The question raised in the title is purely practical. You will certainly ask yourself this if you spend a few years studying the subject. It will turn out that there are no reasons to consider the state a mandatory, so to speak, “natural” part of society, but rather it should be seen as a kind of childhood illness of humanity. Apologies for the analogy, but it is a social parasite, a kind of tapeworm. There is nothing obligatory about someone being infected with tapeworms. People could quite well have done without the state, and if it has happened in our lives, that does not mean it now has to be endured.
At the same time—and this is very important—most of the information that will lead you to this conclusion you will obtain not from malicious “anarcho-capitalists” and “Austrians,” but from perfectly respectable academic mainstream sources. That is, you will understand that it is rather difficult to accuse you of following some party’s line, and that the state of affairs is most likely objectively just so. And once a certain picture forms in your head, you will inevitably try to share it with those around you, and in the overwhelming majority of cases you will encounter fierce rejection.
How can this be? The data is quite accessible—to be fair, I should note that a kind of “minimal anarchist toolkit” has only become accessible in the last few years—yet people simply reject your worldview out of hand.
The answer, it seems to me, is that the state occupies too much space in the interests and in the minds of our fellow citizens.
Take journalists, for example. They are the ones who, in theory, should be scouring the world for news and carrying it carefully in their beaks to the newsroom. But you are not news to a journalist. You are a threat to them. To understand this, try watching a news broadcast on any channel. Try to find topics there that are not related to the state. Besides the weather forecast, you will find only curiosities like “a resident of Kryzhopol gave birth to seven twins.” What would political journalists write about in the absence of the state? Where would their work front be? For it is obvious that in this case they would transform from masters of public opinion… no, they would simply lose not only their status but their jobs. Of course, the same journalistic investigations would not go anywhere, but the scale would be entirely different. If there is no state, political journalists will no longer have the right to lounge around in prime time discussing the fate of the world. There will be none of this pompous business about entering parliament. Can one possibly reconcile oneself to this?
At the same time, I am not claiming that these same journalists rationally recognize the threat your ideas pose to them. No, usually this happens at the level of instinct. They will simply file you away somewhere with the authors of pieces about templars or reptiloids. It’s quieter that way. By the way, if anarchists had thought to spread their ideas through the “animal world” section or “science and technology news,” they would have had better chances. In the journalistic department of “politics and economics,” their chances approach zero. Now let’s take economists. It would seem that economics, in essence, is an anti-state science by its axioms. However, at the same time, most economic texts are texts about state regulation, either with its apologia or with its criticism. Most economists, even those engaged in academic work, are connected in one way or another with the state and, accordingly, with state regulation. In a world without the state, economics will become a rigorous science. Accordingly, state budgets, taxes, trade balances, and exchange rates will disappear from economists’ activities. No one will expect miracles from them anymore, they will not be invited onto television, and they will not be given a well-paid government position. They are destined only for consulting—perhaps a lucrative one, but hardly glorious and honorable. I am not even speaking about theory. For example, take de Soto’s efficiency criterion and Pareto’s efficiency criterion. In the first one, there are no knobs to adjust to “make the system efficient”; it essentially boils down to “everything here will be efficient if you finally leave us alone.” In Pareto’s criterion, there are adjustment knobs, of course. The question—which of the two criteria will be “recognized”—need not even be discussed.
In general, I think everyone has noticed that the majority of liberal economists stop at minarchism of varying degrees of moderation. And this is entirely logical. Either you recognize the necessity of the state, even if a minimal one, and then you are “one of us,” or you do not recognize it and then you are a marginal. At the same time, I repeat, in the overwhelming majority of cases, there is no Central Committee or secret lodge giving orders—everything here works at the level of instinct, self-censorship, and simple discomfort, because if I say that the state is unnecessary, then… what then? Since the state produces economic dementia on an industrial scale, liberal criticism of this dementia from the position of a more rational, intelligent, and thoughtful—but still state—policy sells well. This position is convenient; there is always something to criticize, and one cannot expect that your smart recommendations will suddenly be heard and implemented—it never happened and never will. Consequently, this music can go on forever, to the complete satisfaction of all participating parties.
Well, and finally, the last group of comrades who might be interested in your positions is the progressive public, from online hamsters to real activists. In my observations, it is in this group that you will encounter the fiercest pushback. It is in arguments with this crowd that you will discover the true abysses of casuistry and sophistry. Their resistance will be ferocious, up to and including physical fights. For if the state is unnecessary, then what are we for? We, who sincerely and disinterestedly believe, make sacrifices, and fight for the people’s happiness—what are we for then? People will never forgive you for this.
In general, the step a person must take to accept the idea that one can easily do without the state is too great. On this side, they have an understandable world. Here they are part of the progressive public and fight for a bright future, the outlines of which are obvious to them. And most importantly, the paths that will lead them to this future are obvious to them. A little more effort, one more election, one more good official instead of a bad one, one more correct law and the job will be done. Next to them are the same pleasant people, there are many of them, and they understand each other. Even their enemies think the same way—they just want different people in the same positions and profess (by mistake, of course) the “wrong” ideology. Even revolutionaries and terrorists think the same way they do, they just want to accelerate everything. They all understand each other, they are all part of one world. And then there is you. In the world you propose, there is nothing that would make these people valuable to themselves without changing the roles they currently play. And they might even agree with you that life without the state would be much better, but they will never do anything for it.
And, of course, I am neither accusing nor blaming anyone. Things are what they are. Today, sorry for the expression, both paradigms and discourses are unanimously against those who do not want to continue living with the state. Which means one must think.