There are various things you can point to when explaining to the Anarchists why their ideology is the metaphoric equivalent to a dog chasing cars.

• States arise naturally. If we can assume anything by looking at the development of humans, and say it’s a part of our nature, it’s the formation of state-like structures to facilitate administration. Our pre-historic ancestors likely empowered members of the ‘tribe’ structure to be authorities on certain things, perhaps the oldest hunter was entrusted to oversee the hunting operations. Perhaps the oldest orator oversaw the lore elements of the tribe. Humans didn’t just put forth hierarchical structures all over the world without reason, they naturally came to the conclusion that certain people within the societal structure needed to work in administrative roles to oversee the efficiency of the society. The Roman Republic was formed when 100 senators from the city of Rome came together to co-govern the territories held by the Roman city-state. What followed was one of the most efficient and industrial states to exist at its time. Which tells us;

• States are stronger than decentralized bodies. Centralized bodies are capable of being formed and reformed to increase productivity and efficiency within society. That efficiency is what allowed Rome to have a large standing army that was - by the later period - standardized and professional. Rome’s army being well supplied, regimented, and properly organized gave it an advantage against their decentralized enemies. If we transpose to the modern day, if an Anarchist body was to form and find itself up against outside forces, those outside forces would have a natural advantage and would be able to bring the Anarchist body to its knees.

• Crowd justice is never just. Any time in history that we’ve seen regular citizens take the law into their own hands en masse, we’ve seen lawless bloodshed without any varifying of guilt. The Anarchists think this is how criminals should be dealt with in their society, without a body of law to protect the innocent from accusations, and without a body of law to investigate and find the real guilty parties. In the best case, it means people living within an Anarchist society would become forced via fear of their peers to fall in line with the values of the society, and at the worst, the Anarchist society would be far more bloody than any Socialist society today. Just imagine if you had a falling out with someone, and they accused you of stealing grain in the middle of the night. Just imagine if you had a temper and people didn’t like you much, and someone decided to accuse you of being violent towards others. Without a judge and a jury to fight for the innocent, mob mentality supersedes justice.

• Without a means of defending themselves from interior agents, societal bodies are subject to rotting from within. Counter-revolutionaries are dealt with in Socialist states by the empowerment of a law enforcement body, in the Soviet Union it was the NKVD. This body exists solely to police the society, and defend it from internal threats. The Anarchists maintain no such body, and so leave themselves vulnerable to counter-revolutionary efforts. Some Anarchists would argue against that, idealistically, by assume that everyone in the Anarchist society would want to defend it. But if history has anything to say about that, groups that tended to lean right before and during the revolution will continue to lean right after. And these groups will attempt to consolidate their power together, and force the society to re-empower them. So, what’s keeping someone from assuming control of the local granary? What’s keeping them from then using their control of the grain supply to force people to bend to their will? The long and short of it is; nothing. nothing will keep counter-revolutionaries from trying to regain right-wing government bodies. In reality, Anarchist society would only push human civilization back to pre-history in terms of politics, and we would only see history repeat itself again.

• Then, of course, we can talk about how few Anarchist projects have lasted more than a year, and how many Marxist projects have lasted many decades. And about how Anarchist projects in the west tend to be supported by petty-bourgeois landowners, who can afford to buy and maintain the rights to the land the Anarchist commune is founded on, and the communes that have lasted for decades only do so because they pose no real threat to Capitalist society and have no plans to ever go against Capitalism on a large enough scale to matter.

• Or we can talk about how entirely unviable Anarchism is outside of the west. It’s little wonder why a majority of Anarchists outside of the west happen to speak English, the parts of the world that you see decently big Anarchist populations happen to also be parts of the world where pro-western sentiments are found. Hong Kong, for instance, has a decent Anarchist contingent. But, if we look in parts of the world where the westerners are actively leading imperialist projects onto people who happen to not want to be imperialized, you’ll see large Marxist populations. Hmm, I wonder if that’s because Marxism is the only anti-imperialist ideology that actually gives answers to how to lead an anti-imperialist movement, and has had those answers tested… repeatedly.