TLDR: Statists measure success based on the state, so in order to convince them that anarchism us successful we would need to stop being anarchists.
"For anarchists who do know something about anthropology, the arguments are all too familiar. A typical exchange goes something like this:
Skeptic: Well, I might take this whole anarchism idea more seriously if you could give me some reason to think it would work. Can you name me a single viable example of a society which has existed without a government?
Anarchist: Sure. There have been thousands. I could name a dozen just off the top of my head: the Bororo, the Baining, the Onondaga, the Wintu, the Ema, the Tallensi, the Vezo…
Skeptic: But those are all a bunch of primitives! I’m talking about anarchism in a modern, technological society.
Anarchist: Okay, then. There have been all sorts of successful experiments: experiments with worker’s self-management, like Mondragon; economic projects based on the idea of the gift economy, like Linux; all sorts of political organizations based on consensus and direct democracy…
Skeptic: Sure, sure, but these are small, isolated examples. I’m talking about whole societies.
Anarchist: Well, it’s not like people haven’t tried. Look at the Paris Commune, the revolution in Republican Spain…
Skeptic: Yeah, and look what happened to those guys! They all got killed!
The dice are loaded. You can’t win. Because when the skeptic says “society,” what he really means is “state,” even “nation-state.” Since no one is going to produce an example of an anarchist state—that would be a contradiction in terms—what we’re really being asked for is an example of a modern nation-state with the government somehow plucked away: a situation in which the government of Canada, to take a random example, has been overthrown, or for some reason abolished itself, and no new one has taken its place but instead all former Canadian citizens begin to organize themselves into libertarian collectives. Obviously this would never be allowed to happen. In the past, whenever it even looked like it might—here, the Paris commune and Spanish civil war are excellent examples—the politicians running pretty much every state in the vicinity have been willing to put their differences on hold until those trying to bring such a situation about had been rounded up and shot."
Okay you’ve identified that capitalist nations and projects around any revolution will put it down with utmost force, even overcoming great internal barriers and obstacles to do so, because an example of the alternative allowed to exist unmolested would be a death blow to them.
Now what? How has this problem been effectively navigated
That’s not the point of the passage. Try again, but consider where this was posted and who the intended audience is. Are you the intended audience?
I don’t understand. Why would me being or not being the intended audience matter, that’s a pretty basic thing to have to think through. Do you want to be morally pure in an abstract sense or do you want to make the world a better place? If the only response to asking how this revolution would defend itself is “you’re the wrong person to ask that” then I think you’re just dodging the point.
/gen
If the author is an anarchist and the audience is anarchist then why would the author try to convert the audience to anarchism?
They wouldn’t.
The passage is saying that it doesn’t make sense to argue with people who have already made up their minds. The Socratic dialogue at the start is an example of the logical fallacy of appeal to authority and circular logic, and Graeber’s paragraph at the end is him explaining the dialogue.
Do you see the irony of your original comment now?
But I haven’t made up my mind, genuinely. I’d really actually like to know the answer; if there’s something I hadn’t yet considered I would want to know it
Of course!
If we put things in the most straightforward terms, a state is a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence. That’s it, that’s all a state is. If there is no monopoly of violence then it’s not a state. A monopoly on violence is maintained by a standing military occupation, in most cases this means police.
That’s the jist of it. There’s more nuance and different approaches to it, but that’s the core difference between anarchism and statism; are cops needed for communism? Anything else is just policy.
That’s clearly not what I meant; I meant the original question I posed
I see. Personally, no idea. Communalism seems to be working quite well at holding off fascism. Security culture works well in the imperial core, and decentralized affinity groups seem to be the most effective thing from inside the imperial core.
Graber talks about the two laws of anarchism. First, a better world is possible. Second, there is no vanguard; nobody has all the answers. This is why anarchist tactics today are unrecognizable from a decade ago, let alone a century.
Bruh Ultra-Left moment who gaf if you can’t even give satisfying answers to such a basic historical problem even in the abstract or hypothetical then this sounds like a self satisfying waste of time