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As an anarchist, I do not advocate for the sudden removal of central state authority, because that is likely to lead to exactly the scenario that the Somalia example suggests: conflict among sub-state actors seeking paramountcy over other sub-state actors. As an anarchist, what I do advocate is the establishment of mutual aid and cooperative sociality outside of the state’s purview, because *that* is what builds real anarchism.

Instead of Somalia, we can and should look to the countless non-state societies that existed all over the world for thousands and thousands of years without the emergence of “warlords,” a phenomenon that is, for all practical purposes, a function of rather than exception to the state.

The San bushmen of Southern Africa are likely descended from the first human inhabitants of that region. They likely lived in isolation, without the state, for at least *100,000 years.* Miraculously, mysteriously, no warlords seem to have emerged in that time, no war of all against all. It seems like this alleged critique of anarchism isn’t so inevitable after all.

12/end