Are You an Anarchist? The Answer May Surprise You by David Graeber (2000)

> I’ve been working with people who’ve become big advocates for a universal basic income. It’s not the only solution, but it conforms with my political instincts. People think that is odd because I’m an anarchist. Why would I want a policy where the government would just give people money? Isn’t that giving power to the government? I say, no.

> A basic income would be the perfect leftist antibureaucratic policy. It would not only reduce the number of bureaucrats, but it would get rid of the worst of them, the annoying ones who decide whether you’re really poor enough to deserve this, or whether you’re really married to that person or whether you really live in that room.

He thought there were multiple ways people considered themselves on the left. For example, from https://davidgraeber.org/articles/from-managerial-feudalism-... :

> The conclusion that I came to is that essentially, the left is applying an outdated paradigm: they’re still thinking in terms of bosses and workers in a kind of old-fashioned industrial sense, when what’s really going on is that for most people the key class opposition is caregivers versus managers. Leftist parties are trying to represent both sides at the same time, but they’re really dominated by the latter.

and that "mainstream left" wasn't barely on the left. From https://davidgraeber.org/interviews/i-found-myself-turning-i... :

> Because, in a way, the left began against bureaucratization of life. It’s about freedom. The mainstream left, which is barely left at all at this point in traditional terms … has really embraced a combination of market and bureaucracy, an equal synthesis of the worst aspects of capitalism and the worst aspects of bureaucracy.

If you ask a fan of AOC (not all of them obviously), "socialism" might conjure an image of clean and tidy Stockholm, ask a fan of Trump (not all of them obviously) and they'll tell you about Stalin's gulags or how Sweden is overrun by "Muslim terrorist".

I find this definition interesting because it seems to me there’s a very prevalent portrayal in media pointing towards the opposite, that is that humans left alone (read, without some powerful/wealthy authority) will unravel into the most depraved state imaginable.

Reading the book factuality was fascinating because it showed me a view of humans that you don’t see in mass media since ordinary is boring and thus we only get either extremes of good or bad (read, saving the Amazon rainforest to a mother killing her child)

Anarchy by this definition is hard to believe (although I aim to) because we are bombarder with the exceptions to the rule

An anarchist state is also kind of an oxymoron.

The real test is:

Your friend’s daughter had her drink spiked and then was raped while passed out by a bunch of frat guys.

If you believe that you and your buddies should get together with guns and baseball bats and go to the Frat house and exact justice/revenge on them, then you might really be an anarchist.

All the situations outlined are nice and good. Self-organization should be the default mode. However, there are situations where you need someone that can use violence to enforce justice. For most people, that would be the state.