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."
You’re getting there, yeah! It’s not that you can’t explain or justify anarchism to statists. It’s that Anarchism isn’t a real thing and is a purely philosophical concept. Lukács is relevant specifically for Reification and the Consciousness of the Proletariat.
Anarchism isn’t within the realm of material reality, it’s purely a vibe. It does not exist, and that’s why you can’t critique it. Anarchism doesn’t do anything, it’s just an idea. To get mad at anarchism is to tilt at windmills. But conversely, this entire argument also means that if anarchism can’t be criticised because it doesn’t exist, it also cannot achieve anything because it doesn’t exist.
Anarchism is like pure mathematics, it is a philosophy that exists for its own sake at this time. To leap from the current system directly to anarchism is not possible, but it is essentially the end goal of all leftists.
From the standpoint that there is an order of economic/social systems by which human flourishing can be achieved, that order would be like feudalism > capitalism > state capitalism > socialism > global communism > anarchism.
Ok, so I was understanding correctly. It’s a limit, like in calculus; infinitely approaching, never reaching. And that would make feudalism the other limit of pure authority; It can never be reached because it is a contradiction of ultimate control, which is a contradiction.
And the state is a way by which traversal occurs, but since the purpose of a thing is what it does the state by definition cannot approach anarchism and therefore will never wither away?