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Quite a few people I encounter express some variation of the idea that “the state, however objectionable, provides valuable services.” It’s worth asking, though, which of those services, if any, *require* the state, and which are provided by the state in its effort to improve the efficiency of extracting resources and labor from its subjects.

Not every exploitive or violent hierarchy is a state, and we should not end our struggle with the state. An abusive, patriarchal family; an extractive, controlling religious cult. But the state is the prevailing and predominant hierarchy of power, violence, and exploitation in our lives, and it empowers and is indistinguishable from all the others.

Some could exist without the state, like the patriarchal family. Some would struggle, like white supremacy. Some couldn’t exist without the state at all, and indeed are indistinguishable from the modern state.

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