable and it’s possible that a lot of people aren’t willing to put in the effort. Voluntary association is fundamental to anarchist theory and that includes the creation of voluntary states. As long as these states are willing to work alongside anarchists there should be no reason for conflict, and states have a good reason to cooperate as anarchists could take over some of the problematic functions of the classical state like policing, after all any successful anarchist society needs to self-police anyway.
I’m not familiar with all of the theory surrounding minarchism but I think the term is applicable to these voluntary anarchist-friendly states.
Which brings me to a question: Could minarchist parties exist? And could they represent a form of electorialism that anarchists could participate in? They could be structured around instant recalls ensuring some level of protection against opportunists. Although such parties would require a change to election laws.
In what way is this a state?
Concretely spell out the difference between this an people self organising horizontally.
Top down management structure. You still have a person or a group of people who command different branches like Education, Transport, Healthcare, Emergency response, Recourse allocation (water, food, electricity), Construction/Maintenance (Basically ministries). All of these are organised the same as they are in states. Top down. Vertical. Except at any point you can renounce your citizenship in which case none the benefits and responsibilities apply to you.
This is a contradiction. Nobody is in command unless there is violence to back up orders.
How can you lose benefits unless someone takes them. Ok I stop listening, unless someone comes and forcibly disconnects my plumbing it sounds like I still get to use it. Unless someone forced a firefighter not to extinguish a burning house of a “non citizen” it seems like they’ll probably just do it anyway.
Yeah. You’re right. There couldn’t really be that hard of a line between citizens and non-citizens. And because the hierarchy wouldn’t really be based on violence and more just deferring of skill and effort it wouldn’t really be a hierarchy at all.
But I still think that having anarchist-friendly states is possible. Maybe by having a border that can get moved as the demographics change or through territories voting to join either the anarchist side or the state side.