Anarchists use it to mean any government that exists and is in power.

deleted by creator

Biggest theorical aspect of anarchism: take the word state, add -ism, there you go, the ideology of when state exists

Socially well off people who don’t feel the presence of their own state see propaganda about China and deem the State to be overly present in the affairs of its territory.

I feel its also like some people personify and deify the state, so instead of viewing it as an instrument of organized labor for the organization of labor they view it as a thing in and of itself. In this case it’s adjacent to “state capitalism” where the state takes the place of the bourgeoisie as if a non-entity could extract or consume value according to its own ends. The state has no will of its own. It operates according to the will of its operators.

Basic dialectic thought is that for a thing to have meaning it must be defined by its contradiction, its absence, or exclusion. If every government is statist then the word has no relevance. The word clearly implies not just the presence of the state, but an excessive presence of the state. As opposed to what? Liberal democracy. So in this sense the word resembles a liberal myth which only holds meaning if you believe that liberal democracies do not possess an excess of state while these other nations do.

You can say yes and no to this. Whether I have the gun and you don’t or the other way around only one gun is present, with one person having it and the other not. If I were to alienate you from the equation, as long as the gun is my hand then I would see no problem, but when the gun is in your hand I would quickly consider it to be an excess of guns.

In liberal democracies the state is very much active in organizing labor according to their interests. It does this using extraordinary violence. None of this is presented as state excess. If it is acknowledged at all we begin hearing talk about bad apples. The principle of the apple is good, but this one individual is bad. Most of the time state violence is made to seem like universal principles or natural laws. Homeless and wage labor are as inherent and unavoidable as gravity and time. The inevitability of death is equated to taxes.

I mention above dialectical theory and here it is important. When presented with a thesis, say statism, it’s important to always look for the antithesis and figure the co-relation of the two. You’ll get a better idea of a thing by its relation to its opposite than you would by only looking at the thing by itself. Look at this with regard to fluid concepts like freedom and democracy. To understand the nature of the thing beyond vague feelings we look for the contradictions. Freedom, but what is the antithesis of the freedom being expressed? Democracy, but where does the exclusionary principle lie? Socialists don’t call for democracy but for dictatorship. Why? Because democracy is defined by its contradiction. That’s why liberal democracies begin to complain about an excess of democracy when the traditional means of alienation decay.

deleted by creator